Berries

Good morning again.

For the second card of the day we have Berries for the Totally Papercrafts #69 - Get Fruity challenge.

I have been practicing with the Sheena Douglass paint fusion techniques and so here is one of my attempts featuring Blackberries.

This was painted on mount board 4" x 4" in size. The background was created by using the vaseline technique so that the cream coat of paint does not stick where the vaseline was placed which shows the brown undercoat.

After stamping and painting the picture, the word Berries was stamped in green ink. It was aged with distress ink and then edged with gold embossing powder. This was matted onto dark green card, then a lighter one to tone with the lighter green on the leaves and this was bonded to the square, dark green base card. The leaves, were pre-cut ones from a kit that I have had for years. They were slightly manipulated to raise the leaves up to give more texture and depth to the card.

Friendship

Good morning. My second post so far today. Desperately trying to catch up on Challenge entries.

This one is for Totally Papercrafts 1st Birthday. The theme was Friendship for which I had nothing suitable amongst all my many hundreds of stamps, Therefore I had to go for a digital stamp from the new MCS "Violet" CD Rom. This is a very different card for me as usually I do not do "cute"

The background for this also came from the same CD with an overlay of pink lace. The frame was cut out and placed over the top of the image which was coloured with Promarkers. Several lots of flowers were printed so they could be decoupaged to add extra interest.

The background is matted onto silver mirror card which was wrapped with pink satin/organza before adding to the pink A5 base card.

The sentiment,which says "When I was a little girl..... I wanted a Best Friend just like you!" was printed from MCS, cut with a Nestie and mounted onto a silver Nestie shape before being added to the card with foam pads. The double pink bow as added to complete the effect.

New Home Card

Good morning.

Thursday already. Nearly the end of the week. It is all down hill to the weekend from here! Excellent. More time from crafting!

This card is for the Crafty Creations Challenge  - New Beginnings. I chose New Home for the theme as I just love this cottage stamp by Clarity. A lot went into making this card so here goes........

Card size A4 in cream hammered card.

Background paper - I designed the pattern  in My Craft Studio, printed it on a laser printer and hot foiled it in gold.

Tag - coloured with various Distress Inks, stamped with the cottage in brown, the sentiment, computer printed as I did not have a suitable stamp, tinted with ink, trimmed and bonded to the  tag and some lovely rusty coloured organza ribbon threaded onto it.

Flower embellishments -  cream card, sprayed with various Glimmer Mists, stamped with the flower (sorry, I can't remember the manufacturer) and cut out when dry.

Matting layer under the main image - white glossy card to which was applied various colours of alcohol inks with gold mixive added.

Main image - white glossy card (A6). Cottage stamped applied so that it is the opposite of the stamp by using a brayer. Cottage stamp applied directly to the card above the reflected one. Same technique for the trees. The water was brayered in place after running the brayer over crumpled paper Sky brayered on after masking the main cottage. Hills added in the background by sponging ink over torn paper. Finally the edges were ined to give a vignette look to the completed artwork. Thanks to Barbara Grey for all those techniques.

The image and 1st mat were mounted onto cream card to give definition and the card was assembled to give the finished look.

Challenge link: Crafty Creations - New Beginnings

Flower Card for the Critter Sketch Challenge #46

Good morning. I obviously am trying to be optimistic and think of Spring as this is my second flower based card of the week. It is just such a shame that it is snowing outside (again)!

The base dark green card was cut with the largest of the Grand Square Scalloped Nestabilities using my new Grand Calibre machine (a Christmas present to myself!).

The background was cut with the same, but 2 sizes smaller, from a sheet of card which I coloured with various green chalk inks, sprayed with 2 colours of green Glimmer mists and stamped with the snowdrop stamp from Sheena Douglass using Bottle Adirondack ink.

The main snow drop image and the gorgeous sentiment (a Clarity stamp) were stamped on watercolour card with Versamark and embossed with gold WOW powder. The snowdrops were coloured with Aquamarkers and the edges of both tinted with Shabby Shutters Distress ink. They were both cut out with Nestabilities and mounted on gold mirror card also cut with Nestabilities.

The vertical strip is green mirror card with a thinner strip of gold mirror card added on top. The horizontal piece of card is the same as the base card with decorative corners added with a Fiskars corner punch.

The whole card was assembled with double sided tape except for the image which was mounted with foam pads to make it stand out. A gold ribbon bow and three gold pearls were added as the finishing touches to complete the card against the requirements of the sketch. I do hope you like the finished effect.

Challenge link: Critter Sketch Challenge #46

Flower Card for Sketch and Stash Challnge #52

Good morning. Here is what I consider to be a fairly dramatic card for this sketch challenge. The stash used are the large fabric flowers which I won in a sort of crafting lucky dip over a year ago and have never quite known what to do with them as they are so large - about 6" (15cm) in diameter. They have been used to enhance the size of the image on an 8" x 8" size card.

Gone Fishing

January is here which means 2 men's cards in the first week of the year for 2 birthdays on the 8th of the month! Consequently I panic as they are always difficult, as we all know.

So here is the first one for the man who is a fishing addict. This is being entered into 2 challenges, the links of which are given below. The card layout is based on challenge #8 of the Sketch and Stash Challenge site - the challenge (#51) being to use my own choice of the previous challenge sketches. I have owned the stamp and CD ROM for well over a year and this is the first time I have used it. The second challenge is 'Anything Goes' , Challenge #17 for the CES blog.

Not my usual type of card, as you can see. I have had to resort to CD ROMs etc for the backing papers which I do not usually do.

This backing paper and border come from a Crafter's Companion CD for Men. The main image and the fish embellishments are from the stamp set that accompany the CD ROM.

The main image and the fishes were stamped onto watercolour card with Espresso Adirondack ink. A damp brush was used on the main image to colour it by drawing the ink from the image and painting with it. The fish were left, just as they were stamped - no brushing required.

Three colours of Distress ink were used to 'age' the edges of the picture after it was trimmed to size. Once dry it was matted onto copper mirror card to give some definition. The fish were cut out and put to one side for the assembly at the end. The distress ink was also used to tint the edges of the border.

The base card is 7" x 7". A piece of the background paper 6.75" x 6.75" was matted onto the card and the various other elements applied with double sided tape except for the main image which was raised off the surface with foam pads. The copper blobs in the corners of the brown layer were made with Pearlidoodles.

Challenge links: http://ceschallenges.blogspot.com/2010/12/challenge-17-anything-goes.html

http://sketchandstashchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/12/sketch-n-stash-challenge-51.html

Pink Roses

A second post today to catch up on another challenge. This is for the Crafty Creations Challenge #98 - Photo Inspirations. From the photo I took the colour pink and rose elements from the fabric.

On a 6" cream base card I layered up some very pretty pale pink and cream paper which is a very old design from Joanna Sheen. It is very delicate and features roses and hearts.

The rose images, both the spray and the individual corner flowers are from Creative Expressions stamps. The spray and 4 single blooms were stamped onto slightly textured cream card with Versamark and embossed with Platinum WOW powder. These were coloured in with two shades of pink Twinkling H2Os to give a slight sheen.

For the main image, once the paint was dry, the shape was cut out with a square scalloped Nestability. The edges were then tinted with Tattered Rose and Worn Lipstick Distress inks using a blending tool. The four individual blooms were cut out, just outside the embossed line.

The main image was bonded in place with double sided tape. The leaves, which were part of a prize for winning a challenge, were mounted in place with Pinflair glue as were the 4 roses.

Challenge link: http://craftycreationschallenges.blogspot.com/2010/12/challenge-98-photo-inspiration.html

Spring Card

Good morning. I seem to have nothing but clear snow for the last couple of days so it is good to find some time for some crafting again.

This card is for the Critter Challenge #44 - No pattern paper.

I really enjoyed this one. I got right away from Christmas, Christmas colours etc and went for a spring theme.

The stamps are from Sheena Douglass' A Little Bit Sketchy range - Poppies and Daisies.

The base card is A5 in size in a very pale yellow hammered card. The flower strip is fabric and a very old part of my stash that I just knew would be needed one day.

A dark yellow linen card was embossed with a Cuttlebug Embossing Folder and then Spiced Marmalade Distress ink was applied on the raised areas to highlight the embossing. This was matted onto gold mirror card and applied to the base card.

The main image was stamped onto cream, slightly textured card and embossed with Platinum WOW powder. The image was tinted with Aquamarkers. Once trimmed to size, the edges of the card were coloured with Dried Marigold and Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink. The small daisies were stamped, embossed and coloured in the same way. The lovely sentiment was stamped and embossed on another piece of cream card which had been cut out and embossed with a square scalloped Nestability. The edges were tinted with the same Distress inks again. The image was matted onto a piece of gold mirror card which was the waste from cutting out a frame with a Shapability. The sentiment was matted onto a slightly bigger square scalloped gold mirror matte.

All of these elements were then added to the base card. As a finishing touch the individual daisies were added to the sentiment.

Challenge link: http://critterchallengeblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/challenge-44no-pattern-paper.html

Bear Card for 3 Challenges

Good morning and welcome to another cold and frosty one.

This card is for three challenges, the links for which are given below. Two challenges and a Bear Theme on the other other was anything but a Christmas card.

I am a great bear lover, having a collection of about 60 of them. Therefore I was horrified to realise the I had nothing about bears in my craft collection. Consequently I had to make do with what I had got i.e a lot of stuff bears. So it is my pleasure to introduce to your Spencer Bear.

I took a photograph of him and imported it into Digital Scrapbook Artist 2. I put the photograph through Cut Out Studio and removed all the background. Then in Photo Lab I removed the colour and gave it more of a sketch look. Once printed on Super Smooth paper, he was recoloured using Promarkers and then the edges aged with 2 different colours of Distress ink.

The background was a piece of white card that I was using to mop up excess Glimmer Mist sprays last week when I was making a large batch of A4 decorated card up for future use. When the masks got too much spray on them I put them upside down onto the sheet and the excess spray was transferred. Do this enough times and you get some quite interesting patterns! This card was trimmed to size and then any white areas covered over with distress ink and the edges aged with ink too.

A ribbon was wrapped around the card and then it was bonded to the dark brown A5 base card.

Mean while the picture and a backing mat was cut out with some Nestabilities. These were mounted onto the card and the three flowers, which I made a few weeks ago, were attached with Pinflair Glue.

Challenge Links:

http://craftycreationschallenges.blogspot.com/2010/12/challenge97-beary-project.html

http://craftycatzweeklychallenge.blogspot.com/2010/12/craftycatz-birthday-bear-challenge.html

http://ceschallenges.blogspot.com/2010/12/challenge-16-anything-but-christmas.html

Dragon Challenge Card

Here, I hope, is a different card for the Critter Sketch Challenge #39 - Dragons. See below for the web address) This card incorporates several of my favourite crafts - rubber stamping, encaustic art and Friendly Plastic.

For the image, the two dragons (Stamps by Encaustic Art International) were stamped with Stazon ink onto glossy card and allowed to dry. An encaustic art scene was then built up around the images in red, purple, dark blue to give a scene of mountains, plains and an unusual sky.

The card was then mounted into an aperture card which had been inked around the border with Worn Lipstick and Dusty Concord Distress inks. This in turn was mounted onto some purple embossed mirror board and onto a dark purple a5 size base card.

The friendly plastic embellishment was made by lining up some thin stick of plastic, warming them with a heat gun until molten and then dragging a special comb though to give the feathered pattern. This was then cut out with a small cookie cutter and whilst still warm it was domed inwards to give the finished shape. This was bonded in position with several thicknesses of foam pads.

Challenge website: http://critterchallengeblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/challenge-39dragons-winner.html

Oriental Fancy Fold Card

This one took a lot of work. A combination of stamping and oriental papers from a Create and Craft kit of many years ago.

The Poppy image is the front of the card and the second photo shows the two inside surfaces and the back.

For the front the beautiful poppy and script stamp was stamped onto white card and embossed in black. It was then painted using Twinkling H2Os. When dry this was matted and layered onto black and red card before being mounted onto the base card red card which had already had gold and red layers added to it.

The 2 inside surfaces were layered with the oriental design papers and were embellished with tags, a cut down card front and some oriental symbols.

The back was a stamped image, again stamped and embossed in black, painted with H2Os and mounted in the same way as the front.

I do hope you like it. This card has been entered into the Spotlight on Fancy Folds challenge with Crafty Cardmakers.