Bones Update and a Wedding Card

The hand is healing slowly, the swelling is pretty much gone and the bruising has changed from shades of Black Soot, Faded Jeans and Seedless Preserves to lightly blended tones of Crushed Olive, Peeled Paint and Mustard Seed.  Still don't have much grip so it will be a while longer before I can do much in the way of stamping.  Meantime however I have found some old pictures of a Wedding Card I made using one of my favorite stamps.  The beautiful Rose Script stamp is available from Chocolate Baroque.

The image was stamped and heat embossed in gold onto pearlescent card then painted with Twinkling H2Os.  I used peel-offs for the gold borders and the greeting and made a box for the card to be delivered in.

Engagement Card

An engagement in the family was the reason for this card, or at least the reason to make a card of some sort, but what to make? I recently bought some of the Britannia Flower Dies and have been playing with making roses, and fuchsias etc so it seemed like I good idea to have a go at using the flowers on a card.

Before being made into flowers the die cut flower shapes were painted with Twinkling H20 paints, English Lavender for the petals, Mustard Green for the calyx and leafy stems. When dry both paint colours have a lovely golden shimmer which I hope you can see in the photo.  The "Celebrate" sentiment was stamped and heat embossed in gold onto the die cut in the centre. The stamp is one that came in a kit years ago from Hot Off The Press and the die is from Marianne Design Creatables. The card stock is ivory and gold pearlescent card, the gold being Moondust card from Southfields, the ivory was just some I had in my stash.

Thanks need to go to Joanna Sheen Ltd for posting this helpful video on YouTube as I am sure I would have struggled making the flowers without the clear instructions here.

Trick or Treat Part 3 - Found that Blog Candy Yet?

We have been having a lot of fun on the Elusive Images Design Team for the last few weeks playing errr I mean working hard, making samples with Hallowe'en themed stamps.  A dirty job for sure, but someone had to do it [Grin].  Today I thought I would share one of those samples with you. The card was made using stamps from the Twilight Zone and Spookylicious themeplates, and paper from the Artylicious Essence of Nature CD.  I also used Distress Inks and Twinkling H2Os.

Right now we have a fun blog hop running for anyone who wants to win some hallowe'en themed blog candy.  Now the candy is hidden, not every Design Team member has any, some do, some don't.  The challenge is to find the blogs with the candy.  To give you a helping hand, here is the link to my blog candy post - be sure to follow the instructions in the post if you hope to find that blog candy! 

Of course I may or may not have candy, so to be certain of being in with a chance to win some of these spooktacular Elusive Images Hallowe'en themed stamps you will need to visit the Elusive Images Design Team Blog and also the blogs of the other DT members - you can find their links in my side bar and on the main post about the Blog Hop on the Elusive Images Design Team Blog.  You only have a day or two left to find that candy, as the winners will be drawn on Friday 17th September 2010.  Good Luck in the hunt!

Two Tags and an Alcohol Ink Background

Recently I have been playing with some stamps I bought last year from Graphicus, they all have a nautical/sea theme. I have a card idea in my head for the image of the sailing ship, but it's not quite there yet. I thought I would stamp out the images last night and see where they took me. While I was playing I thought I would try out a background technique I have been wanting to have a go at since I bought some Isopropyl Alcohol a month or so ago - a much cheaper alternative to Alcohol Ink Blending Solution and it's pretty good for cleaning up that tacky gunk that cutting sticky things leaves on our scissors too! You can get it through any Pharmacy tho you may have to ask for a special customer order.

Anyhow on to my tags. First step was to chop open on 3 sides one of those tough cello bags that I get every time I buy unmounted stamps from Graphicus so as it could be opened up like opening the pages of a book. Next I dripped Alcohol Inks (the colours are Denim, Stream, Stonewashed and Lettuce and a tiny splodge of Silver Metallic Mixative) inside my "cello book" and spritzed this with some of the Isopropyl Alcohol which I had decanted into a Tim Holtz Mini Mister. Closed the cello pages and sorta smeared things around with my fingers, then opening the pages back up, I took 2 semi gloss tags I bought in Grapicus some time ago, laid them back to back and placed them between the pages of cello and once again kinda smeared things around with my fingers - I really liked the end result, the colours are lovely and soft and best of all permanent so they won't bleed when you do other stuff with them.

The stamping itself was simple enough, stamps from the Elusive Images "Undewater", "Seashore Scenes" and "Seashell Collage" themeplates stamped in Midnight Blue Stazon. The gulls in the tag with the sailing ship are from a stamp by Clarity Stamp.

On the tag with the seahorse I tried adding a little colour with Twinkling H2O paints to the shells and sea bottom to get a more sandy look - it think it looks OK even tho the paints are transparent so some of the blue/green tones of the background show through. On the tag with the sailing ship I used a white gel pen to add some foam to the waves under the ship.

With hindsight the silver mixative may have been a mistake as Stazon does not work so well with the metallic mixatives - the silver floats up to the surface of the stamping - must try this next time with Archival ink and see what happens.

All of a Flutter

This card was made for a swap on Craft Telly forum where the monthly swap theme was All of a Flutter. The background is made in 2 halfs using a brayer, a Kaleidacolor ink pad (Melon Melody) my cuttlebug to emboss the lower half and stamps by Elusive Images to heat emboss the sparkley Dragonflys and butterflys on the top half. All the stamps for that are on the Butterfly Blush themeplate and I used Stamp N Stuff Kaleidascope EP which changes colour when heated.

The main Butterfly is from another Elusive Images theme plate, this time Just Butterflies. The image was stamped using Adirondack ink in Butterscotch, heat embossed with more of the Kaleidascope EP and then painted using Twinkling H2O paints in colours to coordinate with those in the background. This was mounted onto card cut with Nestabilites dies. The ribbon is from Maya Road.

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.

Shirley Poppys

This card came about after something I read made me Google Shirley Poppys, the flowers in this variety of Poppy are a pretty shade of pale pink. It's also another of those cards made for a March Birthday.

The stamp is from Elusive Images and is part of the Flora and Fauna Themeplate. I stamped and heat embossed it with Silver EP, then painted it with Twinkling H2Os. The greetings are also stamps by Elusive Images and were part of a Graphicus Guild Member's Limited Edition stamp plate. The frame is one stamp and there is a selection of greetings that are all made to fit inside the frame.

The image is layerd onto black card and I added some black Stickles glitter to give some more sparkle. The decorative corners were were cut from white card with my Cuttlebug and then painted with the same shade of green paint I had used on the poppy flowers. I am not sure if the end result is a good representation of the real flowers but I like to think that it's just as pretty as the photos I found in Google of the real thing.

Teddy Birthday Card

This card was made for a Birthday card swap. The person who's birthday it was loves teddies and most things cute so I dug out my one and only cute teddy stamp and came up with this. Cute is not really my forte - other people do it better than me but I enjoyed making the card.

The teddy stamp is from Visible Image and was stamped onto some card cut with a die from a set of circle shape Nestabilities then layerd onto a co-ordinating scalloped circle. The image was coloured with Prismacolor pencils which I blended with paper stumps and low odour mineral spirits.

The background paper is from the a Joanna Sheen CD - the Pamela West Collection. I stamped and heat embossed the floral corner flourish which comes from a set of stamps designed by Sheena Douglas then painted all the little leaves and flowers with with Twinkling H2Os. The flower embellishment is from Prima and was given some extra glitz with a coat of Shimmerz paint.

Owl Always Love This Stamp

Yes, it's that Elusive Images owl again, sorry if I am being repetative, but I adore that stamp and it helped me out of a creative hole recently. The "hole" was the monthly swap theme on Craft Telly forum. The theme was to make a "half and half" card. Well at first I just couldn't get an idea of what to make, and then it dawned on me that it would be fun to have a go at making this card with the Wise Owl stamp.

First I cut two rectangles with my nestabilites, one in black and one in white. Next I laid the 2 rectangles on top of each other and cut them in half. The reason I did it this way was so as if my cut was not quite dead center I could match the left hand side piece from one colour with the right hand side piece from the other and still end up with a rectangle that was the same size as my orignal rectangle which would fit on the scalloped nestie layer underneath.

The next step was to join the 2 bits of card together on the back with some masking tape and then stamp the owl with versamark onto the front, postioning the owl as centrally as I could over the centre join. With that done peeled the masking tape off the back of the stamped image taking care not to smudge the versamark impression and seperated the 2 halves. This allowed me to sprinkle white and black embossing poweder over each side without any cross contamination of colour and heat emboss. Once that was done I rejoined the 2 halves and matted them onto the scalloped nestie shape which had also been cut twice in both colours and cut into 2 halves. This in turn was layerd onto 2 more pieces of black and white card which I had edged with a gold Sakura Pentouch pen.

The golden amber eyes were stamped seperately onto white card and embossed with black EP. They were painted with Twinkling H2Os then cut out and stuck down over the original image. The golden card was chosen from my stash to theme with the colour of the owls eyes and was stamped with a stamp from a Graphicus Guild limited edtion stamp using Encore gold metallic ink.

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.

Another Green Snowdrop

Yesterday when I was deciding what to do for the Feeling Green challenge card I stamped the same Elusive Images Snowdrop Script stamp onto some green card, then using stipple brush added some ink to adjust the colour of the card to a more yellowy green. I painted the image with Twinkling H2Os again - and yes Jo, incase you didn't see my reply to your comment in yesterday's blog post the white paint is an H2O. It's the colour called Oyster from kit #655 and the only one in that kit that does not have an inteference colour.

Today I edged my stamped image with some green ink and dipped it into some of the pearl Cosmic Shimmer embossing powder (Tropic Pearl Lustre) and heat set it. I made a matting layer from some ivory pearlescent card and stamped a border of little snowdrop flower heads using green ink and embossed these with more of the Cosmic Shimmer EP. The little Snowdrop flower head image is from the same Themeplate as the main image.

The main card is some ivory hammer card and I have used one of the paper designs from the Artylicious Damask Delights CD as a background on it. The paper was edged with some green ink and overstamped at the bottom corner with a large flourish stamp that comes from Creative Expressions and was designed by Sheena Douglas. The flourish is also embossed with the Cosmic Shimmer EP, but it was hard to catch the shimmer in the photo.

Glad I was still in Green mode today because I can include this card in the Anything Goes Challenge on Craft Swap Forum where the current theme is "Green"

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.

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.

Poinsettia

This card was made for a swap and as it's now in the possession of the recipient I can share a pic here. Unfortunately my camera was not behaving - someone had left the auto focus function off but I didn't realise it so the picture is not as clear as it could be.

I used a stamp from Elusive Images to create my poinsettia, it's from the Poinsettia Script themeplate. First I created a background by blending Ranger's Distress Inks in Shabby Shutters and Peeled paint with some Cut N Dry Foam. This was edged it with some Aged Mahogany Distress Ink. Next I used some more of the Peeled Paint to stamp the image onto the background. I then stamped the image 2 more times onto white card using Versamark and embossed them with gold EP. The embossed images of the Poinsettia were painted with Twinkling H2O's and a tiny amount of gold Stickles glitter used on the centre of the flower, then cut out and decoupaged onto the background. This was mounted onto mats of green and red foiled card. For the main card I used some red card stock and covered it with some lovely paper I had printed from the Artylicious Season's Greetings CD. I edged my paper with a gold Sakura Pentouch pen. Finally I added a the red ribbon bow and some red cabochon gems.

Christmas Mouse

I love those House Mouse stamps and invested in a couple recently. This is a Christmas card I made with one of them - isn't that lil' mouse sweet! Due to unforeseen events that kept me from stamping much for about 3 weeks the last week has been pretty hectic trying to finish off cards for Christmas and this card was really quite simple and fast to make - just what I needed!

I cut a label shape from some white card with a Nestabilities die then stamped the image with gray Versafine ink and coloured it with Twinkling H20s. This was then layerd onto the next size up of lable in the Nestabilities set which had been cut from red foiled card. Finally I attached some ribbon with a brad. The card itself is just some red card stock to which I applied a white panel which I had embossed in the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder and then stamped a little greeting on the bottom edge which I had deliberatly left unembossed to take the greeting. I added a border of red Stickles Glitter where the white panel meets the red card and then adhered my mouse tag with foam pads.

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

My First Cuttlebug Card

I treated myself to a Cuttlebug a couple of months ago, but since getting it I have not actually used it apart from playing about and experimenting a bit. Not the machine's fault tho as most of what I have been up to recently has invovled me playing with my stuff, inks, stamps and the 'bug too, but not really actually making things from the experiements. Either the results did not turn out as I had wanted or simply because I often procrastinate when it comes to trying to decide what to make with them. It seems that Fate decided to intervene however when my latest aquistion, a Cuttlebug Die and Embossing folder of a leaf, arrived in yesterday's post on the same day that the challenge on the Cuttlebug Challenge Blog is to make a Fall or Hallowe'en card. The theme also ties in with the current "Anything Goes" challenge on Craft Swap Forum where the theme is "Autumn".

Here is the card I made, it's a rather unusual one for me as not a single ink pad or stamp was involved! I made the card using the leaf die which has been embossed in the co-ordinating folder embossing folder then painted in autumn leaf colours with Twinkling H2Os. The background layer is cream card which I embossed in another cuttlebug folder and then chalked over the raised embossing with some shimmery gold chalk that came in a kit from QVC and finally edged with some ink... oops there was an ink pad involved after all. That was matted onto some gold mirror card. The cardstock is some brown card that has a lovely golden shimmer all over it, I think you can see that in the photo, but in reality the shimmer is quite a bit more noticeable. The the greeting is a peel-off, which says "Birthday Wishes", sorry that bit just kept reflecting too much light for me to get the text readable in the photo.

As we don't celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK and the sending of hallowe'een cards is not a tradtion here I decided that the card would be more useful to me as a birthday card for someone with an autumn birthday, but I guess it would work for lots of things such as a Thank You or a Get Well card at this time of year. That's the beauty of peel off greetings, you can peel them off and replace them with another one!

Two Projects - "Christmas" and "Something Funny"

The 25th of September marked the start of another month in the countdown to Christmas and time once again for Fab's Big Christmas Challenge. This month the nutter's challenge would be to make nine Christmas cards. I might even make that many but most of them will be quickie cards with using stuff like, dare I say it "peel-offs" I doubt if I will be adding them to my blog or to the challenge. Whew, OK I hope nobody noticed that shame-faced admission! Anyhow here is my entry for the September's challenge, but who knows, I might manage to make another 8 cards worth blogging about before the 25th of October comes around.

This one was stamped using a lovely Christmas Wreath stamp from Hearth and Home themeplate by Elusive Images. I stamped and embossed the wreath in gold, painted it with Twinkling H2Os, added a touch of red Stickles Glitter on the holly berries and some red Sakura Glaze pen over the bow to change the colour and texture of the bow when compared to the colour of the poinsettia leaves. With my wreath all coloured I decided it would be nict to cut it out. This was mounted onto a circle of gold mirror card with foam pads and then that was mounted onto my card. The card itself is a from some cream pearlised card I bought in the Paper Mill Shop and cut to a 5 inch square card. I covered this with a lovely paper from the Artylicious Season's Greetings CD leaving just a border of the cream card showing and then added some gold strip peel-off borders round the edges of the paper. More foam pads were used to mount the gold circle of card onto this for more dimension and as a finishing touch added a narrow bow of red organza ribbon to provide more contrast with the green design on the paper.

My other project was to make "Something Funny" for Florries Weekly ATC challenge on Craft Swap forum. I have a small set of mini clear stamps by Inkadinkadoo which are definately meant to be humourous so I thought this was the ideal project for giving these stamps and outing. The actual text on the stamps says "I gave up coffee, sex and chocolate" but as I had decided to make a chocolate bar for my background I only stamped the bit about chocolate.

The chocolate bar was made by inking a white ATC size piece of card with some brown ink from a Petal Point ink pad then I used the box making side of my score board to score grooves into the card to form a grid. I used the edge of the same ink pad to darken the brown colour in the grooves so as to create the appearance of more depth and a chunkier bar of chocolate. The stamps were just stamped onto some pink card with Adirondack dye in (Espresso), cut out and adhered to the chocolate bar background with foam pads.

Edit : Perhaps I ough to own up and say my comments about peel-offs were meant to be rather toungue in cheek. I do use them, mostly I use borders and/or corners, also sentiements. There are infact both a gold border peel-offs and a "Merry Christmas" sentiment on the Christmas Wreath card.

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.