Welcome Home card

My card was inspired by a Pinterest find the other day. About time I actually used some of that 'inspiration', lol.This is the card that I CASE'D, and the ladys blog is HERE.












 Made a slight alteration, this is a one layer card, but I did my panel on a separate piece of card.










I started by sponging on two shades of D I, Squeezed Lemonade and Mustard Seed.

 Then I added some of the new Fossilized Amber and Dried Marigold.
 I found out a mask, TCW (The Crafters Workshop) Mini Bricks.
 Through this I sponged Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade D I.

Moved the stencil down and finished off the strip. Gave it a blast with the heat gun to dry it, so I could stamp.
The stamp I chose is called Agapanthus Cluster, by Stampendous, stamped in Versafine Onyx Black.


I stamped the first one about halfway up, and extended the stems with a stem from another stamp set. Re stamped it again lower down,then added a partial stamp over the left hand edge. The butterfly stamps are from an Inkylicious set.

I changed my card up a bit more, by adding some double sided adhesive sheet to the front, then sprinkling with Glamour Dust.

Once the adhesive sheet was in place, I brayered over it with a hard rubber roller, to make sure it was completely flat.
I also put the backing sheet back over the top and brayered it again, over the Glamour Dust to make sure it was stuck firmly.





Next step was to mark the width of the panel on the inside of the card, then score lines to border the panel.

It looked like it still needed something, so two butterflies were punched out of sparkly vellum, and coloured on the reverse with DI markers in matching colours.Folded up the wings, then stuck down with Pinflair glue.

 At this point I discovered that in all my stamps, I do not have a single 'Welcome' or 'Welcome Home' stamp! Neither do I have anything in my ageing peel off collection, so no other option but to hand write it. I added a small orange flat back gem to the exclamation mark. Some orange ribbon wrapped around the spine to finish.

I'm linking this to 'A Focused Journey' blogspot,
 for the 'Stop pinning and make something' party, which is Diane's idea to encourage us all to actually use some of those ideas we Pin for inspiration!

One Layer Bee card

 Another card on the CAS theme- this time using a hexagon shaped mask, and Bees instead of butterflies.
 The mask was cut from copy paper using a hexagon Nestie, and repostionable tape runner on the back to hold it in place.

 I used Distress Inks to sponge with, Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed, Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade.
 One thing worth noting here, I worked on a Pearl card base, and the ink does not dry as fast as on other cardstock. It is easier to dab the ink on with a sponge, then do any blending with a clean sponge, rather than trying to do it the normal way, it just spreads too far.

You can see how much excess ink blotted off after I'd finished sponging.
At this point, I just stamped the Water Droplets stamp in Spiced Marmalade over the mask, and put it aside to dry for a while.





















When it was dry enough, I added the Bee stamps, in Versafine Vintage Sepia.
The large Bee is a Judikins stamp, which used to be wood mounted. The two smaller ones are both by Aspects of Design, from The Stampman.
 Finally I added some colour to the Bee bodies with Distress Markers, using Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed in dots, and blending them with Squeezed Lemonade.

The quote was also stamped in Versafine Sepia. How long the ink stays wet on this type of card is worth remembering when doing the rest of the stamping- its very easy to smudge parts of the design. I had to tidy up one Bees wings because I forgot.
 I am going to enter this into this weeks 'Less is More' challenge, as the brief is to use masking or stencils.


 Supplies:
 Card base
 mask
 Distress Inks in Squeezed Lemonade, Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed and Wild honey.
Water Droplets stamp, Designs by Ryn
Versafine Vintage Sepia inkpad
 Bee stamps- the Judikins one is still about, both from Judikins, and on E-bay. Looks like the Aspects of Design ones are discontinued though.

One Layer Card with Visible Image stamps

So, Monday afternoon, and I finally got some time to play with my new Visible Image stamps.I also wanted to see if I could successfully do a one layer card with them.

First step was to cut some masks, and for this I trimmed down some copy paper to fit through my 'bug, and used a variety of Nesties.










I cut a different one top and bottom, giving me 6 masks.

Selected my first mask, and attached it to the card front using repositionable tape runner.

 Using Scattered Straw, Squeezed Lemonade and Mustard Seed, I sponged on yellow Distress Inks. I followed that with Dried Marigold,Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade.




Now for some stamping. I used Versafine Sepia to stamp the 'background' stamps, and for all of these, I used a second generation stamping, all done with the mask still in place, to keep it within the sponged box. Then the mask was removed, and a Large Butterfly was stamped in the top left corner, this time using a first generation stamping. Small Butterfly was stamped bottom right, and another two trailing down the card.

Enlarged it here, so you can see the background stamping.






Final addition was the sentiment, again in Versafine Sepia.




 
 
Supplies:
 Visible Image stamps:
 Bronte Script,Ripped Fishnet, Ink splats( from Free Your Imagination set) Large and Small Butterfly, We have each other word stamp.

 Distress Inks in Scattered Straw, Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed, Dried Marigold, Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade.
 Versafine Sepia Ink

Clean & Simple- Easy Birthday cards

So, some real crafting at last! These are the results of todays first efforts for a while.  While I've been unable to do anything, I discovered Pinterest! I knew about it, but hadn't actually investigated it before. I discovered a wealth of amazing cards on various boards, and best of all- I don't have to physically store my 'inspiration' pictures anywhere. Anyway, I saw a lot of ' CAS'- Clean & Simple cards- and decided this would be worth having a go at. One thing I want to do, having learnt how life, and accidents, can seriously get in the way of crafting, is to get myself a stock of 'everyday' birthday cards. I constantly find myself being caught unawares, as it were, by too many birthdays creeping up on me. So if I can get myself a batch done, I won't find it so much of a struggle to do the special cards, or cards I get ordered. I hope.

So these one layer cards-they were actually really easy to do! I think it took longer to decide on the colours than to do the card. This one is various dye inks (Adirondacks, Distress, Marvys) in yellows & oranges, with the images stamped in Adirondack Espresso.



First off, I tried it out on some scrap paper, just to get a feel for the process.

 To start with I made up some post-it note masks, which I then trimmed along the top edge with a deckle blade. I stuck two post-its side by side, and made two pairs for the card, as I started off with topfold DL sized cards.

 I masked my paper, and I found it easiest to line the masks up with the lines on my cutting mat, so I knew they were straight.I started sponging on various blues.


  Then I started to add a few patches of 'background' - a crackle stamp here, in slightly darker shades of blue than I had sponged with.
Next I used a Paperartsy stamp, which I inked up with a darker blue, then smudged off some of the colour. I also stamped it off first, and used the second impression, so it was light, then did the same with a script stamp.

Random overstamping with various foliage stamps, and a flock of birds. All going well, then I dropped my inkpad- thats the square on the left. Have you noticed a dropped inkpad always lands ink side down!

Anyhow, I tried out another couple of strips.

Exactly the same process, just changed the colours and stamps. I decided I quite like these, although there were a few problems- I thought the bottom one too busy, and I had that ink pad mark, but I have a plan for these, even though they are on scrap paper.






So onto the cards then.



Sponged with yellows & oranges.

Overstamped with grasses, willow & birds, all by Inkylicious.

Next one up was yellows & browns. I added some mesh, then a flourish or two.




Changed the format slightly, I took the mask off, and stamped a Stampscapes tree on the right. I also stamped some of the tree on the left, before I unmasked.That flock of birds is in there again, lol.

Last one of the day, I did in yellow & greens. The  dandelion heads are Inkylicious again, and the little dragonfly is part of a Lavinia Stamps set.

I've stamped them all with Happy Birthday, but you could leave that off, and stamp them up with whatever sentiment you needed at the time.

The three little blue flowers were never intended to be there- I wasn't concentrating, and didn't realise I had a little blue ink on the edge of my Happy Birthday stamp. I think it was Anna Griffin who said' there are no mistakes in card-making, only embellishments!'

There are some other cards in the first picture, and I will blog those tomorrow, as they were done differently.