Lots of pretty papers

I've had the Dovecraft 12x12 Folkland paper pad for a few weeks now and decided it's about time I stopped gazing at, oohing and aahing and stroking and actually cut into them at last!

They are SUCH pretty papers, aren't they? You can't really tell in the photo, but the butterflies on the middle layer are all sparkly, so the card twinkles as you move it around in the light - added to, of course, by the gem I've popped on to the die cut butterfly. The sticker sentiment is also from the Folkland range and the pretty ribbon came from a Butterfly Challenge prize pack.

Now I've given myself permission to cut into this pad I can see I'm going to have a lot of fun with it.

I am sharing this at
Allsorts Challenge - Pretty papers
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - Anything Goes

A visit to Venice

I've never actually been to Venice, in fact I've explored very little of Italy. However I've had this sweet digi for several years and this is the first time I've used it. The image combines the ancient architecture of the city with the modern scooter girl (not wearing a helmet, I notice) so I combined the modern digi image with very vintage style papers to continue the old-meets-new theme.

Being an André Rieu fan, when I think of Venice, I think of music, and I also associate it with Shakespeare, so I've teamed my image with a selection of music and Shakespeare papers from an old Debbi Moore magazine. I only kept the papers, so I can't recall the title of the mag, but the theme seems to be Carnival in Venice and if you look really closely you will see that even the roses are designed to look as if they are made from musical scores.

I am sharing this with
Cardz 4 Galz - Let's go digital 
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - Anything goes  
Just Us Girls - Music 

If I Had a Hammer

Well, are you singing along? I certainly am!

The current challenge at The Male Room is Tools,  and for my card I've used elements printed from two Debbi Moore CDs, Shabby Chic Mechanical and Shabby Chic Tools of the Trade -  actually they are snippets left over from a previous project, so this has been a good stash-clearing exercise. I've teamed them with some die cut tools - the drill and hammer were cut in white card and coloured with markers and gel pens and the remainder in matt silver card - and a background of wood effect paper and a panel of embossed silver card, attached with my favourite screw-head brads.

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers challenge #122 - Fantasy

Edna's been having fantasies - oooer!

I think she may have had a sip or two too much Tizer! Anyway, that mans that our new challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers is Fantasy. So whether your fantasies are about fairies, dragons, unicorns, five minutes to yourself or something that might get you banned from Blogger, we want to know about it! And of course we love snark, so if you could chuck a bit of that in too we'd be eternally grateful.

Inspired by Edna, I dug out a silhouette fairy stamp. Now, fairies are so much not my thing that the fact I decided to use it could count as snark in itself, and yet I ended up getting so carried away I made TWO cards.

I used Stazon ink to stamp my fairy onto glossy card and then used encaustic painting techniques ( If you'd like to learn more about encaustic painting, there's a wealth of info and inspiration at https://encaustic.com/ ) to create fantasy scenery around her. I always get a bit carried away when I get my waxes out - hence the pair of cards. I might loathe ironing - but I love doing it with wax!

Each image has the fairy stamped with Stazon ink onto glossy card before setting to with the iron. I use a mini travel iron, although Arts Encaustic sells irons specially made for the purpose. The only difference seems to be that they are prettier. The iron MUST be one with an unbroken smooth sole plate, not a steam iron with holes in the base. Oh, and one you never, EVER intend to use for clothes again.  I also have a very old ironing board that I keep solely for this craft. If you use your normal one, you need to protect it with lots of newspaper or scrap paper, otherwise you will start finding wax spots all over your clothes.

To create the design, I started by covering the centre section of the base of the iron with clear wax, then added other colours going out towards the edges, and swooped it the whole height of the card in a single movement.  All the waxes I chose were ones that didn't have any white pigment in them  - the white pigment is opaque and obscures the stamping, so white, pink and other pastel waxes don't work when painting over stamped images. Then I used curved horizontal swoops to create "hills" and tapped the card against the base of the iron, pulling it away sharply, to create suction patterns that look like foliage. For each of these, I added more wax to the iron as necessary. I dragged some of the wax up from near the bottom of the card, using the edge of the iron, to create the tall grasses and finally used the very tip of the iron to add red wax "flowers" to the green and gold card. When each picture had cooled, I used a soft tissue to polish the wax to a high gloss.

For the square card I simply die cut my finished piece and added an Idea-ology Small Talk sentiment sticker. For the rectangular card I sponged  yellow and orange inks over an aperture card, mounted my wax piece behind the aperture and added one of the sentiment stickers plus some flowers to pick up the colours from the wax. Those flowers are absolutely NOT there to hide a blooper made while I was outlining the aperture in black. Oh indeedy-no they are not!

I am sharing these with

Love to craft - Anything Goes
Watercooler Wednesday - Anything Goes
 

Second time lucky

I've made this card for a friend who has a birthday later this month, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't read my blog (Pelfy, if you are spying on me step away NOW and scroll no further!).

It's basically just loads of die cuts! The sentiment is stamped with a stamp that came with Quick Cards Made Easy a few years ago, and sadly it was its very last outing. As most magazine freebie stamps tend to, it's gone hard and is cracking and took me about a dozen repeats to get it clearly stamped. (If they don't turn brittle, they melt - but I must have had a good 5 years of use from it so I can't complain!). I've added the bands of gold and purple glitter using double sided tape - maybe a less rigid looking stripe would have looked better on the butterfly but I wanted to keep all the edges clean and bold. The leaves have been finished with Glossy Accents. I would have liked to apply it through the embossing holes in the die, as I would with ink, but I had visions of sticking the die to the card so I did it freehand instead. I also added Glossy Accents to the heart in the sentiment. And just in case you can't see the sparkle and shine, here's a closer look.

Why second time lucky? Well, when I was sketching out the card, I planned to use a purple butterfly to match the rectangle layer, thinking the dimension enough would be enough to make it stand out  from the card, but you can see here that it didn't work.

 

I had to laugh when my husband saw  the reworked card. As you know, he is a keen gardener and when he saw the butterfly, he said "A white butterfly doesn't look very realistic." I replied with just two words.... "CABBAGE WHITE". Game, set and match to me!

I have made this with two challenges in mind, two of my favourites that I always try to join in:

Pixie's Snippets Playground because everything (including BOTH butterflies) except the base card came from my snippets box. In fact they were all the last bits of snippets, causing some very careful positioning of dies to make sure I had enough for everything, so it's been a good clearing out exercise.

The Butterfly Challenge where I have managed to include ALL the elements on the wheel - green, gold, grape, gems, glitter, Glossy Accents and of course a butterfly.

For a Scrabble lover

I've seen lots of cards of this style in gift shops and on Pinterest and been planning to make one for some time. But I've added a touch that none of them seem to have, matting in "Scrabble green" to make it even more relevant. As a former very serious Scrabble player, that touch is important to me!

As my handwriting is so dreadful, I generated the sentiment on the computer.  The Scrabble tiles are real ones, left over from the days when I needed 3 sets to keep me occupied.

I am sharing this with

CASology - Arithmetic 

Less is More - Dimension

Embossing - heat or dry at Sparkles Christmas

Welcome to another month - and that means another new challenge at Sparkles Christmas. This time we would like to see some embossing on your work - heat or dry embossing, we don't mind.

In fact I've chosen to do both.

The poinsettias are stamped with a stamp from a recent issue of Creative Stamping, stamped with black ink and embossed with clear powder then coloured with Promarkers.
The background uses an embossing folder I was given, swiped over the "inny" side with green ink before passing through the Grand Calibur. It's quite a deeply etched folder so the white embossed areas really stand out well from the background.

I am sharing this with
Addicted to Stamps and More - anything Goes 
Winter Wonderland - Colour it
A Bit More Time to craft - Anything Goes
Craft Rocket - Christmas is Coming