Native American Challenge

The theme of this weeks challenge on Sell Your Craft's Here is "Native American". Wasn't sure if I could come up with anything at first but remembered I had some Tilda stamped images lurking in the depths of my craft drawers and was nicely surprised to find this one.

So after colouring in Tilda with my Promarkers I added a bit of adhesive ribbon for the dress trim and headband. I then set about making a log for her to sit on. This was made very simply by forming a tube out of wood effect card stock and filling in the ends with a circle of lighter brown card.

I then cut out a wigwam shape out of Kraft card and added more adhesive ribbon for decoration. I cut out the door and ceiling flaps out of beige card and used a brown Promarker to draw stitching around the edges. I used the same Promarker to colour 4 coffee stirrers and used these as the wigwam poles.

I made a simple 8 x8 easel card out of white card stock and used green card stock to cover the base, I then used a piece of Kanban background card to make the back of the easel. The wigwam was then mounted onto the card and Tilda was positioned in place.

Just a simple fun card to enter into this weeks challenge - hope you like it.

More Florals

Just a few very simple cards made with the floral toppers mentioned in my previous post.Think the first one would make a lovely wedding card!

Flower Fest

Having made a couple of cards recently, using some of my paper flower stash, I thought it best to give them a bit of tidy up. So I used some old glass tumblers and some circular oasis and hey presto ... paper flower storage!

I plan to make a few cards over the next week, so whilst I was sorting my flowers I made some simple card toppers with a few die cut/punched card shapes. The photo doesn't really do these toppers justice, but hopefully when you see the photo's of the finished cards you will see how nice they are.

Victorian Inspiration 2

 

Original

For me to venture into the world of distressing is a big thing! Those that know me will tell you I don't do "messy crafting". But as I was feeling decidedly brave, I thought I'd dust off my distress inks and give it a go. Was pleased with the effect on the edges of the backing paper but the doily soaked up way too much ink. Card is ok overall but prefer the pale blue one I made earlier.



Re-worked Version

Update Sunday 9th October 2011 - I really didn't like the first attempt so i reworked it with a little less distress ink on the doily, plus I altered the layout of the flowers. Feel happier now! lol

A Victorian Inspired Card

I am a member of a Facebook page called Sell Your Crafts Here. It is a page where crafters can sell or even swap their excess crafting stash. There is also a weekly challenge on this page which all members are welcome to enter.
The theme of this weeks challenge was "Victorian". I really struggled with the theme at first, as I don't own any Victorian stamps or images. But having done a little research into the greetings cards from this era (OK ....I Googled - lol!) I noticed that a lot of the cards were floral and doily based. As I have both of these elements in plentiful supply, I came up with this 8 x8 card.

It really was so simple and satisfying to make. Going against all the rules, I glued the outer edge of the doily to pale blue bobble dots card stock then poked the wire flower stems through some of the holes in the centre of the doily. I added a peel off in each corner and pricked, matted and layered a decorative piece of card in the centre and added a sentiment.

Love this card so much I am going to make another one in a different colour and may even distress the doily with some distress inks! Watch this space!!

A Blue Card Challenge

And NO, before you all get the wrong idea it was not a challenge for a naughty blue card, it was a challenge to see how many different types of card I could come up with on the theme of the colour blue!

So I raided my stash of blue papers, cards, toppers, ribbons, peel-offs, buttons and gems and came up with the 8 cards shown in the photo's. There were actually 12 in total but I can't seem to find the photo of the other 4!

Nothing complicated this time, just a simple bit of cut and stick!

Going Crackers ....

Another of my purchases this weekend was a pack of 6 Christmas Cracker blanks by Stix2. I have just finished decorating my first set and am so pleased with the results.

The card stock used is from a pack by DCWV "The Natural Stack" lots of beautiful designs in cream and brown, with the addition of gorgeous copper foiling on some of them.

I used my Woodware Crafty Edger to punch strips of the card and then threaded co-ordinating card or ribbon through the holes in the card. I also used thin strips of glitter card, copper foiled adhesive Merry Christmas messages, adhesive gems and ribbon to decorate.

The packs of 6 blanks come in white (as shown in the photo), red, silver and gold. They also include the snaps to go inside the cracker but you do need to provide your own joke, xmas hat and small gift!

Woodware Crafty Edger

Another thing that was demonstrated by Michelle Johnson at the Bee Crafty Demo Day on Saturday was this wonderful new gadget by Woodware, called the Crafty Edger.

The Crafty Edger allows you to punch border strips up to 12 inches in length with no more worrying about lining up your punches. This is because the punch elements fits into slots along the paper bar at 2 inch increments. Perfect borders in a matter of seconds!

The cost is £19.95 for the main punch, the paper holder/strip and one punch cassette (it comes with the one that looks like a picket fence that you can thread ribbon or paper through). The additional cassettes are £6.99.
There are a number of punch cassettes giving a wide variety of fancy borders. Some of them can be used together to give hybrid borders.

I purchased three extra cassettes on Saturday and just had to go back to Bee Crafty on Sunday to buy another two cassettes.  Woodware also do corner punches for the edger and I will also be purchasing those  as soon as I can get them! Have a feeling my other border punches will be redundant from now on!

Gerberas, Glue & Glitter

What a fabulous week off I have just had, the weather has been fantastic and I have spent lots of time crafting. This post is to share a new technique that I learnt the Demonstration Day kindly arranged by Bee Crafty. The wonderful Michelle Johnson from Woodware & Stix2 came along to demo, armed with a huge array of crafting items, adhesive pads, adhesive sheets, a glue gun and glue sticks, glitters, foils, mica powders and lots of stunning samples. One of the aims of the demo day was to show us how to make our own toppers using a hot glue gun!
To make the centre of card shown above -  First I stamped the image (Woodware's Gerbera Clear Stamp) using a Versamark watermark stamp pad, then I sprinkled copper coloured embossing powder over the image, tapped off the excess and used my heat gun to emboss the image. I went around the image with a Promarker with an extra fine nib, to give the image a little more depth. Then matted and layered it onto a couple of pieces of copper card stock (one mirror card, the other Matt).

Then the fun began! Having pre-heated my newly purchased Stix2 glue gun I squeezed some glue (about the size of a two pound coin) onto a heat proof craft sheet. I covered the surface of my Gerbera clear stamp with some more Versamark and then pressed it into the glue. (Don't use a stamp block for this stage as you need to be able to feel the temperature of the stamp) Once the back of the stamp had cooled down, I gently peeled the stamp away from the glue and was amazed that I was left with a rreplica of the centre of the Gerbera image. I cut away a few straggly bits and them brushed the surface of the glue image with some mica powder to give it colour. I also added some copper glitter to the centre of the flower for added sparkle. The topper was then added to my card with some strong wet adhesive.

Those who know me will know that I am not one for what I call "messy crafting" but I can honestly say I that having dabbled into the world of messy crafting I am a total convert!!

Am off to get my glue gun out again - all the items used to make the above card are available to purchase  from Bee Crafty - either in person or on-line!

More Xmas Cards

A few more xmas samples