Autumn Dreamweaver Forest

Although it's been ages since my last post, it isn't because I haven't made any cards, but because I have made cards that I couldn't post until after the were given to the recipients. These 2 were made for a friend and I have used the Dreamweaver Forest stencil again, it is one of my favourite stencils of all time.

I used the embossing paste and when dry used the glue pad followed by Easy Metal sheet.  The background card pieces have been stamped with various leaf stamps in versamark ink.  The leaves on the front are made from handmade paper and coloured using distress inks.  The sentiment is stamped onto a nestie edged in distress ink whilst in the die, and has a little bling on the 'i'.  These are all  mounted onto an A4 dark brown cardstock folded in half, and with a insert (which I forgot to photograph) with 2 rounded corners and 2 leaf punched corners.

The next one also uses the embossing paste but then it has cosmic shimmer embossing powder in various shades applied onto it.  This is an awful photo and doesn't do it any justice - please take my word for it!  I was in a rush to post them and didn't have time to redo the photos.  I used kraft cardstock for the stencil and used a lovely wooden emblie from Crafty Emblies which I rubbed with metallic rub-ons.  The background pieces are again stamped with leaf stamps in versamark (you can only see this in reality).  The sentiment is stamped onto a nestie, again edged with distress ink whilst still in the die, and again with a bling 'i'. This is then mounted onto a gold miri nestie.  All of this mounted onto a dark green A4 card folded in half and with an insert inside, decorated as before.

I have replaced the original photo with a better one.  Anyway - thanks for looking, and as always, thanks for any comments :)

Pink and Purple Tortoises!

This card uses a tortoise stamp from a set I bought a while ago and have hardly used, so thought I should have a play.  The tortoises are coloured using my copics and cut with a spellbinders oval die.  The pink piece behind is a piece of handmade (by me!) paper made a very long time ago and has been sitting in my stash waiting for the day.  These pieces are mounted over a lovely Cheery Lynn fancy oval which is one of my favourite dies.

The background pieces are a gorgeous pink flower paper that I have been saving (lol) for ages as I love it, but today's the day it's got the chop!  The other piece is a pink petticoat polka dot digi paper.  Both of these mounted onto white card and stitched on the sewing machine.  The ribbon is  lovely glittery striped sheer pink gorgeousness.

This lot mounted onto a folded A4 purple pearlescent card.  Not forgetting (almost!) the sentiment from Craftwork Cards which is a white pearlescent flower shape which I have edged with one of the pink copics I used on the tortoises.

It was such fun to make this card, pink and purple tortoises, why not?!  I hope you like it :)

(Sorry about the picture quality I am having a problem with my camera and have used my phone again )

K&Co more Susan Winget

 I got totally absorbed making this bunch of cards.  I love these papers from K&Co and also used the accessories/die cuts etc to complete the set.

This first one also has a string of pearls and doily coloured with  glimmer mist & cosmic shimmer spray. My favourite grosgrain ribbon, stickles and nesties are in there too.  The glare and the glitter make it hard to see inside the dome.

After watching the videos about using intricate dies on the Cheery Lynn website I finally got the hang of it. I used glimmer mist and cosmic shimmer spray to get the right shade of purple to match the paper.  The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards cut out with a nestie.

 The papers are so pretty just by themselves, of course that doesn't stop me from adding more stuff!

I love the birdies!  The little ones I cut out of the packaging - can't waste them, too cute!  Some card candy, stickles, a nestie and a sentiment stamp finish this one.

I cut out the flower and butterfly from the paper to give more dimension.  The picket fence die is one of my favourites.  Stickles around the edge of the paper a la Julie Hickey.

My first love is stamping but playing with these gorgeous papers is such fun.  Thanks for looking.  I really appreciate any comments :)

Crafty Emblies memo block & giant peg

Hello all, hope you enjoyed the long weekend.  I didn't get any time for crafting unfortunately but these 2 items were made last week for a friend and I thought I would post them.  I used Lumiere gorgeous metallic paint and they have a fabulous sheen which I'm not sure shows here.  A simple strip of Tim Holz tissue tape is on top of that, and also around the pencil.

The gorgeous Craft Emblies cogs and bolts are rubbed with Inca Gold and they really gleam.

The great big peg is painted in the same colour as the block box but looks paler here.  It also has a strip of tissue tape followed by Inca Gold rubbed Crafty Emblies wooden goodies.  I also glued a piece of bling (necklace) for contrast.  That's it for today, thanks for coming by :)

Simple card with daisy trim

This is a very simple little card using the gorgeous paper Meadow Lark collection by Prima.  I love lots of Prima products but they are not widely available in the UK yet.  This is a single sheet from the 6 x 6 pad.  I have simply used white gel pen to highlight various areas (but I must admit I could have done a better job of it - c'est la vie).  The edges were gently tinted using distress ink.  The daisy trim is gorgeous and I bought it recently on ebay.  The words are from a Tim Holtz pad.  That's all there is to it.   Sometimes less is  more so they say.  Thanks for stopping by, I hope you like it.

Paint Job No 2

This is another piece using acrylic paint,  fresco finish by Paper Artsy, which has a lovely chalky effect.  I've been meaning to paint this for about a year and I finally got around to it!  I painted over the previous work as it was easier than cutting a new piece of wood.

I used gesso to begin and then did various fresco finish colours and  their Crackle Glaze, followed by more fresco finish .  The fish are a Katzelkraft stamp which was done in black archival ink onto Paper Artsy crackly tissue paper, then painted on the back using the other colours of the same paint range.  Some of the translucent colours were painted carefully on the front so as not to lose the black details.  When dry white pain was applied to the back to make the colours stand out.  The fish were then applied to the background using their Satin Glaze both under and over the top.

The next step was applying white paint through various stencils/masks before adding black die cuts  (Sizzix and Tim Holtz) with matt medium to finish it off.  I went through so many highs and lows making this both being very disappointed at stages and then slightly pleased (!) but in the end I am happy with it, it's not perfect but neither am I.

Thanks for looking and any comments are always really appreciated.

Anne x

Paint Job No 1

I've not really done any acrylic paint work so this was a big jump in.  I did a workshop with Lina Macdermott at The Craft Barn about a month ago.  She is the most patient tutor and I love her workshops. We actually had to draw the picture and mix the paint from red blue & yellow primary colours, and white of course.

It's a 12" x 12" canvas which we appllied gesso to and then when dry torn pieces of book pages were applied with matt medium.  We mixed our background colours and applied them over the top, wiping some off as you go.  The figure is then sketched and painted using colours we had mixed ourselves.  The clothes are made of card; the skirt part is embossed and sanded before applying matt medium to adhere it to the canvas.

I cant take any credit for dreaming up the composition as we all did the same as Lina's orginal, but now I've taken the plunge into acrylic I will get my mojo working.

So nice to make something that is not a card!

Hope you like it, look out for Lina.

Tarted up handbag holder

I  have wanted one of these for ages and saw a box of these with odd names on today and thought I would have a go and change it.  It took all of 5 minutes!

I used the stamp in the photo above and applied the emboss markers direct to the stamp. stamped onto white card.  Applied a coat of normal clear embossing powder and heat set.  Then covered the whole thing with versamark ink (I happened to pick up the dazzle one but it would work with any clear pad) and a coat of UTEE, heat again and punched it out using a circle punch.  I used Glossy Accents to stick it on.  I must say Glossy Accents is a fabulous quick drying and very strong glue, it dried in seconds.  I did another coat of versamark and UTEE because I wanted a thick glossy surface.  That was all there was to it.  Not bad for a £1.

I should have done a before photo but didn't intend to post it, but am so pleased with it I thought I would.
Here it is in action!

Thanks for looking :)


I am entering this into all my crafts challenge

Bouncy 21st Birthday Card

2 blog posts in one week, lets see if I can keep this up!  Sasha is 21 next week and so I had to think of something different.  This is what I came up with sort of gatefold with dangling numbers.  I used the Rock Star Stack again, it's my favourite for my lads birthdays (but will probably have to change next year lol).

I started out using 2 A5 size cards and stuck them together.  I cut off the parts not needed (where I was putting the acetate) and drew round a plate to get the arch then cut it out.  I cut out 2 pieces of acetate using the card as the template.  I covered all the card parts with the Rock Star paper.  The ones on the front sides are flocky and feel fab,  I decorated the guitar with holographic stickers.  The acetate was stuck on using mini dots.  I used peel off borders to edge everything and to make little hinges to keep it upright (it wanted to flop).  I cut out stars from the same paper stack and stuck them on the acetate using mini dots and put holographic dots in the centres (same on  back).

The 21 I drew freehand and cut out, then matted onto more rock star paper.  I used strips of acetate to make them dangle.  I stamped the letters for the name and punched them out, and matted them onto silver miri  also punched out.  The sentiments were stamped and embossed in black archival and matted onto silver miri also.

This is the the back view.  I have subsequently put a small matt on the plainer pink side with the message on.

You can just see the acetate dangly things!  Well thanks for looking :)

It's been too long ......

It really has been too long but here is a new card.  This is for Theo's 18th birthday and I really had fun making it.  It's quite grungy and distressed.  It's a double sided bi-fold card (DL when folded).

 I used the Rock Star stack from DCWV and edged everything with distress inks.  The main card started out ivory but I changed the colour with distress inks (greens/blues).  The tags were coloured variously using distress inks, sprays, white paint, masks, stamping in archival black and black pen.

There are Tim Holtz metal wings and phrases (enjoy the journey & live the life you've imagined)  and a metal corner from Teresa Collins.  The words on the guitar tag are from Tim H chit chat pad.  The circle and celebrate is from Hot off the Press and I think the rock star ones are Inkadinkadoo but could be wrong as I have lost the packaging (again).  I coloured some nail heads with copics as they were the wrong colour here and used ribbons from my stash.  Theo loves it, fortunately, even though as usual done in a big rush.  If you're reading this, thanks for staying with me.  I've removed all the wood from my stamps and have been organising them into folders and it has taken an age to do, but I can see light at the end of the very long tunnel  so aiming for more stamping,   yea!

Marvelous Monochrome

It's been soooooo long since I blogged, I am a bad blogger :(  I've been spending ages unmounting my wood mounted rubber stamps, and I have a ton of them.  So of course, I've been doing reorganising and that takes ages.  I managed to make a few simple cards last week and thought I should post em.

I've promised myself that I will use some older stamps, and some never used (!!!).  So this first one is one of my oldest from  psx ,'May all your dreams come true'  (hope they do ).  It is just white embossed on   DCWV La Creme stack.  I have put Rock Candy Distress Stickles on the flowers but you cant see in the pic.

Corners are cut, black satin ribbon tied, and then mounted onto some silver embossed card that I've had for at least 5 years!  So many papers and cards are too nice to use!!  The time came for the chop.  Newsprint card candy from Craftwork Cards in the corners and whole thing mounted onto white A5 size card.

Next one is a virgin stamp I must have had for an aeon, it's by Wordsworth and is a fab sentiment and so true. If you cant see it, it says, 'What lies before us and what lies behind us are tiny compared to what lies within us'  ooo very deep!    This is stamped and black embossed onto more of the stack from above.  It has velvet on the pattern and is very touchy feely.  All the layers are from the same stack and just edged with Black Soot Distress ink.  The swirl is from my stash of K&Co lovely stuff..  Its tied with a cream grosgrain ribbon and mounted onto a lovely dark cream card base.

I am going to get a decent camera soon!  Sorry about poor quality pics.  Still, thanks for looking and I hope you like them.

Pretty Papers

Here are a few cards I made with the gorgeous K&Co Susan Winget Speciality Papers - part of my haul from my recent trip to Florida visiting my lovely friend Peggy.

The first one uses one of the papers as a background with a doily cut out using my cricut and a cut file from the internet.  This was colour tinted with Distress Ink (Antique Linen) and stamped with a script stamp over the top.

The pansy topper is from the matching topper sheet and is mounted onto a circle of paper sprayed with cosmic shimmer.  The dragonfly is also from the sheet but I have added a coat of diamond glaze.  The sentiment is a peel off on a nestie edged in Antique Linen DI.  The little flower is also from the sheet.  I've glittered the edge of the paper for a bit more bling.

The next one is an easel card using the same paper set as above. It's difficult to see the Thank You in the photo.  I just love these papers - and to crown it all they were 40% off!

The last one is also from the papers above and I have cut out some of the flowers and semi decoupaged them onto the background.  The edges, flower centres and dragonfly wings are blinged with glitter glue.

The little bumblebee is from a matching sticker sheet, and the little sentiment mount is a nestie.  The 'smile' is from a Tim Holtz word stickers book.

  I absolutely love these papers, they were such fun to play with.  I can't wait to play with my other gorgeous paper pads too.  What do you think?