Bee On A Design Team

Hello everyone! I'm very excited to share with you that I'm now part of the Visible Image Design Team so welcome to my first make for Visible Image.  I’m delighted to be part of their lovely team and I’m looking forward to sharing my makes with you. 

The Bee Happy stamp set was my first Visible Image purchase and that large bee is fabulous.  Once the matching dies were released, I snapped those up too!   I love a fun-fold and today I’m making a Z-fold card but you can easily use this design to make a standard card instead.

If you'd like to watch a quickie video on how I made this card, pop on over to my YouTube Channel here.

To begin, I made the inked panel that would be used for the hexagons, so that the ink had time to dry before heat-embossing at a later stage.  Using Distress Oxides in Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Twisted Citron and Peacock Feathers, I blended the inks in a random fashion all over the card.  

To mute the colours, I then blended Black Soot Distress Ink around the panel and left it to dry.

Next, using a 5¾” square card blank, I marked a vertical line halfway across the inside of the front.  I know this seems a little strange but it’ll all make sense later, I promise!   The large bee was stamped along the line at an angle.  Think about placement of the bee and where the die will cut, you don’t want it halfway through a leg or antenna.

To partially die-cut the bee, tape the die in place and also tape your bottom cutting plate to the platform of your die-cutting machine.  Place the card with the right half of the bee on the cutting plate, aligning the pencil line (where my fingers are pointing) with the edge of the bottom plate and tape the card in place.  Place the other cutting plate on top and die-cut. 

This should give you a half-cut bee!

Using the Honeycomb Hex stencil and Weathered Wood Distress Oxide, I stencilled a background lightly, the added the dots using 2^nd generation stamping of Black Soot ink. 

To create the Z-fold, I scored down the pencil line from the top to the bee and from beneath the bee to the bottom and folded into a mountain fold.  The card was then folded in the centre as normal.  One of the sentiments from Birthday Wishes was stamped and clear heat embossed onto a piece of card and some hex stencilling added. I attached this to the card using some thin foam tape.

On a separate piece of card, I stamped all 3 bees twice using My Favorite Things hybrid ink Licorice and coloured with Copic markers.  I’d over-stamped a little and lost the detail on the bee bodies so added in some highlights with a white Posca pen.  I later went over these with a black fine-liner so they weren’t so prominent.  I also ‘painted’ Stickles Star Dust glitter glue on the wings and onto the wings of the bee on the card.

I cut around the body of the bee, not being fussy, cutting off the legs and antennae but cutting carefully around the wings.  To cover up the white cut edge, I went around the edges with a black Sharpie pen.  The bee body was glued onto the card and the wings gently bent up for some dimension.

To check that the inked panel is dry, tip embossing powder on and then tip it off again.  If it all comes off, you’re good to go, otherwise dust the powder off with a dry brush and dry the panel with a heat tool.  I used a Versamark ink pad and the hexagons and dots stamps randomly across the panel, added gold embossing powder and heat set.  Once cooled, the panel was die-cut using Creative Craft Products Hexagons background die.  (I added a sheet of Glad Press ‘n’ Seal to the back of the die-cuts to keep them in their correct places.)

To finish, I adhered small groups of hexagons around the card, trimming off any overhang from the back with scissors.

A little bonus make was a couple of tags that I made with the leftovers.

Here’s a close up of that lovely large bee with his glittery 3D wings.