Elegant Ladies From Elusive Images

Elusive Images has just launched some lovely new A5 themeplates, each of which features a beautiful lady in a fabulous evening gown. Accompanying the lady on each of the plates are a lovely mix of swirls, ornate corners, chandaliers and candelabras.  You can see the new stamp sheets in their full glory over on the Elusive Images Design Team Blog where, if you are lucky, you might win one of the themeplates in a random giveaway.  You will also get to see some of the beautiful creations made by my fellow DT memebers to give you some inspiration.  We all agreed that these stamps would be very pretty to use for wedding themes, making lovely cards to give to the bride and bridesmaids etc, but their versatility does not end there, as the samples shown on the EI DT blog show!  The samples I made did wedding themed items, but this one is an any occasion card made when I gave in to my addiction to Vintage Photo Distress Ink and just had a nice inky play! 

The stamp was stamped with the Distress Ink onto cream card, only stamping the upper part of the image. I blended more ink around this and also used the ink as a paint to add some shading to the lady's face and arms.  The frame was cut using Nestability dies from more of the cream card which then had lots of that lovely Vintage Photo  ink blended over it.  The pattern on the frame was created by stamping the skirt part of the lady's ballgown in Versmark ink and dusting with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls. The frame is mounted over the image of the lady using foampads.  The background is more cream card and paper from the Artylicious Decadent Brocade CD onto which I blended yet more of the Distress Ink.  To finish the card I stamped a greeting, added some cotton lace and some amber coloured cabochon gems to the frame and as the corners of the backing paper.

Getting Grungy

This one is another card that I made for the Elusive Images Design Team Application - remember I said in my previous post that the Lighthouse Scene is a lovely image - well it is an I couldn't resist making a very different card with it.  As Glenda has posted a photo of  this one over on the Elusive Images Design Team Blog I thought I would share how I made the card.

The image was stamped with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and I used a wet paintbrush to drag colour from the stamped outline to create extra shading in the image.  Where I needed more shading I dabbed the ink pad onto my craft sheet and used my wet paint brush to pick up a litte more colour.  If you look carefully there is also a tiny touch of Aged Mahogany in the image.  The ink was very watered down on my craft sheet then picked up on my paint brush and used to make the sails on the boats stand out just a little more.  Once the image was dry I used  the blade of my scissors to distress the edges a bit then used Cut 'n' Dry foam to blend more ink from the Vintage Photos pad around the edge to create a vignette effect.  Finally I dragged and smudged my Versamark pad around the edge, sprinkled on Gold EP and heated.

The finished image was mounted onto black card which I embellished with some kitchen twine that had been grunged up to look like old dirty ropes from a sailing ship. I did this by  using just about every shade of  brown distress ink I own, from Frayed Burlap to Brushed Corduroy!  It was easy enough to do, just splodge the brown inks onto a craft sheet, spritz liberally with water then roll and scrunch the peice of twine around in the inky puddle so it soaks in the inky water.  Let it dry then repeat as needed to darken.  Once the twine was nearly dry  I made the browny shades more uneven by smudging a little ink directly from the ink pads onto the twine and lightly spritzing so as to make the inky smudge bleed into the twine more - it bleeds better if the twine is still a little damp when you do this.   The knots were tied using an authentic sailors knot - in this case a figure of eight knot.  I wanted the knots to be the Real MaCoy, so I did some research online and found this web site with some great instructions on how to try proper sailors knots.  Just click on any of those knots and an animated page opens that shows how to tie the knot.

Finally my background layer - once again I turned to my Distress Inks in assorted shades of brown and used the wrinkle free technique to create the background.   Once this was dry I overstamped with Versamark using an anchor image from the Seashell Collage themeplate and dusted this with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls then very lightly spritzed with water to set the Perfect Pearls.  The edges were treated in the same way as the edges of the main image - distressed with the blade of my scissors, a little ink blended with Cut 'n' Dry foam, and smudgy gold embossing.  The whole thing is mounted onto black card from the same stock I used to mat under the main image.

If you got this far, sorry it's such a long post, but I wanted to share how I made this card because I had a lot of fun making it!

Red Sky At Night

The challenge them on My Time To Craft this week is "Nature". This gave me a nudge to get a card that has been in my head for a long time - since last summer actually - made and out of my system!

The stamps are by Elusive Images and come from the Wild Meadow themeplate. Inks are from a variety of Kaleidacolor ink pads, but mainly Desert Heat and Creole Spice. The stamps were heat embossed onto the red sky background with black EP and on the main card I stamped with Versamark then dusted over with Perfect Pearls using a purple colour from the Jewel set.

The red sky background was created simply by using torn paper masks to sponge colour from the ink pads down onto the card, starting with the sponge on the edge of the mask and drawing the ink down onto my card. The colours graduated from lightest to darkest and I moved the mask a little further up with each colour. Once that was done I gently washed over this with a water brush to bleed the colours together even more.

Fab's Christmas Challenge is Back!

Last year my freind Fab ran his Big Christmas challenge all year and joining in as many challenges as I could certainly helped me to have a stock of cards ready for Christmas just past. If like me you have made a resolution to be ready in plenty of time for Christmas 2009 then why not visit Fab's new for 2009 Christmas Challenge blog and join in this year - there is a link on the right hand side of my blog right at the top where you can't miss it - just roll over that and click or click the link in this post. I certainly plan to join in again this year and here is my first card - well 2 actually! As the colour scheme is Red and Green and the whole card is based around a the stamped greeting these also fit the terms of the current challenge over on Christmas Cards All Year Round - a twofer!

The stamp is from The Artistic Stamper and was stamped and heat embossed onto ivory pearlescent Moondust card using Green Sparkle EP on one card and Red Sparkle EP on the other. I painted in the text using gold Twinkling H2Os. These were then mounted onto foil card, using red foil card with the Green embossed stamped greeting and green foil card with the red embossed stamped greeting. I chose red card to mount these onto. For one I used a small left over piece of paper I had printed from the Artylicious Season's Greetings CD, and for the other I used Versamark and Perfect Pearls to create a background using the same stamp. I think the one with the printed paper background is my favorite, but both were really quite quick cards to make.