Saturday 30 April 2016

Teal Butterflies

I dusted off my brayer for this card. I bought it early on in my card making career and used it with variable results. I also bought coated, shiny card which is easy to blend ink on but is REALLY hard to stamp well on. No wonder I had so much trouble. Long ago I moved on to smooth or matt with much better results. I still have some though and that is what I used here. 



I inked the Teal Zeal (Momento) over the top and bottom corner and a little Tumbled Glass (DI) in the middle. Then I embossed the butterflies. It's a Darice folder called Butterflies, quite appropriately. This is one of my bargains from last week. 
I inked over the butterflies with a sponge to highlight them and then attempted to coat just the butterflies with Versamark. I used clear embossing powder to give a sheen. 
I wanted to add a white on black sentiment, which looks very smart and is in vogue just now, but that is a step too far for me.  Embossing powder too messy, white ink too tricky. 
I want to give this to a friend who I don't think is into too much fuss or frills so I didn't add any extra decoration. 
I'd like to enter this into:
The Butterfly Challenge - T is for teal and/or texture and
Cuttlebugmania - Butterflies. I've used a Big Shot (which is a pretty teal colour) and Darice folder.

Tuesday 26 April 2016

Spring flowers

I went to a Craft show on Saturday. I'm not really in need of more craft stuff but what can you do when it's only 5 miles down the road and your friend says 'Lets go'? I didn't spend too much and got plenty of bargains. I've only managed to make things I don't like recently but new stuff has inspired me to get going again. 


I'm very pleased as I've used:
One new stamp. Central flower. I came across the Little Claire Designs stall at the end of the show when I had already spent enough (but not too much!) so only bought one of their stamps but I could easily have bought many more. I decided to go home and checkout their website for future reference. Very many lovely things and delicious samples.
Two old stamps. The flower sprig is from Kanban and is one of may oldest but possibly never used before. 
                           Tiny butterfly. Use because the one I'd planned to use was too big! This is Inky Doodles also probably not used. The leaf is also Inky Doodles, coloured green not yellow as it looks here.
Lots of snippets. The whole thing is made from snippets.  

All the sections are separate pieces of paper. I'm not sure why, I obviously wanted to make it hard for myself.  The thin strips of green are glued on top to create the pattern. I managed to trim to 3mm, very impressed. 
So I'm linking this to:
Pixie's Snippets Playground
Little Claire's Montly Challenge  - Spring colours 
I was going to link to the Butterfly challnge but this is completely the wrong colour so back to the drawing board for that one. 

Sunday 24 April 2016

Silver buttons

I've been cutting up drinks cans again. I used these dinky button dies from Xcut. 
Recently on a trip to Cornwall where I wanted to visit pretty fishing villages and look at the sea, my husband wanted to visit a huge shop, which I'm exhausted just thinking about. We managed to do both and the shop turned out to have a garden centre and a craft department , where I found these dies (1.69!). Everyone was happy!

I've cut them out and threaded silver thread through the card and button to hold them then added some silver stickles to the purple fir garland.

I'd like to enter this into the Merry Monday challenge - Purple, white and silver. A yummy,
elegant combination. 
http://merrymondaychristmaschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/merry-monday-201-purple-white-and-silver.html
And 52CCT - Metal embellishments.

http://52cct.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/april-stash-challenge.html

Tuesday 19 April 2016

Fancy folds and Fuchsia

I haven't made a card for ages and was getting a bit twitchy. Time and inspiration were lacking.
Mrs A is currently challenging us to use Fancy Folds and/or Fuchsia, and a butterfly of course. Not for much longer though but I think I can just get in the gate. 
I tried out folded cards when I first started but not almost always make square or rectangle. (It is far less fiddle too!)
I know I have a template for a diamond top card somewhere but couldn't find it so resorted to  the Internet here. I've scaled it down though, it's really wee! 14cm tall. 
That is probably where I went wrong as the diamond doesn't quite sit square which is annoying but I didn't want to make it all again. 

 
The pink is very  bright but not shown well here. I do like it though. 
So popping into the Snippets Playground with this as it's mostly made of scraps. Time for a go on the swings. 
And the Butterfly Challenge.
I'll have another go at a photo later and catch up on commenting but I have to go shopping now. 
x




 

Sunday 3 April 2016

Washi

                       http://casology.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/week-191-washi.html


I love Washi tape. When I see it in a shop I say 'Ooh, Washi tape!' but I never really know what to do with it. So when I saw this challenge I wanted to get using it. 

I've made a card which is not inventive or clever but it's a start. There are so many good ideas here, I will have to take note and see what I can do in future. 

 All I've done is used this lovely green ferny tape to make an edge and then added a stamped scrap on top slightly raised, at the Washi tape edge, with foam pads. 
I've used one of my favourite stamps, a Card-io leaf stamp, with a few different colours of ink and a Paper Smooches sentiment.  
I think the tape makes a good edge so perhaps I'll try that again.