The Story of a Die | Hello

All of The Hellos!

The die is an old favourite from Concord and 9^th, and I’m quite fond of using hello on my projects.  I’m also a fan of zero waste and that is where this all got a tad out of hand!

Card number one is a cut Honey Bee patterned paper with three hellos cut out.  The original plan was to bump the stripey hellos up on 3 layers of white cardstock and pop them back in place.  I believe this is called the eclipse technique.  I did this, cutting 9 white hellos along the way, and really was not blown away with the look.  It needed gold glitter, as so many things do!  So, I cut three gold hellos – these then needed another nine white hellos…

 

I was happy with card number one.

I now had spare stripey hellos, gold glitter negative hellos and a whole bunch of white negative hellos.  These can’t go to waste!

Card two was simple enough. The gold negative was simply stunning.  I die cut a panel, added the counters and chads back in place, popped some sprigs and a birthday girl greeting to one side.  Done.

 

What about those white negatives though… a layout?  Yes, a rainbow layout!  I added ink blending done one side of my background and laid the negative over the top.  Carefully added back the chads and counters so the hellos read correctly.  My Stix2 pick up pencil came in handy here.  I know there are loads of pick-up type tools on the craft market, and a lot from the nail art market too, but this one is my favourite. It’s a wood pencil with a sticky lead.  It’s not super sticky – it picks up small bits of paper, gems, sequins etc. and leaves no residue.  And it’s not lead either… it’s white, slightly waxy.  When it loses its tackiness, you just sharpen it with a pencil sharpener, which I’ve only had to do once in a couple of years.  Biggest bonus?  No plastic.

 

There were still more white negatives left so I made another card.  I went for purples this time.  Same deal as the layout – ink blending with the negative adhered over the top.  I cut another hello – I’ve lost count at this point – added it to a couple of left over white hellos and adhered it over some leafy springs.  This spawned a further negative hello, in purple this time, which is sat in the Box Of Doom waiting to be used.

 

Still hanging around are the original stripey hellos stacked on their white hellos for dimension.  That turned into this...

 

What started as ONE stripey hello card some how ended up as all of this!