Hello Folks! I am SUPER excited to celebrate
Ellen Hutson's 11th Anniversary along with a host of wonderfully talented artists! You may have come from one of them, the lovely
Carolyn Peeler.
For this special hop, we were asked to make a project with our favorite
Essentials By Ellen set. I
easily could have gone with the
Mondo Hydrangea stamp,
Oh Deer, or the innovative
Hinged Alphabet dies, but I simply could not pass up my absolute favorite stamp and die of all ... the bear from
All Inside! I love, love, love him for three main reasons:
1) his dead-pan expression just cracks me up;
2) he can hold so many different things, from all sorts of various sets; and
3) his streamlined shape makes him super easy to color, but he's so cute you can just leave him as-is (a.k.a., polar bear!)
Here are cards from
the post where I first fell in love with him:
I haven't gotten to make a holiday card with this cutie yet, so I was excited to get to work!
And here he is, hanging out at the North Pole all majestic-like, wishing joy to the whole world!
For the world, I cut out a circle from
watercolor paper, lightly penciled in the continents (while looking at a globe on google), and then watercolored them with zig clean color markers. Since it's a Christmas card I made the globle red and green. It was fun not using traditional colors for land and water, and I like how festive it looks! Finally, I washi-taped the
Hinged Alphabet Dies to keep the word "joy" spaced together, and ran them through the die cutter.
One of the benefits of the hinged alphabet dies - since the letters pop up at an angle you can read a card that's lying on top of a counter in another room : )
Another advantage of the hinged alphas is that you get the opportunity to hide a little surprise underneath. When you look at the card from the side you see all sorts of gold sparkles coming out, like the world is literally bursting with joy!
I guess a fourth reason I love this bear is that Julie has thoughtfully designed accessories for him, kinda like paper dolls! The
Bear Wear 2 set has Halloween, winter and Christmas accessories to get your bear prepared for the holidays. I've added the Santa hat and candy cane here, but there are many other accessories to choose from.
For this card, I copied an idea I had my kids do for Christmas cards one year. I made them large J, O and Y letters to hold up, and I took a picture. They had a ton of fun being silly which made for a fabulous greeting. These bears can hold things too, so why not have them spell out a sentiment?
These letters are from the hinged alphabet dies. Nice to know you can use them like regular die cuts if you cut the letters off at the hinge. After inking them in red I made some stripes with a white gel pen. Love the bears' chubby little hands grabbing things! I didn't even adhere these letters down, they are actually holding the letters. Just like my kids : )
The globe is made the same way as the first card, only with traditional colors, and a healthy dose of glitter on top to make it all sparkly. The sentiments in all caps on both cards are made with the
Basic Alphabet set. Just perfect for occasions like this where you need to finish off a phrase. I wanted "to the" to be smaller (so more of the world would show) so I just hand wrote that in script. The black fish tail ends are hand cut as well.
In this case it really worked out that polar bears live in the North Pole, as that meant no coloring for me! (Fun Fact: Did you know polar bears live in the North Pole, while penguins live in the South Pole? They are NOT neighbors!)
I have about a dozen bears pre-cut and ready to go at all times, because, well, you never know : )
In fact, I took this opportunity to use up some of my empty card bases, extra sentiments, and stray embellishments, and turned them into three more cards. All of the elements are recycled from prior projects. Such a good feeling to clean and be productive at the same time! And what a great illustration on how the All Inside bear goes with just about anything. The heart, envelope and party horn are all from different stamp sets that aren't even designed by Essentials by Ellen. Love that!
Thanks so much for taking a look and letting me share my favorite Essentials by Ellen set with you!
The fun continues at the delightful home of Laurel Beard where there's something wonderful waiting for you!
A huge thank you and HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to all the mighty fine folks at Ellen Hutson LLC!
-Kelly
