The card that nearly never was

This card very nearly didn't happen.

You see, just over two weeks ago, when the current Butterfly Challenge was posted, I decided exactly what I was going to make. I lifted out some snippets of plain card and patterned paper, did the die cutting,  attached the metal butterfly embellishment to the circle and the blue button to the flower, and then it was time to go out somewhere. So, as I thought, I put all the bits together in a safe place...... and promptly forgot where.

Time passed, I searched my craft table and storage boxes, and there was no sign of the collection of bits and pieces, and the closing day of the challenge came and went - and then PHEW! - I checked for the newest Butterfly Challenge last Wednesday and found that the previous one had been extended for another two weeks due to Mrs A's problems with having been hacked. So that gave me another two weeks to either find the bits or start again.

By then, though, I had quite a lot of other cards that needed making, including one that needed some bits out of a folder I've not used for several months. I lifted up the folder and lying there beneath it were all the bits for making this card, where I'd left them for "safe keeping"!

The metallic butterfly is from The Works, attached to circles cut with Nestabilities. The flower is cut with a Spellbinders die - I think the set is called Jewelled Flowers, the sentiment is stamped with a stamp duo I won in the Playground a year or two back and the papers are snippets from a Simply Creative 6 x 6 pad called Azteca which may well be the most useful pad in my collection. Definitely one where every snippet gets saved, tucked into the pad for safe keeping. And this time I mean PROPERLY safe!

I am sharing this with
Butterfly Challenge - letter D - dark salmon, Denim blue, die cuts and dimension
Pixie's Snippets Playground - challenge 325
Sweet Stampin - Circles

Golden dragonflies

It's been far too long since I posted anything featuring dragonflies. Well, actually for me 24 hours without creating anything including a dragonfly is too long! So here I am to put that right.

The seed heads, leaves and sentiment are all stamped with elements from the Uniko "Organic Wishes" set and the dragonfly is a very, very old unmounted stamp that I think originally came from the now-defunct company Raindrops on Roses.

All the gold stamping is done using a Delicata pad, which is unusual for a metallic pad in that it dries completely without needing to be embossed or heat-set.

I am sharing this with

Addicted to Stamps - Clean and Simple
Addicted to CAS - Gold

Anything Goes at CD Sundays

Over at CD Sundays today we have a nice easy challenge for you - Anything Goes. The only restriction is that you MUST include something from a CD. The theme, style and colours are all up to you.

I've used this as an excuse to play with the beautiful Josephine Wall CD and Project Book from Joanna Sheen, making the Wood Nymph project up as it appears in the book apart from a slight change to the colours I used for the layering and base card.

 

I printed all the pages from the CD onto glossy photo paper in order to capture all the exquisite detail. Then came a LOT of fussy cutting to add all the layers to the main image. If you don't enjoy fussy cutting, or have dexterity problems, you could just use the main image, but as you can see from the photo of the fully-opened card, the layers really bring the little creatures into the foreground to help you to enjoy the detail.

 

I really loved making this card - I hope you will agree that it shows!

Recycled gift bag

As soon as I spotted this sweet little gift bag I know it was going to end up being the basis for a crafty project.

The lettering is on the back and front, so needed to be covered up, so I die cut a stitched rectangle to go on each side.

The back one I creased, to match the fold of the bag when flat, then above the crease added a stamped sentiment (the stamp was a gift so I don't know the brand) and a scattering of stars.

I decorated the front panel by stamping with a fir tree, twice without reinking the stamp in between, and a line of bare trees, then spritzed all over with some gold mica powder added to a spray bottle of water. Then I attached it to the bag and added a die cut reindeer.

I am sharing this with

Fab'n'Funky - Christmas
Jingle Belles - Earth Day (recycled elements)
Watercooler Wednesday - All about Christmas

 

London bookmark

We are a family of avid readers so I like to keep a supply of home made bookmarks and when I noticed Mark using a till receipt to mark his place recently I thought it about time I made some rather less girly ones.

The Cityscape stamps from Tim Holtz are perfectly proportioned for bookmarks, and ideal  for masculine designs too.

I stamped the London  cityscape onto a snippet of pale blue card and added a hint of colour with Promarkers, plus a touch of white gel pen on the clock face. Then I matted it onto a slightly bigger snippet of black card and cut the bus from a snippet of red, using a die from the X-cut Build a Scene London set.

After adding the die cut, I ran the whole bookmark through the Grand Calibur to make the area that lies between the book pages as flat as possible - a bookmark is no place for dimensional elements! Then I shaped the top and cut a slit in it, and folded a length of this lovely ribbon featuring the classic Routemaster bus through the slit, holding it in place with strong adhesive.

I don't know whether you can spot it, but there's a vehicle crossing Tower Bridge and I've coloured that red too to go with all the other buses.

I am sharing this with
Pixie's Snippets Playground - challenge #324 
The Male Room - Anything apart from a card
Little Red Wagon - Riding Along

It's April 25th....

... and that means that eight months today it will be Christmas Day! It also means that today is Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's, of course, so here is this month's Rudolph Day Christmas Card. 

 

 

For this card  I used a Darice folder to emboss the snowy sky and a die from an X-cut Build a Scene set for the village scene.
I stamped the sentiment onto vellum using Stazon ink and cut it out with fancy scissors then attached it by folding it over the die cut panel and sticking at the back. The stamp was a magazine freebie a few years ago and sadly like many of the freebies, it isn't great quality and has developed a split diagonally across the middle which I had to fill in on the stamped image with a permanent marker. I do love the freebies from magazines, they are often right up to the minute, but I suppose at the price they can't always be expected to last very long, it's just a bonus when one does!

I am sharing this with
Scrappymo's - Rudolph Day
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - White 
Use Your Stuff - Vellum  
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge  - use a building
Holly & Ivy - Anything Christmas goes

Scored sympathy

The current challenge at Less is More is "Bring something back"  and I dug out this lovely old Penny Black stamp which I've had for about 10 years. I seldom use it any more because it is wood mounted and I have a rather similar clear stamp which of course is so much easier to position. But it is too lovely to part with, and perfect for sympathy cards.

I stamped it in purple ink and heat embossed with clear powder, then used my Hougie Board to score a double frame around it. The sentiment is stamped with an Anna Griffin stamp and I used a Memory Box die to cut the butterfly.

I am sharing this with

Less is More - Bring something back
Sweet Stampin - Sympathy/Thinking of you
Just us Girls - Purple  

Magical Unicorns

I'm awfully behind with all the challenges I like to take part in - I hope the organisers don't think I've fallen out of love with them! But after spending several weeks travelling, I have been way, way behind with all my DT preparations so naturally those makes have had to come first, and also for the last 10 days or so mark and I have been battling with nasty colds, probably made worse than they might have been by the cold soaking we got in Seville.

Anyway, I'm starting to play catch up now and things are heading back to normal. And my first "real time" make is a card for my granddaughter, whose 6th birthday is next week.

Naturally for a 6 year old, lots of sparkle and bling is the order of the day and unicorns are compulsory! The papers are a mixture of foiled and glittered sheets from a First Edition Pick'nMix pad which has been in my "too nice to cut into" box for far too long.

I am sharing this with
Shopping Our Stash - Mythical and magical
Crafty Creations Challenge - Anything Goes

World Book Day at Cardz 4 Guyz

The new challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz is World Book Day.

I've chosen to depict the book Treasure Island.

My "Long John Silver" is the digi Pirate Pete from Dr Digis, coloured in with Promarkers. I've used a map printed out from The Best of la Pashe 2012 and  distressed it to make it look ancient - and then brought the whole thing into the 21st century because instead pf pieces of eight, ducats or doubloons, for my "treasure" I have added a pile of B!tcoin - I simply copied a picture several times and then cut them out. (I've changed the I in the name to a ! in the hope I won't get loads of spam comments from the bots that trawl blogs looking for That Word!)

  I am sharing  this with Crafty Sentiments - Anything Goes

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers : X is for Xyloid

It's X is for Xyloid at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers today.

And what the heck, you may well ask (I certainly did, even though I'm a former Scrabble player and it would have scored me lots of points) is xyloid? It's just Edna's word for WOOD.

To make my card, I took a  woodgrain background sheet from The Best of La Pashe 2012 into Craft Artist  and added sentiments to two of the planks, then printed it out and cut off  the planks with the sentiments and a couple more, and used the rest as a mat for card lightly stencilled with a woodgrain effect.

I cut up the separate planks with deckle edged scissors to give a roughly chopped look and stuck them randomly over the background with the sentiments as the focal points, then gave the planks some "personality" with tiny googly eyes and hand drawn mouths.

Finally I added screw headed brads to the corners.

Now let's have a look at YOUR Xyloid creations when you hop over to see what the other sistahs have made and then link up your own work - you never know, you may be cworned Queen or Princess of Snark.

Back to Basics - a brand new challenge!

A brand new challenge starts today - and I'm excited to be on the design team.

The challenge is called Back to Basics and Beyond  and new challenges will be posted every two weeks on a Wednesday. Each challenge will feature a different technique, from long-forgotten ones to bang-up-to-date ideas to help us all to broaden our crafting repertoire, and we hope that this means they will appeal to both novice and experienced crafters.

Our first challenge is a very familiar technique to most of us - matting and layering.

I've used a very old Artylicious stamp which I coloured in with pencils then masked and overstamped with bare twigs, then removed the mask and finished with a grassy foreground. I then chose three colours from the image and used them for matting and layering on both the image and sentiment, finally adding a finished touch of die cut corners and candi.

Wuff trade

Today I've been playing with the Little Claire "We 6 dogs" stamp.

I've only added a touch of colour to it for this card, and paired it with some dotty and stripey papers from my stash, bright pink ribbon and buttons and a computer generated sentiment to make a get well card.

I am sharing this card with

Just Us Girls - Black & White Stripes

Cardz 4 Galz - Black & White plus 1 bright colour 

 

***

Next I made a much more colourful card using the same image

The Happy Birthday background is a piece of very old paper from Craft Creations and the patterned paper from last month's Making Cards magazine.

I am sharing this with

Addicted to Stamps and More - Make Your Mark
Sweet Stampin' - Animals 

 

***

And now the two together

I am sharing the duo with

The Library Challenge - 101 Dalmatians because although the stamp does include a Dalmatian, the book cover in fact features a whole range of dogs

Twofer Challenge - Pets  (Go on, you were all expecting me to use a cat image for this month's Twofers, weren't you?)

It'll be all white on the night....

Christmas night, that is. I do love White on White for Christmas cards!

I've used the original That Embossing Folder for the background, and teamed it with a die cut poinsettia, using a magazine freebie die, ivy and pine bough (I think they are both Marianne dies but wouldn't swear to it)  and a festive sentiment using a Gummiapan die.

I am sharing this with

Christmas Crafts All Year round - use all white
C.R.A.F.T. - Christmas
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - snowman or anything goes
Crafty Creations Challenges - Anything Goes

A Birthday Sketch at CD Sundays

CD Sundays are celebrating a birthday this month, so today we have a sketch for you and we'd like you to use it in conjunction with a birthday theme.

 

Don't forget you need to include something from a CD too!

I've used three papers, a border, a topper and a sentiment all from the My Craft Studio CD Click, Print, Go - Fantastic Florals & Sentiment Toppers  - the flower embellishments are die cut using some snippets of the papers using a Dovecraft layered flower die.

I am sharing this with A Bit More Time To Craft - Anything Goes

Travel or Transport at Cardz 4 Guyz

There's a lot of scope with  our new challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz today - the theme is Travel or Transport.

I've used this beautiful scene embossing folder which, along with a super set of stamps which I used for the sentiment, was the cover gift on a recent issue of Papercraft Essentials.
I embossed it once in white, then just the area around the balloon in red, cut out the red balloon and attached it over the white one in the scene.

Now, I wonder if any of you can give me a bit of advice. I use a Grand Calibur, and in general the sandwich I use with embossing folders is  [white plate - folder - Grand Raspberry plate]  but with the normal weight of cardstock I use for embossing, it simply wouldn't go through, and having killed a machine a few years ago with an over-thick folder, I didn't want to risk it again. So I tried different combinations of plates but with the grey plate on the bottom it still wouldn't go through and with the pale pink plate it went through like a dream but didn't emboss at all.

I tried using thinner and thinner cardstock until, in the end, using the thinnest in my stash plus the grey plate I got my embossed landscape. But what sandwich do YOU use when faced with a slightly-too-thick embossing folder?

Bleached lady

I really love this stamp but I have no idea where it originally came from - I for it in a swap of unmounted stamps with an American friend about 20 years ago. It's rather saucy actually, when you look closely you can see that the lady is starkers underneath that pretty shawl!

I stamped and heat embossed her onto red card and then used a water brush filled with bleach to remove the colour from the skin areas. The sentiment is stamped with a magazine covermount stamp from a few years ago and to add balance I added two shiny black peel-offs that have an oriental lacquer look.

I am sharing this with

The Library Challenge - Memoirs of a Geisha
Mix it Up - Bleaching
Sweet Stampin - Embossing heat or dry

Big Bold Bright Bauble

The die I've used for this card is an old Cuttlebug one from the early days of die cutting machines when nothing was as intricate as it is now, and to be honest I hardly used it for years because the baubles it cuts look a bit dull and boring.  It took me a long time to realise that if they are stamped, embossed or otherwise embellished they would be transformed!

Here I have cut it in pearlescent teal card and embossed it with a Tim Holtz folder, then topped it with an equally big bold and bright snowflake cut with a Uniko die and added a stamped sentiment and a hand drawn and ruled border.

I am sharing this with

Just Us Girls - Bold


CAS Christmas - Ornament 

Goodbye to Naughty or Nice

It's the very last challenge over at Naughty or Nice - which makes me very sad - and this month we can choose any previous challenge.

I chose challenge 37 - Feature a Creature

And I thought it would be highly appropriate if I CASEd my own entry for that original challenge. This is the card I made first time around

And here is my new take on it, using the same cat stamp and ribbon and incorporating corrugated card again

This time I  masked  a narrow border around the edge of the die cut and stamped the cat, from Katzelkraft's "Les Chats Russes" set,  then masked him and stamped the Indigo Blu silhouette border and sponged the sky over a second mask of scrap paper. The sentiment is a Dylusions one from the "Ugh - people!" set and the butterfly cut with First Edition layering butterfly dies.

I've just noticed that Grumpy Cat appears to be levitating a bit in among the grass! Maybe the butterfly has inspired him to take up Yogic Flying.

Butterfly among the flowers

Apologies for this being my 5th post of the day - after a week away from home, I'm only back here for a couple of days and I've missed my crafting so much and really do want to support the challenges I love! I've lost track of the number of machine loads of washing I've done and crafting is the ideal way to keep myself busy while it is all washing.

My first inspiration for this card is Kerry's card to CASE over at Cuttlebugmania's 5th birthday celebration

And I have combined it with this fortnight's wheel at the Butterfly Challenge using all three colours plus twine.

And I'm also sharing it with Make My Monday where the theme is Things With Wings. 

I chose Kerry's card because I loved the way she had embossed the die cut scalloped oval. I tend not to get creative with the basic shaped dies that I've had for years - this has whetted my appetite for it!
The background is embossed using a Crafters Companion Embossalicious folder  and the oval, which was cut with a Nestabilities scalloped oval die, is embossed with an unnamed folder which I think was a magazine freebie.
The word "Thanks" is cut with a die that I won, I think it was from Hope and Chances which means it is probably a Spellbinders die, and the butterfly is cut with the Spellbinders Flutter Love die set. I used some glittery washi tape and added glitter to the butterfly's body to link it to the tape.

What's Black and white and red all over?

This card!

I think this is my current favourite stamp set, it was the cover mount on a recent issue of Making Cards. This time the only colour I've added is red - I reckon if the girls turned around they would be wearing bright red lipstick too.

I am sharing this with

Shopping Our Stash - Black, white and 1 other colour
Stamping Sensations - One for the girls

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers #107 - U for Umbrella

Our latest challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers is perfect for April, a traditionally showery month - U is for Umbrella.

I've used some of my newest stash, the Tonic Studios "Singin in the Rain"  dies from their Pin-Up Girls range  and two sets of Umbrella stamps from Clearly Besotted, along with a sentiment I generated on the computer.

Pity I counted wrong and got two green segments of the brolly next to each other, but heigh-ho, these things are sent to try us!

Now why don't you pop over to see what the Sistahs have created and share your work with us. It doesn't HAVE to be snarky but we'd love it even more if it is - and you may be crowned Queen or Princess of Snark.

I am sharing this with

Love to Craft challenge - Anything Goes
Dies R Us - Anything Goes (using a die brand they stock)
Inkspirational - Rain photo inspiration
 

Cool coloured Christmas

This card is inspired by the current photo challenge at Jingle Belles.

I love the cool orange and turquoise sort-of-Moorish patterns on the cushions, and had some papers with the same feel to them, so I die cut squares in three different sizes and fanned them out over the base card. The "platform"  for the tree is bamboo effect paper to reflect those log-bundle tables and the circular embellishments in the corners are inspired by the mirrors.
The Christmas tree is inspired by, erm, the Christmas tree.

I am also sharing this with
Allsorts Challenge - Be there or be square
Holly & Ivy - Anything Christmas Goes
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - something funny or Anything Goes

Flower corner

This uses a magazine freebie stamp that I've had for years, but until I got a Misti I could never get a clean image from it. Now it stamps like a dream!

It's a lovely image to colour as it looks so very different when you vary the colourways, and this time I've used Promarkers chosen to roughly match the colours for this month's House of Cards challenge.

I an sharing with

Craft Rocket Challenge - Flowers
House of Cards - CAS Floral Corner and/or colours

Watercooler Wednesday - Feminine Anything Goes