New Christmas Stack-Its designs from Tina Fallon

If you like Stack-Its, you'll love the latest sheets from Tina and Co Papercrafts, featuring a delightful variety of Christmas designs, including:

• Victorian church and village scenes;
  
• traditional Santa Claus;
• Star of the East scenes;
• puppies, robins, owl, geese, pheasants;
• winter scenes;
  
• Scottish bagpiper;
• cute teddy, snowmen and penguins.
  

Stack-Its decouapge sheets produce toppers with a 3D pyramid effect for your card and craft projects. You cut out all the different sized shapes of the image, then layer them on top of each other with foam pads, starting with the largest at the base and the smallest at the top. Self adhesive foam pads are recommended rather than silicone adhesive for this particular type of decoupage, as they provide more even spacing between layers.

The new Christmas sheets have varying sizes of design, with some sheets also incorporating a co-ordinating backing sheet area.
Stack-its are designed by Tina Fallon, who regularly demonstrates her designs on the Ideal World and Create and Craft TV channels. The sheets were previously produced by FGS Creative Designs Ltd, new decoupage designs from June 2008 onwards will be produced by Tina and Co (Papercrafts) Limited.

Dufex individual engraved picture print toppers

Newly added this weekend at Foil Play, extra Dufex individual picture prints, including extra large prints (158 x 209mm) like the beautiful eagle above.
These beautiful Dufex picture prints are very versatile - they can be used as centrepiece toppers for your card projects, like the one here, or you could decoupage identical prints to produce a stunning layered 3D topper.
Foil Play has a huge selection of Dufex postcards and picture prints to choose from, including fantasy scenes, religious, Christmas, new baby, floral, animals and people, to suit a wide range of cardmaking occasions.

New kits and sheets from Redhotbed and Michele Marsden

Lots of new goodies are in store this weekend at Foil Play from Michele Marsden and Redhotbed.
To start with, three Christmas Clutter sheets. With these sheets, you cut out the individual elements printed and layer up with 3D foam or silicone glue to produce the finished image. The sheet includes a plan which you can follow, if you wish - the plan can also be used as a topper.
A selection of Christmas topper sheets, including some die cut stamp toppers. There are also new flitter glitter baby topper sheets, and some male designs too, including beer, wine and darts. Cut out the toppers and mount on your card or craft project, either with adhesive or double sided tape, or with foam pads or silicone adhesive for a 3D effect.
Here's something different - die cut and foiled kits containing 2 A4 sheets to produce an ATC book and outer sleeve. The kit is die cut, so no scissors are needed. A step by step illustrated instruction sheet is included in the pack.

Die cut waterslide card kits are also new - there are three to choose from, and each kit includes an illustrated instruction sheet.
A choice of waterfall cards, including Christmas sheets, and a selection of multipacks containing new duo and stack waterfall die cut sheets. Each of the multipack kits contains an illustrated instruction sheet.

It's great that Redhotbed are now including illustrated instruction sheets with many of the newer packs and sheets. Foil Play will also send an illustrated instruction sheet with purchases of all exploding box kits and individual waterfall sheets.

Michele Marsden designs for Redhotbed and demonstrates her designs on Ideal World and Create and Craft TV channels. Check out her website for lots of step by step projects and gallery examples for crafting inspiration.

New TBZ die cut decoupage, Christmas designs

Lots of new TBZ embossed and gilded die cut decoupage sheets are in stock at Foil Play, including a delicious array of Christmas designs. I know that many people are getting started on their Christmas cards now - much better prepared than me, as I have to confess to always leaving them until the last minute!

These sheets make great toppers for your card and craft projects in minutes, all you have to do is push out the pieces and layer them up with self adhesive foam pads or silicone adhesive. Speaking of which, I have also stocked up recently on plenty of great quality essential adhesives from Stix 2, including various sizes of foam pads (and black pads too), silicone glue and tape pens.

Summer upgrade to first class postage

As a crafter myself, I know how important it is to get those crafting goodies as soon as possible!

Foil Play has always worked hard to despatch orders quickly, usually by the next working day after purchase, with many despatched same day.

I'm pleased to say that from now until the end of August, all orders will be upgraded free of charge to first class postage, so you should get your goodies even sooner.

P&P remains free for all orders over £5.00 at Foil Play, with a nominal charge of £1.00 for orders below £5.00.

La Pashe decoupage - Remember When - Series 1 & 2

New in at Foil Play is this delicious decoupage from La Pashe, including series 2, which is hot off the press today! Each pack contains 6 sheets of Decoupage images printed on a stunning 130gsm silk paper. One backing paper plus one character sheet makes one incredible A5 card and 3 complete cards can be made from each pack. The only additional product you need is silicone glue or foam pads.

Series 1 (pictured above) contains 3 sets of character sheets featuring a total of 4 different characters which can be mixed and matched with the 3 different backing papers.

The 3 backing papers comprise a background, a foreground and several tags featuring various occasions (Happy Birthday, Happy Father's Day etc), relatives (Dad, Brother, Husband, Grandad, Friend etc) and topical sayings (Bottoms Up! Remember When... Fan-Tastic! etc).

Series 1 is available in both Sepia Effect and Full Colour, Foil Play also has a limited number of sets in black and white.


Series 2 contains 3 sets of character sheets featuring a total of 4 different characters which can be mixed and matched with the different backing papers.

The 3 backing papers comprise a background, a foreground and several tags featuring various occasions (Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary etc), relatives (Mother, Daughter, Son, Grandma, Grandson, Friend etc) and topical sayings (Celebrations! Have an Ice Day! etc).

Series 2 is available in both Sepia Effect & Full Colour.

All of the La Pashe artwork is produced by Jim Harker. Born in Gateshead, England, Jim has applied his trade all over the world, including Sweden, Holland, Japan & the Czech Republic. Jim returned to the north east of England in 1996 where he took the position of resident artist at the illustrious City Art in Durham. Jim specialises in painting local scenes, pet portraits, cars, trucks, motorbikes in both acrylic and watercolours. He also does cartoons in pen & wash and this style is perfect for the artwork in the Remember When... range.

Step by step project: A4 Egyptian themed card

This project gives step by step instructions to make an Egyptian themed A4 card, featuring a Dufex postcard topper, which makes a great focal point for a larger card.
To start with, I needed:

• Two sheets of A4 silver moondust card (you could of course use a piece of A3 card, folded);
• Blue mirror card;
  
• Kanban Egyptian icons backing paper;
• Dufex Egyptian postcard topper;
  
• Dufex birthday greeting toppers sheet;
• Kanban self adhesive Egyptian hieroglyphic ribbon;
• Strong double sided adhesive tape;
• Double sided self adhesive foam pads;
• Scoring tool;
• Pencil;
  
• Paper trimmer.

At this stage, I was also planning to incorporate some hieroglyphic patterned card as part of the matting and layering - but as the design progressed, I decided that less was more!
Score both pieces of the moondust card approximately 1cm from the long edge of the card. The scored edge will form the spine of the card.
Place the postcard topper on the reverse of the mirror card, and mark in pencil where you need to cut, to form the backing mount.
Cut the mirror card backing to size using your trimmer; cut out two of the Dufex greetings toppers (one is for the inside of the card); cut a backing mount for one of the card greetings in mirror card and cut a piece of the Egyptian icons backing paper to size for the front of the card.
Put double sided sticky tape on the back of both pieces of mirror card, the backing paper and one Dufex greeting. Put double sided foam pads on the rear of the Dufex postcard and the other Dufex greeting.
Mount elements onto one piece of the moondust card, with the scored edge to the left, as shown. Whilst the Kanban ribbons are adhesive, I'd recommend using double sided adhesive tape also, to make sure that they stay stuck down.
This is the inside of the card - I've stuck down the Dufex greeting flat, and added double sided adhesive tape. There are actually two lines of tape, but I've removed the covering tape for the first line, as there wasn't enough room to fit them side by side. Remove the cover from the second piece of tape, and adhere the front of the card to the back. I found that the easiest way to get the two pieces of card correctly positioned was to hold them parallel and upright (landscape) on a flat surface with the edges to be adhered at the top. It's easy then to manoeuvre the sheets together to exactly the right position.
Adhere another piece of adhesive ribbon to the spine of the card, again using extra double sided adhesive tape, to be on the safe side.
Carefully open the card and crease back.
Voila, the finished card!

Greetings banners galore!

New at Foil Play this weekend, lots of foiled greeting banners, perfect to add the finishing touch to card and scrapbooking projects. First up, I've added a selection of Card Art foiled greeting banners and tags. I love these banners, you may have already spotted that I've used them on a number of card examples!

They come in a variety of metallic and pearlescent finishes, all with foil printed greetings. The packs on offer at Foil Play cover lots of different occasions, including birthday, Christmas, new baby, Christening, other celebrations and family greetings.

The banners can be used flat with double sided tape or other adhesive (I quite often use them in this way on the inside of a card), or to add dimension, they can be mounted with either silicone adhesive, glue dots or foam pads.
Also new this weekend, a selection of A4 die cut sheets from Craft UK. There is a choice of sheets covering different occasions, including Birthday, Christmas, New Baby, Wedding and more.

Each sheet contains a variety of foiled greeting banners in a variety of shapes, which you can push out and use. The banners at the top of each sheet can be used intact as borders, or snipped into individual banners.

These banners can of course also be used flat or mounted.

Jolly Nation half price starter kit offer

The Crafthouse Press is running a promotion with Quick & Crafty magazine to introduce new crafters to the world of Jolly Nation (formerly Paper Nation) 3D decoupage, by offering, for a limited time (starting on 16 June 2008), the chance to purchase a starter pack of products for half the normal price.

Foil Play has a limited number of the promotional starter packs available for the special offer price of £6.75. There are two packs to choose from, a men / boys pack and a women / girls pack. Each pack contains:

• 8 different sheets of A4 3D decoupage
• 2 different sheets of A5 die cut 3D decoupage
• 12 different sheets of matching A4 background papers
• 1 sheet foam pads
• Exclusive poster showing every character in the range

Normal retail price of each pack would be £13.50.