Oriental Poppy in Red & Blue

 Another Oriental Poppy card using the Hampton Arts stamp, this time on a background brayered in  Adirondack reds, Watermelon, Red Pepper & Cranberry. Again the post it note Sun mask was added after the first colour was brayered. This one is also heat embossed, and matted onto black cardstock. I used a blue & gold washi paper for the card base here, as all the red papers are very heavily patterned, and the result was just too busy. I also stamped  a kanji  letter, onto a piece of card coloured with red ink, then triple embossed and the letter stamped in Black into the last layer.  A coin and a piece of knotted blue ribbon finish it off.

Oriental Poppy #2 Tag

The Oriental Poppy & Script image is clearly very popular, and this is a different take on the theme. I finally found out where I got this from- it was featured recently in Craft Stamper Magazine. It is Aspects of Design, Floral 01, from The Stampman. Here it is stamped on an alcohol ink background, in Black & heat embossed. I cut this into a tag, and cut a slightly larger tag from black glitter paper to matt it on to. I added a chinese coin, and the two little black sticks are cut down cocktail sticks, rolled on an embossing pad and dipped into black embossing powder, then heated! I tied a little red raffia around them, and attached them and the coin with a dab of silicone glue.A few strands of red & black fibres finished off the tag. The paper that covers the base was part of a roll I bought years ago one Christmas at the Hobbycrafts show at the NEC. I added three small coins, which have a little hanging loop at the top, so I secured them with a little bronze coloured brad. A narrow black ribbon was tied in a knot on the left side.
                        I often use a knotted ribbon when I am making a card with no particular person or occasion in mind. I think that knotted ribbon works o.k. on mens cards, whereas a bow is definitely more female. It just means I have a little more flexibility with who I can send it to. That is also why a lot of my cards have no sentiment on them- I add that when I need it.
  I seem to have my mojo back, I have been struggling to make enough time to get into my cards lately, and trying to squeeze them in just hasn't been working for me.

New Sizzix 'Framelits' Cutting Dies & Cuttlebug

I have seen a few questions asked regarding these new Sizzix wafer thin dies and their compatibility with the Cuttlebug. Well, the answer is YES, they ARE compatible.












 Here the Sizzix die has been put through the 'Bug using the standard A,C,die, card, B sandwich.


There are two differences between these dies and Nesties. The first is the position of the cutting edge.

  In the Nesties, it is in the width of the die, and I have noticed that the position varies from one die shape to another.

 As you can see from these two, in the Labels Die(right), it is pretty much in the centre of the die, but in the Scalloped Ovals, it is almost at the edge.

The big selling point with the Sizzix is that the cutting edge is RIGHT ON the edge, so in their words-'what you see is what you cut'. So if you want to frame an image you've stamped, or a photo, there is no guesswork as to what you will end up with- I can see their point, but personally I would just cut the shape out of cheap copy paper first, then use that to line up.
The other big difference is that you CANNOT emboss with these dies, only cut. I didn't actually realise that when I bought them, and it may have influenced me against them, to be honest, if I had. I got these as I had a promo e-mail from  Craft Superstore, who had them on offer in 2-pack combos, and I liked the number of dies in this particular set,8 in each, and circles are really useful.
However, I thought the lack of embossing a drawback, and wondered if there was a way around this. And the answer is, yes there is!
I have seen videos on Youtube about creating a 'blank' area inside an embossing folder, and tried something similar.

Firstly I cut a large scalloped circle, then chose a plain circle that would just fit inside this shape.

   Next, I layered them one above the other, and held them together with a little re-positionable adhesive.

Here are the two die cuts, so you can see what I mean. Before attempting to emboss, I flipped them over,so the plain circle was underneath.



Now I layered up on the A plate with the Tan embossing mat, two card shims, and the 2 B plates. Although this did emboss, it wasn't as crisp as I would have liked, so I repeated it with three card shims.

 The final sandwich:
A plate
Die cuts
Tan mat
3 card shims
2 B plates





 Remember: Every 'Bug is different- be careful when adding shims, and start with less- you can add card/paper shims much easier than you can replace a broken 'Bug! This works in mine- yours may need more, or less. Remember also it will depend on the thickness of your die-cuts. The thicker they are, the less you will need in shims.





Here are the two pieces separated again, and you can see the scalloped shape is now embossed!


I've enlarged it here so you can see it more clearly.

It's no real hardship to do it this way,and it does have the advantage of some creativity- you can choose how wide you want your embossed border, and could choose to have it either plain, or scalloped. So for anyone who has bought them, and want to emboss, now you can.

WOYWW# 116- Inkpads & Promarkers

This week I had a play with some inkpads!
Being fairly new to Promarkers, I have picked up some of the basic rules about which inks to use with them- definitely not Staz-on, and that pretty much everyone recommends Memento.So I was browsing the net, as you do, and found that actually quite a few people were also recommending that you could use a number of other ink pads with them, and then someone else would say no you can't! So I decided I would try out any of the pads they said you could use, which I own.
These are the results:

Memento (left) Archival (centre) and Adirondack Dye (right)

The Memento, on the left, obviously works well- the image stays nice and crisp. The Archival, in the centre, shows clear blurring of the image (Ignore the slightly wonky stamping here).  The third one, Adirondack Dye, Pitch Black, actually gave me a real surprise- no blurring of the image when I coloured over it, even when I used the blender pen, and a nice strong, crisp black image.

Versafine (left) & Impress (right)

    
  These two inkpads are recommended by a number of people, but I got a very poor result from both.On the right the Versafine shows clear blurring of the inked image, yet a lot of people said this works fine for them,but it is possible that this one works if you are colouring inside an outline image rather than colouring over the top of the ink. The Impress image, (this was the only colour I have in Impress pads, they were on sale somewhere, lol) really doesn't work at all, although I did get some interesting colours from where the ink blended with my Promarkers, even if that wasn't the intended result! Again, a few people said it works fine, maybe the black does, or maybe it works as an outline image. I will test this out later and post the results.
 Another point seems to be card or paper- everyone has their own preference. These samples above were done on plain white 100gsm multi-copy paper from Staples.Yet the Memento and Adirondack performed really well.  But just in case the paper type had a bearing on the Versafine & Archival, I tried both on NEENAH card, which seems to be one that almost everyone recommends.

Archival (left) & Versafine (right)

 Again, the Archival on the left performed really badly,(if anything worse on this card than plain paper),the blurring around the butterfly isn't my attempt at blending, its almost as if the Promarkers 'bleach' away the ink colour. You could get some interesting (but probably not very controllable) effects though. The Versafine on the right didn't fare any better, you can see that it still smudges & blurs any fine detail, I didn't think there was really any difference between the two types of card/paper. Oddly enough though, I did notice more bleeding of the Promarkers outside the image lines than I had on the copy paper-not sure if this was just me being a little careless, or if it does bleed more.  I will be trying a few more images in outline, to see if that improves how the Archival, Versafine & Impress perform, and I have ordered a Letraset Bleedproof pad, which is recommended also for Promarkers, so I shall do some comparison images on that too when it arrives. Have a great WOYWW.

85th Birthday

The lady who ordered the Ruby Anniversary card, also wanted a card for her Mothers 85th Birthday, and again I went with an easel design. The base and face of the easel were covered in a rose print paper, and both edged with a silver peeloff border and corners. as the lady seems to be wearing a pale lilac and silver dress, I went with these colours for the card. I cut silver & lilac paper with a deckle edge blade on three sides, then punched a fancy border on the last side. These were layered up, then the photo matted on top. I wrapped White & lilac ribbon around the front and tied in a bow before I mounted it onto the easel. A triple embossed heart in White & silver finished the front. The base uses Nesties Petite scalloped rectangles, again in Silver & lilac with white/lilac roses (Craft Creations) in the corners.The word MOM was cut out with a Quickutz squeeze and Alphabet die. Its been a very long time since I last used that- I'm not even sure if they are still making them! I bought it very early in my crafting, to add names, ages etc to cards, then got annoyed at not having any real choice in size of letters, and that I would constantly have to buy new Alpha sets if I wanted a different style, and still not have much of a size range. So I ended up buying a Silhouette digital cutter- I found them on a really good promotion, loved the fact that I could cut any font on my PC, in any size I wanted. I have had it now for about 7 years, and I have to say it was the best money ever spent, when you consider the cost of Alphabet sets/shape dies for manual machines.