AAA Cards - CAS Game: One Corner With Optional Twist (Old Supplies)

It's been ages since I participated in a blog challenge.  I'm making my comeback with the AAA Cards CAS challenge. The theme for this week is "one corner" with optional twist "love those old supplies". 

I stamped those flowers about 3 years ago then chucked the card into a pile where it's been lying forgotten since then. That counts as an old supply right? I pulled out that stamp set (Hunkydory "Floribunda" - also unused since I stamped those flowers) and stamped the leaves.  The sentiment came from another Hunkudory stamp set "Beautiful Babushkas". I coloured the leaves and flowers with watercolours. 

Stars 🌟

Over on the Less is More blog the latest challenge is a one layer challenge featuring stars.  Here's my attempt:

The stars come from various stamp sets.  I stamped the sentiment into the centre of the card with copper dye ink and added the little star trio at opposite corners.  Then I stamped the spotted stars into the corners with first with gold dye ink and then overstamped with copper, and finally the stripy star into the gaps with the gold ink.

The pictures don't pick up the metallic sheen of the inks very well, but IRL there is a nice shimmer.

I'm also going to enter the latest AAA Cards challenge - inspired by a film. The movie I've chosen is Stardust (love that movie btw). I think that the sentiment could apply to Evain, who shines brightly when she's happy, but also to Tristan who learns the value of being himself.

Text Accents

I've been watching a lot of YouTube for inspiration for mixed media and also making my own embellishments.  I see a lot of people use Tim Holtz's Idea-ology word stickers for text accents.  I don't have any of those, but I do have a few mini alphabet stamps, so I thought it would be fun to make my own (and less expensive too).

For these I used a Dovecraft set, which I got on sale for £1 at Hobbycraft.  Stamp any words that you like then cut out the strip.  It's a quick, easy and cheap way to add text accents to projects, with the added benefits that you only get the words that you want as many times as you want.  The stamp sets come in various styles, so could work for lots of different types of projects.

This is not a sponsored post and does NOT contain affiliate links.  These are my own opions based on products that I have bought.

Hello!

It's been a while since I entered a cardmaking challenge or posted on the blog.  It seems appropriate to start off my comeback with a "Hello".

I got this gorgeous "hello" stamp as a freebie with a Docrafts Creativity magazine and it's been languishing in the bottom of my stamp stash for months.  I can't believe that I waited this long to use it, but now that it's made its debut I can see it being used a lot.

The background was made by flicking gold paint onto the card base.  The sentiment was stamped onto a card panel and heat embossed with gold.  I then made a rough outline of the sentiment panel with a gold pen and popped it up on the card base with foam tape.  Three gold gems, placed randomly finished off the card.

Today I'm entering the following challenges:

Daring Cardmakers (New), and
CAS-Ual Fridays (Gold)

Sparkle and Shine ATC

It's been a while since I posted and since I entered the Wicked Wednesday ATC challenge.  It's good to be back!  The theme this time is "Make it Sparkle", and here's what I made:

I started with an ATC base made from an old cereal box, which I covered with patterned paper.  I then stamped and die cut the chandelier, and coloured the die cut with a very light off-white, just to soften it a little.  I went over the lights with pastel yellow 3D Pearl Effects, and the jewels on the chandelier with silver glitter glue.  The chandelier was getting lost against the background so I toned the background down with a little gesso and used foam pads to raise the chandelier.  I tried to create a warm glow from the lights with yellow ink on the background.  The words were stamped on white card; "shine" was also embossed in gold (although in hindsight maybe I should have used silver to match the rest of the ATC).  Glitter glue around "sparkle" and a couple of gems on "shine" finished everything off.

Furry Friends

It's been a while! I didn't mean to take so much time off. 

I'm joining in with the Wicked Wednesday ATC Challenge. The theme for the last week was "Furry Friends".

The background was one that I had made before (I like to make a few at a time).  The paw prints came from the docrafts Little Meow stamp set.  I also stamped some random feathers in pink & silver inks. 

The cat also came from the Little Meow stamp set.  She looked to me like she was looking at something so I added a little bird from another stamp/die set I have.  I wasn't sure what words to use so I just stamped "meow".

I felt like it needed a little something else so I added the dots and dashes border.  I tried to use puff paint for the dots to get some texture, which sort of worked.  It was my first time using it so I haven't quite gotten the hang of the technique.

Pisces

I haven't played along with the Wicked Wednesday ATC Challenge for a while.  I just never seemed to get around to it.  But this week I made a point to get in on time! 

The theme this week is "Zodiac Signs".  I got a set of Tropical-themed stamps with last months "Creative Stamper" magazine and I chose the rather fabulous-looking fish for Pisces.  

The background is watercolour card that's been used to mop up excess paint.  I want over it with a fairly wet wash of Luminarte Acrylic Glaze in Azurite.  The fish was stamped and embossed in black and then coloured with alcohol markers and a white gel pen.  I used a bubbles stencil (homemade) to sponge on some white ink around the fish.  

The colours are more muted than I would have liked due to being coloured onto a darker background.  If I were to do it again I'd stamp first, mask off the fish, lay down the background and then colour. 

Moroccan Inspired Cards

I bought the Sizzix Peacock* and Moroccan Flowers stamps + die sets recently and I love them. LOVE THEM! I also bought several of the Moroccan label dies. Although I really like them, I found myself struggling to come up with a decent layout, but thankfully I got there in the end.

First off I embossed a piece of red mirror card with my Xcut Moroccan Flower Tiles folder.  Then I cut a label with the Sizzix Tangier die and stuck that on top of the mirror card.  (I like the way the red shows through the decorative elements of the label.)  Then using one of the stamps fron the Peacock set I stamped and embossed the detail in red before cutting out the shape with the corresponding die.  The sentiment is attached to the centre of the label using foam pads.

The second card used another stamp from the Peacock collection.  I stamped a repeating pattern on the blank card using white ink then heat embossed with clear embossing powder.  I then used my inks to create the warm orange/yellow/red background.  To bring out the embossed detail I buffed those areas with a dry baby wipe, which removed any ink from the top.

The die cut was done with the Sizzix Arabesque Flower die using red mirror card again.  I used the same stamp/die/sentiment combi as before, but this time I embossed in gold. Again I used foam pads to adhere the sentiment.

I love how these cards turned out.  Both quite simple but really striking.  And so my love affair with the Sizzix Moroccan Collection dies & stamps goes on.

I'm entering the following challenges:
CAS-ual Fridays - Embossing
CAS on Sunday - #62 Embossing
Daring Cardmakers - No Black, No Neutrals
CAsology - Repeat

*I have used some affiliate links in this post.

Joyous Moon ATC

I made this ATC for the Wicked Wednesday ATC Challenge last week, but I forgot to post about it and missed the deadline to link up.  But I think it's really pretty so I'm going to share it anyway.

I started with watercolour card and painted stripes of blue - from light blue to blue black - across the card with acrylic paint.  When that had dried, I used a circle die as a stencil and used white paint to make the moon.  I used a stencil brush and was quite liberal with the paint.  It gave a nice textured surface which I thought represented the moon quite well.  When dry, I inked a stamp from the Sizzix Winter Charms collection with silver ink and stamped over the moon.  The text is an extract from the dictionary definition of joy.  Finally I stamped the grassy silhouette along the bottom.

My First Shaker Card

This is a straight-up CASE of a card by Vicky Papaioannu..  I've never really felt compelled to make a shaker card, but I loved the softness and the diffused effect that using vellum gives, so I decided to give my own a go.

To start with I cut three rectangles 12.85cm x 8.5 cm from patterned paper, plain white card and vellum.  To make a frame I measured 1.5cm in from all sides on the back of the white rectangle and then cut the middle section out using a craft knife.  (I may use my Silhouette to make up a load of these rectangles and frames for future use, as I'm pretty rubbish with a craft knife and even this simple task was a bit of a pain!)

I stamped the image and sentiment onto the vellum using silver pigment ink and then covered that with silver embossing powder. Heat embossing happens quickly on vellum so keep the heat tool moving to avoid bubbling.  Then placing the embossed vellum face down, I attached double-sided foam tape around the four edges of the vellum, sprinkled in some sequins then placed the patterned paper rectangle on top (also face down).  And that's the shaker compartment done.

I had intended to use the same patterned paper as a mat for the shaker compartment, but forgot!  Instead I used a lovely bright blue paper, which matched the colour tones of the sequins.  So there you go - my first shaker card!  I don't think it'll be the last...

I'm entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge and The Paper Players Tic Tac Toe challenge (any shade of blue / Embossing / Patterned paper).

Spread Your Wings and Fly

The challenge this week on the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is to use an inspiration colour swatch.

Isn't it delicious?  This combination of colours seems to be really popular at the moment, and rightly so because it's lovely.

Whenever I use paints, if there is any left over I brush it over watercolour paper to make backgrounds for future use.  It just so happens that some of the backgrounds matched this swatch beautifully.  So I stuck two of the watercoloured panels to a card front.  I recently bought a new stamp  - a butterfly surrounded by the words "Spread your wings and fly" and added small butterflies from the Hot Off The Press "Dressform" mini stamp set.  I added some gems in teal and light blue as butterfly trails, and then added a sentiment to the top left corner.  The edges are inked with a light pink pigment ink.

Capture Joy ATC

I really enjoy blog challenges. I find them an excellent source of inspiration and I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting ones. So I was pleased to find a blog dedicated to the ATC (that's Artist Trading Card to the uninitiated).  The subject of the latest Wicked Wednesday ATC Challenge is "polka dots".

I've heard of ATC's but have never made one before.  I thought that having a smaller area to work with would be easier, but it's every bit as challenging as trying to fill a large page!  Anyway, this is my attempt:

I started by covering an ATC-sized piece of Kraft card with polka dot patterned paper.  I went over that with a thin layer of gesso to mute the colour a bit. Then I randomly stamped small honeycombs and flourishes all over using silver and black pigment ink.  I tried to ink through some stencils that I made, but it didn't really work out.  It just kind of looks like I've smudged ink on the background 😀.  I used a white gel pen to draw different sized circles on the background.  Then I die cut and embossed the umbrella (from the Sizzix "Hello Rainbow" set) three times from patterned paper, silver mirror card and black paper, then pieced them together.  The raised parts of the umbrella were highlighted with the white gel pen.  

I then stuck on the hearts (waste from another die cut << never throw anything away!) with largest at the bottom and teeny tiny ones at the top, to give the impression that they were floating off into the distance.  I went around the umbrella and the hearts with a grey marker, and dotted around the hearts with the white gel pen again to help lift them from the background. Finally, I stamped and embossed the sentiment, which unfortunately didn't stamp very crisply or cleanly.  More practice needed!  

I really enjoyed making this tiny piece of art and I'm looking forward to the next challenge.

Home Sweet Home

A couple of weeks ago on Create and Craft TV I watched a programme about Stampbord, which I'd never heard of before.  The demonstrator made a lovely night scene as though looking through a window.  Just by layering inks and stamping and creating texture, she produced a really lovely piece of art.  It took a lot of willpower not to buy up every piece of Stampbord on the show (those people really know what they're doing!).  I really wanted to have a go, and then I remembered that I had quite a bit of greyboard left over from a previous impulse buy.

Now, I'm a creative person, but I wouldn't call myself artistic.  As I've found since starting cardmaking, composition is a real skill.  So it was with some hesitation that I cut the board down to size and prepared to get started on my first mixed media masterpiece.

I used three pieces about 9 x 6.5cm (roughly 3.5 x 2.5in).  I covered them in patterned paper  and then painted the backs with white gesso.  I also applied a  thin layer of gesso over the top of the papers to mute the colours a little.  I then stamped and embossed the word "HOME" in purple on two pieces, then wrote  "Sweet" with a Versamarker (my new favourite thing!) and embossed that in blue.  I stamped then embossed a couple of bird silhouettes on the HOME panels,  On all three panels I used a flower and foliage stamp with silver ink, then over-stamped the flowers in a different colour.  I didn't like the way that it looked so I painted over the silver ink with Moss Green Luminarte Silk Acrylic Glaze.  Then I attached a few flowers made from air-drying clay and ran purple organza ribbon along the back to hold the three panels together and make a hanging loop.

It's quite pretty and I like the way it turned out, but it is very basic.  Having seen a few mixed media tutorials since making my wall hanging, I see that I could have gone much further with creating the backgrounds and layering, but then that's what learning is all about.  I've still got a lot of greyboard left, and I'm already thinking about my next project...

Make A Wish

I'm playing along with Freshly Made Sketches 183 .

Here's my interpretation:

I embossed the card blank and used strips of paper to reproduce the sketch.  I also tried working with vellum for the first time - embossing the dandelion seed heads and sentiment in gold.  I thought it would be a good way to add a stamped image without completely obscuring the patterned paper underneath.  I discovered that embossing happens really fast on vellum, and gets really hot! The embossing powder started bubbling at one point.  Also, as I wasn't sure how glue would show up under the vellum, I only glued the outer edge.  In future, I would use a different method. The wet glue caused the vellum to ripple and because it isn't stuck down in the middle, I ended up with a sort of pocket effect.  But having said that I think it looks quite nice.

Bare Naked CAS

Inspired by the challenge over on AAA Cards I have made three "bare naked" CAS cards. The first uses a stamp from the Hobby Art Owl collection - so sweet!  He looked kind of pensive to me so I thought the "Thinking of You" sentiment was perfect.

The second is along the same lines but I changed the stamped image and also the orientation of the card.  And of course roses and love are another perfect pairing. I'm also going to add this to the CAS-ology challenge.

And finally, I embossed 2 pieces of plain white card, stuck one on the front of the card, then cut out and inked a single butterfly from the other, stuck it over the top of a plain butterfly and folded the wings back. Finished of with a teeny sentiment from the Hot Off The Press dragonfly mini stamp set.

Hummingbird

I made this card for the CAS on Sunday challenge #42 - Sequins Celebration and Crafty Little Fairies - Sparkle and Bling challenges.  I got a set of adorable mini stamps by Hero Arts, including a lovely hummingbird set, which I've used here.  I then painted the hummingbird with mica powders - I love the shimmery effect, although it doesn't really show up very well in the photos. The flower was coloured with watercolour pencils.  

Now, when it comes to stamping and colouring, I'm as fresh as a daisy.  One of the things that I noticed was how the mica powder "paint" partially obscures the black, stamped outline.  If I was going to repeat this card, I think that I would try using an embossing powder, which would then act as a resist and keep the outline crisp and sharp.

I didn't read the challenge properly - I missed the part about "celebration", so I went back sand stamped "Happy Birthday" at the top.  I actually prefer the original version. What about you?

(Faux) Stitching and Sewing

I made this card for the 4 Crafty Chicks challenge #210. Although I missed the deadline I thought I'd show it anyway.  The brief was Real/Faux Stitching.

A while ago, on a whim, I bought a very discounted We R Memory Keepers Sew Easy with several piercing attachments. I used the crisscross attachment along the left edge, but then I couldn't be bothered to actually sew it, so I did some faux stitching instead.

The dress form stamp was another impulse buy.  I tried to shadow stamp the image in the background, then stamped a clear image on white card, which I cut out and layered right at the centre. 

The sentiment came from a Tilly Daydream paper pack with a stitchy theme. I faux stitched around the edge then made tiny snips all the way around to give the effect of frayed material.

The card looked a little bare so I coloured part of the stamped image and stuck a matching organza ribbon flower on the side. In hindsight I probably should have matched the red from the sentiment instead of using pink.

CASE Study Challenge #195

This week I'm joining in with the CASE Study Challenge (CASE stands for copy and steal everything, by the way).  This is the design that was set: 

And here's my interpretation:

I used white pigment ink on Kraft card. At first the white really stood out, but as it dried it seemed to fade a little. Maybe the Kraft card soaked it up. So although I like the result, it's not as punchy as I would have liked. 

Then I thought about stamping with acrylic paint instead, to get a bolder finish, so that's what I did here:

The result is definitely bolder, but it has a different look to stamping with ink. This was my first attempt at stamping with acrylic paint. At first I applied the paint directly on to the stamp, but I was a tad heavy-handed and some of the finer detail was lost.  So then I applied the paint onto an acetate sheet and then pressed the stamp into that before stamping on the card.  The result was much better doing it that way.  It's not as crisp as the ink-stamped version, but I think it has its own charm.

Finally, because the white was not very bold, I wanted to do a comparison with black ink, and here it is:

The design definitely stands out more in black, but I'm not sure which version I like the best.  I was thinking that perhaps the black version would make a nice sympathy card if the white mat behind the sentiment was changed to black.  I also thought that another version of the white using embossing powder might be a good way to make the white stamping pop.

I am entering the following challenges:

CASE Study Challenge #195

Moving Along With The Times - Clean and Simple