Lupin and Holyhocks

Good afternoon,

Another card made using one of my embroidered, inked papers. I made this for a card challenge and stupidly missed the closing date....hey, ho!

The image, from a stamp by Sheena Douglass, was stamped on black card with Versamark ink and dusted with Perfect Pearls mica powder to give a lovely shiny gold image.

My hand made background was trimmed to a suitable size and mounted onto an A5 size blank card along with a black mat.

The ribbon was hand dyed to match the embroidered paper and tied in a double bow for the embellishment.


Zesty Summer Colours Card

Here is a card for the Totally Papercrafts challenge #131 - Zesty Summer Colours


The card is A5 in size. Both background cards  started out white. The green base one was made with various colours of glimmer mist. The smaller one was made by marbling red, orange and yellow inks.


The 4 layer flower is of felt cut out with Spellbinders which were felted together in the centre before being decorated with bright orange flat back gems.The flourish foliage was also created with Spellbinders.

The lime green flower ribbon was something I have had in my stash for years.

Roses and Gems and Twine (Fibres)

It is so long since I entered a card challenge, I am ashamed of myself. So here is the first of what I hope will become a regular thing again!

I have used one of my experimental backgrounds from yesterday's post as the background for this card which is for the Crafty Creations Challenge #184 - Gems and Twine (or fibres)

Well, I didn't have any twine but I have sure packed a lot of fibres into this card!

As the paper was made from 100% cotton rag waste that chalks up one type of fibre. Then the inked cotton paper has been machine embroidered so there are some more fibres and lastly we have the amazing space dyed fibre which matched the background beautifully.

The picture is of roses and rose buds painted, using the one stroke method, with acrylic paints.

Black flat back gems have been used for the studs in the corners of the picture, smaller gems for the butterfly's body and wings and finally a line of clear gems along the bottom of the card.

Experimental Embroidered Background Papers

Good morning. Happy Bank Holiday weekend for those of you living in Britain.

I have actually found some time to play and here is the outcome of my experiments.

I started off with approximately A5 size hand made paper which is made from 100% cotton rag waste. I thought this would be the best as I wanted to attack it with a sewing machine and I thought the rag fibres would hold the stitching better.

However, first I had to colour the paper. This was achieved in my own inimitable style by getting very messy with some water and inks. I admit I had to resort to rubber gloves for this one. The ink was a bit difficult to wash off skin!

Using a non-stick mat to protect everything, I sprayed the paper with a fine mist of water and then used ink from bottles that had dropper attachments to drip the ink onto the slightly soggy paper. It ran quite well by itself but I have to say that in some cases I did help the colours to mix a bit in some areas. Once satisfied with the colours I dried the paper over night. They dried quite a lot lighter than they looked yesterday.

So, this morning, I started playing with the sewing machine and these are my first results. I am pleased with the way they have worked out. See below for some close up shots.

Hopefully, by the end of the weekend, I will have some finished cards to show you so that you can see how they look when incorporated into finished product.