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.

You Leaf Me Breathless

It's the Autumn solstice today so an autumnal-themed card seems appropriate. I've made a gatefold card and used the Sizzix Leaves embossing folder on the two front panels.  I then used pigment ink in red, orange, yellow and green over the embossed detail. The sentiment is stamped on plain white card, then I've gone around the edges with orange ink and finished it off with two pieces of Candi.

I'm entering the following challenges:
4 Crafty Chicks #212 - Fall
Cute Card Thursday 339 - Awesome Autumn

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.

Let's Get Digital!

Wow, it's been a while! I'm currently taking a long summer break visiting family abroad so I've had little opportunity for papercrafting what with my entire stash being on a completely different continent!  But then I remembered that although I don't have any physical items, I do have my laptop and Craft Artist. Yay!

I had downloaded some background papers last Christmas, but wasn't really aware of the world of digital crafting until I watched Create and Craft TV a few months ago.  My first CD was "All About Alphabets" by My Craft Studio, which also came with the My Craft Studio Elite program.  That was OK but it wasn't until I discovered Craft Artist 2 Professional and the DaisyTrail.com digikits that I really got into it.

Birthday card I made for my niece

I love Craft Artist.  It's a really powerful program and it's also been really helpful for creating flyers, adverts and the like for my day job. You can download the starter program for free from the DaisyTrail website.  It doesn't have as much functionality as Craft Artist 2 Professional, but it's still pretty nifty.  The full program is around £20 but if you sign up to the newsletter and keep an eye on Create and Craft TV (and are patient) you might be able to grab it for less than a fiver, which is what I did.

I'm still very much a beginner, but the possibilities seem endless.  I can't wait to carry on creating.