Vintage Thank you.

 

I am still re visiting my old stamp sets and  combining some of them with new sets. The flower on this card is from the "Prized Peony" Set.  I think this stamp works well on vintage cards.

  To be honest this card was created out of a disaster. I had stamped and coloured the Paeony by stamping it in dark red ink, then using a little water and a paintbrush, I pulled the colour from the more heavily inked areas of the flower to the uninked petals. I added some green ink to the leaves. I was not worried about the red in the leaves as there is usually red in the leaves of the Paeony plant.  Just take a look at the underside of the leaves if you're in doubt. ha ha.

 I messed up the background big time on this panel.... Not wanting to waste all my efforts colouring the flower, I decided to cut it out and adhere it to a new background.  The new background was stamped on vanilla card stock using Early Espresso ink.  I used the retired En Francais and Bliss stamp sets to stamp the background. I also used a blending brush with a small amount of ink to soften and darken the edges. I am happy with the way this one turned out...eventually.

The sentiment is from the Kindness and Compassion stamp set.

Tri fold card.

I was recently impressed by a card I saw on face book made by a lady called Linda Parker who funnily enough doesn't live a million miles away from me. 

 After a nice long chat on Facebook with Linda I told her I wanted to CASE her card and she told me to go a head. So Studied her card for a few moments then went to my craft room and made the card as I had remembered it. 


When I had finished I went back to Linda's card to compare with mine.


Ummm  it's very  close, but not that close.
 I forgot Linda had put loads of butterflies on hers , I forgot the colours of the layers,  the brads and I think she may even of had ribbon and a different sentiment  on hers.




In fact I think the only things I remembered well were the stamps and inks she had used .
So I ended up with a card very similar but not exactly the same.

I think this card stood out for me because it is my favourite stamp set from Stampin up and it's called stippled blossoms and it's a two step stamp set and I adore the two step stamps.  I also  loved the colour combination Linda used. 
I think I still prefer Linda's card.


 And Linda if you are reading this THANKS for letting me CASE your card.

Faux Book Tutorial

To write a tutorial including every instruction, every material,  every tool used and tips for achieving best results would take me forever. Especially as there are two versions of this book.
 So I have decided not to include instructions for decorating. 
Which gives you free reign on how to decorate your faux box card.

For the Economy version of this book.....

You will need 
Materials

Three A4 sheets of cream card 
I find photocopy card is best as it is thinner.

Two  A4 sheets of  sturdy card
One sheet of acetate
 Glue.

For the full Version of this book
You will need 
5 sheets of cream  card
3 sheets of sturdy card, unless you do the top frame the same colour as the pages.

Further instructions for
the full version are in the tips at the bottom of this post.

 Decorations.

charms,  feathers, lace and sticky back crystals.and a large flower or something to                                                                      act as the focal point.






Tools
Stamps and of your choice.
A score board with 1/2" markings
A Bone folder.













Cut two squares 7 x 7  inches. Using a score board score lines down both squares every 1/2 inch to the end of the card.

Cut two rectangles size 5 X 7 inches  place the these pieces of card on the score board  so the short 5" side is flush with the top of the score board.Score every 1/2 inch to the end of the card.

Begin folding the card in a concertina  fashion. Use a bone folder to crease in the folds you need folds and they should all stack up neatly. This is  an important step... if you don't have a bone folder a small rule will do the same job.

All four pieces need to be folded in  this way. 

                Take your time over this step as any mistakes will show big time.

Lay the two shorter  pieces at top and bottom of your work space and bring in the two  longer side piece as in photo. 

Make sure that you have the concertina'd pieces all the same way up.

 By that I mean the last strip on the inside of each piece should be pointing up. 

This won't work out properly if they are all pointing in different directions. 

                       

 On the last section of the bottom panel, add a small amount of glue to the corners.

Bring in the side panels and overlap the corners of the sides and end piece making sure this joint is completely square.

 Repeat this on all four corners,  keeping the corners square.

 Begin interlocking the corners, by folding one fold of the top down then fold in one fold on the right side , then the one fold in from the bottom and finally one fold in from the left. Repeat this pattern until you have folded in all the folds.

 DO NOT apply glue to these folds.

 When you reach the top  apply a small dot of glue to secure the top folds  just as you did at the start to stop it coming apart.

OH Dear!!!  My corners could have been better here .

At this point I strongly recommend you measure the overall size of the frame as you now need to cut a sheet of card exactly the same size and shape as the frame. If your frame is slightly out you'll need to compensate for that.

To make this stand out better I chose to make the surround frame a different colour, so you can see it better.

On my original card it was the same colour as the pages with some additional inking.

 Cut a panel to go in the back of the frame and decorate anyway you want.
Just be sure to leave half an inch clearance on all the edges as you will be applying glue to these edges to mount the frame onto.

When you are happy with the back panel mount the page from onto your panel Checking  it's squarely mounted

Preparing  the cover.

 This may seem like a cock-eyed way of measuring up for the  book cover,
but it works for me and I don't waste half as much card getting it wrong now.

  A4  card stock in  colour of your choice put it on the score board in landscape position. Then score at   5  1/2 inches. 

Turn the card around 90 degrees and score again at  5  1/2 inches.  

This will create  a narrow  panel  in the centre of the card just over an inch wide that will act as the spine of the book.

 Cut a sheet of good quality acetate,  slightly smaller (about 1/4 ") than the outside edge of the page/ frame.

Apply double sided tape to the edges of the acetate and position very carefully over the page/ frame. 

Do take care to get this straight and square FIRST time.

 Once the acetate is on  it will look pretty untidy so this is where the top frame come in. Add double sided tape to the back of the top frame and very carefully position over the  page frame.

Decorate the cover  to compliment the inside and s don't forget the spine.

TIPS

For a fuller, deeper book cut the two side panels to 7 inches by the length of the A4 Paper and the top and bottom panels to 5 inches by the length of the 
A4 paper. you will need to do a lot more scoring and folding and  you will need 5 sheets of  cream card  and you will need  two sheets of card for the cover which will need to be joined together at the spine of the book. 

You'll need to  measure the size of your  page frame add 1/2 inch  to both measures. then add another 1 1/2 inches for the spine. Then cut your card to this final measurement. Repeat this for the back cover of the book. 

You will have two spine panels, apply adhesive to one of the spines then overlap the spines pressing them together firmly . 

The join s will be almost invisible  and this double spine will be much stronger than the economy version.

 I have to say  the results are worth it.


To make it look more vintage sponge small amounts of  ink on the edges and folds of the pages.

To make  the flower I cut 6 flowers from quite a thick lining fabric  4 large flowers and 2 smaller ones. and held them over a burning candle until the edges of the fabric started to melt and shrivel  up  at little. then I stacked them up in a pile and stitched through all the layers and added a sparkly 
button to the centre .

The background
I did lots of over stamping, sponging and heat embossing for a vintage feel background.

A video would have been quicker but unfortunately I am having big problems up loading videos on to my blog. I spent all day yesterday trying to get one video on there. So I am stuck with doing tutorials this way until I can get help with uploading.

C.A.S.E by all means... but 

 Credit the Creator!!!  

Trinity's 21st Birthday Card.

 Remember those burnt edge flowers I made  a little while ago, well now I can show you what I was planning to do with one of them. I haven't been allowed to post this until today just in case the young lady receiving it saw it prior to her birthday.

I really love vintage stuff so making this was a joy. I got the chance to use all sorts of techniques,  stamping, daubing, heat embossing, distressing, hot foiling,  dry embossing, die cutting, matting and layering,   paper pricking.... although you won't see that as I placed the diamante stones over my pricked pattern.

I have been dying to post this one as I was so pleased with the way it turned out .

So much work went into the construction and decorating of this card that I really don't know if I can even begin to tell you how I made it.

The Stamps

The stamps I used were the background stamp En Francais,

Baroque motif, 

the texture wheel stamp  (all available from Stampin' up until October that is)

a  nameless Tassel stamp  

a dotty flourish  and a Greeting stamp.

 Here's a list of materials used for this card

5 sheets of cream card

3 sheets of brown

1 sheet heat resistant acetate

small scrap of  spotty paper

 versamark ink

Gold embossing powder

Victoria lace

3 Small white feathers

Diamantes

1 pearl and diamante button

1 large flower

2 Brown ink pads I used  Soft suede and Early Espresso

Sponge daubers

Glue and double side tape

1 sheet normal acetate

1  1/2 sheets gold mirri card

I small charm

number peel off s  21

Tools

Vintage  wallpaper embossing folder.

Bigshot or similar machine

Label die

corner die

Heat gun

Score board

Bone folder

Hot glue gun or strong glue for the button.

As you can see a lot of materials and time went into this card.

the sides /faux pages of this book were made by making four concertina sides and interlocking the corners together and sticking into your book cover. The centre decoration panel was added after the construction of the book.

The whole thing was then topped off with a sheet of  heat resistant acetate onto which,  I had heat embossed  a birthday greeting and  part of the baroque motif flourish stamp in the top corner.

I  cut a frame from cream card, aged it with the textured wheel stamp and sponging and stuck it over the acetate to conceal the double sided tape holding the acetate in place.

The binding of the book.

I printed  my wording on to cream card and cut down to size and hot foiled, aged with the wheel stamp and sponged.

The box is just a regular box bottom made on the score board,  but the lid was created using a stiff acetate and  was designed to sit inside the bottom of the box rather than over it.

Which conceals the  corner joins in the acetate.

All that was left to do was print off some nice words and cut them out using a label die, Hot foil them, sponge the edges and  stick on the  acetate lid .

I hope you like this one as much as I do.

Paisley petals card

This card was found on a lady s blog in the U.S. I was stunned by this card  and just had to reproduce it.
It is made from Stampin' ups marina mist card with the paisley petals DSP. I also used  the background stamp En Francais for the  text on the flower and strips of  card which I daubed the edges with soft suede ink.
The flower stands  out quite a bit on this card so instead of using an envelope I decided a Clear dvd case with no moulding inside would make the perfect case for it.
This card  won't be  going any where I am keeping this one.  I love it.

Nature card for any occassion

This card was made using a  rectangular mask and I used a scrunched up nappy bag  with  some crumb cake  ink to give the background a soft subtle look.
Then I over stamped with the
En francais stamp background stampwith close to cocoa ink.
I  over stamped  again in two of the corners with  the Baroque Motif stamp  but using  the slightly darker chocolate chip ink.
Finally I stamped the leaves with versamark ink and heat embossed with gold embossing powder.

Versamark resist

My cupboards are all built, and are filling up fast.
Craft room is almost sorted, so took a few minutes out from the sorting and shredding of 20 years of paperwork and the cleaning today to have a play.

I love the versamark resist technique.
Lot's of chocolate chip ink applied with the brayer over the french script image,
which I had stamped using versamark ink and allowed to dry before applying the chocolate chip ink.
I punched some flowers using the three in one boho punch and vanilla card stock, daubed the edges, shaped and added a flat back pearl to the centre of each.
Hope you like this one.

faux paper tearing techinque used for these.

Two more attempts at the faux paper tearing. I tried it using white card but thought it looked a little to stark to I toned the white down with the texture wheel stamp and a littl cajun craze ink. The next card I made I used the Very vanilla card. I much prefer the look of the Vanilla card.

How sweet are these little Origami baskets, They are made from a sheet of 12" x 12" designer paper no cutting involved at all, I have used some snail glue in places.

I loved making this so much I went on to make a few more.

I changed the size of the paper to 8"x 8" .just to see how small it came out. I did squish the base of the little one to give it a square-er look.

I decorated my white paper with the en francais background stamp, over stamping with the artistic etchings stamp set.

Inks used, Close to cocoa and Bravo burgundy.

Faux torn paper birthday card.

It's Sunday night and I am tired after a day of shopping, gardening and baking cupcakes, then cleaning up the mess after each of activity. So I am pretty tired which makes it a poor time to do blogging. So these following posts will be brief.

Faux torn paper effect with some gold embossed leaves from the autumn splendour stamp set from S.U.

card colours cajun craze, choc chip, and real red. Inks : Cake crumb, close to cocoa and cajun craze. plus versamark for the gold embossing.

Valentine's Card

Another emboss resist card using the same technique I have mentioned in previous posts. This card is actually going to be given to somebody, so I made a box to send the card in. I couldn't post this on here earlier just incase the lady who received it saw it before Valentines Day. And that would never do.

I do hope she liked it.

I love doing this technique and it's alot easier than one might think. The card is 7"x 5" there are a lot of layers in this one.

Well, I am off to make wedding invitation s, Menu s Place cards and favours now. I will post some photos when I have one of each finished.

We decided on something totally different from the invitations examples I posted earlier.

Embossing Resist Card

I can't resist the embossing resist technique, so here it is again, but this time as a small thank you card.

You'll need a brayer, a dauber two shades of ink of similar colour one , lighter than the other. I used cake crumb and soft suede from SU. Vanilla and black card stock, Vanilla ribbon.

Some suitable background stamps, I used two of Stampin' up s background stamps. versamark ink, embossing powder.

Stamp images using versamark ink and heat emboss with the clear embossing powder.

Ink up the brayer with the lightest colour ink and completely cover your embossed card pieces. once cover take the dauber and darker ink and rub into the area where the embossing is more dense, (the brayer doesn't always get ink into these areas ) by adding a little darker ink with the dauber you can make the detail in these areas quite prominent.

Matt the three middle layers and add a ribbon then assemble all the other layers and adhere to a 4 x 4 black card.

Emboss Resist

This one took a little more time and effort to do.

I used two of Stampin up background stamps and the large scallop stamp from the circle circus stamp set.

Very vanilla and black card stock.

Ink pads.....Cake crumb, chocolate chip, soft suede, a versamark pad.

Clear embossing powder.

Brayer and dauber.

Using the versamark pad I stamped the En Francais stamp and embossed with the clear embossing powder.

Then using a brayer, I inked it all over using the cake crumb ink .

I used a dauber and with soft suede ink and filled in all the patches where the embossing is more dense, as the brayer doesn't get the ink into the design.

I did Bella Toile back ground stamp. Once the embossed layers were complete I mounted them on to black card added the ribbon and bow.

I stamped the scalloped circle from the circle circus stamp set using choc chip ink. I then clear embossed the whole thing and added a flat back pearl .

Winter Post Card

Loraine's Hostess Gift.

This was the packaging for a gift for my friend Loraine. Who hosted a workshop last night.

Many Thanks Loraine.

Who would have thought that this was just and ordinary envelope ten minutes earlier.

I used a sage shadow ink pad and card stock and 8"x6" white envelope. En francais background stamp along with the medallion stamp.The oval and oval scallop punches along with a message from the oval all stamp set. All products available from Stampin' up. (apart from the envelopes that is.)

En Francais

Stampin'Up s En Francais
background stamp,
Burgundy grosgrain , The butterfly is
stamped with Black Stazon onto gold card ,
cut out and stuck onto card with foam pads
to give it dimension.
I used crystals for the butterfly's body.
Sorry, I have no idea the makers of the
butterfly and flourish stamps I used.