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.

Hello Notecard

I wanted to make some notecards, but as usual found it difficult to start.  I've had the Flower Frame and Tree embossing folder set by Sizzix for a while, but since I got it home I've not really been sure about how to use it.  Well, thankfully inspiration finally struck and I came up with these:

I started off using plain Kraft card,  but the embossing folder didn't quite fit and it looked a bit odd so I decided to use it as a panel instead.  I picked out a few embossed elements to highlight, which was done with watercolour pencils initially, but then I tried painting with mica powders, which gave a much better finish I think (you can see the lower bird looks more crisp than the upper bird).  I had a load of 17mm white circles left over from when I cut a tray to hold lip balm tubes, so I stamped individual letters on each one and layered them up on mica paint-washed kraft and white card to mirror the swirl and for an interesting look. Finished off by mounting the panels onto a card blank.  I like the mixture of kraft, white and colours, but I prefer the white panel on Kraft more than the other way round.  What about you?

I'm entering the following challenges:

Colour Throwdown #338 - Use Green, Teal, Kraft and White

AAA Cards #37 - It's Springtime

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.

Simple Mother's Day Card

 

I was inspired by the sketch in Freshly Made Sketches 175 and the colour palette in Colour Throwdown 331 to create a simple but sweet card for Mother's Day (which is coming up on 15th March here in the UK).

The cue colours were hot pink, light pink, green and Kraft.  I used hot pink organza ribbon, MUM was die cut from Kraft card with the Xcut alphabet die, the flowers were die cut with a Tim Holtz Tattered Florals Sizzix Bigz die, then edged with fuchsia ink and curled for body and dimension, and the leaves were die cut and embossed with a Sizzix Leaf Embosslits die.

Say It With Flowers

It's always nice to get flowers so I made this bouquet card for my sister's birthday.   I bought the gingham flowers but made the pinwheels. I was going to put the flowers in a vase, but ended up creating stems from green mirror card and tying it all together with a red organza bow.

I am going to enter this into the CAS on Sunday Challenge #51: Flowers.  I'm not sure if it counts as CAS as there are quite a few embellishments, but I suppose I'll find out...

Mini Holly Wreaths

I've been having so much fun making mini holly wreaths. They're so adorable and perfectly sized to sit on the front of an A6 card or to make great hanging ornaments for the Christmas tree.

I made the holly in CraftArtist 2 by using the star shape, selecting the number of points and then using the edit nodes function to manipulate the shape.  I then imported the shape (jpeg) into Silhouette software and used the trace function to generate a cut file. Then it was just a matter of filling the page with the holly in a couple of different sizes and cutting them out from lots of different shades of mirror card with my Portrait.  It probably would have been much easier to download the shape from the Silhoutte store, but where's the fun in that?!

I also cut out lots of rings with an outer diameter of 9cm and an inner diameter of 7.5cm to act as the wreath bases.  Before sticking the holly down I hand-embossed each one (using a blunt pencil or scoring tool) with leaf veins. 4mm rhinestones act as berries and the whole thing is finished off with a small bow. 

Various shades of green on the same wreath give the illusion of depth and I also enjoyed playing around with other colours for a more contemporary look. For the hanging ornaments I added a hanging loop and stuck another round of leaves on the backside so that the wreath looks good on both sides.  Made a little bigger they can be used on A5 cards, and a little bigger again they look great as inside door decorations.  I'll definitely be making more wreaths again next year.

Pretty Paper

TK Maxx might seem like an unlikely place to shop for craft and stationery supplies, but it's worth checking out every now and again.  From gorgeous notebooks to paper pads and embellishment packs there are some surprisingly good deals to be had.  Much of the crafty stuff is imported from America and not widely available here so even better value.  My best haul so far was a 180-sheet 12x12 paper pad by Recollections that I snapped up for just £7.99.  

But my latest find (which I L❤VE) hails from these shores; a 2015 calendar by Hammond Gower from their Lace collection.  It's a gorgeous fusion of Kraft card with pops of colour. Love, love, love it! The calendar doesn't actually appear on their website but it looks like it's made up of a collection of their greetings cards. I'll be a happy bunny on New Year's Day when I get to put it up.  Here are some of my favourite months.