Hummingbird Blue

At last a new card!  I thought I should try to enter a challenge, which is a new experience for me, so I did this one for the Shades of Blue challenge on Emma's Crafty Challenge.  I thought it would be a good  exercise to limit myself to a set of rules but I am not so sure now, as I had used a multi shade thread on the buttons  which had a bit of dark grey in it, so had to take it off and use one that was totally shades of blue. Thinking of it now, the hummingbird is probably going to disqualify me as it has black ink on it!  So then, not sure if I'll enter it after all.

I made the hummingbird from Fantasy Film (like the butterflies on previous cards).  The blue and white paper is K & co which I also coloured with blue pencils and  blue glitter pen.  It also has distress inked edges.  The card it is mounted onto started out as plain white as I didn't have the exact colour I wanted I used an old Fabrico craft ink pad in Sky Mist using direct to paper all over.  I stamped swirls in places using Encore White pigment ink and heat set that. It has distress inked edges.

The swirl is a Tim Holtz Alterations die from Sizzix called Elegant Flourishes, this has been covered with Distress Stickles in Rock Candy.  I have lost the packaging (again) for the scalloped edged circle die, its in Whitewash Coredinations card which has been lightly sanded.  The sentiment stamp is by Print Works.

The wired edged ribbon is from my stash as are the 2 buttons and blue thread.  Really quite straight forward card but I did spend absolutely ages colouring the paper and glittering it with thousands of little dots, which I am not sure you can see in the photo.

Not sure if I'll enter it because of the black ink on the hummingbird!

In this photo you can see the glittering better but hard to read the sentiment so I chose the first photo as it's the reverse.  Well, what do you think?  Any comments would be great :)

Blue Valentine

Unbelievably I almost finished this post and my finger slipped and I lost the whole thing!!!!!  so here goes again ...

I wanted to do a blue valentine rather than my usual red.    I actually love this card and only just finished it about half an hour ago (fortunately I wont see Alex until tonight so it's not too late!).  It is my first 8" x 8" card and I will definitely make more cards this size.

I must say the picture doesn't show up how shimmery it is as I have once again used cosmic shimmer and glimmer mist in huge amounts!  I will ask for a decent camera for my birthday this year as I am using my camera phone which is not great, obviously.

Here goes (again!!!!) ...

The main focal point heart on the front is a free svg cutting file from the internet done on my cricut expression (which I was so lucky to win a few years ago from Craftwork Cards).  The paper behind is actually the paper on my desk when I sprayed some flowers for another project.  It has so much cosmic shimmer and glimmer mist on it that it's stiff!  This and the white card mount are die cut using a spellbinders label die.  Onto this the flower is a Sizzix/Tim Holtz Tattered Florals which has again been saturated with cosmic shimmer and glimmer mists and assembled using a large turquoise brad.

The card underneath is stamped with an elusive images heart which is embossed in cosmic shimmer ep and colour tinted with faded jeans distress ink using a blending tool.  The back of this piece is also stamped with the same stamp but using faded jeans distress ink which is then blended with  a water brush.

The background piece of the bottom card is again paper generously sprayed with cosmic shimmer and glimmer mists with cling film put on top until dry. When peeled off it leaves this fantastic weird and wonderful look.  The same heart stamp was used again here onto the same paper but embossed with detail white ep, then mounted onto white card and cut out leaving a small border.  They have been mounted using foam pads.  The lacy heart strip of white cardstock is cut out using a spellbinder's border die (part of the set I got when I bought my Grand Calibur recently).    The pearlescent white scalloped oval is another free svg cutting file onto which I have stamped the I love you and embossed in cosmic shimmer ep.

I hope you like it and thanks for coming by, hope you have a great Valentine's Day :)

Magenta Fantasy Film Butterfly

I just love Fantasy Film and have a pile of butterflies on my desk half way through incarnation!    This card has the large Magenta butterfly stamp.  I love Magenta and they never delete stamps so you can always get oldies.  This stamp I have probably had for about 10 years!   As you can see, the wings are Fantasy Film and there is a great video which shows how to do this and I will attempt to make a link to it. The photos look like they are 2 different butterflies but they are the same one, it's so irridescent.

The body is made of wire and beads.  I have done this by taking the wire and folding it in half, add a bead, let it drop to the  half way point, then thread one piece of wire through the next bead, push it to the first bead and thread the other piece of wire through the hole with the wire sticking out.  Pull the wire and continue adding beads in this way. When the body is long enough make an antennae by cutting off the wire and twisting the ends with a round nose plier or round the end of a paintbrush etc.

The Fantasy Film wings are made by stamping your stamp into Stazon black ink and putting on your desk, ink uppermost, then laying 3 or 4 layers of film on top.  Cover with a piece of craft sheet (or baking parchment etc) and carefully iron on medium  heat until it is fused together.  You have to peek after a few presses and check, continue until it is done.  Peel it off your stamp carefully.  Cut out close around image.  If there are any patchy bits of inking, you can use a black permanent pen (or Copic etc) to go over the image. I have done 2 sets of wings to add dimension.

Keep all the leftover bits as you can reheat them into a sheet and use it for die cutting.  The background is a Heidi Swapp mask  sprayed with a few different Glimmer Mists.   The button started out as clear plastic.  Using a page of an old book I used a double sided sticky sheet on the back of the button and cut around it.  I made the holes using a large needle and threaded a piece of soft wool through and tied into a knot.

The background piece is edge distressed and machine stitched onto metallic card .  A piece of trim is attached using ultra sticky tape (the red one) and the whole thing sewn onto an A5 size white card.  I like the fact that you can see the stitching on the inside but you can always cover it with a paper insert etc.

I am off to find out how to link the Fantasy Film video!

I hope you like this one and please leave me a comment if you feel like it.

Love

Anne

Cutie Owl

This little cutie is coloured with watercolour pencils and is probably a bit brighter than it needs to be, but hey it's always an experiment isn't it.  It has stickles on it too.  The branch is various metallic pens.  The more I look at it, the more I think I should do something on the white background, but there's so much going on elsewhere on the card, I think I'll leave it.   Its cut out with a spellbinder label and edged in silver leafing pen.
The pearlescent blue card mat under that is also edged with the leafing pen.

The background papers are both digis from Pink Petticoat (I love their papers, their colour palettes are gorgeous) .  They are both sewn onto a white card matt with a multi-coloured machine embroidery thread in a zig zag stitch.

The owl stamp and the sentiment are from the same set (I think it might be Inkadinkadoo but I have stupidly thrown away the packaging of most of my unmounted stamps!) .  The sentiment is edged in the silver leafing pen as well.  The gorgeous dotty blue satin ribbon is tied around the piece to balance out the blue of the mount above.  The whole thing is mounted onto the same blue pearlescent card as the mount for the owl.

Like a lot of my cards when I look at it, I find fault, this isn't perfect, that could be better, what if I did this or that, so I was reluctant to post it.  But I think you just have to go for it and just let it be 'good enough' rather than 'perfect'.  I don't think we would ever post anything otherwise!  What do you think?