Loads of colour with Illustrated Faith & MAMBI

Well hello Magpies, Rachel here and welcome to May! It’s the 5th month already and as I’m typing this, I am wondering when it’s going to start warming up a little bit. It’s time to bring out the short sleeves and flip flops now isn’t it? Please?? Seriously, it’s been snowing today, please turn on the sunshine someone!
Last month I worked with The Illustrated Faith line and I enjoyed it so much, I ordered a few more bits for this month and carried on! I just love the bright colours of this manufacturer and despite it being created for use on bible journalling, I haven’t used it for it’s intended purpose at all. I do like a challenge!
On my first LO I use some of the cute stickers from the Illustrated Faith, Bible Journalling Stickers, His Word. There are some great stickers on this sheet, I love the butterflies, owl and I used the green leaf sticker on my second LO. There are quite a few different packs in the Bible Journalling Stickers range, check them out here.

I used quite a few different packs of MAMBI Value Chipboard Stickers this month, I think these packs are such great value at £4.99. The packs have 4 or 5 sheets in them so it’s far more than you see in the photo below. Take my word for it, these packs are so worth it. In my LO below, I used a lot of the stickers from the Vacation Pack.

I used the She Blooms, 3×4 paper for this LO, and some of the reverse side which is the awesome black & white stripe. This paper is currently out of stock but it’s worth signing up for an email alert when it comes back in stock cause the black & white striped side is so lush and usable! I used some of the 3×4″ cards and lay them around my photo in a grid. I trimmed some slices off some of the cards and then used those slices as well. Once I had built my grid, I just went about embellishing with lots of chipboard stickers from the MAMBI Vacation pack and the Illustrated Faith, Bible Journalling His Words Sticker Sheet and I dotted around some of the Enamel Heart Stickers in Teal and Black. My title uses the ‘sweet’ from Amy Tangerine, Better Together, You & Me Thickers and the turquoise letters are Freckled Fawn Puffy Alphabets in Aqua. The New Zealand chipboard shape is from a pack I bought in NZ, I couldn’t resist using it!

Here are some close ups of some details, some of the MAMBI Chipboad Vacation Stickers.

And some more….

And a close up of the fab Freckled Fawn Aqua Puffy Alphabet and Enamel Heart Sticker in Teal


 
These Illustrated Faith, Paper Pieces Die Cuts, Pop Culture are a bit awesome! There’s some great Die Cuts available, look here. You get loads of die cuts for £3.99 and they’re so bright and cheerful.

On the LO below I used the MAMBI Value Pack Chipboard Stickers, Instalove. I actually found that I had 2 packs of these chipboard stickers in my stash so I didn’t hold back in using them lol!

I got a pack of these Pinkfresh Studio, Felicity, Puffy Sequin Stickers in my DT stash this month and they’re great! They are well worth the pricetag cause you really only need a few on a LO to make an impact and there’s so many colours to choose from. Check out the new ranges from Pinkfresh Studio, Felicity and Life Noted, they’re definitely something different.

On this LO I decided to make a frame using some mists. I used some I had in my stash but there’s a wide range of Heidi Swapp mists and paints available in the shop, check them out here. What I did was cut a piece of scrap cardstock the size I wanted, and I painted some of a green mist over the top to make the frame. I also dotted some darker green and yellow around as well. When it was dry, I removed my scrap card, leaving the frame around it on my backgrond cardstock. I liked this effect and I’m sure I’ll do it again soon.  I dotted around some of the Pinkfresh Studio, Felicity, Puffy Sequins around the frame as well and they went perfectly. Here’s a close up of a part of the frame so you can see what I mean…

After I’d made my frame, I layered up some papers in the middle, I used the reverse side of the Mason Jars paper with the white spots on black, then some of the reverse of the Tiny Blooms paper and some of my favourite black & white striped paper which is the reverse of the She Blooms 3×4 paper. I dotted around some of the Pop Culture Die Cuts, some of the stickers from the His Word sheet and then I used a few stickers from the MAMBI Instalove pack and some MAMBI Puffy Arrows from the Chalk and Bright Multi packs.

Here’s a close up of some of the stickers, the heart comes from the Illustrated Faith, Bible Journalling Stickers, His Love sheet.

And more layers, the green banner comes from the Die Cuts pack and since the word praise didn’t really fit with my LO, I covered it with a yellow speech bubble from the same pack, the layered the green leaf sticker from the His Word Sticker sheet.


 
 
This paper, She Blooms from the She Blooms Collection from Illustrated Faith, well, I just love it! It’s so bright and cheerful and I’ve used it on quite a few LO’s this month. It makes a lovely impact on a LO and is just so lush! You all need this paper in your life, believe me!

 
I used a lot of stickers from this MAMBI Chipboard Value Pack, Good Friends on this next LO. The bright colours of the MAMBI packs are so cheerful and they all went really well with the bright colours of the Illustrated Faith lines too. There are 4 sheets of chipboard stickers in this Good Friends pack and they’re so cute!

This LO is a super simple design. Just a large rectangle of paper and a smaller one on top. Couldn’t be easier. The blue striped paper is the reverse of the Whatever is Lovely, 3×4 paper and then I’ve used my favourite floral, She Blooms paper on top. Then I dotted around some of the Good Friends Chipboard Stickers and was finished. Super simple!

 

 
I have talked about these £1 Hey Little Magpie Rhinestones before because hello, £1 for a sheet of adhesive bling, yes please! I have used them a lot and I continue to buy them because they’re so easy to use, and OMG, great value. I usually adhere these gems with a pair of tweezers and I’ll give you one little tip, when you’re taking them off their backing sheet, slide them off sideways rather than trying to pull them off vertically. They slide off sideways and bring their glue with them where as if you try and lift them straight off vertically, sometimes the glue stays behind on the sheet. Also, the piece of acetate that’s left after you’ve used all your bling, well that’s really handy for putting embellishments on to check positioning before you adhere properly to your LO. I keep the clear sheets that Thickers come on, or cut acetate packaging up to get squares I can use for sticking titles on, then I can check where I want it to go on my LO before I actually stick it all down. Handy stuff, packaging!

Also in the Hey Little Magpie £1 Range are Dewdrops in various colours. I’ve used Fushia Pink in the LO below. The dewdrops are fantastic value for money and they make a great embellishment. They’re very tactile and I also find it very therapeutic to adhere a line of them using Glossy Accents. I dot a tiny blob of Glossy Accents on and then pick up my dewdrop and pop it on top of the glue. You should definitely add some dewdrops to your stash if you haven’t already, they’re so handy and affordable!

My next LO uses some old chevron paper I had in my stash, I think it may have been Simple Stories from a year or two ago? I also use the fab floral She Blooms paper in some strips. I used these two papers because I am wearing a chevron skirt in this photo, and my friend Claudes is wearing a floral dress and the She Blooms paper totally matched her dress! So then I decided I needed some circles on it. cause I am wearing a circle necklace in the photo too. I remembered I had an old mask in my stash and it had circles of holes in it, so I dug it out and used it to apply some circles of bling to the LO. It was a labour of love and it did take a while to dot on Glossy Accents and then add the bllng but it was worth it in the end. I don’t think the circles show up properly in this photo, so I have added some close ups so you can see my blingy circles! Then I just embellished with MAMBI Good Friends Chipboard Stickers and some Puffy Arrows. My title uses old Thickers from y stash and I used some cute little saying stickers from Pinkfresh Studio, Felicity, Word & Phrase Stickers on the right hand side of the photo.

Here’s a close up of my bling circles….

And another one, including the Pinkfresh Studio saying stickers.

 
 
So I started running out of Illustrated Faith papers after doing so many LO’s with this this month and last month so I chose an absolutely stunning piece of Websters Pages paper from the Make a Wish Line, this is the Always Beautiful paper and it is simply gorgeous! Both sides of the paper are fab as well, I love, love, love the floral side but the reverse is a pink gradient and it’s a bit lush too. So this is a fabulous paper, I think you should put a piece of this in your HLM basket ready for next time you’re shopping!

Another great product is these Rubber Shapes from the Maggie Holmes Bloom line. I had missed that there were rubber charms in this line and I am always a massive fan of rubber embellishments! I saw a picture of them on a blog somewhere and immediately went and added some to my HLM basket for my next shop. I was so pleased to get them too, and I may have used far too many on the LO below so don’t go buying all the packets of these cause I definitely need to buy another pack, I LOVE them! These are charms made of rubber and they’re awesome, great colours and I think the words on them are very usable, they’re not too over the top.

This LO, as usual, is pretty simple. I think I saw something on an advert on telly and it sparked the design in my head. Well, the design was a much smaller and thinner piece of the floral paper in the background but when I came to cutting that sheet, I wanted to make it larger to show off more of the pattern, so it got bigger. But that’s the beauty of this LO design, it’s super simple and it will work with a smaller or larger background piece. I used the beautiful Always Beautiful paper and it needed a bit more ooomph so I cut strips of the Make a Wish paper which is also from the Websters Pages, Make a Wish line. My title is from the Amy Tangerine You & Me Thickers and also the ‘cool’ is by Dear Lizzy, Happy Place and is a Watercolour Die Cut Phrase then I used some super old alphabet stickers that I had in my stash. I had no black ‘e’s’ so I had to use yellow ones as well lol! I used the fabulous Maggie Holmes, Bloom, Rubber Shapes on the left and right of the photo. A couple of chipboard stickers from the MAMBI Good Friends pack and some HLM Adhesive Rhinestones and I was finished.

Here’s a close up of those Rubber Shapes, I hope you can see how cool they are!


My last LO is a very simple one but one of the awesome products I used on it, is the Gold Resin Hearts from the Crate Paper Hello Love line. Most of this line is out of stock now but it was one of my favourite lines ever and these hearts are fantastic. I notice when anyone looks at a LO where I’ve used one of these hearts, they can’t help but reach out and touch it, they’re so tactile! There’s a couple of packs left in stock and they would make such a good addition to your stash, I promise you!

Also still in stock from Hello Love is the Glitter Layered Tags and these are pretty special too. I’ve used the ‘kisses’ pink heart on the LO below but I have used a few of these tags on previous blog posts. They’re quite stunning in real life and well worth the money.

Last but not least is the Freckled Fawn Sticky Note Pads, Heart/Arrow and I was dying to use one of these! These are actually like Post-it Notes, so there’s layers of each and they have some adhesive on the back. Be careful pulling them apart cause I did rip one of mine being too heavy handed. I love the heart, it’s super cute and I knew it would be a great focus on my LO.

This LO is super simple but I wanted to keep the focus on the large photo. So I used my favourite black & white striped paper from Illustrated Faith, She Blooms 3×4 paper. I put some Hey Little Magpie Washi Tape across the join. Then I layered my Freckled Fawn Sticky Note heart on top of an old Studio Calico Vellum Heart and popped my Hello Love Resin Heart on top of them all. My title uses older Thickers, the half gold & white ones were from the Crate Paper, Hello Love line and the massive gold ones were from Maggie Holmes, Shine and they’re so awesome but unfortunately out of stock now. If you got your hands on some, well done, aren’t they fabulous! You don’t have to leave them gold remember, you can paint them any colour you need, I painted them on another LO I did of my cat, in my November blog post. The ampersand I used was from Crate Paper, Craft Market and I made my own banner for the top right hand side to pop my Hello Love Glitter Tag on top of.


 
So that is my offering for May Magpies! I hope I have showcased some products that you might not have seen or appreciated before. I know sometimes I haven’t seen something properly, like the Maggie Holmes, Bloom, Rubber Shapes, I saw someone showing a photo of them on a blog and was like rubber shapes, yes please!! Have a great May everyone and I’ll see you again next month and I plan to get some more cards done for my Heidi Swapp Memorydex next time.