Our September Guest Designer, Mel McCarthy, has started off the month with a simply adorable baby project. In addition to the precious photo below, she also sent me this description in her own words…

“Friends of ours are having a baby in a few months. I’d like to hop on board the baby train myself and start a family of our own, but for now I’ll have to live vicariously through stamping baby gifts! heehee ;o) This Toys on Wheels set was perfect for making them a set of gift boxes — or a baby train.

“The Toys on Wheels images were such a delight to play with. I embossed 3 of the 6 cutie patootie animals. To achieve digital embossing, I just printed them one at a time on cardstock (that had been quickly painted with white Acrylic paint) — then sprinkled on some clear embossing powder as soon as each image was out of the printer and heated. It took less than a half an hour to paint the paper & print and emboss them. I find that having heat embossed digital images is such fun, and the embossing means Copic marker ink won’t blur the ink lines. I also embossed clear stamped patterns over the animals for some extra texture.

“Since these sweeties are digital images, they are super easy to ‘flip horizontally’ in any image editing program — which gives you animals from all angles and a finished look from all sides of the box. Of course, you can make the animals any size you like, but I used them as is, since they were already the perfect size to fit the boxes I wanted to make. The boxes measure 4 x 3 inches & the wheels are punched from Easy felt (stiffened felt) with a 1 3/8 inch punch. (It fits the wheel size of the digital images in Toys on Wheels perfectly!)”

Photo and description ©2009 by Mel McCarthy. Used by permission.

You’ll find “a big ol’ pictorial with every last detail of how to emboss the images & build the boxes” on Mel’s blog: Mel Stampz. If you’ve never visited her blog before, you owe it to yourself to check it out.