Introducing Secret Agent & Zappy Birthday

Zonkers! Bam! Zap! Welcome to the first Group Post Day of the Papertrey Ink January 2015 countdown. Geez oh pete's, do we have some super fun stuff for you today with Secret Agent and Zappy Birthday. I've been needing sets like these in my stash. Great for kids, both boys and girls. And masculine cards for the grown ups too.

One of the super neat features of Secret Agent is the "secret message" technique you can create with colored transparencies. Here, I filled my stamped and die cut magnifying glass with red transparency. Both the outer frame and "glass" are different dies that work perfectly together for easy assembly.

I also used the greenish blue transparency below to cover up all my stamps and seals. This has the same tone and texture as the red glass of the magnifying glass. The "top secret" seal helps hide my adhesive here.

I attached my magnifying glass to my project with a red brad. This allows it to pivot on my card....

.... so the recipient (my nephew in this case), can move it to line up with the Soft Stone "shadowed" magnifying glass to red the secret message. The message was stamped in Hawaiian Shores and covered up with the distortion stamp in Pure Poppy.  How crazy cool is that?!?!? ADORE this. And my kids can't stop playing with it.

The fun continues to the inside of the card. I have our Secret Agent man giving up some of his secrets. I love the "this message will self destruct" sentiment. Fabulous illustrating on Nichole's part here. I flipped when I saw this guy for the first time.

Moving on, we have another great set of products by Lexi with the Zappy Birthday Collection. There's a new cover plate that gives your backgrounds a comic book look (so versatile...comic books are just the beginning here) and great paper to go with them.

I created by background with the Comic Book Cover Plate and used all the papers. Next, I created a "seal" like all super heroes have on their outfits, but I used a number for a birthday instead. I added the action bubbles from the Zappy Birthday set and die cut the action words with foil paper to give it that super-duper comic look.

I was really struggling with adding my "happy" and "birthday" to my project. It's pretty busy already, so I didn't want to add another color or strong element, but I didn't want those words to get lost either. A drop shadow seemed like the perfect solution. I die cut the words twice, once in True Black, the other in Pure Poppy and one on top of the other. The tone on tone of the Pure Poppy on the patterned paper keeps things subtle, and the slight shading of True Black helps it stand out just enough. Mission accomplished!

Are you excited as I am about these two sets? FABULOUS stuff. Can't wait to see what everybody else does with them.

Everything will be available on the 15th at 10 PM EST in the store. Just a few more days!

Nichole Heady
Betsy Veldman
Dawn McVey
Maile Belles
Heather Nichols
Melissa Phillips
Danielle Flanders
Laura Bassen
Laurie Willison
Ashley Cannon Newell


Supplies

Secret Agent Card
Stamps: Secret Agent
Dies: Secret Agent
Red and Green Transparency
Cardstock: Aqua Mist, True Black, Stamper's Select White
Ink: Soft Stone, True Black, Hawaiian Shores, and Pure Poppy

Super Hero 7th Birthday
Stamps: Zappy Birthday
Dies: Zappy Birthday, By the Numbers, By the Numbers Mats, Mat Stack 7 Collection, Comic Strip Cover Plate, Birthday Trio, Suffix-Style Dies, Star Gazer
Patterned Paper: Comic Strip Patterned Paper Pack
Foil Paper