Sloth card

I have had this stamp set quite a while.  It's called "Back on your Feet". I bought it because I loved the tortoise image. I have used the tortoise quite a few times, but I have never used this stamp before.

It's not that I don't like this image, it's just  that I haven't had a use for it.

I have a lot of stamp sets where I have only ever used one or two of the stamps in the sets. 

 I think perhaps, I will have to set myself a challenge to use all the unused stamps in sets.

Whiskey Business

I think the Whiskey Business stamp set from Stampin' up! is a great set for guys cards.

The sentiments are so fitting and usable. Which makes a pleasant change.

I cut an oval aperture in the black and white polka dot card and adhered it on to a piece of white card stock on which I had stamped and coloured the two glasses, and added the sentiment. 

On a separate piece of white card I stamped, coloured and cut out the decanter. Using 1mm thick sticky  foam pads, I stuck the decanter next to the glasses and overlapping the oval aperture.

Then mounted the panels onto a piece of Peekaboo peach card before adhering to my white base card.

Melon Mambo card

I have been sorting out my craft room over the last few weeks.  (when I haven't been distracted by something I've found and decided to play with instead).  I came across some sample cards I had made when I first joined S.U.  I found  an Old Olive version of this card. I had used Versamark and a wheel stamp to stamp the bottom half of the card with Old Olive grosgrain and pearls. It was quite a classy looking card.  Today I decided to re make it using a brighter colour. Which I now think was a big mistake.  I used Melon Mambo card and ink on this card rather than Versamark  as I wanted the stamping to stand out a little more.

 The white grosgrain I used on this card was lightweight and didn't look as good as the heavier, richer looking Old Olive, so I added a second layer of  Melon Mambo ribbon. I have to say, I much prefer this card in Old Olive. 

I have a help yourself / freebie box which I place all my old sample/demo/ experimental cards  and cards I am not entirely happy with, in.  I take this box to work with me each time it gets full and leave it in the staff room for colleagues to help themselves.  The box is usually near empty on the first day. Which means I don't have to store them and it tells me somebody actually likes my work.
 

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.

Beautiful moments

 If you are one of my followers you may notice I am posting a bit more than usual at the moment.

 That's because I have been making the most of these last few crafting days of the holiday before going back to work. Some of the cards I am posting will be images  I have used on cards before, but I am using different techniques. On the card above I have used two stamps from the "Beautiful moments" stamp set by S.U.

On previous cards using this image, I have coloured the dresses in a variety of colours. But this time  I wanted to leave the dresses white. I just added a little pale grey shading.       

But on the card below I decided to take it up a step and  give the mum and daughter summery pink gingham dresses to coordinate with the pink gingham background paper.

This is such an easy and effective technique and it's often overlooked.

If you are unfamiliar with this technique I'll share the how to now. 

First you stamp your image onto your  white card stock and then you stamp the image again onto patterned paper. (a small design is best and not too dark or you won't see where you have stamped)  

The next step is to cut out the dress you stamped on the patterned paper and adhere it on top of the dress you stamped on your white card stock making sure you line up any lines that are on both images.

All you have to do then is colour the rest of the image. It's that simple.

Another way of jazzing up an image like this is to draw a pattern on yourself.

On the card above I coloured the dresses in the normal way and took a fine tip white paint pen and just dotted paint over the purple dress and drew tiny arrow heads to form a rough chevron design all over the dress and added lines of dots under each row of chevrons. Click on the photo for a closer view.

 

Breathtaking Bouquet

This stamp is called Breathtaking Bouquet. It's a large stamp that pretty much covers the entire front of a 6 x 4 card. It takes a lot of colouring, which is great if you like colouring. Fortunately I do. Here I have combined it with a sentiment from the "So sentimental " stamp set.

A very colourful card which is sure to brighten somebody's day.

 

Treasures of Life.

The "Treasures of life" stamp set is  about grandparents and grandchildren. I though this would be a great Christmas card for a Grandfather.  This image is my favourite in the set. In fact I bought this set purely for this image. I am not keen on the other two images in the set nor am I keen on the sentiments. But this image sold it for me.

I used Spellbinder's classic oval dies along with the coordinating scalloped oval dies to cut and mount this image. These are the first set of dies I ever bought and I haven't used them in donkey's years. probably because the scalloped borders kind of went out of style. But I think they are making a bit of a come back now. So I figured it was time to dig them out.

 The sentiment is from the Free Skate  stamp set.

Swallowtail cards

 I have been re visiting some of my old stamp sets over the last couple of weeks. This Swallowtail butterfly stamp is one of my favourites. I used  sponge daubers to apply the ink in bands down the wings. Once the wings were covered with inks I went around the very edge of the stamp with Early Espresso ink on a dauber to create a uniform outline.

The sentiment is from the "Hopeful thoughts" stamp set. I think this set is one of the first S.U. sets I bought.

 I enjoyed playing with this stamp so much I made a couple of versions.

Just changing the colours, the sentiments and shape of the card.

Grace's Garden

This card was made using  the set called  "Grace's Garden. It's a polymer stamps set  and I don't normally buy polymer sets as I usually have issues with them.  To be honest, I only bought this set because I needed to buy something to make my quarterly figures. I am pleased to say I didn't have any issues with this set and  I am rather pleased with the results. If I had to find fault with this set, it would be the with the sentiments..... Honestly,  what the hell is this all about....

I thank you for the all  kindness in yours.  

Perhaps it's just me, but I really don't get that.

 

Clean and Simple Thank You Card.

I think this is what they call a clean and simple card. 

It's a good card for a guy who needs thanking. It is certainly a no frills card and takes very little time to stamp and construct, making it a great card to demo at a workshop where time is short.

I used two stamp sets to create this card.  The speech bubble is from the  "You are amazing" set.  Stamped using the Sea Foam ink pad and the words are from the "Massive Thanks" set. Stamped using night of navy ink.

There is not a lot more I can say about this card. So I am off to play with these sets again and maybe do a more feminine version. 

Sea Shells Embossing folder.

This new sea shells embossing folder by S.U. was part of my gift from my upline. There is a set of stamps and a die that coordinate with this embossing folder. Even  if bought as a bundle it's still pretty pricy, so I haven't purchased them. I thought I'd wait and see how I get on with the embossing folder before deciding to purchase the rest of the suite.

Here are the results of my first playtime. to colour the shells I picked up a little ink on with a wet baby wipe and gently applied the colours to the raised parts of the design.  Once all the shells and seaweed were coloured I lightly brushed blueberry bushel ink around the edges of the card working in towards the middle of the card, taking care not to get too much blue on the shells.

My next experiment was with Vellum.....I think this is a first for me. I am not a fan of the stuff. Especially when its heavily embossed. It warps so  much and it's quite difficult to get it to lay flat again. Another issue I have with it, is the fact adhesives show through.  To combat that on this project I run the coloured vellum through my Xyron 510.  If you are not familiar with Xyron machines, I'll tell you they are kind of like a  small bigshot  (without the platform and plates).   You feed the card into the mouth of the machine and crank the handle, the card is pulled through and the adhesive is applied to your project.

 To colour the vellum I used Copic markers I coloured the reverse of the vellum, flipped it over and added glitter glue to the right side of the vellum and allowed it to dry before assembling the card. If  I am honest I don't really like this card, but it was something I had to try.

My next card was an idea born out of a disaster on another card many years ago. I had some adhesive smears on a project and I tried to remove them with an adhesive remover wipe.  The wipe removed the adhesive well, but it also removed the top gold layer of the card. So for this card, I thought I would use it as a technique. 

 Stazon cleaner does the same too.  In fact, that's what  I used on the card below. I dabbed a little Stazon cleaner onto a piece of kitchen roll and brushed it over the  high spots on the card to remove the gold and reveal the silver layer below. 

Don't rub hard or for too long or the silver layer will come off too and you'll end up  through to the nasty dirty white layer.      This technique will Not work on foil card with a plastic coating.

 

Floral Easter Cards

Well here's a first.... A batch of Easter cards and what's more, made well in advance rather than last minute. For these cards I used a retired set by Stampin' Up called  "Indescribable Gift." The Ombre background  was a free gift From Stampin' up during this year's sale a bration. To   be honest when I saw this paper in the catalogue I wasn't that impressed, but I thought I give it a try as it was free. I have to say....  I love it!!

I wasn't sure whether this blackberry colour would work with this stamp when I was making this card as it's not traditional Spring colours. But I like it. So then I went on to make another using the green Ombre and that works too.

Not wanting to use up the whole pack of these papers on this years Easter cards, I decided to make a few more cards using the same image, as I had coloured half a dozen images the night before. But I didn't want them all the same.  On the card below I fussy cut the image after I had coloured it. Then stuck it on navy card to really make it stand out. I added a layer of pink card behind the navy before sticking it to my base card. This is a bit of an odd size card as I cut the navy card a bit too short. So I added a thin pink ribbon and bow to fill in the excess white space.

Now this one was born out of a disaster. I hate wasting things so I thought I'd try something different. Hubby doesn't like this one he says it looks like it's been cut in half.  I tend to agree with him on this one. But I didn't say that, I tried to save face and said "yes, because the pattern continues round the back."

Does it!!?  he asks.....No not really, I had to confess, but it gave me an idea to make one where the image does wrap round the back. I 'll have to try it and see what it's like.                                                                                           Note the branch comes in from the side on this one.

The following three cards are very similar. They are clean and simple cards. But I have changed them up a bit.  I have changed the shape, the size or the colours of the layers of card under the images.

 The card below is 6 x 4 inches and mounted on to a chocolate brown card before being adhered to the white base card.                                                                                                                                              I had the branch come in from the top this time.

I changed the size and shape of the next card to a 6 x 6 inch card. I added two layers of card  beneath the image this time. One blue and one chocolate.

The card below has a wider pink layer and a narrow chocolate layer of card beneath. and the branch comes in from the other side this time.

I heat embossed the stamped image in gold before colouring on this one.  The sentiment is also heat embossed in gold. It doesn't show up very well in this photo.....

So here's a close up shot just to prove it.

Bereavement card

  I think we all hate making bereavement cards, probably because it means somebody has died. When your grieving yourself, you often don't feel like making a bereavement card.  I have needed so many  of this type of card in the last 12 months it's been unreal.  So I have decided to keep a small stash of them ready for those occasions. For this card I used the Stampin' up Climbing Roses set, along with a sentiment from a FREE sale a bration set that is available until the end of this month with a purchase of £45.00.  It's called heal your heart and there are some really useful sentiments in it.

masculine card

If you have never tried the wax resist technique, I suggest you give it a go.  

You can make some  stunning background papers with this technique. All you need is 

wax paper, 

smooth white card stock,

an hot iron, no steam

 an ornate embossing folder or two

   a die cutting machine of some sort.

Ink pads,

 sponge or blending brushes.

 I cut a piece of  Reynolds wax paper down to the size of the New stampin' up seashells embossing folder  placed the wax paper in the folder and ran it through my Bigshot. 

Now the embossing folder I used is one of those 3D multi layer folders,

 I think the basic embossing folders are better for this technique.

I sandwiched the wax paper between two piece of white card and placed the sandwich in a piece of folded copy paper and then ironed the sandwich for about a minute or so to transfer the wax to the card stock.   It's a good idea to iron the sandwich on a piece of heavy duty card. I used the back of an A3 sketch pad. Make sure every part of the card gets the heat treatment. The last thing you want is missing patches.

Once the wax has cooled you can apply ink with a blending brush or sponge. You will see the image emerge as you apply the ink.

 

fruity thank you

A quick thank you card today using the retired Market Fresh stamp set.

I am quite pleased with the way this one turned out for such a simple card.

 

Masculine card

I have had this Thanksgiving stamp set for some time, but have been putting off using it. 

Something told me that colouring this stamp was going to be  challenging.....And I wasn't wrong.

My first four attempts went in the bin and the stamp set almost followed them.

Then I had an idea to a use a chocolate chip stamp and write pen (water/dye based) to draw in all the dark feather markings before using my Copic markers to colour the image. 

Once coloured, I turned the card over and with a large ball tool and working on the cover of a leather bound diary, I rubbed over the bodies of the pheasants using small circular motions to make those breasts really pop out. Using a slightly smaller ball tool I ran it along the tail feathers, the neck and head for a partially embossed look. I am not sure how well it would stand up to the postal system though. So it might be best to hand deliver this one.

Copic markers bleed through the card, so when you turn the card over you can see exactly where to emboss.

I have to say I am  quite please with the way this turned out. I haven't added a greeting yet.

 I will decide on a greeting once I know who is going to receive it and what the occasion is. 

           I forgot to say this set is in the current catalogue.
 

Hey Girlfriend

I 've been playing with the Hey Girlfriend stamp set again.

Now I rarely make anything in yellow as it's not a colour I like. But this stamp was just screaming yellow at me and I think it has worked well.  

I combined this image with a sheet of DSP  and  I used a Spellbinder die  from the Elegant ovals set to cut the frame.

  I had a small heart shaped gem stones in my stash  that was just the right size, so I placed it between her hands.

Dressed to impress

Today I have two cards using the dressed to impress stamp set and  the coordinating DSP.

All the items on these cards are included in the set. They are individual stamps so you can create your own compositions.  I had some masking to do to prevent the over lapping of the images on the card above.

I put my Stamparatus to good use on this one. I placed the stamp on the inside corner of the plate and stamped the image. Then I  moved the plate along one notch  on the hinge and stamped again and continued stamping and moving the plate along one notch each time.  (this is known as hinge stamping)

Once I'd stamped to the end of the strip of card. I cleaned the stamp and positioned it on the card between the first two  stamped tubes. I closed the plate to pick up the stamp ( in it's new position)  and began stamping the tubes again in the same manner as before.  This will fill in all the spaces between the first row of tubes.

I cut out all the tips of the lipsticks down to the top of the gold tube, but on reflection I should have cut down to the top of the red part of the tube. But at the time I wasn't planning on having two rows. I had intended to have a single row running the whole length of a DL or 5x7 inch card, but it didn't look as good as it did in my head.

 

Hey Girlfriend

This little lady is in a new set from Stampin' up called Hey Girlfriend. She is one of three young ladies in the set. This one is my favourite. The sentiment is from the celebrate sunflowers set.

This is the second little lady in the set. The cat is a separate stamp so you don't have to use them together.  There is also a little dog  and a balloon stamp to go with them and a half a dozen sentiments.                                    I haven't used the third girl as I am not over keen on her.

Celebrate sunflowers

As promised here are yesterdays makes using the Celebrate sunflowers stamp set and coordinating dies.

The last time I posted cards using this sunflower set I said I wish I had bought the dies to go with it. Since then I have bought the dies which has speeded up the cutting out of these large blooms.

  I don't know where I got this gingham paper from but I think it works well with these sunflowers.  

I had just enough of this gingham to make two cards so after making the blue sunflower card, I just had to make one in yellow. I used S.U 's Brilliant Blue ink pad to stamp the greeting.

 The following cards are both 5x5 inch square card. The first of these two cards the sunflower image was stamped onto whisper white card stock. Then masked off so I could stamp the leaves without the images overlapping.  Using the speckled stamp from the gorgeous grunge set I stamped lots speckles using second and third generation stamping  for various shades of speckles. I coloured the image with Copic markers. Then brushed a little crumb cake ink around the edges. I stamped the greeting (which is also in the set) onto black card using versamark ink and white heat embossing powder.

I added a layer of black and a layer of yellow card to frame the image.

For my last card, I used two stamped and die cut sunflowers and five leaves on a sheet of dark blue DSP. Then mounted onto a sheet of navy paper before adhering it to  a 5x5 inch white base card.