Bee Yourself...

Hello all! It took me an embarrassing long time to make these three cards. A week I believe. But in my defense, I kept getting interrupted with life. 

I received these awesome stamps by DezinesByEm. They are a specialty stamp line designed by Mike Fernholz and you can find them on Anthony's Paper Craft site. 

For today's cards, I used the: 

• DMB1902 DezinesByEm Bee Set 
• DMB1906DezinesByEm Honey Bee House
• DBM1904 DezinesByEm Honeycomb

I love to do bee themed cards. But for this set, I wanted to go a little more rustic. I remembered I have a Tim Holtz Lost and Found Paper Stash which I felt would do well with my vision. 

I used both Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain Time Holtz Distress Ink to lay down a few honeycomb areas.

Next I decided I wanted to heat emboss my stamp designs. I do this when I want to color so that the colors don't bleed into each other, and well I just like heat embossing! I colored most of my bees and honey bee house with Derwent's Inktense Ink Pencils.

For me personally, I like to use vaseline to blend my colors. It brings the vibrancy of the color out. I have found that I like to do this one of two ways. One being to dip the tip of my color pencil into the vaseline and color with it. Two being to take a q-tip and blend a little bit of vaseline onto my color. A little goes a long ways. 

***I have several types of Derwent products. I have found that with the Derwent Inktense set, I have absolutely no issue whatsoever using the dip the tip option. I simply wipe the tip off when done. It sharpens just fine as well. I would not, however, recommend doing this with the Derwent Watercolour Pencils as it does breakdown the pencil. When it comes to crafting for me, I say whatever works for you is great. It may not work for the next person, but that's the joy of crafting. No one does it the same way.***

I also heat embossed my sentiments. (In the third picture, I am using the yellow from Derwent's Watercolour pencils. I did not use the vaseline on the tip of my pencil, but rather blended it with the tip of a q-tip after I colored my image).

Once everything was colored, I ran my pieces through my Xyron Creative Station.

The final step after assembling my three cards was to add a mixture of flowers I have on hand from I Am Rose.

Final Set:

 Card 1:

Card 2:

Card 3:

Materials Used:

• Paper
• Tim Holtz
• Lost and Found
• Die Cut Machine
• Silhouette Cameo 4
• Silhouette Studio-Designer Edition
• DezinesByEm stamp set
• DMB1902 DezinesByEm Bee Set 
• DMB1906DezinesByEm Honey Bee House
• DBM1904 DezinesByEm Honeycomb
• Xyron
• Xyron Creative Station
• I Am Rose
• 488-A Flower mixture
• Derwent 
• Inktense Ink Pencils
• Watercolour Pencils
• Extras
• Tim Holtz Ink
• Walnut Stain
• Vintage Photo
• Recollection 'Ebony' heat embossing powder
• Darice Heat Gun
• VersaMark Watermark Stamp Pad

FTC disclaimer: I received some of these products for free but was not compensated for writing this post. To view my complete disclaimer, click here.