Hello everyone! My name is Ashlea and I am so excited to be on the Birch Press Designs blog for the first time. I have always loved the Birch Press Designs style and quality of product, and I am thrilled to be a part of this team to help inspire and spark ideas! For my first post, I thought I’d focus on a simple but effective technique using shadow dies. Since Birch Press has many word and shadow dies, I wanted to provide ideas of different ways to use them as often as possible! I love the pad to paper technique of rubbing an ink pad onto a piece of card stock in order to transfer a very rich and vibrant color that you just can’t get from the traditional ink blenders. Here’s a video showing a detailed tutorial of how I achieved this look.
I love this technique as it allows me to stretch my uses for these word and shadow dies. It’s super simple!
First, you’ll want to pick 3-4 colors of ink pads that won’t turn “muddy” when the colors meet. Basically, you’ll want to choose colors close to each other on the color wheel. I used Catherine Pooler inks for my pad to paper technique here because I love her pads, especially for pad to paper techniques.
Once I blended all of my colors and cut the shadow die out using the ink blended spaces, I adhered all of the letters to the shadow dies and adhered them to a card front cut with Memory Box Wrapped Stitched Rectangles dies to add a little interest to the border.
Finally, I adhered all of the word dies to the card front with foam tape to add dimension and heat embossed the sentiment “You’re In My Heart” from the Lingo Love stamp set and adhered that over the second word die down.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed learning a bit about how I created this card using the ink pad to paper technique. I hope you’ll try it out on your cards and enjoy it as much as I do! Thanks so much for stopping by and I’ll see you again soon!
Supplies
Hi there it’s Tracey here with you today. With Valentines Day only a week away I thought I would share a shaker card with you made with Birch Press Design craft dies! I created a video below to show you my process for creating my shaker card.
Smooshing with Distress Oxide inks is one of my favourite technques that I haven’t done in a while. My smooshing colours were inspired by a card I saw on Kristina Werner’s YouTube channel the other day. I started out by smooshing some Distress Oxide Ink onto my craft mat and then I spritzed it with water. Using a panel of watercolour paper I lay it down into the ink, held it briefly and lifted it. Before adding more ink I dried the panel with my heat tool and repeated this process two more time until the colours all worked in together. This panel is the background to the shaker card. I adhered that watercolour piece to a white top folding card base. Here are the supplies I used today.
To make the shaker I adhered a piece of acetate over the back of the heart on the card front. I used tape runner to make sure the acetate was completely sealed close the edge of the heart. Turning it over on to the tissue backing paper helps to keep any dust off the front while working on the card. I adhered two layers of foam tape all over the back of the front panel, close the edge of the heart and right over to all exterior edges. Then I filled my shaker with sequins. I adhered the background panel/card base carefully to the shaker. Once it was flipped over I inlay the silver sparkle Dahlia die cut into the heart on the front panel.
The last step was to add the ‘Hugs’ sentiment which is from the 
Making a shaker is a great way to get more use out of your dies. Your could step this up a notch and build your layers up on the front panel like I did in this post 
Thank you so much for stopping in today to make a shaker with me. I hope you try making a shaker with your Birch Press Design layered dies and when you do tag us in your Facebook and IG posts @birchpressdesign so we can see your work! Have a wonderful weekend!
Hi there it’s Tracey here today and I am so excited to share a card with you that was made using the brand new 
The mini frame was going to be the star of the show so I decided to add all my colour on to the panel behind the frame. Here are the supplies that I used to make the card:
I started off with a watercolour panel that measured 5 1/4″ x 4″ and I sponged three shades of purple Distress Oxide Inks on to it. I spritzed it with water and let the panel dry. Once it was dry I sprayed it with a generous coating of Sheer Glimmer spray to give the panel lots of sparkle. If you don’t have a sparkle spray you could add shine with some glitter, Stickles or even with a shimmer pen like Wink of Stella.
Once the panel was dry I cut out one of each layer of the Dahlia Mini Frame set with heavy white cardstock. The three layers were glued together with a liquid adhesive. I like using liquid adhesive with the Birch Press Design layering dies because it gives you a bit of time to wiggle the layers into place.
Once the frame was dry I adhered it to the watercolour panel and then set it aside to dry while I worked on my sentiment. I stamped and die cut the ‘Thanks’ from the brand new 
I was originally going to adhere the panel directly to the card base with tape runner but it didn’t stand out enough. So I carefully removed it and added foam tape pieces to it instead. I was worried that the tape runner might adhere to the card base accidentally so I used my powder tool to go over all the sticky that was around the foam tape. It worked out perfectly. This was one of those moments where I wished I had made a video! I love sharing my mistakes in my posts and how they can be fixed. Before adding the coloured thanks to the frame I backed it with pieces of foam tape so that it would sit at the same height as the frame.
To finish off the card I added a few clear silver Stickle filled sequins that were size 4mm and 6mm. If just gives the card a little more sparkle.
The 
