Birthday cards

The cards I made last week using those large numbers- Hubbys 40th card for starters. The backing paper was an image of the Leo constellation I found on the net, and I picked out the main stars using acrylic jewels.
The numbers are from stencils,cut from black glitter paper, which I stuck onto card with Spray adhesive.










Top tip here, remember to flip your numbers over when drawing on the back of the cardstock!
Yes, I've made that mistake before.

I added a couple of UTEE hearts, done with WOW Black Twinkle embossing powder.

The 21st card for our niece, I put foiled Congratulations paper onto the card front for this one, and added some Tattered Florals and ribbon, along with a strip of Happy Birthday Vellum.

Mortimers 13th card involved some more Internet images, Call of Duty this time. I used one large image for the backing paper, then Photoshopped some small images into a strip, leaving a black space in the middle where I typed in the birthday message, using a similar font.


Supplies:
 Stencil numbers, 140mm, Clevercut. They do letters as well.
Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die
WOW Embossing powders
 Foiled background paper, Craft Creations
Black glitter card/paper
Black ribbon
Acrylic jewels
 UTEE
 Versamark/clear embossing ink

WOYWW # 210

Morning all! Where did that week go?Wednesday again, time for our regular drop-in at Auntie Julias Stamping Ground. Show & tell for this week then:

This arrived in my Happy Mail on Monday, from my ATC swapper, Monique. Fab ATC, gorgeous cover for it, a bunch of gloriously old dictionary pages, and a beautiful stamped mail art envelope holding it all. Did I get enough adjectives into that paragraph, do you think?

 Also arrived since last week, a lovely card from Debs, (Pen Pot),as a thank you for the flower die cuts. Already putting them to great use I see, thanks so much Deb.



What I'm doing at the moment:( well, what I would be doing if not typing):

I came across the stamped image while I was sorting stuff to take to the crop- another one of those things I keep meaning to use up. I've had the unmounted stamp set, there is four of them, for so long, I have no idea who made them, but they are old style botanical prints. I used a sheet of watercolour paper, torn from the pad, and did the crackle glaze thing, using two colours of acrylic paint, with a layer of crackle glaze between them. Overstamped it with Staz-on, and they are coloured with H2O's, I think.I'd intended using it for a card, but having seen the Art Journals going on at the Crop, I'm thinking to make either an Art Journal, or a Garden Journal, or maybe even an Arty Garden Journal, lol. I'm such a decisive person, ..... not!

 By the way, this will get me into all sorts of trouble, I know but yesterday, Tuesday, was Maggies ( Silvercrafters) birthday.......

 ENABLER ALERT........... Skip this part if your ability to resist temptation is not at its best!

I had a link in one of my e-mails the other day, from a place called  Creativity Direct. The link takes you to the page to get the free catalogue.  This LINK takes you to an e-version of it. If you like altering stuff- don't we all- you will love this!

You name it, they've got it- Canvases, frames, bird houses,magazine holders, journals, shapes, door hangers, animals,torso's, boxes - the list is endless, in wood, card, papier mache, foam,  porcelain, glass. Pretty much every craft you can name is covered too- embroidery, sewing, knitting, altered art, decoupage,glass/ceramic painting, Christmas crafts.
 Loving my night shifts- never seemed to have so much time to myself, or been less tired. Nights aren't part of the rotation shifts where we work, everyone  who works nights has asked for it. I can imagine it being miserable if you HAVE to do it & don't like it- the way I felt about having to do earlies. I was born to work nights, lol. I remember reading a long time ago, that the time of day that suits you best depends on the time you were born, and I was born in the evening. So I'm an evening/night person. Its still weird getting up and its still the same day you went to sleep though.

WOYWW #201

Well its show & tell with Auntie Julia again, over at The Stamping Ground.
I  haven't been up to a lot this week, so this is how my desk has been looking since Saturday. Those glittered medallions finally getting used. As they were so fancy, I decided just to use plain white base cards, square ones, and to emboss around them.
All laying on my Hougie Board.

A close up here so you can see what I mean. I will just stamp a simple Happy Birthday onto them later this week. I used blobs of silicone glue on the backs, as I find that, or Pinflair glue gel, holds onto the glitter surface best.
 I like these a lot, and have a feeling that I will be doing some more of these. I did find the putting down the glue part very relaxing, a bit Zen-like, lol. There is still plenty of glitter around the house- I spotted Ambrose sparkling a little last night. Shows up really well on a black cat! Which made me think that a black & white version of these would be cool. He's not just a pretty, furry face.

This one was made for a work colleague who wanted  a card for a friends birthday soon. I get some mileage out of those Tattered Florals, you know. To be fair, those dies have been a good investment. I like the way you can mix them all together. The background is an MBossabilities folder, Asian. Also Nestabilites, Labels 8 for the sentiment.  Just a bit of proof I can do Pink, if I really have to!
 We popped in to see Maggie ( Silvercrafter) tonight (Tuesday), on the way home, she is well. As you know, my eldest Son is married to her Daughter. We  spent Sunday afternoon looking after Merlin & Mortimer- well Mort looked after himself, to be fair. Another gamer in the family, *sighs*- a COD fan, so Beloved Hubby approves!
Beloved Hubby also spent the afternoon turning Merlin into a nerd- teaching her all about customising her laptop, shortcuts etc.  I'm on earlies- I LOATHE them with a passion, have I ever said? Five o'clock in the morning is when you should be GOING to bed, not getting out of it. Its nice coming home at 2 o'clock, but it doesn't compensate for getting out of bed in the middle of the night! I'd never have made a farmers wife, thats for sure. So I will be speaking with you all later, have a great WOYWW.


I'm adding this part a little later in the week-  many of you know Silvercrafter, Maggie.This picture is from our wedding, and shows Ant, Geoff, Becky & Marg, with Merlin & Mortimer in front.

Tragically, Margs husband  Geoff died suddenly on Sunday morning. We are fortunate in having Marg & Geoff as co-inlaws. We have been friends for 20 odd years, which is not always the case with in-laws, is it? I know Marg has contacted some people to let them know, and just wanted to let those who she frequently gets around to, that she will probably be missing for a few weeks. We see her quite regularly, so I will let you know how she is.

Wedding & Anniversary Cards

 Two cards made this week, the front Easel card for a Ruby Wedding Anniversary, and the Silver & White at the back for a Wedding Acceptance. Not something I've been asked to make before.
 The Wedding Acceptance uses the Memory Box dies La Rue heart, and the matching Grand Heart for the backing. I die cut the Grand Heart from white pearl card, and the La Rue overlay from a silvery paper. A few silver & white flowers were made using the Tim Holtz strip die, Tattered Flower Garland. I used a mix of silver, white & vellum for those and filled the centres with seed beads.The Bride & Groom are the Stampendous stamp, At the Altar, stamped once onto black card for the groom, then onto white pearl card for the bride, and finally onto vellum to cut out the overdress. I added a little Diamond Stickles to give her dress a bit of sparkle.
The Lattice background is a Quickutz folder, Diamonds & Dots.

 The Easel Anniversary card uses the same folder, and hearts. The flowers on here are a mix of Tims Tattered Florals Movers & Shapers, and Tattered Florals Bigz die. I like that you can mix all these flower dies together and get an endless variety of flower shapes & sizes. Dark Red ribbon was wrapped around the Lattice before matting onto dark red card, and the sentiment was computer printed and cut out with Nesties Labels 4. I had one set of these, the large, but ended up eventually getting the small set too, which gives less of a margin between the layers. Sometimes I felt the gap was too big between the layers on the single set.

WOYWW #197

Well, this is my desk on Tuesday night- early shift this week, so it won't be changing! Stuff that needs putting away, to be truthful. It was in a pile, I spread it out so you could see what was what. Mostly freebie stamps from magazines-the large one in the middle with the womans head on was with Creative Stamping, (with the obligatory Thank You stamp) and a couple of Craft Stamper stamps on the top. The small Art Deco style( plus Thank You stamp) was with a Creativity mag- you all know just how much I needed two more Thank You stamps! The one behind that I bought from Hobbycrafts, a map stamp. Then on the right is a new mag I picked up from Tesco, with a set of stamps free, called Get Stamping. Didn't grab me when I opened it, so shan't be making a regular purchase, I'm afraid.Top left is a pack of card from Cardcraft UK, don't know if you can see them on top, but a couple of Darice embossing folders also came my way, a Honeycomb and a wire fence one. Next to that, the start of another Ruby Anniversary card, and some blue & silver flowers from the Tattered florals die.A few odd tools lying about- scalpels, tweezers and so on. So why the Show & Tell? Wander over to The Stamping Ground, where our ever charming hostess, Julia, will explain it all
.Earlier in the week, my desk looked like this:


All my bear panels being stitched together! Found a smashing e-bay supplier of gingham fabric, and it goes perfectly with the bear squares. The quilt is all put together now, but I will show that after Jo has had it to put on the LilyBo site. I should be getting it off to Jo next week, I just have to make the bag for it now. Happy Wednesday folks, I'll be round to visit later.

Christmas cards from 2012

Going to try getting back to some crafting this week, but I thought I'd post up the Christmas cards I was working on before I fractured my shoulder. I realised I hadn't actually put them up yet, as I didn't get them finished.

These three all feature a stamp called Angel Chorus Collage,by Rubber Stampede. I've used this stamp and technique here, its a technique I remembered seeing in a magazine a few years ago, but I really can't remember which magazine, nor the persons name.
The image was stamped first on cream card, in gold, and heat embossed with gold powder. I repeated this onto plain vellum.

The cream card was sponged with Antique Linen and Old Paper Distress inks, just on the musical score section.
Last time I used this image, I coloured the angels on the card,this time I used Promarkers to colour the Angels just on the vellum. I did this by flipping them over and colouring on the reverse of the image.Promarkers don't blend on vellum in the same way as on paper, as the ink stays quite wet, but this doesn't matter as you are colouring the reverse. Doing it this way gives you a nice 'soft' feel to the image, and you don't have to be over fussy with your colouring. You could also use oil pastels, like for Pergamano work, or H2O's.
When the angels were coloured, I carefully tore around them, and matted them, right way up now, on the card image. I used Pinflair gel glue for this, as it didn't show through the vellum.



 
  I trimmed up the edges to match and matted onto gold card. The image was then added to the front panel for Easel cards. I've used a random selection of backing papers for the cards- I have so much Christmas paper from years gone by, so I'm not getting any more till I've used this stuff up!



The Layered Poinsettia is from the Nestabilities range- I cut the petals out of red & green paper that had a speckled effect. The only part of the die I didn't use was the centres- I used some gold beads for these, as I  didn't like the flat effect from the die cut. You can see Tim Holtz Rosettes on the top left one, and the one above has Tim's Snowflake rosette on.
                      






The white flowers are a mix of small punches, and flowers from the Tattered Florals strip die. The gold flourish on the left, I can't remember whose die it is, sorry, the one on the lower right is a Cheery Lyn, Joycraft die.

This last one used a panel I had created before, using a Papermania 'Baubles' embossing folder, and the image stamped onto Acetate is from Butterfly Kisses,Saint Nick, available now through HobbyArt.
 After I stamped it onto acetate ( I actually use Transparency Film) with Black Staz-on, I covered the back of the image with double sided adhesive film, then sprinkled Crystal glitter over it.
 See here, if you want to see how I altered the folder so I could emboss in this direction.

Long Time No See

Been quite a while since I last posted, but life kept getting in the way! I'll post some pictures another time of the stuff thats been going on in the house, which is gradually getting sorted. But I thought I'd post a few pictures of stuff I've been doing over the last few months, and apologies to everyone who has kept up visiting, only to find nothing new.

These two cards were for the same wedding- always a problem making cards to go to the same people! Both of the people who ordered them wanted Easel cards.
 The flowers on both are the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals- I got the large & small versions,( Alterations & Movers & Shapers) which gives me even more adaptability when building up flowers. In the Gold card, I used a Celtic Horseshoe stamp. I think this came from the Aspects Of Design range, quite a few years ago, and I am pretty sure it is discontinued, which is a shame. Also used Tims Flourish die, and Nesties Labels 7. The centres of the flowers were filled with Glossy Accents and seed beads. The large Congratulations was cut out with the Silhouette.

The Black & White card has flowers cut from vellums and black & white pearl paper, triple embossed hearts in black & silver and Nesties Labels 4. I used black & white seed beads for the centres of the flowers again.

I'm also discovering that Blogger has changed a little while I've been gone!  I am not having any trouble posting any more, which is good, but I really don't like the changes they have made to the 'Labels' section. Maximum number of labels, ok, I was getting my head around that, learning to be brief, then I discover its a maximum number of characters too. What on earth is that all about? Its our blog, why does it matter how many tags we put on a post, or how many characters it uses? Not a happy bunny. Going to try another post using Livewriter and see if it applies through that too. I suspect it will, as its a Blogger rule. Off over to Blogger to find out what they are playing at, lol.

Easel Birthdays

All three of these were for the same person, so it was hard work making them all as different as possible! Two feature the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals,and I love the fact that they will cut pretty much any material- I've been using up a lot of fancy papers that I have collected, and some of the flowers I really love- the green & gold in the bottom card is a particular favourite. That one also has a four panel image of the Penny Black stamp 'Aspire', matted onto gold & wrapped with a narrow gold organza ribbon. Nesties Labels 7 was used for the sentiment here.

 The top left card features a Chocolate Baroque stamp, Harlequin Rose, which is part of an A4 sheet.The image was stamped in black, mica powders smudged onto the background and chalks & micas used to colour the Rose & leaves.The background is an embossing folder, Creative Expressions' Lattice'. Wrapped with silver & black ribbon and embellished with Black & White Tattered Florals. I have to say that Black & White really is my favourite go-to theme. Nesties Labels 4 was used on this one.
 Top right, the background is another sheet of fancy paper, a vellum panel punched with Doily Dots and some Tim Holtz Rosettes, cut from black & white vellum. The Butterfly panel was made with Fusible Fibres, and I cut out a second set of butterflies to mount on top with silicone glue. the stamp itself is available from two places, Tanda Stamps, Far East Set 1, either as a plate along with other oriental themed stamps, or individually. It is also available from  De Stempelwinkel, as a Non Sequiteur Plate, Samurai Plate. The sentiment is on Nesties Petite Scalloped Ovals Large. On all the cards, the foil printed background paper on the bottom is from Craft Creations.

WOYWW # 149, Paper Flowers

Back at the Weekly Workdesk Wander, courtesy of our most excellent hostess, Julia Dunnit at The Stamping Ground. 
   These were the Tim Dies I bought recently, having admired what people were doing with them. So I've spent a few days cutting out loads of flowers in different papers.

I've have been putting some together for a couple of Wedding cards in Black and White that I have to make.I used black and white pearlescent paper, along with some glittered vellum for a bit of sparkle.


Here I've layered them all up, and also added some seed beads in Black or White to the centres. So that's my desk this week.

                   Roof Update:
 We now have a roof over our bedroom, lol, just in time for the glorious (!) Bank Holiday weather we had,and we have someone coming into plaster the room next weekend. The kitchen roof is coming off now, as well as taking down the chimney stack at the end of the kitchen. We have an old Victorian house with the galley- style kitchen:

According to the guy you can see taking it down, the only thing keeping it there was gravity!!!
 Hope you all had a lovely Easter, and have a great Wednesday.

Playing with Punches

As I have been having fun with the Tim dies for the Tattered Florals, it reminded me that I used to use my punches to do similar things.




 As you can see, I punched loads of different flower shapes out of various papers, even mulberry paper.

  This works best if you 'sandwich' the mulberry paper between ordinary copier paper, the mulberry is too flimsy on its own and just tears rather than punches.

I'm using a large ball embossing tool and an old mouse mat to give the flowers a little shape.

 
 


 Then its just a matter of layering them up together
 in various combinations. I use a little Glossy
 Accents, or silicone glue for this bit.






 Final touch is the centres, I use either Glitter Glue, Stickles or Glossy Accents with either seed beads or loose glitter.



Last but not least are the leaves- again these are mainly punched from mulberry and handmade paper for effect. This fern leaf punch is by Woodware.

 Here's a card I used a small selection on- a better size for this project than the Tattered Florals.