A Birthday Card

Pink 'n' Girly without being saccharin sweet, or at least that's what I was aiming for when I made this a while back for a friend's Birthday. The card base is some ice blue pearlesenct card - chosen because it would look well with the silver embossing I planned to do. The papers are from an Artylicious CD - "Decadent Brocade" . I addes some shimmer to them by spritzing with Glimmer Mists, blended a little ink round the edges then embossed the big swirl stamp in silver at two opposing corners.

The flowers were embossed in silver onto more of the same pattern paper. I spread a thin layer of Stickles Stardust glitter then cut them out. The large Birthday greeting stamp is from an A6 plate by Elusive Images. It was also stamped onto the printed paper and heat embossed in silver, then matted onto some of the same ice blue card I have used for the main card.

The flowers and swirl stamps are by Sheena Douglass.

Thank You Card

I got the new Artylicious Decadent Brocade CD recently and have been printing stuff off - stupidly I forgot to take a photo of the first of the card I made but this is the second card from the CD.

The stamped sentiment is by Elusive Images and can be found on the Words of Gratitude Themeplate. The paper was inked round the edges with Memento ink and then spritzed with Gimmer Mists to make it shimmery. The Prima flowers were also spritzed with the Glimmer Mists.

From One Tough Card to Another.....

Well my last post was about difficult to make cards - and here's another difficult subject - MEN!!! This is actually an Anniversary Card, but as it's for my hubby that makes it one of the dreaded "man cards" so I couldn't fall back on easy options like pretty flowers, butterflies etc. that give easy solutions for Anniversary cards being sent to other couples! Anyhow I wanted something that is romantic but in a masculine kind of way - hmmm did I just put "romantic" and "masculine" in the same sentence? Not that my hubby doesn't love me, but he just is not a fluffy hearts and kisses kind of person if you see what I mean. Anyhow this is what I came up with - manly colours with a beautiful, but not in the least bit soppy, heart stamp and text stamp, both of which are from Elusive Images.

The background for the heart was made using Distress Inks and the "Wrinkle Free" technique - one of the techniques we played with at the recent workshop I went to. The colours used were Faded Denim, Broken China and Peeled Paint spritzed very liberally with loads of water. Once this was dry I stamped and embossed a lovely leafy flourish heart which can be found on the Harlequin Rose themplate using Gold Embossing powder then spritzed it with Glimmer Mist - the colour was Sea Glass.

Finally I cut out the heart and mounted it with foam pads onto some dark blue Moondust card from Southfields - it's a gorgeous deep blue pearlescent card but the photo does not do it full justice. Before mounting the heart I had stamped and embossed in gold the word "Love" which comes from the Words of Love themeplate onto the Moondust card. This was layerd onto some gold foil card and then attached to a card blank which I had printed with a background paper design from the Artylicious Filigree Fusion CD which co-ordinates nicely with the leafy flourish design on the heart stamp.

Bluebell Woods for a Floral Challenge

The challenge this week on Theme Thursday is "Flowers". I love bluebells, such pretty colours and delicate flowers, so this stamp from Elusive Images is a favorite. The stamp can be found on the Snowdrop Script Themeplate.

I used green Stazon ink to stamp the image then painted it with Twinkling H2Os. This was matted onto layers of dark blue and lilac card stock from my stash. Next I made the picture of the Bluebell woods using stamps from the Elusive Images Arboretum and Wild Meadow themplates. The background was brayered using Adirondack Dye Inks then the trees and grassy bits were stamped with more of the same inks. Finally the bluebell flowers were added using a mix of stamping with the H2O paints and adding some extra spots of colour with a paint brush.

The card base is some blue card from my stash that has been spritzed with Glimmer Mists over Glimmer Screens. The Bluebell text stamp was stamped over the Glimmer mists using Azure Stazon - the shimmer of the Glimmer Mists still shows through the Stazon.

Spring Snowdrop

The challenge this week on Daring Cardmakers is Feeling Green and challenges cardmakers to use lots of green on their card.

My card uses a stamp from Elusive Images and was stamped with Forest Green Stazon then painted with Twinkling H2O's. I edged the image with some lighter shades of green from a ColourBox Queue that has an assortment of green shades in it. I made a shimmery green background layer by blending a little more of the green inks onto some white card then spritzing with Glimmer Mists in green and yellow. The Snowdrop word stamp is from the same Snowdrop Script themeplate as the flower image and was stamped in green pigment ink then heat embossed using a clear pearl Cosmic Shimmer EP that has a green mica sparkle to it once heat set.

Better Late Than Never

As the challenge this week on My Time To Craft is "Going for Gold" I decided that I really should take that as a sign that I needed to finish a card I had started making in January, it was originally meant to be for "Plum and Gold" for the challenge on the Graphicus Team Blog, but as I have mentioned January was a bit of a nightmare. Anyhow here is my "Going for Gold" (with Plum) card.

The stamp is by Elusive Images and can be found on the Harlequin Rose Themeplate. It was stamped and embossed with Gold EP onto black card first. I then bleached out the card where I wanted to paint the rose and used Twinkling H2Os to paint the flower and leaves. This was matted onto some plum colour Bazzil card and then onto gold mirror card.

The main card is black card which I have partly covered with paper printed from the Artylicious Damask Delights CD. A narrow gold peel off border was added to the edge where the paper joins the card. Finally this was spritzed with Silver Bells Glimmer Mists to give both the printed paper and the blank card a lovely shimmer.

Happy Challenge

The challenge this week on Theme Thursday is to use the word "happy" or "happiness" in a project. For my project I used one of the tags we made at the Graphicus Glimmer Mist Workshop I went to recently and combined it with stamps from Elusive Images. The tag has been spritzed with 2 colours of glimmer mist over a Glimmer Screen, unfortunately the photo is not really showing the shimmer that well. The bird stamp is from the Let Your Heart Sing themeplate and the text is from the Words of Wisdom Themeplate. Both were stamped in black then heat embossed with clear detail EP.

Forever Autumn

The challenge on Daring Cardmakers this week is "Forever Autumn" so here is my take on the theme.

The card was made by first brayering colour from an Adirondack Rainbow Pad (Woodlands) onto some cardstock, then stamping the leaf image randomly using various autumnal colours of Twinkling H2Os painted directly onto the stamp. This was matted onto some dark green cardstock. Another matting layer was made by spritzing Glimmer Mists onto some orange card stock and that was also layerd onto more of the dark green card. I chose some russet coloured card stock for the main card and used an Elusive Imgages text stamp to stamp and emboss the Just a Note greeting onto it. The stamp is from the Delightful Damask themeplate

Peacock Fan - Getting A Round Tuit

Well, it only took me four months to make this card - for me it's been a bit of an epic, in fact you might even describe it as an obsession! I saw the Peacock Fan themeplate by Elusive Images with it's beautiful stamp of a single fan blade at the end of May this year and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to make it into a fan and add real feathers behind each blade, but as the stamp was the Graphicus Guild members offer of the month at the end of July I waited to buy it at the offer price. I finally got my themeplate when I was at Graphicus for some workshops during my summer holiday. By this time I had a copy of the Artylicious Peacock Summer Party CD which has been designed to co-ordinate with all the lovely Elusive Images Peacock Stamps so now, early August, I was all set to roll.

I knew it would take me some time because I am not particularly good at cutting out and I knew that cutting the feather detail at the top of each fan was going to be fiddly so I decided that I would make 1 or 2 "feathers" at a time till I had the 7 I needed. In all it took me about 3 weeks to get all my feathers made and painted in between making cards for birthdays, challenges and trying to build up a stock of Christmas cards too. So since the end of August my fan elements have sat with me picking them up at regular intervals, popping my Peacock Summer Party CD into my computer to browse through the designs and pondering what to do next! This is perhaps one of the downsides of Glenda Waterworth's Artylicious CDs - there are so many beautiful designs on each CD to choose from that I often struggle to make a choice over which one I will use and for this fan card I had spent so much time making the fan I wanted to be sure I had the right paper.

I finally took hold of myself today after seeing a challenge called "A round tuit" on the This Thursday It's All About challenge blog. Yes that was what I needed! I needed to get "a round tuit" and make a decision about how I would turn my fan into a card!

Anyway here is the finished result, at the end it just suddenly came to me which paper to use and I hope I got it right, I think I did. With this card finally "out of my system" perhaps I can get my teeth properly into that fabulous Peacock CD because there are so many lovely card ideas I have been pushing away until I got my fan card made.

Each blade of the fan was stamped using holographic black EP, then painted using Twinkling H2Os. The black parts were coloured with a Sakura black Glaze Pen and I used a clear Sakura Glaze pen over Twinkling H2O paint on the gems in the fan to make them look more like facet cut Amethysts, Emeralds and Paraiba Tourmaline. The "Pearls" were created by using Ranger's Liquid Pearls in White Opal.

The card itself is A4 - the fan is too big to fit on an A5 card - and because Glenda creates Full Bleed images on her CD's I was able to print the peacock feather design borderlessly to cover the whole sheet of card. I then lightly spritzed the sheet with gold Glimmer Mists to give it a gentle lustre.

Glimmer Mist & Masking in Blue

My friend Jan kindly sent me a Heidi Swapp mask as a little extra treat along with a card she had made for me. I had some fun making a simple card by sticking the mask down onto some pale blue pearlescent card and spritzing it with darker blue glimmer mists. I cut the result out and mounted it onto some deep blue card and then onto a card made from the same pale blue pearlescent card. Added some gems and ribbon for a quick, but I think rather effective card and it's definately "Blue" so it works for the challenge this week on My Time To Craft.

Not a Tree

I can't exactly say most times where I get the idea for a card from, probably something in my subconscious, but for once I do know what inspired this card!

While I was cutting out the stamps from my Arboretum Themplate from Elusive Images I was struck by the fact that the canopy of one of the trees was exactly the right sort of shape to fill a pot full of flowers! In my garden, despite the dreadful wet and horrible summer, I have some lovely tubs of Impatiens (Busy Lizzies) in flower. I had been admiring how pretty they looked that very day. Have you ever noticed how the petals of these flowers are almost irridescent? I had also seen some beautiful things made by Glenda Waterworth which involved using shimmery embossing powders to add flowers to the trees from the Arboretum themeplate and it occured to me that the tree stamp and Glenda's embossing technique would let me create my own version of the tubs of flowers in my garden - ideal for a birthday card I needed to make.

First of all I stamped the tree by inking it with green inks, then used shades of magenta and pink chalk inks to stamp the flowers. Next I went over each flower with a Versamark pen so as it would be sticky and then sprinkled on some Cosmic Shimmer "Iced Blush Luster" Embossing powder and heat set it. It'a very pale translucent powder so the colours of the ink show through. Next I cut out a plant pot shaped template, wrapped some ribbon round it, added a tag with the greeting on it and attached it just under the tree branches, hiding the trunk part. This was matted onto some of the same green card I had used to cut my pot template from and I had my "pot of Impatiens" ready to afix to a card.

I made the card from some of the same green card and made a backing paper by starting with some pale pink paper to which I added some depth by applying some Cerise and Magenta colour if ink with a sponge. I used a pouncing movement to dab the ink on, rather than sweeping the sponge around on the paper. Next I took the little flower stamps I had used on the main image and stamped them randomly over the paper, and finally spritzed the whole thing with some pink Glimmer Mist to give it some shimmer. This was applied to the card and the pot of flowers was then adhered with foam pads.

I guess it's not a very elaborate card to look at in some ways, but I do think it looks very like the real flowers in my garden! In case you are wondering which tree from that themeplate I used, it's one of the smaller ones - the one that sits upside down in the top right quadrant of the plate. I would have added a photo of the real tub of flowers to this post, but once again it's a horrible wet day here, not good for taking photos! Perhaps I can add a picture before they all fade for the winter if the sun ever decided to show it's face again.

Magical Christmas Card

As a child I loved the magical idea of Rudolph and the other reindeer flying through the sky pulling Santa's sleigh. I think that's why I love this magical stamp from Elusive Images. It's part of the Christmas Fusion Themeplate.

To make this card I first made a background with shimmery blue Glimmer Mists which I covered with clear UTEE and stamped "Rudolph" into it using Encore Metallic Silver ink. Finally I gave him a lovely red nose with a tiny spot of Christmas Red Stickles Glitter.

The backing paper is from the Artylicious Season's Greetings CD. It's actually a very plain paper with just a very soft graduated shading on it, but I used another stamp from the Christmas Fusion Themeplate and some more of the Encore silver ink to stamp that lovely star flourish all over it.

Finally I assmebled my card, staying with the "star" theme by using some star effect holographic card to layer with and by adding a few faux gems in the shapes of stars to the card.

This card is my card for August's "Fab's Big Christmas Challenge" - I don't think I am going to do the nutter's challenge this month - it's EIGHT cards before the 25th of September, but we shall see, maybe I will find enough time this month!

Blog Comment form and Gimme an Inch....

... well 4 inchies actually! Oh boy am I late with this swap - sorry Jan.
This is my second attempt at inchies and I still think they are tough little devils to make. The swap was to make 8 and to make 2 of each so that we could swap one set and keep one. With the eight swaps we receive we will have sixteen inchies to then use in a project of our own devising.

I started with one theme in mind, using images of ladies, but half way through it dawned on me that my 4 beauties were very seasonal and it would be fun to make a corresponding inchie to match each season, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Now I was on holiday when this idea struck so it had to wait till I got home, and the mammoth craft room tidy up had to be done first.. oh well enough of the excuses I finally got my other 4 inchies finished so here are my Four Seasons inchies.

The bevy of beauties are all taken from the Garden Themplate from The Artistic Stamper which was stamped in Black Stazon then watercoloured. The complimentary inchies are stamped onto backgrounds made with Glimmer Mists using various stamps or elements from a stamp as follows : Spring - Stamp by Personal Impressions; Summer - Stamp by Elusive Images, the Just Butterflies Themeplate; Autumn - stamp from a set of clear stamps origin unknown; Winter - stamp from a Stamp Tapestry set.

Blog Comments Form
For those of you who are kind enough to take some time to leave me a comment I hope you will agree with the change I have made. For myself I find when I visit other blogs I am preferring the option where the comments open in a seperate pop-up window so I thought I would change to that setting here. Feel free to say if you prefer it the other way round.

Peacock Birthday Card

I have had to hold back on posting a picture of this card which I made earlier on in the week - it's for a birthday so I waited to give the mail time to deliver the card. I had a blast making this one, getting gloriously messy with Glimmer Mists, painting with Twinking H2Os and sticking on Gems. Sometimes I think I must have been a magpie in a past life because if it sparkles, shimmers or glitters in any way I want it.

The background papers was made using the Glimmer Mists - first I painted a wash of green glimmer mist (Lily Pad) over my paper, then while it was still wet sprizted with more of the Green and also a Turquoise (Turquoise Blue) and Purple (Lavender Fields) Glimmer Mists. Then I folded the by now pretty soggy paper in half, spirtzed side inward and crumpled it up into a ball.. then uncrumpled and unfolded being careful not to tear the paper. Next was the really difficult bit.. walk away... and beleive me that is hard for me to do cuz I love picking things up I am making and admiring the shimmer, but it needed to dry, and to do so without me getting my mucky paw prints all over it or tearing it! Anyhow it was late so I toddled off to bed and the next morning I spritzed more of the green, turquoise and purple glimmer mists on to it and once again left it to dry. Finally when the paper was totally dry I used Royal Purple Stazon ink to stamp a peacock feather randomly over it and added a few more spitzes of Glimmer Mist. The more I layered the glimmer mists the more it seemed to shimmer!

With my background paper made I chose a Peacock image from the Elusive Images "Peacock Glory" themplate, stamped and heat embossed it with gold EP, painted it with Twinking H2O's and added some deep sapphire blue cabochon gems to it. The feather I had stamped on the background comes from the same themeplate. Finally I cut out my image and stuck it to some of the same deep green card I was using for my base card. I edged both the green card and the backing paper with a Gold Sakura Pentouch Pen and added a Happy Birthday greeting. Once again the full effect of the shimmer from those Glimmer Mists evades my camera! I must apologise for the smudgy finger prints in the photo - good job I noticed them before hubby did and yelled at me for getting finger prints on the camera lens!

More Glimmer Mists

I have been playing with Glimmer Mists again. This time I used one of the Glimmer screens and 3 different colours of Glimmer mist to create a background, I then used stencil brush to stipple on some pink ink around the edge of the stencil flourish to give it a bit more lift. The stamped quotation is a stamp by Clarity Stamp and was stamped with Versafine Onxy Black. I wish the camera could capture the shimmer better.

Brrrrrr......Freezing

I am still working on the "nutters" challenge for Fab's Big Christmas Challenge this month. As June is the sixth month Fab's "nutter's" challenge for June is to make not just one Christmas card as is required for the regular challenge, but six! Not sure if I will manage all six, but every card I do make just now means less pressure for me at the end of the year. Last year I found that the pressure to make enough Christmas cards was actually taking away a lot of the pleasure in making, so I am not too worried if I don't manage all 6 this month so long as I am enjoying making the ones I do make. I will be that much closer to having all the cards I need for Christmas 2008 ready in plenty of time. If you haven't started making your Christmas cards yet, why not join in with Fab's challenge, you don't have to go for the "nutter's" one, for the regular challenge all you need to do is make a single Christmas card - and you never know you might find yourself in festive mood and make more - not a bad thing to have some cards made nice and early if you always need a lot of hand made cards for family and freinds at Christmas.

Fortunately I found some more inspiration in another challenge this week. Daring Card Makers Challenge is entitled "Brrrrrr.......Freezing" and the brief is to make a card that is inspired by images, colours, embellishments - anything that makes you think of feeling cold and reminds you of winter. Anyhow here is my "chilly" card!

The Snowman stamp is from Visible Image and has been stamped in Black Archival Ink then coloured with Prismacolor pencils. The shimmery snowflake background was made by sponging blue dye based ink onto white card stock the spritzing with Gimmmer Mists. After it dried I stamped the snowflake image in Adirondack Dye ink (Denim) then spritzed some more with the Glimmer Mists. The photo really does not do justice to the gorgeous icy shimmer from those Glimmer Mists. Finally I edged the both the Snowman image and the background with a silver Sakura Pentouch pen.

The card itself is some pearlescent card stock that I picked up at the SECC in March and I have used some of the offcuts of my background to punch out small snowflakes and to make the text message. The Let It Snow text was also stamped with the Adirondack Denim ink.