Apologies and a Tiddley card

I just want to say sorry to friends who's blogs I have not been visiting a lot recently. My old 'puter was getting very wobbly, dying on it's feet actually. Anyhow I had to nurse it along and avoid having it turned on for too long as it was running too hot and getting ready to fry itself. Thankfully the guys in my local computer shop are very cool guys, they kept my old 'puter running for about a year longer than I had expected and they have now built me a nice new one for not too large a number of pennies. Well not too large in the scale of 'puter stuff, but enough pennies to buy rather a lot of rubber stamps with if I hadn't needed the new 'puter.

Anyhow here is a "tiddly" card I made for a swap on Craft Telly Forum recently - the swap theme was to make a small card.. The card is what we refer to in the UK as A7 size - I know I have some American freinds who drop by occasionally so for you guys the card size is close to 1/4 of your American Letter size card which has then been folded in half to make a little card.

The whole thing was made from a piece of lovely pearlescent Moondust card - the butterfly was cut and embossed from some of the Moondust card with my Cuttlebug using one of those dies that has a matching embossing folder. I brayered some ink over the embossed butterfly using a Kaliedacolor ink pad - Calypso if I remember correctly - and finished by adding some sparkle with Stickles glitter glue.

The layer underneath the butterfly was stamped with a small text stamp which I had inked using the same Kaleidacolor pad and the daisy border at the bottom was stamped and embossed with gold EP then painted with Twinking H2Os. I can't recall who made the littel set of text stamps, but the border comes from a set made by Crafty Secrets. The other matting layer was simply another piece of the moondust card which I had coloured with the brayer in the same way as I coloured the butterfly. I did find it was best to give the ink a gentle heat set on this kind of card.

Simply Stamping

The challenge this week on Stamp Somthing is called "Simple Somethings", and you are to only use one layer of cardstock for your project! Um well, somtimes stamping is not so simple, especially when you are a clutz like me! But the craft gods were smiling on me and despite droping the plastic cover from a Ranger Pigment ink pad on my card I managed not to get black ink all over 2 days of work and ruin it!

The card is simply an A5 piece of white card stock folded in half then stamped and inked. I first stamped and embossed the toadstools with black Adirondack Pigment Ink and used fine detail clear EP to emboss them. The Fairy was stamped and embossed in the same way, using a Stamp-a-ma-jig to help with postioning. These stamps are from Elusive Images, the Fairy is from the Dragonfly Faeries themeplate and the toadstools are from the new Autumn Table themeplate, which so far has only been released to Graphicus Guild members, but which will be on sale in about a week's time, this means that at the moment the stamp is not listed on the Graphicus web site so I can't give a link.

Next I coloured in the tops of thetoadstools with Tinkabella Inks and used an Ranger Inkssentials white pen to create the spots. The stems were coloured with Stampin' Up markers and the colour drawn out with a wet paint brush. Clear Crystal glitter was added to the faery's wings and then the whole lot was coated with Glossy Accents so as the images would resist the inks I was going to use in the background.

Once the Glossy Accents were dry, I left this over-night to be sure it was, I used torn paper masks and various colours of green inks applyed with sponges and a Colour Box blending tool to create the background. I used stamps from the Elusive Images Wild Meadow themeplate to create some texture in the grass in the foreground. The trees are from a set of stamp by The Angel Company and the text is from a set of stamps I recently was lucky enough to receive this weekend from Roni when she had a blog candy givaway on her Ink Stains blog. They are from a set by Crafty Secrets and are clear photopolymer, if you have any doubts about using clear stamps then I can vouch for this brand because they stamp beautifully.