Christmas card four

A centre step card  featuring the Pine tree from the "Lovely as a Tree"  stamp set and some retired DSP.  I was reminded of a technique the other day that I haven't used for years , so I decided to use it on this card. 

I cut the oval from cream card, but before removing the card from the die,  I sponged some green  ink over the die onto the card.  When I removed the die, the die cut edge was clean creating a frame for my little tree. I added a few glitter baubles to finish. 

Magic of Christmas

Here's a little card made using three stamps from a new stamp set from Stampin' up.The set is called "Christmas Magic " and it will be available on 2nd of September.
The holly branch is from  another new set coming out in September. I have to say,  I am very excited about this new Autumn- Winter catalogue.   I think  it's was because almost all the stamp sets I love come in the red rubber, wood mount rather than the photopolymer.

I coloured the images with Copic markers and used a black stamp and write marker to drawn in a few more snow mounds to match the mounds at the base of the snowman.
The background I created using the Serene Snowflakes stamp set, (now retired) and white craft ink.

Gilded Flying Scotsman

It's been a while since I have updated my blog, that's because I haven't done any crafting for a while. The reasons for that being  four weeks ago,  I fell down the stairs and badly sprained both ankles. 
Hubby took me to hospital some hours later, when the pain got so bad I could barely stand, let alone walk.
Hubby found a wheelchair and wheeled me into A&E, where we sat and waited for hours to be assessed & Xrayed and finally to be seen by a male nurse, who not only gave me a pair of crutches, but he also gave me his cough when he coughed in my face and continued cough over me through out the whole consultation. I knew I wasn't going to escape getting his bug from the first cough. 
Sure enough, two days later I started coughing,  I coughed so much and so hard I gave myself the headache from hell and had pulled all the muscles around my ribs. 
After a few more days things went from bad to worse, I lost my voice and became feverish and I really felt like crap. So I spent the next few days and nights camped out on the sofa. So as not to give it to the rest of the household or keep them up all night. 
The annoying thing was, I couldn't use the crutches for more than a couple of minutes as  it put too much strain on the shoulder I injured when I fell over at the end of last year and had recently finished a course of physio for. 
Once the ankles had recovered enough for me to walk, my brother in law took me to the doctors, she told me I had a chest infection and signed me off work and gave me some pills. 
So now you know why I haven't been up to crafting a blogging for a while.
But I have certainly made up for it the last couple of days.
I am sure  you haven't come to  y blog to read all about my health issues, so I'll get on with with my first crafty post.

My first post this evening is a card I made for my dad. It had to be a simple card as I am not fully recovered for my illness and injury.

I bought this Robert Addams die at the Make it show this year. It's called the Flying Scotsman.
It's easier to make up than his motorbike die. 
Robert had samples of the die made up in gold  Mirri board and in coloured card which looked great, but I wanted to try something a little different with it.

So I made up the train in black card,  then applied gilding wax over the card. I think it's very effective.

The Age Awareness sentiment is from
a stamp set with the same name.
I stamped the sentiment and heat embossed it  then used gilding wax over the  heat embossed sentiment to tie it in with the train and background.

The world map is an embossing folder available from stampin' Up.  Sorry I can't remember the name of it.

Emboss Resist Tutorial

I have had a few questions on how I made the green coffee cup in the post below so I have decided to do a tutorial on this for those that want to try this great technique.

You will need:

A Versamark ink pad,
A large flourish  stamp. 
The Perfect Blend stamp set.
2 shades of  coffee coloured dye based ink pads.
I used  Baked Brown Sugar and Soft Suede. 
Memento ink pad black.
A Brayer.
Glossy card stock I used photographic paper. 

                                                       


Warning... Not all photographic paper is suitable so I am afraid it is trial and error on this. Don't use Woodware's glossy card stock it doesn't work  very well.



Ink up the flourish stamp with the Versamark ink and stamp the image onto the glossy card stock, taking care not to let the stamp slide on the glossy card as you stamp.

You won't be able to see the image very well as the ink is clear.   
Allow the ink to dry off  for a few minutes.                                                                                                                                                                

 Take the brayer and ink it up with the lighter  colour  (baked Brown sugar) and apply the ink over the stamped image. I like to work diagonally across the card starting from a corner.
Build up the layers of ink until you have a good even coat of ink.  Add a layer of the darker ink (Soft suede)  if you wish to make it a little darker and richer. 

Allow the ink to dry then buff with a piece of kitchen roll to bring back the gloss on the card and to remove any ink sitting on the Versamark. 
Your background paper is now complete.







Ink up the coffee cup stamp and  stamp the image on to a post it note..
 TIP...make sure you stamp the top of the cup as close to the top of the post it note to include the adhesive.

Take a craft knife and carefully cut out the lids of the coffee cup and the band around  around the centre of the cup.. do this as accurately as possible. DO NOT discard the lid you have cut out, you'll need it. 



When you have cut the parts, the post it note  should look like the photo below.

On a second piece of glossy card stamp the coffee cup image.  I used memento ink. Wait for the ink to dry. It may take a little longer than usual as the glossy card is not as porous as the the card we usually stamp on.










                                                                                  
Now you need that lid you cut out earlier.... Position it  over the lid of the coffee cup you stamped on the glossy card.






Then position the rest of the post it note over the rest of the image to mask it off.  
as in the photo below.










Ink up the flourish stamp with Versamark ink again and stamp over the hole in the post it note.











                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
 Remove the largest part of the post it note leaving the lid in place.

Ink up the Brayer again with the lighter brown ink  and cover the entire coffee cup and the post it note lid, again building up the layers.  

Take a sponge and apply a little of the darker ink to the edges to give a more rounded look to the cup.

Remove the  post it note mask to reveal a nice clean white lid. 

You can leave  the lid like this.... but if like me,  you think the white is a little too stark you can take a baby wipe dab it onto a very pale brown ink pad and wipe it over the lid gently to take the starkness off the white.





As before allow the ink to dry and then buff the card stock.

The mug is now ready to be cut out.

Brayer  another piece of card glossy stock to sentiment and layering if required and assemble card.









Here you can see I have stamped the same flourish on to my base card in brown ink for some extra interest.


So when would you send this card....
How about making it as an invitation  to a Macmillan coffee morning.

Just a quick note to end with.
Here are three samples on three different brands of glossy card stocks the brown one is  from Woodware.  Now you see why I said not to use it.  Well unless you want a very muted effect that is.

 The darker blue is Fuji lightweight photo paper. Heavier weight Fuji papers go sticky and do not work.
Some of the cheaper photo papers from places like Wilkos and  Asda  work well.

The lighter blue is an unknown brand of glossy card stock......You maybe surprised to read that I used exactly the same colour ink on both the blue samples,  but the results are surprisingly different.

 So I am afraid,  it is a case of try out different  brands of  glossy card and photo paper to  find the one that gives you the result you want. When you find the one the gives best result do make a note of the brand,  then you will remember which one to buy in the future. I didn't,    so I am now on a mission to find out which card stock I used to get the pale blue effect. It may have been a Stampin up one but I wouldn't swear to that.

A Little Experiment.

 Yesterday we had a visit  from my arty brother. We haven't seen him for a while so I asked him if wanted a tour of my craft room and see some of my tools and gadgets.

 During this quick tour I remembered my Gelli Plate and decided to give him a quick demo.

 I am ashamed to say, I bought this plate over a year ago.  I  used shortly after it arrived then packed it away and forgot about it.

 So this morning I decide to have a try out an idea I had and this is the result.  

It was just an experiment so I made a very simple card to show off this technique rather than something fussy with lots of embellishments.

Here's how I created the background paper. 

Using a brayer I applied Stampin' up's Cherry cobbler ink all over the Gelli Plate, making sure the coat of ink was even. 

 Then I took a large background stamp from Stampin up called  " Something Lacey "  and without inking it and making sure it was completely clean and dry .  I stamped in the centre of the Gelli plate.  The idea of this is, that the dry stamp will lift the ink from the Gelli Plate to give you a negative image of the stamp.

 After a moment or two I lifted the stamp off and placed a sheet of card over the Gelli Plate and smoothed it over the Gellie plate and left it for a few moments  to absorb the ink from the plate. 

 Meanwhile I inked up the same stamp again in cherry cobbler ink, lightly stamped off the image on scrap paper, then stamped it again onto my white card stock.

I then peeled the card stock from the Gelli Plate  to reveal the negative image.

I trimmed back the stamped image and saved the off cuts to stamp my sentiment on. 

Easter Egg Shaped Card

I don't usually  make Easter cards but I have a set of egg dies for a very long time and not used them. So I thought I would have a go.

 

It's not a particularly exciting card but I thought, I would share the making of this card.

 

  I have seen egg shaped cards made  by folding a sheet of card stock in half and  placing the fold of the card  over the die , slightly short of the edge of  the die to create the hinge, perfect for the first step to an egg shaped card.   but this  leaves the egg with one straight side, which looks a little odd. 

 As you can see from the photo below .  It doesn't matter how beautifully the egg is decorated  if it has a straight edge it's not going to look right.

 

 

 

 

 However, this can easily be rectified by cutting another egg shape and adhering it on the front of the hinged card.  as in the photo above.

 This not only hides the hides the hinge it  restores the egg to it's proper shape.

 

 

Then the egg can be decorated in anyway you like. I chose to decorate my egg in  Stampin' Up's DSP polka dot papers in spring colours.  

Good Luck Card

Here  I have made a Good Luck card for a friend starting a new job. 
Unfortunately I haven't had the time to pop round and see her since I completed this card.
Now I can't take the credit for the design of this card as I CASE'd it from a very talented lady who makes a lot of wonderful video tutorials. She goes under the name of Valita's designs and freshfolds  on youtube.  Do a youtube search and you will find loads of her amazing tutorials including  a tutorial on this card.
I have to say I forgot to stamp my sentiment before assembling the card so I had to resort to peel offs for this one. 

I don't have the flower punch she uses to make the Clover,  so I used two heart punches in different sizes. I  inked them  and glued them  one at time on to a tiny piece of green card stock to hold them all in place them added the stalks.

In the video a white pencil is used to add white to the leaves, not being able to find a white pencil I decided  I would brushed on a tiny amount of white craft ink with a  small, stiff  paintbrush to the tips of the leaves.

I'll leave the link here to Valita's Blog you can see her amazing work there too. She's from Australia and has a wicked sense of humour. Not only does this lady show you how to make cards but she also makes the most amazing puppets.

http://valitasfreshfolds.blogspot.co.uk/

Traveller Meets World Map

The ship on this card was going to be in a circle on this base card.

 But I kind if misjudged my paper size then I messed up my inked background. 

Rather than start again, it was a case of how much of my work could I salvage.

Out came the circle dies  and I managed to save enough of my work to to create this corner section. So then I needed to fill the dead space on the card.

What better than the world map background stamp.

 I heat embossed the map with black embossing powder and sponged ink over it with Old olive , Bashful blue and Hello honey  inks. 

Then I  did  the same with the sentiment.

I used very thin foam pads to raise the ship from the background slightly but I stuck the sentiment  directly onto the background with Tombow glue.Then mounted the piece of work onto brown card and then onto my base card of Hello Honey cardstock.

I forgot to say the ship is from the New 2015  Stampin Up Catalogue and the set is called Traveler. Yep!  you read that right,  it is Traveler with One L.

 I do find these spelling differences  very  annoying as I have to remember to spell things wrong.

 You'd think they'd change the spelling for the English market.  

Time to take the dogs out now so Cheerio until next time . LOL.

Horse Frontier card

 After my last attempt at this card and the major mistake I made I just had to do this card again, but with some changes. firstly  you'll notice I changed the colours of the DSP (background paper)  making this a more masculine card.

I didn't put the ribbon on this card  either and I have changed the positioning of the feathers and sentiment.
Other that,  it's exactly the same. I think I prefer this one.

Card for the Child Artist.

Today's card was a bit of an experiment. I bought a scrapbook kit some years ago and in the kit were these green frames tied up with green organza ribbon. 
I hated them so much,  I threw them all in a bag hoping I would find somebody that would like them and take them off my hands. ( I really hate throwing anything out )

The last three days  I have been trying to sort out my craft room and I came across these things lurking in the back of a cupboard. 

I had not long finished colouring the little girl image in the centre of this card, so she was sat on my desk when I dumped the frames on there.
 It didn't take long for me to realize that one of the frames I hated so much,  might look good as a frame for her. 
So  the sorting, cleaning and tidying went on hold while I experimented. I don't think it looks too bad at all.   What do you think? 
The image is a stamp I bought from the" Farnborough  Make It Show" a few years ago and     coloured with copic markers. The spotty paper is from Stampin' up.

Hubby's Birthday Card.

It was  Hubby's birthday last week and I had left his card to the last possible minute.  Not through lack of time, I had plenty of time for a change. 
I just didn't have  any idea's at all that would fit him.

The night before I suddenly  remembered he used to have a thing about watches. Arh!!!! I have the Dapper dad stamp set and the Well Worn DSP which is a lovely masculine paper.....but what on earth am I going to do with them.


I tried several things but didn't like the results.
 At around midnight on the eve of his birthday I finally came up with this  7 X 5  card.

I stamped and heat embossed the watch in gold embossing powder.
 Stamped it a gain in black craft ink and allowed the craft ink to dry thoroughly then punched out the clock face with the 1" circle punch and stuck it onto of the gold clock face.




I added a  1" resin  bubble/ domed circle thingy... ( what are these things called?????)over the clock face then set about cutting my layers.

Using  oval dies I cut out some layers to mount the watch on. 
I used some thin sticky  foam pads in between the scalloped layer and the card to bring the watch forward a little.











I love this  sheet of designer series paper it's my favourite in  the Well Worn pack.
But it was  to plain for this card.  

 So I dragged out the  retired,  Sense of Time stamp set and used the cog stamp and black ink pad  to add a little more interest to the background.
Besides I really like over stamping on printed paper, heat embossing is even better.


I stamped, punched and sponged  my greeting and glued it in place.

For the inside   I made up an A4 sheet of paper  on the PC  with quotes and sayings that all related to time .  I printed it off then over stamped with the large clock faces  from the Sense of Time  stamp set.
It was then cut to size and stuck into the card with some narrow DS tape ..... All ready for the morning.

Fine Feathers Cards

It's  another sunny  bank holiday  and  we had planned a trip to Shropshire to visit my father who has been very ill of late. Dad is now out of hospital and is now  basically having to fend for himself with just the occasional visit from the district nurse.  So a visit from us would have cheered him up no end. But Hubby has gone done with a cold and I really don't think it would be a good idea to visit and and pass on the cold to my dad in his weakened state. It's probably not fair on Hubby either to expect him to drive over 300 miles in a day when he is feeling like crap. So we have had to postpone the trip for now.

Fortunately his neighbours daughter has been popping in on him when she visits her mother.

Dad tells me she has even done some some house work for him. 

So you can guess who my next Thank you card will be for. 

Any enough  about my family and on to these cards . I bought the Fine Feathers stamp set some time ago and the other day I decided it was time they came out to play.

Here are the cards I made. They look much better in reality than in these photos .

Glittered cards are so hard to photograph. I stamped the the feathers using Concorde Crush ink from Stampin' Up ( Now retired) which has to be my favourite purple ink and coloured the feathers with a blender pen and a tiny amounts of Concorde Crush and Pool Party Ink .

With the two way glue pen I dotted some adhesive over the feathers and applied a little Dazzling Diamond glitter. 

I added some Pool Party Ribbon to one of the panels which actually looks awful in this photo but  in reality  it does look much better. I am not a big fan of this type of colour  but it does work amazingly well with purple.  I will probably change the ribbon to  a purple before I send it anyone. I am hoping SU will bring out a purple ribbon when the new catalogue comes out  that is closer to Concorde Crush than the Elegant Eggplant Grosgrain they sell at present.  Rumour has it there is a new purple ink on the horizon so finger crossed  there will be ribbon to match.  Actually it's more than  a rumour, I have seen a photo of it. It's going to be at the  top of my shopping list in July.

I mounted each piece of feathered card to  card in the same colours as the inks used and the stuck them to the front of my white cards and added my greeting stamped in purple .

Here's a close up so you can see the glitter as it doesn't show up on the above photos.

Adoption Celebration Card

 

Having been asked to make a Celebration Card for an Adoption.

 I decided to make  this card.  Grandma  wanted something a little different from shop bought cards and as this card is my own design I  figure she won't get another one like it. Which will certainly make it different.

I have to say this card has taken the best part of two days to complete. I know it doesn't look like it should have done but  there is a lot of work in this card.

The Brass paper  fasteners  needed to have the heads painted white..... in this case  I used correction fluid to paint the heads  and when dry I coated each head with a few drops of glossy accents.

I could have white Stazon... but  my white Stazon is  a few years old and is looking very odd. I think it has gone off, even the ink in the refill bottle has turned brown.

 ( note to myself Must remember to order a new one.)

The Stamp set I used here are "Bundle of   Love" for the small toys. The T shirts were stamped using the "Tiny Tees" wheel stamp, which actually has romper suits on it.   I didn't think they were age appropriate for a little lad that must be around the age of one now.  So I snipped  of the bottom  of the romper suits to turn them into T  shirts.

The adoption greeting  comes from the Kisses and Cuddles set of stamps from S.U. This Stamp was the reason I bought the set.

The coat hangers I made using wire ties  I had saved from Christmas crackers years ago and only just discovered.  A pair of round nose pliers for jewellery making make this job simple.

 The card stock is  S.U's  Pool Party card and the Pool Party designer series paper.


 The Punches, word window, boho flower,  2 label punches , plus  the   3/4 ",    1" ,   and  the 1  1/4" circle punches. The words grandma wanted in the card I printed off and hot foiled using a pale blue foil. 

 Which strangely enough didn't look too much like Stampin' up's Pool Party Card stock initially. but together they look pretty much the same colour  The greeting and  scalloped mount were cut out using Spellbinder's oval and scalloped oval dies

I also made a box for this  card  and lined it with white tissue paper which I had stamped with the same stamps as I used on the card.

That's all Folks.... This  PC   seems to have a mind of it's own and  it

 is driving me mad now.

More information on hot foiling available in a  previous post.

Instruction for making this card  are available  here  in a previous post.

Easter Blossom Card

My fourth and final post for this evening is this quick Easter card using a range of ink pads from Stampin' up of course and the ornate egg stamp from the Easter Blossom stamp set.
 The colours here are more vibrant than they are in reality.

Large Post it notes were used to mask off the top and bottom of the base card.
I measured 1" up from the bottom edge and placed the first post it note across the card then measured  up  1 1/4"   and placed another post it note across the card.

These  post it notes protected the card while I sponged and created the straight edges above and below the eggs  as I sponged on the blue.

The Eggs...
I began by stamping  three eggs in three different colours .  Gumball green then melon mambo and then  the crushed curry.  ( they are the whole eggs you see )
Then I cut masks slightly smaller than the stamped eggs and placed the masks over the three eggs  I had stamped on the card,  then I began to stamp in between the three.
 I had to move the mask from the green egg and place it over the lilac egg   before stamping the yellow egg.
Once all the eggs were stamped I removed the egg masks and stamped the sentiment..

Tip: If you cut your masks  very slightly smaller than the image you won't get the white space  in between  stamped images.

Happy Easter Everybunny

An Easter card.
I  don't usually do Easter cards so I really don't know why I bought two Easter themed Stamps sets.

Having said that I must have liked them so perhaps with Easter coming along it's time they came out of the cupboard.

I used my Copic markers to colour in the rabbit.

The egg however was stamped onto some glossy card stock which I had previously smeared with a mix of inks, then it was cut out and glued on top  of the original stamped image.

Home is where the heart is.

                                                                                      I really enjoy making these tunnel cards but sometime I can't decide just what to put in them. This time I wanted to do something using Stampin' Up products .



I chose the  Banner Blast stamp set and
coordinating punch  from this years
sale a bration catalogue, the hardwood background stamp from the spring and summer supplement catalogue.
 A various colours of ink, the small  single heart punch, the tiny  heart from the owl punch and a  small alphabet stamp set.  (I purchased many years ago from somewhere I can't remember.)
Just to make the outside of this new home card for my son and his family who moved house last weekend.

For the inside of the card I used the owl punch and the leafy branch pieces are from the bird punch both from Stampin' up.



To make the Owl wings,  I punched one scallop circle embossed it using the square lattice embossing folder. Then I cut it into four quarters  and glued two quarters to the back of each owl.

The owls were a little bit too wobbly on the branch and needed a little more support.
To stabilize the owls a little better, I punched a further  two owls bodies and glued them to the back of the owls,  after  they had  been stuck to the branch, so the big branches are sandwiched between the the two layers of the owls  bodies.

The bigger branches were cut free hand  with scissors. I then glued  little bits of foliage to the back branches.


I slotted the branches into the folds at the sides of the card making sure they were not glued into the same fold as I want to create more depth by having one further back than the other. Then I glued them into position.

The background started off as a 5"x7"piece of daffodil delight yellow card stock which I sponged over the top with  red riding hood and calypso coral ink from SU and I left the bottom  section of the card un-inked.