Sunday was this month’s Technique Night with my meetup group and by request, I did a night that was focused on going over many of the tools you might encounter on your crafting journey including:

• The BigShot
• Aqua and Blender pens for water coloring
• Crimpers
• Bone Folders
• Paper Piercing tools
• Heat and Dry Embossing
• the Crop-a-Dile for eyelet setting and hole punching
• the Stamp-a-ma-jig for exact stamp image placement
• Color spritzers
• And paper punches

So, we ended up using all of these tools on the following two projects.

First we used a Whisper White envelope (since it uses the same type of paper as Whisper White CS, these envelopes take ink and stamping really well!) Trim off 1 1/4” from one of the short sides of the envelope.  Then we used the scallop edge punch on the smaller piece.  For the larger piece, we stamped and used the color spritzer to scatter Soft Suede ink on both sides of the envelope.  Then we ran the big piece through the crimper.  Watercolor the stamped image using the covers of classic ink pads and a watercolor pen, add a punched out scallop square, and adhere and you are pretty much done.  We punched two holes through both the top and bottom pieces of the envelope so we could run ribbon through to tie the envelope closed.

Next we made this card:

This card used the BigShot for making the dots on the white paper.  Then we used the brayer to lightly go over the dots to give them some color.  We did dry embossing on the Rich Razzleberry CS using some holes I punched out some Chipboard with the Simple Alphabet Dies for the BigShot.  We stamped the flower image from the Vintage Vogue stamp set, used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to place the text below the flower and then heat embossed using black embossing powder (don’t forget to use the embossing buddy to ensure you don’t get stray embossing powder flecks!).  Used the crop-a-dile to set the jumbo eyelet; and then finally used the super, awesome mat pack and paper piercer to punch the row of holes below the Rich Razzleberry CS.  Oh, and we used the bone folder and the groove in the paper cutter to score the card so we had a nice crisp fold.

Whew!  That’s a lot of tools, but it was lots of fun.

If you are interested in any of the tools used for these projects, you can get them now through my online store .  Plus –  if your total is $25 or more you will be entered into my drawing for a $50 gift certificate!

My favorite tools are the BigShot and the Mat Pack.  What are yours?