Anniversary & New Baby

Two cards here, I pictured them side by side as its not easy to tell the size of the baby card without something to compare it to. The Anniversary card is a standard A4 sheet of card folded. The Anniversary & new baby were not for the same person, by the way!

    
The New Baby was for a work colleague leaving to have her first baby, so I made an A4 sized card, which gives plenty of room for everyone to sign. I buy a pack of A3 card from Staples for doing these. Its not particularly thick, so I add a sheet of A4 card to the back, and by the time it has papers etc on the front, it is perfectly sturdy. The punched panel uses vellum punched with two different X-cut border punches, Looped Fringe & Doily Dots.                           
 I'm actually very impressed with these border punches, they give a nice crisp cut and are really easy to line up, although I always do this by flipping it over to double check. I used a pale blue, a blue gingham and then a darker blue vellum, and added a knotted ribbon over the top. The decoupage teddy is matted onto Nesties Labels 8, and the sentiment was computer printed onto vellum and then heat embossed with silver powder. I matted that onto a piece of white card overstamped in Brilliance Pearlescent Blue with 'Precious Baby ' a u/m word collage stamp from Artifacts (The Stamp Bug). Finally added a few punched & layered flowers, with Stickles centres.


The Anniversary card also has a panel punched with the Doily Dots border punch, and is wrapped with black & red ribbon. The background paper is from a Dovecraft pad,called Charcoal Prints. The Rose Heart stamp is from Chocolate Baroque, stamped and embossed in Gold, and coloured with H2o's. I added a clump of paper roses and red and blck feathers, and secured it with silicone glue. The sentiment was stamped and embossed in gold again, onto a small tag and tied onto the ribbon with some red cord.

WOYWW #114

First on my desk this week is another map card.The maps are from a set available from Stamp & Go.com, SIFS65,which features 6 maps, some waves, a couple of ships, and a ship in a bottle. It was stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black onto an alcohol ink background then cut into a mosaic and matted onto black card. The two tags use a stamp from Artifacts, The Stamp Bugs own stamps, Spirit of Adventure Collage. Just went to their site to get the link, and their u.m stamps are on sale at the moment, with 25% off! The Time & Tide stamp is by Paper Artsy, Clocks plate 3, which also features some of the stamps in the third picture I have posted. I sponged old Paper, Antique Linen & Walnut stain Distress inks onto some script background paper and both tags.



  The second card is again using alcohol ink backgrounds, and the Crafty Individuals stamp from a couple of posts ago. The square card base was covered in paper from Dovecrafts Aquamarine Floral Prints paper pack.

Here are some of the clock images from the Paper Artsy plate, stamped onto Distress inked card, cut out then the 'glass' created with Glossy Accents. The card was coloured by swiping Distress inks onto a craft mat (mine came from Poundland, a baking sheet) spritzing with water then wiping the card/tag across the ink. Here is a link to Tim Holtz showing how he does it. The clock hands have been cut out using the Silhouette, using a 'dingbat' font that features clocks & timepieces.Have a great Wednesday, and if you are new to this idea, visit the Amazing Julia Dunnits Stamping Ground and join the fun.

WOYWW #104

At last I seem to have Blogger working properly,yay!!!!! I haven't been able to log in, let alone post for a couple of weeks. This week I updated to the new Firefox4, and Blogger seems to be working fine again.So if you use Firefox as your browser & are still getting Blogger problems, this may help.
I'm on a bit of a mission to use up some of the images that I have stamped in the past, so the last few posts use up stuff you have probably seen on my desk at one time or another.
 So, on my desk this week are a couple of cards:

 I used three versions of the Crafty Individuals Treeline stamp, and the base card was covered with a sheet of Papermania paper from the Simply Elegant pad, which I overstamped with a tree from Crafty Individuals Elements plate CI 209, in Adirondack Espresso. The three versions are: brayered background using Latte & Sandal  (top left), oil pastel in oranges and yellows (centre) and sponged Adirondack ink in Sunset Orange and Red Pepper, with a Post-it mask for the setting sun (bottom right). The sentiment was stamped onto a scrap of brayered card ( Latte &  Hazelnut) in Black Soot then heat embossed. It is all one stamp, I masked off one half of the sentiment with low tack tape, inked the part I wanted, peeled off the tape and stamped. That way I could place them separately.

 I brayered white card with Adirondack Lemonade and Distress ink Wild Honey, with a Post it mask. The Fennel Heads stamp was stamped in Black Versafine, and I added a Dandelion head from Lavinia Stamps, part of a set of three, all slightly different, called Dandelions, lol. I cut the image to a tag shape, added an eyelet & some narrow gold ribbon. From the leftover piece I cut another tag shape, and overstamped this with an Artifacts Stamp, from the Stamp Bug, called Darting Dragonflies. I used Wild Honey again, but stamped off first, to get a paler imprint.The sentiment was stamped over the top in Black Versafine- this is another e-bay buy, so I don't know the maker, sorry. The base card uses some free paper with Making Cards magazine, a strip of gold vellum run through the D'vine swirls folder, and a strip of Black organza ribbon, then gold  organza ribbon over the top. The tags were mounted with sticky tabs.


For quite a lot of years I worked in the Retail trade, so I know only too well that people are quick to complain, but very rarely praise service they receive. So I try to give praise when its due, and to this end I want to say a big Thank You to Inkylicious. You will have seen I use a lot of Adirondack & Distress inks, and this is where I buy them from. For two VERY good reasons. Firstly, their prices - Adirondacks are £3.79 and Distress inkpads are £3.90- best prices I have found anywhere. Also, their postage is a very reasonable £1.50 for orders under £50, free above that. Secondly, their service is second to none. I ordered four pads last week, on Thursday evening at 5.15. As it was evening, and a Bank Holiday weekend as well, I expected ( and would have been happy) to get them during this week. I was astounded then, when I got home from work at midday on Saturday, to find them lay on the mat waiting for me! This is definitely a retailer who will get my custom time & time again- so Thanks again guys! Oh, they do lots of stuff besides inkpads too!

Talking of inkpads, I thought this might be useful. I downloaded the inkpad labels from Ranger inc, for Adirondack pads & Distress pads, then printed then out onto a label sheet- I used one that has 4 labels on an A4 sheet. I cut them down to size, then before I stuck them on the pads I swiped each label across the inkpad it was meant for.I really recommend wearing gloves to do this bit!  Now I don't have to unstack them to find the one I want. The two links take you to the respective Ranger pages for the pads- you can click on a link on the page to download the labels template. You can also download the colour charts, and ones for the Alcohol inks too.

Mixed Monochrome

Ok, I promise this is the last of the monochrome for now(maybe). I just wondered how it would come out if I mixed the two types of images. Better than I expected, to be truthful, lol.I matted the squares onto a black/gold coloured base, then this onto black,white and then black again. I used some of the PDA card in white with silver flecks, and some black & white yarn around the front. As I said in WOYWW, these aren't true 'inchies', as they are closer to 1 1/2", but I like the size- gives a good sized panel, in whichever format you lay them out.

Monochrome in reverse

As I mentioned in the WOYWW post below, I wanted to do a reverse version of the monochrome card on my desk, and here it is. The stamping was much easier this time round, as I used Memento Tuxedo Black with clear embossing powder- no having to get rid of all the stray specks! It was also starting to have a 'male' feel to it, so I stamped a mans face image (Paper Artsy), and the 'Describe Him' text stamp, which is by Artifacts, from The Stamp Bug, which pulled it all together.The base card is from PDA Card & Paper, and is black with silver flecks on it- they also have a black with gold flecks, and white with gold or silver flecks. I didn't have any white webbing spray, ( I don't even know if there is such a thing), so this card was the best option.It has white eyelash wool tied around the spine instead of ribbon, but was made in exactly the same way.

Faerie Birthday

A piece of white card was brayered with Adirondack Lemonade, Sunshine Yellow & Citrus. Lavinia Stamps Faery House was stamped in Black Versafine then heat embossed with a black sparkle powder. 

I also stamped off onto a post-it note, then cut out the mask. I put the mask in place then overstamped with the Faery words plate ( Lavinia stamps) in Plum Archival ink. Leaf Trail ( Lavinia Stamps) was stamped in Olympia Green Versafine, using first & second impressions, and a variety of small foliage stamps stamped along the bottom. 

A small dragonfly stamp was added in a couple of places. This was trimmed down to size and matted onto dark green card. I took a square card blank and covered it with a sheet from the Dovecraft 8x8 designer pack 'Fantasy'. 

The stamped image was then mounted onto the front with sticky fixer pads. A wide black and a narrow green organza ribbon were wrapped around the spine and tied in a bow. 

The sentiment tag was made from an offcut of the brayered sheet. I overstamped it with Artifacts Darting Dragonflies u/m stamp, from The Stamp Bug, using Versafine Frost. Sentiment was stamped in Olympia Green Versafine, then an eyelet added to thread some twine through. 

A small dragonfly embellishment was added to the tag.

Mainly Monochrome

Stampsmiths Ophelia was stamped in Black Versafine onto an alcohol ink background, created using Stream, Denim and a tiny spot of Cranberry, with plenty of blending solution. She was cut out using a Nestabilities Petite scalloped ovals large and the black matt cut out with the next size up.Using the card that was left from cutting out the image (the negative shape) I marked the position the image would occupy on the front of the card with a light pencil. Two flourish stamps were then stamped in Black Versafine so they would extend out from under the image, sprinkled with sparkly black embossing powder and heat embossed.The Versafine is quite a 'wet' ink, and on pearlescent card stays wet long enough to take embossing powder. A third flourish was stamped in the top right corner and also heat embossed.The Ophelia image was stuck to the black matt with DST, then the whole thing stuck to the card front, also with DST.Four flowers, 2 black, 2 white, were stamped with 'Describe Her' text in the opposing colour, joined in pairs with a black or white brad and added to the card with silicone glue. Black eyelash wool was used to wrap around the card spine, and as I hadn't got a stamp small enough to blend in with the card, I used a small peel off in black for the Birthday sentiment.

Describe Her

A sheet of A4 white pearlescent was creased & folded and used in landscape format. A piece of black pearl paper was embossed with the Swiss Dots folder & Cuttlebug, trimmed to 6x10cm and the corners rounded. A piece of black embroidered paper was cut to the same size and rounded. Butterfly Kisses Stamp 'Tartan Background'(BK1006F) was stamped in Black Versafine onto white cardstock, trimmed and rounded. These three panels were mounted onto silver grey card leaving an equal gap between them, then the grey card cut to just fit the card front and corners rounded.

A length of black organza ribbon was wrapped around the panel and tied in a bow before being stuck down with DST across the centre of the card.  Artifacts stamp 'Describe Her' was stamped in Black onto white pearl card twice, then cut and rounded. A piece of silver vellum was cut about a centimetre larger than the words panel, corners rounded then embossed with the D'vine swirls folder. The word panel was matted onto this, then mounted across the three panels on the front of the card. 

The lady is from a set by The Glitter Girls, and is stamped in Staz-on onto acetate which has been given the 'Caught in Crystal' treatment. She was then mounted to the left side with silicone glue. The sentiment was stamped in black, and comes from an Elusive Images themeplate.

 Caught in Crystal:  This is messy, so cover your workspace with newspaper first! And wear gloves too! Take a sheet of acetate (I use OHP transparencies, from Staples) and pour a couple of tablespoons of Johnsons KLEAR floor polish onto it. Add a few drops of re-inker colours, or alcohol inks, and spread with your fingers or a spatula across the acetate.

Don't mix too much, or you will muddy the colours. If you wish you can sprinkle in some glitter, gold leaf, even seed beads, but remember the lumpier you make it, the harder it will be to get a good stamped image. You can of course stamp your images first, then flip it over and do the floor polish stuff, however this makes it harder to determine where your images colours will be. When you are happy, take a sheet of tissue paper (the sort used for gifts, not the paper hanky type) and either scrumple it up, open out and pat down onto your ink/floor polish mix, or just lay it on flat and pat down. I use any pale colour of tissue, it doesn't have to be white. Just pat down with your fingers- don't press, or you will push the colours around. Now put aside to dry- this may take a day or so, depending on temperature. If you do find it difficult to get a good stamped image, you can clean Staz-on off acetate with Staz-on cleaner & try again, and you may find it helps to put a stamping mat, or mouse-pad, underneath.

Three Wolves

Three Wolves (Coronado Island SJ009-K) is stamped in Black Versafine onto white card, trimmed and matted onto black card. A square brad was added to each corner. 'Describe Him' words from The Stamp Bug's own stamp brand, Artifacts, is stamped 4 times onto white card in Black Versafine then trimmed down to size. Then matted onto black then white card and fixed to the card front with DST. The wolf panel is positioned overlapping the words panel and fixed with foam pads. Both sentiments are from the Rubbadubado Stick & Stamp message sets, and are stamped in black on white, matted onto black then mounted with silicone glue.