An ode to the B-side

Hello Little Magpies!
It’s Nat here bringing you my first round of projects for the Creative Team.
This month I wanted to share with you my long-standing appreciation for the humble B-side of 12 x 12 patterned paper.
There are so many beautiful papers in the Hey Little Magpie shop but the B-side can easily get overlooked when browsing products – but nine times out of ten it’s actually the B-side that swings it for me! I am a real sucker for versatile patterns and colours that will work with any theme, so I’ve put the spotlight on just a few that caught my eye and combined them with some other lovely products that will make your stash go a long way.
First up I have a couple of cards from Basic Grey’s Grand Bazaar line:

I used the B-side of the Mediterranean paper as the background to my card then fussy cut one of the fox motifs from the Constantinople paper as the main feature. You can seriously make this paper go a long way as there are sooo many little motifs and designs that can be cut out and used as the focal point on a card, or as embellishments and details on pages and journaling cards. This fox motif caught my eye immediately:

I love how it stands out against the geometric background print.
Then all I needed to do was add a greeting using a set of my favourite “label” dies – the Sentiment Strips 2 dies from My Favorite Things.

Add some 3D foam and some zingy enamel dots and you have a very eye-catching card for someone’s mantelpiece!
 

Next up I wanted to decorate the B-side of this aptly named Beautiful paper in the Basic Grey Highline release using the lovely Leaf & Flourish stencil that accompanies the Grand Bazaar line so I could try out some nifty techniques I’d seen on YouTube using embossing paste.
Wendy Vecchi’s white embossing paste has recently been added to the store and this stuff is just so great to use! It’s a fantastic alternative to using mists or ink on stencils and a quick and easy way of bringing texture and dimension to your projects.
I really wanted to replicate the vibrancy of the colours in the Grand Bazaar line for this project, so decided to look to my collection of dye inks to transform that white embossing paste into something a bit bolder.
Taking some washi tape, I taped my card down onto a craft sheet, then taped the stencil over it. When using embossing paste your stencil needs to be really tight over the surface you’re decorating so that no paste can get trapped under it and create a mushy mess.
Once my card and stencil were taped down ready for action, I squished my Peacock Feathers Distress Ink pad nearby onto the craft sheet a few times and mixed some of the embossing paste into it to create a gorgeous vibrant teal. A little goes a long way and once dry the colour is pretty true to the shade you mixed.
When you’re done mixing and applying the paste over the stencil (using a palette knife or some other handy “scraper” like a gift card) remove the stencil carefully and go wash it under running water. You also need to make sure you clean off any remaining paste from your tools and work surface with a baby wipe as it definitely won’t budge so easily when it’s dried! This stuff dries pretty quick so don’t leave the top off the jar for longer than necessary.
Once you’ve done all that, just set it aside to dry or blast it with a heat gun if you have less patience than me!
This is how it turned out:

Not bad for a first attempt!
I love the design of this stencil – with a bit of nifty masking you could pick out the motifs you want to use and cover up the bits you don’t need using a post-it or washi tape on the less intricate areas. On my first go I wanted to use the whole thing and the embossing paste sure adds lovely dimension:

Here’s the finished card:

As you can see I really didn’t want to cover up too much of that stencilled design…

…so I cut another motif from the Constantinople paper and made it pop with 3D foam pads.

There are extra pads under the leaves of the flower to make them pop even more.

With little room for a greeting on the front, I stamped one inside with the same Distress Ink I’d used to colour the embossing paste – simple as that!

And now for something a bit more mellow…. I opened up a pack of the lovely printed wood shapes in the Crate Paper Oh Darling collection – this is what they look like: Lots of lovely bits and pieces and a great size for cards too! So many B-side designs went into the making of this card, including my favourite of them all – the two-tone aqua stripe paper called Happy Day, it always makes my day happy when I use it. 🙂 I used some much-loved dies by My Favorite Things in this project – namely the Fishtail Flags STAX dies and the Notebook Edge die. I seriously cannot make a project without the Fishtail Flags STAX and layers dies, they have to be my most used items in my die collection. Fantastic for sentiments, dates, titles, or just for adding a little layering as I’ve done on this card. The cut-out accents on the What a Doll paper in this line went great with the layering created around the journaling card I picked out from the Oh Darling pack. And there’s the bicycle wooden shape I finally decided on, accented with a couple of heart stickers from the Oh Darling sticker sheet. And as the final finishing touch, a few more stickers from the sheet and one of the gorgeous resin flowers from the Grand Bazaar pack. I think the colours of the flowers in that pack work so well with the Oh Darling line with their aqua, hot pink, cream, and yellow/peach tones. A very versatile set and one that will no doubt be used up quickly on future projects!

Onto my other mellow card – this time focussing on a few B-sides from the Maggie Holmes Styleboard collection – including the fab embossing folder.

For this card I wanted layers and texture to be the focus. There are two lovely B-side patterns here combined with a journaling card from the Styleboard set (my most-used journaling card set ever!).
I’ve used this doily embossing folder on a number of occasions now and I always reach for a piece of vellum when doing so, as it really shows off the doily pattern to its best. On this card it provided a good solution for creating a more muted background to the journaling card – once embossed I stitched it onto the birdie paper so there’s no adhesive showing through anywhere.
A good tip when attaching vellum to layered projects is to apply adhesive in a spot you know will be covered up with something else. I applied a strip of ATG tape in the middle where the journaling card was going to go so that the vellum would stay in place when I ran it through the sewing machine. No fancy adhesive required!

The journaling card is on 3D foam tape for extra pop, and I used one of the gorgeous layered stickers from the Styleboard collection as the main focal point. Love that pink telephone! Out came the fishtail dies again for the greeting, finished off with a teeny tiny gold enamel dot. You can see the layering and texture a bit better in this close-up:

And finally, a very simple card to show-off how well the colours used on the B-sides of My Mind’s Eye Chalk Studio II work with the ephemera pack in the recent Burlap & Bouquets release by Fancy Pants. I used two papers from the My Mind’s Eye line which had exactly the same pattern on the back – cream stripes with yellow/light blue stripes. I cut an aperture in the yellow striped paper and mounted it with 3D foam tape onto the blue striped paper so that the stripes alternated. I picked a greeting from the ephemera pack and decorated the front with some more of the accents, tucking them into the aperture and behind the greeting. The texture of the ephemera pack die-cuts is lovely, and totally fits the burlap name of the line, you might be able to see it easier in this pic: Some Distress Stickles around the edge of the top layer and some black Stickles in the flower centres and this card was finished!

I hope you enjoyed this little trip into the World of the B-side – I have a feeling there will be many more lovely B-sides arriving in the store!