outlined occassions

Another Card using  a set of the sale-a-bration stamp sets..
This  one is called outlined occassions. I really like this set. as you know I am not fond of colouring in as I have  difficulty staying with in the lines. My optician says it's an age thing.
Anyway back to this card I stamped the greeting  and  very carefully coloured in the lettering. 
I  punched out a few pennant s and assembled the card.
 A very simple but effective card.

punch art owl card

I think this guy is kind of cute.
He was created using the owl punch and the scallop circle punch for the wings.
I daubed the edges  with chocolate chip ink and then put the owl together. 
I added the leaves and  a flower.
The bark effect was created , by inking up the inside of a bark embossing folder  with a darker ink than my card stock and running it through my Bigshot. This  gives the bark slightly more definition.

Scalloped card for an lady

Below I have posted a couple of  the cards for kids, So I thought I had better do one for a lady and here it is. the spotted background paper was created by inking the inside of my embossing folder and then running it through the bigshot. It's a great effect. I love polka dots. The rose I bought  craft a local craft shop. it was white when I purchased it, I change the colour using the bashful blue stamp and write marker pen from S.U.

Teneale's card.

 

Today I have three cards which I have to say I CASED the first is one  I  am showing you  was I found on the VERY, VERY talented Teneale Williams website. I am a great fan of Teneale s work, she manages to come up with some fantastic and romantic designs and shares them with likes of us plebs, ( sorry  folks I mean, the NOT so talented). Not only are her designs beautiful, they are extremely well  made. To put it  in the words of my husband " the build quality is excellent". he hee. I adore her work as you can probably tell.
The card above is as close as I could get to her design. She used a scalloped edged  heart and a ribbon banner  greeting. Not having these things I had to adapt.  I copied Teneales card after I had made the card below.  An  interesting experiment try is what I did here. I had seen  Teneale's card fallen in love with it, studied it and then went to bed. The next day I tried to make the same card without referring to the original. The card below is the result. As you can see I missed a lot of the detail in the original card. But I still like this. Then I went back and copied the original as best I could.  I recommend that you try this, You'll end up with a card that is your own rather than a copy of somebody elses.

The background was created by inking up the inside of the  SU embossing folders with crumb cake ink place your card in the folder and emboss. The ink transfers to the card while you embossing. It's a great effect and very easy.

CD case photo frames

After a death in the family in the middle of last year,

we had kind of inherited 2,000 Jazz and classical CD s.

We are not really fans of either, so we decided we would sell them on, the CD s were in really good condition but the cases were badly scratched or cracked . To sell them on we needed to replace the jewel cases. We bought several hundred new cases. These case s got me thinking, what other uses could I come up with for them.

Here is just one alternative use, by detaching the lid turning it over and put it back on, the CD case will stand upright. The lid of the case can then be used to hold photos.

I cut the two pieces of card one "marina mist" and one "pacific point" to 12cms X 12.5cms and using my largest oval die, I cut out the centre of the marina mist card.

Then I stamped the frame using the Vintage vogue stamp set.

I took the darker "pacific point" piece of card and the next size down oval die, Again cuting out the centre and then stuck the pacific point piece under the "marina mist" card and then placed my photo under both layers of card.

If you don't get the oval apeture in exactly the right place on the bottom layer , you can trim down the sides of the bottom layer until you are able to position the smaller apeture in exactly the right place.

For the second frame I did exactly as for frame one apart from the stamping.

Instead I used Marianne s corner die to cut four corners and just placed one in each corner. Very easy, much easier than I make it sound.

The third frame was done exactly the same way , I just changed the colours.

Why not have a go at these, they would make a great little gift and for only a few pence.

Salty fish card

This card was a bit of an experiment, using

re -inkers, glossy card and rock salt, it didn't work out as well as I would have liked or expected.

Oh well, I guess a blind man would be glad to see it.

Anyway the instructions for this are are as follows..... should you wish to try it for yourself.

You spritz your glossy card with water, lay on the ink with a paintbrush in any fashion you like, then sprinkle rock salt over the wet card and leave to dry. When completely dry brush the salt off.

The effect did look a little watery so I just had to stick one of my fish on it and stamp a some under water plants .

It does leave your card tasting salty too. Yes, I tasted it . lol.

paisley petals scissor holder.

I started to make a container using the petal cone die from S.U for some reason I didn't complete the project I didn't even finish cutting the out the pieces for it.

Not wanting to waste the pieces I had cut out from the beautiful paisley petals paper. I played around and came up with this little sleeve for my scissors.

I have cut and stabbed myself with them a few times. Hopefully this scissor protector will prevent a few of my little accidents.

Snowman Holiday Calendar

My Snowman was cut out  from a large roll of white glossy card and painted with acrylic paints. He stnads about  three foot  to three and half foot tall.
This couldn't be an true advent  calendar as there wouldn't  be anybodyin school to open the last seven doors. So I made it a count down  to the holidays calendar.
Of course  all the doors were opened before they should have been, but that's kids.
I used old Christmas cards for the pictures behind the doors.
The numbers on the doors were cut using my S.U  alphabet dies.
I am so glad I have those dies.

Creative elements in Rich Razzleberry

This card was made using the Creative Elements stamp set from S.U.
I also used Rich Razzleberry ink along with Basic Grey ink and a blender pen to draw the ink from the petal edges into the centre of the petals.
I used a jewelled brad as the centre of my bow instead of tying a bow.
I used the flourish stamp to create the background.

water filled card instructions

 

I have been asked for instructions  on making the water card. So here they are.

You need one of the sweet treat cups from Stampin'Up a small piece of acetate big enough to cover the back of the sweet treat cup.

First peel off the  white tape to reveal the adhesive fill your cup with water about  3/4 full  without getting water on the adhesive.  ( I over filled this one slightly)
Add glitter or sequins to the water at this point. If you do spill water on the cup adhesive, use a new cup,   it won't seal if it gets wet and you'll end up with a very soggy card.

Carefully place the  piece of acetate over the cup and seal  the edges firmly. Trim back any excess acetate.

Stamp your image onto whisper white paper.

I used the whale from Stampin up's fox and friends set.

 I then placed the water filled cup over my design added snail adhesive round the edges of the white card and stuck The water cup over the stamped image. Taking care to get  the positioning right.

I then punched a hole in a piece of Stampin'up's designer series paper (DSP for short) using the punch that goes with the treat cups.   Added snail adhesive all round the apeture and placed it over the cup. 

I cut a piece of red card slightly wider than the DS paper and mounted the cup onto the red card  tied some yellow ribbon around the topper and stuck the whole thing onto the front of my card which I had already stamped with the splashes stamp from the French foliage stamp set.

A  final word of advice, the water makes this card front heavy.

 To help conbat this problem I usually add an  insert using   a heavy weight paper. Doing this usually adds enough weight to the back of the card to stop it toppling over.

A second way of making this card would be to use a three fold base card and punch a hole in the middle section  and use the end panel to cover the workings on the inside, but this way restricts  where you  position your  cup.

Hope I have made this clear enough for you to follow. Have fun.

Bicycle Card

Here I have used some stamps I bought at the Newbury Art stamp show this year. I have been after a nice bike stamp for ages and now I have one. What's even better is this one come with accessories to fill the basket,  food  wine and flowers I think, there may even be a puppy. I can't remember. I just wanted the bike.
Again I have used Rich razzleberry and Old olive. I must be getting  so boring now as I keep choosing  those colours.

Love letter storage box

What a strange Saturday morning this has been,

My intercostal muscle strain had me up half the night and up very early this morning.

After a very slow and painful exit from the bed I staggered downstairs and reached for the pain killers and the first of my morning coffee's.

Dear hubby joins me twenty minutes later he too reaches for the pain killers as he had a headache.

We looked at each other as if to say "What the hells happened, we' ve turned into a couple of old crocks." lol.

Then Darling Hubby takes Stan for a walk, while I wait for the man to come and look at the supposedly broken hinges on one of the windows in my craft room. Sure enough said young man turns up and discusses my window repair briefly.

The room was an awful mess (as craft rooms usually are) but this was even worse as I had had to move loads of stuff, so he could get to the window.

Well, to my surprise the young man was very interested in crafting, I ended up showing some of my cards and paper craft projects and we chatted away for ages and would you believe it.... I gave him a demo on inlaid embossing. How bizarre is that?

Meanwhile..... Darling Hubby has text me to say...... he and Stan have got hellishly lost and need help finding their way back to the car. So the rest of the morning was spent on the phone guiding him back to civilization and the car, using Google maps and Google street view videos.

Which was quite cool really 'cause I could see exactly where he was, where he had been and where he was going. I was walking with him. On a virtual walk. lol. I think he freaked out a little when I said have you come to the wheelie bins in the wooden container yet....... he was stood right next to them. At this point he hadn't realized I was using google street view.

Anyway this box was made sometime ago, So it's a bit tattier around than it was. It was a project I loved doing , though it took ages.

It is made from layers of poster board. Ten of the twelve layers had a rectangle cut out of the centre all at slightly different angles.

Then each layer was covered in cream photocopy card, which I had stained with strong solution of tea and coffee and allowed to dry.

Some of the layers I stamped for extra interest.

When all were covered, I stacked and glued all but the top layer of the base together in a pile, so that all walls of the hole in the middle were all flush. I then added ribbon, so that the letters looked like they had been tied up and the hinge ribbons. I then added the top layer of the base.

I lined the inside walls of the hole with pieces of card that had been covered with the stained copier card.

The lid was attached to the ribbon

hinges and a triangular piece of card the width of the box (made to look an Envelope flap) was added to conceal the ends of the hinges. I then decorated the top with paper flowers, an address a stamp and I had to draw my own postmark.

Manhatton Flowers embossing folder was used to create this beautifully embossed background. we added the butterflies which were cut using the Bigshot and the Beautiful butterlies die. All are available from the mini catalogue.

The wings were stamped with a couple of the petal stamps from the build stamp a blossom stamp set.

Another floral card

My rush to get this one completed before going home shows. We used the new wheel in the mini catalogue called in stitches. I rather like this wheel. Maybe it's because I like sewing. If i were to make this card again I would definately use a dauber and a little ink to conceal the white core of the designer paper.

Card For a Young Lady.

I found this Sugar Nellie stamp at The make it Show in Farnborough. I thought it was cute and pretty so just had to buy it. On the look out for more of these stamps now. I don't usually go for stamps that require a lot of colouring in, but I have to say I enjoyed colouring this one with my Copic markers. Author Francoise Read introduced me to these markers. I didn't really believe her when she said how good they were, but I bought a few anyway just to have a play and they are very nice to work with and blend beautifully. I done a couple more in different colours and using my SU stamp and write markers and they have come out really well. I still used my copics for the faces. Background paper is SU's designer paper in bashful blue and the ribbon is pretty in pink taffeta ribbon also from SU.

Luminaries

This Luminary was created from a strip of black card 8 1/2" x 3 1/2" it was scored at 2" 4" 6" and 8"
The top edge was punched using Stampin' Ups lace edge punch the windows were punched using the largest circle punch stampin' up sell .
I cut vellum squares to fit in the windows and stamped them with black stazon ink using the baroque motif stamp set from SU.
When the ink was dry I stuck the vellum into the windows and completed the project by joining the two ends together.
Placed my Tea light inside and photographed it.
I recommend the use of the battery operated tea lights for indoor use, my tea light was only lit for a few minutes but I still managed to get hot wax on my work surfaces , the table cloth and me.

Here is a little about the history of luminaries I thought you may find interesting .

Christmas luminaries are traditionally used to light homes, sidewalks, pavements during Christmas. The tradition of lighting candles in paper bag is part of American Southwest. These luminaries are in number of hundreds and thousands, which are lit on Christmas Eve. One can trace roots of traditional luminaries in form of candles placed in a mini, sand-filled, brown paper bags in sixteenth century. This tradition of luminaries came into existence through Spain, where bonfires were lit on roadside and churchyard so that people find way to reach midnight mass held during winter festival of Las Posadas.
Through Spain, this tradition reached Mexico and parts of America. People even light luminaries in respect of Mary and Joseph, who are searching lodging to give birth to Christ during night. The same tradition is followed even today in modern times. People decorate homes, fences, roofs, sidewalks, etc. with help of luminaries, which help the tourists to get to their destinations safely during Christmas nights. The other word for luminaries is farolitos, which means little lanterns in Spanish. Chinese lanterns were used in nineteenth century to decorate entrance of home in some parts of America. Many people opted for paper bag as they were affordable in comparison of Chinese lanterns.

Stampin' Up's Cracker

I found the template for this little cracker on the stampin' up web site. So I though I would give it whirl using card I don't really like as I just wanted to see how easy or difficult it is to make.

It turned out to be really easy. Might make nice little wedding favour for those winter weddings.

Man Card

A Man s card at last.....these are the hardest cards to make in my opinion. I cased this design from another demonstrator.

It was easy to make once I had worked out the template for the waistcoat and I really like the result.I used the very vintage wheel stamp and some daubing round the edges.

Ink pads: Night of navy and Soft suede.

For the buttons I punched five small circles stuck them in position and added a drop of crystal effects to each one to give the buttons dimension.

The tie pin was created by punching one tiny circle in silver card and a smaller circle from card stock again I used one drop of crystal effects and once it was completely dry, I stuck the smaller circle on top of the foil circle. You may like to know that the Brads holding the greeting onto the navy card are not brads. These were created the same way as the buttons.

Pink bella toile

Pretty in pink ink and cardstock used here along with Bella toile background stamp.

Some pretty in pink ribbon and a stampin up hodgepodge frame all products available from The Stampin up catalogue.