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?

Unmounting my wood block rubber stamps

Yippee!  I've been thinking about doing this for ages and never had the courage to rip ! till  now .... It's so easy.  I have a ton of wood block stamps - well 15 drawers full in 5 wheelie storage carts (I couldn't possibly count them).  They take up loads of room and as I can't seem to stop increasing my stash,  something's got to give!  So far I've done 24 mostly large ones and am about half way through one drawer!  I  have a big bag of wood and being a crafter I don't want to throw them away but not sure what to do with them.  Any ideas?

Here's a quick how to (there are videos on You Tube)

1.   Put stamp in microwave for approx 5 seconds each  per medium sized stamp (I put 4 large ones in for 20 seconds).

2.   Try to carefully peel away the foam and the rubber together.  You can cook it a bit longer if it doesn't peel away easily.

3.   If the foam tears you can still push it back on but if the foam disintegrates peel it off as well.  So you are either left with a virgin sheet of rubber or with foam backing.

4.    Using a craft knife carefully insert the blade into the plastic picture from the wood and it should peel off easily.

5.    Smooth the picture down onto the (still sticky) foam (check it's the right way up) and trim off the excess with scissors.  You can apply a repositionable adhesive to this surface so when it dries it can be used with an acrylic mount.

6.    If you have virgin rubber (no foam backing) you can use Easy Mount or Cling On on the back.

7.   There are several ways to store unmounted stamps (again loads of videos on this on You Tube) ie in a binder on a thick plastic sheet, in CD cases etc.

So thin without the wood so takes up less space.  I'm so pleased with the results. Why not have a go?

Wedding Cards

At last, a new post!  Although these are some wedding cards I made a little while ago but thought I'd share them with you.

The first one is a retro design using lovely patterned paper with retro circles, simply rounded the corners and taped onto a DL card.  The blue card strip across the front is matted onto a shiny  black card  and has the sentiment stamped onto a scrap of white card trimmed with a corner rounder.  The main focal point is the cute couple stamped and black embossed onto a white tag.  Another tag made out of the same blue textured card is placed behind.  Both tags are tied with a light blue velvet ribbon for extra texture interest.  To finish off, a tiny sparkly gem is added to the bride's hand.

The next one is based on the design as the first but with different paper.  The yellow, green and white paisley paper is gorgeous and is mounted onto a textured yellow DL card.  Both card and paper have their corners rounded.  The tags are as before but are tinted with yellow and green ink, as is the sentiment piece.

The white DL card has a shaker section with prisma glitter.  The sentiment is stamped and silver embossed and the main card has silver peel off corners.  It is finished with a silver cord with clear beads on the ends.

The last one has tiny real dried pressed  rosebuds held by pearlescent paper punched cherubs.  Hearts with swirls inside are stamped on the DL card  with Brilliance ink as is the paper with the sentiment (if I make this again I will use a different and smaller heart for this).  The wedding vows are made in Word on the pc and the opposite corners of the paper are curled and adorned with corner peel offs.

I am finishing off a batch of cards using my stash from my recent trip to the USA . I always prefer to make a few at a time ringing the changes but with the same theme.  I will put them on here asap.  Hope you enjoyed looking at my cards and thanks for stopping by.

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?

Another Fantasy Film Butterfly

A variation of a previous post but I do like this one.  The butterfly is done as before using Fantasy Film with wire and beads for the body and antennae . It's sitting on a masked flower with glimmer mists.   A piece of braid/ribbon held on by the stitching around the card.  The green and purple matts and the main piece distressed with a tool and mounted onto white A5 card.  I hope you like it and thanks for coming by :)

Sympathy Card

Sympathy cards are really difficult I think.  You don't want them too fussy or 'shouting out' for attention.  For this card I chose deep tones that were restful on the eye.  As you can see, it's very simple, the daisy stamp is quite an old one from Penny Black called 'Blush' inked with Marvy Blending Blocks Shades of Sunset and Shades of Olive dye pads. The little 'with sympathy' embossed in green is on a small piece of white card which  has the corners punched.

I used the cuttlebug to give some texture to the background pieces. All the pieces have the same corner shapes to unify the whole thing and  are mounted  onto a black A4 card scored in half.

I hope you like it, and thanks for coming by :)

Fantasy Film Butterfly

This gorgeous little butterfly is made with Fantasy Film and has a wired and beaded body and antennae.
I cut a circle out of a page of a book and matted it to a white scalloped circle.  I made a stencil with a round punch and used Shades of  Sunset Blending Blox ink pad on a sponge dauber to make the coloured circle.

This is then mounted onto a piece of card which has been masked with my Heidi Swapp floral mask and sprayed with glimmer mists.  This piece is stitched with multi coloured thread zigzags onto a pink and then black matt. The whole thing is mounted onto an A4 white card which was scored in half to make the card base.

I have a few variations of this card  which I will post if you are interested.  I hope you like this one and feel free to comment.  Thanks for coming by.

Tonal Swan

The colour in the photo makes it look blue but in real life it's shades of green, with a bit of blue on the swan's body and the ribbon is sort of dark turquoise.  Anyway this has hammered card as the base with cuttlebugged background papers.  One is a pearlescent paper and the other is coloured with kaleidacolour fresh greens ink pad.  The pearlescent strip is a Martha Stewart border punch.  The scalloped circles are nesties, a dark aqua and a green glitter card.  The swan is an Inkadinkadoo set I think (I must stop throwing away packaging!).  It is coloured using pencils and sansodor and has tiny sparkly flat back gems  on the wing.

I did some stitching in a multi coloured thread to attach the papers to a white card matt and added the dark turquoise ribbon threaded through the sentiment stamped in silver on an off cut of white card which I trimmed down and rounded the corners.

The colouring was done before I bought my copics, but I still often use coloured pencils blending with sansodor.  It's so relaxing.

I might try to take another photo to get a more realistic shot - but considering that I use my phone camera (!) that may not be possible.  I should invest in a decent camera really, perhaps then the cards would look  better on here.  The trouble is I am too impatient and just want to put them on the blog even if they could look better (promises, promises!).

Hope you like it and thanks for taking the time to look.

Another variation on the Three Ferns stamp by Hero Arts

This is another version  of Three Ferns stamp.  It uses distress inks sprayed with water before stamping onto a piece of white card stamped in distress inks with a text stamp on one side and the three ferns on the other.  The edges have been inked with the same colour and then distressed with a tool.  Thread is tied around and has a button knotted onto it.

The lacy ribbon I  have had for years and not used til now and the background paper on the left is a Pink Petticoat digi.  I have a ton of Pink Petticoat digi files they make gorgeous background papers and are lovely colours and designs and very reasonable.  The brown piece of card is stamped in versamark using the Three Ferns stamp again.  The sentiment is from an Inkadinkado (I think) clear stamp set of flowers. It is distressed and stamped with distress ink.

This is one of the cards that will be hard to give away.  You  know you have to give most of them away otherwise the house would be full of cards!  Anyway it means you have to make some more!

Crafty Individuals Fairy

This is one of my cards that didn't go to plan but I just kept going with it and although I'm not 100% happy with it, I still like it.

This is a rubbish photo because you can't see the shimmer but anyway trust me it looks better in real life!   The fairy is (another!) one of my favourite stamps, she is stamped in cosmic shimmer EP  onto mulberry paper which is on top of a piece of black and silver UTEE (in Dawn's melt art technique where you cut a piece of  Craft Sheet  to fit into your Melt Pot, heat a ton of UTEE and stamp into it with an inked stamp).  The problem with this particular one was you couldn't see the image clearly enough, despite going over it with mica powders which is why I did the piece of mulberry paper on the top.  I like the way you get the spiky edges with the melted UTEE.

That is then mounted onto a piece of  purple card with the fairy stamped randomly in black and sprayed with glimmer mist.  I've just noticed that this piece of card is upside down!  Oh well, too late now! It is edged with a silver leafing pen.  The white paper flower is stamped with a text stamp in black with black soot distress stickles and a button with silk thread.  The black paper flowers are glimmer misted and have silk threaded buttons as well..

The background card piece is glimmer misted and stamped with small flowers in champagne metallic ink.  The corner lacy papers are just torn and stuck on.  The 'hello' is made using alphabet stamps and edged in silver leafing pen.

Although it's not a perfect card,  it is one that I enjoy picking up and looking at it!  Sometimes you have to look past the faults and just accept your work as it is.

If you're still reading this thanks for that!!!!

Dreamweaver forest

The colours are pretty wild but I love the way this turned out.  Its a Dreamweaver stencil with easy metal over the paste.  It's actually done on a piece of purple and gold handmade paper so you can see some gold bits which is probably a distraction, but I was just playing with the paste and using various coloured papers and card to see how it would look (as you do!).  It's matted onto a very shiny gold paper and purple card.  The handmade paper leaves are from a batch of die cuts I bought on ebay and coloured with distress inks.  The sentiment is from Printworks Collection (from the states) and is matted as before.  The base card is a lovely pearlescent purple.  Hope you like it.

One of my favourite cards

This is one of my all time favourite Hero Arts stamps and I have done lots of variations on this theme.  I used distress inks watercolour technique on a piece of white card which was stamped with a large text stamp.  I then colour tinted the edges and used a distressing tool to rough up the edges too.  The background paper is digi from Pink Petticoat, and the tiny happy birthday is one of my oldest (foam!) stamps which I love.  The green and brown strip are cardstock.  The base card has a lovely metallic pearl finish.  As always it looks better in real life!   Thanks for looking :)

Thank You cards

My mum needed a load of Thank You cards after her 90th Birthday party.  I needed to do them real quick so I used my Craftwork Cards papers and cards.  They are all different, some more than others, but basically made from the same materials.  I used 2 Martha Stewart punches for the butterflies and 2 for the lacy edges, I love these as unlike a lot of other punches they will go through pretty thick card stock.  I used some Tim Holtz tissue tape on a few of them and a thank you stamp from PSX and one from All Night Media.

Three Christmassy Birds

This is the Crafts Too embossing folder with Festive Berries and Broken China (I think) Distress Inks blended over and then sanded to reveal the white card.  The birds stamps are a favourite of mine of Hero Arts from last year.  They are coloured using pencils and sansodor (solvent).  The little greeting is from Craftwork Cards.  I managed to get the back of this card so dirty with inks that I didn't  have the nerve to send it to anyone!  I have now invested in a roll of Eclipse tape to use to cover the backs of my cards during the creative process (ha!)  which  you can peel off to reveal a virgin white back when finished!  That tip from Jennifer McGuire (Hero Arts). I know I could have used temporary adhesive and a piece of paper but it's Christmas and any excuse to buy some more craft stash.  When not wasting my time on facebook or having a glorious time making cards I love to watch Jennifer McGuire's cardmaking videos on Hero Arts blog.  In fact I have several cardmaking dvds which are more fun to watch than most tv, very therapeutic in fact. Thanks for coming by :)

Melt art girl

This is a gorgeous stamp by Hampton Art Stamps using Dawn Bibby's melt art technique.  Glimmer mist in the background. It's one of my (many!) favourite stamps and it's a wooden one to boot!

blue birthday

This was a birthday card for my daughter.  I melted some UTEE on a piece of non stick craft sheet in the meltpot and stamped into that with dark blue ink on my Crafty Individuals stamp.  The flowers are inked to match  with blue buttons threaded through.  I have used my Martha Stewart lacy punch on the edges of the folded A4 blue card.  The front piece was trimmed and punched and another piece of punched card mounted on that with a slither of silver card to cover the join.  The corners are the waste from a fleur de lys corner punch.  Thanks for looking :)

Enjoy 17 Theo

Another teen birthday card - great fun to make.  The main card is an A4 kraft card folded in half.  Tim Holtz tissue tape is applied diagonally in stripe patter across the whole thing.  The boy is Paper Artsy (I think! - I have lost the packaging again) stamped in blue, cut out and mounted on a piece of shiny black card with metallic markers puddled on it and allowed to dry.  This piece mounted on white and then mounted on top of a blue piece stamped in dark blue versamagic ink with the other stamp from this set, one of the stamps says 'if people did not do silly things sometimes, nothing intelligent would ever get done'  - very neat! This piece is mounted onto white card.  The kraft text pieces are edged in dark blue versamagic ink ; the 17 is a rub on and the other words were done using an alphabet stamp set.  The flourish is a Tim Holtz sizzix die called Elegant Flourishes.  I hope you like it :)