Lil' Inker Designs: December New Release Hop Day 2!

Hello there! Welcome to day 2 of our December New Release Hop!

If you're just joining us today we have some truly fun, trendy and unique products just releasing this week! I'm so excited to bring them to you. Let's get right to it with a brief recap on everything new!

The first new goodie below might just be my favorite of the release and is totally inspired by my husband who always teases me and says I should make a stamp set of sentiments that people would NEVER put on a card. After some thinking I think we nailed his concept! The Fine Print set actually has lovely and sweet things to say but you must read between the lines in order for the entire message to be clear. Loving this set! These sentiments make some hilarious cards for friends, loved ones and are fantastic for masculine cards too!

Oh but wait I love this set too!!!!! I'm obsessed with fonts and subway art and chalkboard style and I think all of those things inspired this set. Love Things is a fun set which will make great Valentine's Day cards, cards just to say I love you or even an anniversary card using the "true love/love birds" stamp! The fonts are so awesome in this set and what I love about this is that several of the smaller ornamental stamps can all be adhered to one stamping block and used to make a terrific background!

Shiny Happy Sentiments was designed specifically to coordinate with our Stitched Stars Dies and Starry Sky Die having mostly a "shine" or "star" theme. But if you take a close look at these sentiments you'll quickly see they can be used for SO MANY DIFFERENT occasions; congratulations, encouragement, birthday, love and MORE!! The fonts a fun, quirky, handwritten, sketchy and right on trend!

Seriously, I'm loving this Cover Up Die. It makes a gorgeous clean and simple background by creating a striped effect. We added in the stitching for additional detail and spunk! And I know there's another use for the stripes this plate cuts away. I love a die that lets me use its negative pieces. Stitches & Stripes is super fun and makes for such a cool background for your paper crafting projects!

Floating Hearts Die is a follow up to our popular Starry Sky Die. It's one of those dies that every crafter should have. Whether you use it so that you have many paper hearts to use at once or to sprinkle some heart cut outs across a card front it's worth it's weight in gold!

Oh, yes we did!! I was trying to think of a clever way of bringing you a tag set but in a way that would surprise you and I think we've done that with our Love Tags die set! The large tag is a standard size and the second a mini and each features a scored hearts detail all around the edges which press into your paper during cutting. Of course we designed the hearts to coordinate with our new Floating Hearts Die! Loving these tags!!!

Our new Cover Up Die: Love is really something else! I was saying before how I love text and fonts and I think it's exciting to bring that into a die which cuts more than one word which we see a lot of. What I love about this die is what I'm seeing some our designers doing which is to hi-light or isolate some of the words with markers or different papers. I also love that you can cut out and use some of the words and phrases on their own. Both of these things really add to the versatility to this plate.

This die is extremely detailed and intricate which means you've got to spend a little more time with at your cutting machine so it's easier to work with after. I personally use this die with my Big Kick machine without any paper shims and if I use the Rock and Roll die cutting technique (SEE VIDEO HERE) and make sure I make a couple of passes through my machine this die cuts like butter. I then hold it in my trash can and shake or tap out the pieces and I'm left with very few pieces to poke out. Fingers work fine for this but if you have a piercing tool that works even better. If you have a Big Shot or a Big Kick and you're not getting the same results try making your sandwich and then on top add a shim of cardstock. The shim should be as large as your die so that the additional pressure is distributed evenly.

If you have a Cuttlebug, we highly recommend that you use shims with this die and metal adapter plates are working wonders. We've actually stocked a small quantity of these in our store in case you'd like to give one a try. It's an additional investment but I can almost guarantee that you'll have crisp clean cuts with all dies especially detailed ones if you introduce this plate.

Would you like to see some projects?

This card was made and shared earlier in the week as one of my sneak peek cards. It uses our new Cover Up Stitches & Stripes as well as our Love Things Stamp Set and Stitched Mats: Rectangles. I think this ended up being such a neat and simple design and it came together in just minutes.

Next up is little card set I made using The Fine Print Set. I made a set of four cards featuring four different sentiments and I made a wrapper to hold them together.

Here is the assembled card set.

The above is a shot of all four cards. I used our Stitched Mats: Squares to make this as well!

Ok, one more project for today.....

I wanted to make something to show you how nicely our new Shiny Happy Sentiments pairs with both our Stitched Stars Dies and our Starry Sky Die.

Ok, so that does it for today. Isn't this a fun release? Tell us what you think by leaving comments along your way today. Don't forget to leave some extra love for our guest designer Jingle! I'm so excited she's here with us for this release!!! And just in case you get lost along your hop here is a list of participants:

Alicia Thelin - next up!

Alyssa Scritchfield

Amy Kolling

Jingle - Guest Designer

You could win one of three $15 gift certificates just by leaving a comment for our team! We'll be picking winners from one randomly chosen secret prize blog! You have until Sunday night December 22nd at 11:30 P.M. EST to be eligible to win!

See you tomorrow with more projects to get you inspired!!