Bee Happy

My cards this week were inspired by a card I received from Sue in our Facebook Birthdays group.  I just loved the giant bee and found the stamp set, following a quick bit of googling!  It’s called Bee Happy by Visible Image and I also got the Honeycomb Hex stencil to go with it.

This post contains affiliate links and I may earn a small commission if you purchase via the links, at no additional cost to you.  Thank you :-)

First, I stamped and coloured the bees using a tiny blending brush and ink pad.  The wings were made sparkly with Stickles Stardust - I squirted a small amount onto my craft mat and painted the glitter glue onto the wings.

These were to be slimline cards so I cut the panels and blended Distress Oxide Mustard Seed ink onto the card then added more through the stencil.  I also stamped the smaller background elements using grey and orange inks using second-generation stamping.

The big bees were fussy cut and smaller bees and the sentiment were stamped onto the panel.

The panels were mounted on a black mat then onto a white DL size card bsae.  To finish, the bees were mounted on foam tape and a few gems added for extra sparkle.

For the other card, I wanted to use the stencil to create some texture so I used Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste.  Whilst it’s possible to add colour to the paste after it’s dry, I didn’t need to as the paste dyed itself during the application, picking up the colour from the inked background.  I also tried a different method of fussy-cutting the bee, as it was quite fiddly.  I stamped the big bee on the inked panel, ensuring that the legs, outline of the body and antennae were stamped well.  Next, I stamped the big bee onto another piece of card and coloured as before.  This time, I just cut the body out roughly, chopping off the legs but cutting carefully along the edges of the wings.

The body was glued directly to the panel and the wings popped up on foam tape.  This method gives all the detail but without the white halo.  Here you can see the two side-by-side.

I didn’t add any gems to this as I didn’t want to detract from the honeycomb texture.  

 My favourite is the one with the grit paste.  Which do you prefer?