Under my umbrella

This card was made using the  under my umbrella stamps set from stampin' up. I coloured the brollies with copic markers and punched them out using the coordinating punch.
 To  create the rain  I used the fine  nib glue from S.U  and gently touched the nib to the card and quickly flicked the nb upwards to create a the raindrop shape. I left the card to dry over night.  (although it didn't need that long)  The following day I lightly brushed over the dry glue drops with Balmy blue ink to make the raindrops pop out.

Pampered Pets...Dog

I've  used both dog stamps from the Pampered pets set from Stampin' up on this one. Coloured with Copic Markers and teamed up with the coordinating DSP.

The little butterflies come in this set too,  so just for fun I thought I'd  have one of them land on the dogs nose.

Pampered Pets ...the dog....again.

My final Pampered  pets card for today.

 I quite  like making these gift card holders, so I couldn't  NOT make one using this set. I love the way this turned out. I used the warm grey range of Copic markers to colour the dog.

I used the coordinating dsp to decorate the pocket . I die cut a rectangular  frame using a die to cut the inner aperture  and using the same die I cut the rectangle out again in white card and glued the white panel in the frame to level things off.... Of course I could have just cut layers and stacked them , but that would have been too easy.

Pampered Pets...the dog.

This card was a lash up from the beginning. I had every intention of using this base for the cat stamp. But when I put the cat on it looked lost on this is a 7x5 card. I tried putting several cats on and didn't like it. So I put the dog on instead.

Anyone familiar with this  DSP will know this sheet of DSP is cat orientated. But I have this theory that hardly anyone reads the background paper.  To test my theory, and to decide whether I would post this card on here,  I gave it to hubby for his input. (if anyone is going to read the background paper it will be him) .  Sure enough  he read the words out loud,  but he didn't pick up on the fact the words are cat related and I had put a dog with them. So If he didn't question it, I would leave it as is and post it anyway.

Pampered Pets..the cat

As soon as I saw the Pampered Pets stamp set, dies and dsp  I knew I just had to have them. I hadn't a clue what I was going to do with them or what sort of cards I would make with them. I have to say I haven't  worked a stamp set so hard since Cambridge Carols came out a couple of years ago.To make the card above. Using  my pc  I printed off the sentiment  and cut the card down to 3  3/4  of an inch by 5 1/2 inches.  I cut a piece of dsp and adhered it to the lower portion  and  added  an  1/8th of an inch strip of red card to finish the background.  I then stuck the background onto the red card base. I stamped, coloured and die cut the cat and stuck him on the card with foam  pads.  As a finishing touch, I  added a  small bow to the cats neck.

I decided not to use dsp on the next card , I  stamped a leafy border twice for a little extra interest, although most of the borders are covered by the cats panel.
If you are not familiar with the Pampered Pets stamp set,  I have to say that to create this image, I had to do  some mirror stamping to reverse the image as the cat stamp is a single image.  

To mirror stamp you need a silicone mat and a stamping platform.  You stamp the image onto the silicone mat , carefully place the  card on top of  the stamped image and close  the platform  and press gently. It's advisable to let the card stock sit for about 15  seconds to give the card enough time to soak up the ink

 I stamped off quite a few cats to colour and experiment with, while watching TV.  The tabby cat came out better than I expected.  I used Copic markers to colour all the cats.  

I used the DSP on this 6x6 card for some extra colour and interest.

I have to say,  I am not so keen on the DSP for cats. 

Whiskey Business.

This set is a new set by Stampin' Up .It's called Whiskey Business... Two people sprung to mind  as soon as I saw it , so I just had to buy it.   

Coloured with Copics and mounted onto  Cajun Craze card stock and Cajun Craze DSP. 

I love the sentiments in this set too. Not Gushy or overly sentimental.

A  hint of humour on this one.

 Hubby says the Whiskey is too dark on this one.

 Maybe I was thinking of the bottle of Brandy sat in the kitchen or maybe it's just that my  honey coloured pen has run out of ink and had to make do with the colours I have.  

Part the appeal of this set is the fact the Decanter and glass are separate stamps making it more versatile. So you can have as many glasses as you want in any arrangement. 

This set will be great for Father's Day  cards as well as masculine birthday cards.

More LOTV

 This post contains the rest of the LOTV cards I made last week but didn't post because I was so tired  I was falling asleep over the pc. So these few have had to wait until now. 

On these cards I was playing with background stamps. I keep forgetting I have background stamps and tend to use spotty or striped papers instead .  Lockdown has meant I have time to go through the stamps in my craft room and refresh my memory as to what I have and start using some of it.

 Here I have used the crackled paint stamp and an ink in a similar colour but a darker shade.

 I really like the extra interest it's created.

 On the card below I went much darker, I am not displeased with this  effect either.

 The lace stamp below maybe an unusual choice  to put with this image, but I think it works quite well.
This card would be good for a couple moving house or a  non girlie girl's birthday.  I haven't put a sentiment on it yet.    I am leaving that until I decide to use it.    Maybe it will read  "smile" or "you moved"

 On these cards I used the embossing folder.   "Birds and Swirls" seemed fitting for this card.
Half the embossing is on the front and half on the back.  I opened out the base card and placed the fold of the card in the middle of the embossing folder  and ran it through the machine sideways rather than the  sealed edge first.

 I love the cable knit sweater look on this embossing folder....mind you I have a thing for cable knit sweaters too. I think this would be a great folder to use on a cricket themed card. But today I have used it with the boy on the rope swing.
 I am trying to create cards using only the images I have coloured over the years and not used, plus scrap card.

The last couple of weeks I have been clearing and sorting my craft room .  I have five drawers of scrap card that I never use. The reason being these drawers are difficult to access. So I have moved the drawers to a higher level so now I have easy access.  I have  re sorted all the drawers and disposed of a lot of it.  I still have five drawers of scrap but they are no longer bursting at the joints.  So to reduce my scrap further  I set myself some restrictions...  I can't cut into a new sheet of coloured card and  all the cards I make now can only be made using the scrap card, any half finished projects and the stack of images I've spent many nights colouring (while watching T.V.)  over the last few years.
So this is my first card  since my self imposed restrictions. All stamps used are from  3  retired Stampin up sets. I do wish S.U would do a stamp that said  "Your Birthday" or " On  Your Birthday"
There are so many other stamps that would work with them.  Like on this card for instance, the YOUR on this card is on a 3 word stamp and the Birthday obviously had happy in front. It took some masking and a bit of working out to isolate those two words and position them.

 This second card is 3x3 inches and again made from my scrap card

 The Policeman  is an LOTV image I thought he was cute but really I had no idea what sort of card he would be suitable for.  So if you have any ideas for captions for this image  that would work on a card I'd love to hear them. The brick work on this card was done by using the chunky end  of a Copic marker and kind of using it like a stamp.

 This one was made from a scrap of water colour paper which I coloured with water colour crayons and brushed over with a wet paint brush, then stamped over.

 The card above was one made using one of those images I coloured months ago and stuck on  base card.

 This cupcake card measures  4x4   not much scrap needed for this card.

 This base card was stamped and went wrong so it was relegated to the scrap drawer  for a couple of years  having found it I thought it would make a good background for this little chap.

The base of this card was abandoned because I hated the way it turned out . But yesterday I decided to turn it into a card anyway. I figured if I put a large enough image on it  would make the background less noticeable.  I think it worked.

Party time card.

The  children stamp  I used here is a wheel stamp, correction, it was a wheel stamp. I never  did get a really  good solid silhouette image with this stamp, not matter what ink pads I used, so this stamp has been in storage for a number of years. I found my Easy Mount foam yesterday so the first thing I did was to remove the stamp from the wheel, adhere the Easy Mount and start stamping.
It is so easy to get perfect silhouettes with this stamp and using the Stampasaurus.
With a white gel pen I added some white dots and  few small crystals to the evening sky for some sparkle. I also added a little stardust gel around the children then smudged it around and over the children. I am not sure that was such a good idea but what's done is done.
Once  I 'd had a play,  I had to turn my work into a card.

Emery board holder.

Lockdown as given me some time to spend in m  craft room to have a clear out and do some 

reorganizing. I found a handmade nail file  holder  given to me by my crazy friend Sharon.   She  embossed the card and smudged coloured chalks over the embossed area.

Seeing this inspired me to make new ones. They are quick and simple to do and require very little material , time. and tools.

Here is how I made mine.  A piece of white cardstock 7 1/2 inches x 4 1/4   . ( The length will vary depending on the length of your emery boards.) . Score length ways at    1  1/2   and 3 inches. turn card round and score  at 1/2 an inch   on the bottom edge.  

Cut away the side  pieces leaving the a small flap on the middle panel.

  I sponged  some ink randomly over the card before embossing it.  It looks pretty awful at this stage.

Some of that is down to the fact the ink hadn't had time to dry out before I took the photo, partly because the lighting was a little harsh in my craft room and partly because it is pretty awful. 

Once it started to dry out and had been embossed using a Crafters companion embossing folder it started to look a bit better.

I used a 1" punch to punch out a semi circle notch to make removing the emery board is easier.

 Time to glue the side panel to the bottom flap to seal the bottom. Then glue  the back panel down.

Using this  Pebeo  gilding wax and  a my middle finger and a very light touch, I  stroked on the gilding wax.

 The gold wax just finishes this off nicely. Enhancing the beautiful and  intricate patterns on the embossing folders. I found it's best to use a very busy heavily patterned embossing folder when using gilding wax.  It's easier to keep the wax on the raised embossed parts when the pattern is even.

 I got  a little carried away  making these and trying out different colour combo's .
 Another Less opulent way of decorating  these is to stamp and colour images of  your choice before you  score the card and assemble it. But I must say the treatment of inking and embossing the card makes it feel a lot thicker and more robust than just stamping and colouring.

I used pretty card panels on the one below.

Hubby's card this year.

This  simple  7x 5  card was created using a LOTV digital stamp which I coloured using Copic markers. This was Hubby's card this year. The sentiment is from a retired stamp set called Age Awareness stamp set.

Pretty Kitty

This cute kitten is from the Stampin ' up set Pretty Kitty set . This was made a while ago but I never got round to posting the photo. I haven't added a sentiment yet as I am undecided on the occasion and who this card will eventually go to. The backing paper I purchased from a craft fair. The image was coloured with Copic Markers.

Magnolia Lane DSP

These  cards were made using the Magnolia Lane DSP. The bottom card was sent to the undertaker that looked after my dad.  He was a lovely guy called Alan. Which was funny and a little confusing at times as my Dad and husband are also called  Allan and Alan. Alan the undertaker  went out of his way to accommodate us.  He even opened the office when they were officially closed to help us out. 

So this card went to him along with the cheque for the outstanding balance on the cost of the funeral.

stack of doughnuts

Here we have another food stuff I am not allowed to eat,  lucky for me  I don't  like iced doughnuts.
But I did enjoy colouring this stack of them . The stamp is from  Stampin' up 's Birthday Goodness. set.
 I created my own  pink stripe backing paper on the pc for this  card.
I am really pleased with the way this one turned out.

Evelyn's last birthday card.

This card was made for my mother-in-law's birthday last September. But I never got round to finishing the  post. So I am posting it now.

 I have a funny feeling I changed the colour of the digits to turquoise before giving her the finished card.

Evelyn was my mother in law and she sadly passed away last month.

 I was so looking forward to making  a 100th card and a huge banner but that won't happen now.

Snow globe cards

I love the snow globe stamp and die set  bundle in this year's autumn winter catalogue.

Here is my first card made with the stamps and dies. 

 I had issues trying to find something  small enough to put in the globe that wasn't glitter or sequins.

Then I came across these tiny polystyrene balls in my local craft store. They are still a little bit bigger than I wanted,  but the main issue was static. They all stuck to the inside of the globe and didn't move freely.  My solution was to sprinkle a tiny amount of talcum powder onto a sheet of kitchen roll and rub the powder into the kitchen roll. I then rolled the balls over the powdered kitchen roll.. This seemed to work well. the balls move freely and no longer stick to the acetate dome.

A word of caution, don't use too much powder as it does cling to the balls which then transfers to the inside of the dome giving it a foggy look,  which is not really the effect you want.  Another option that might work would be to rub a tumble drier cloth over the balls to reduce the static. I don't have a tumble drier so I don't buy the cloths, so I couldn't try this.

The base of the snow globe I cut out twice. once in gold,  and once in white. I stuck the white die cut on top of the gold,  slightly off set,  leaving the tiniest amount of gold showing. Personally I think I should have used silver rather than gold as the colours and tone of this card  are cool , so adding the warmth of the gold looks wrong to me.

I used the embossing folder "Gently Falling" to emboss the top layer of the card,  after I had die cut  the  aperture for the dome.
Hopefully my next snow globe card will contain water and glitter …..If I can get the card assembled without spilling water on the adhesive around the dome. So far I haven't been too successful with that type of card.
 Which  I have to say surprised me, as I have done cards with water in before and have had no problem with spillage and leaks.