Gorjuss Girl

A few months ago a lovely friend gave me a huge kit of Gorjuss toppers, tags, decoupage and papers, and although it's far from an old kit I was in the mood to play with it yesterday so I added it to my pile of "Make three cards" kits.

I did make three cards with it, but I'm only sharing one of them with you today because it's the one that uses some pearls, and I want to share it with Suzy Bee's Blooming Challenge this week where the twist is Add Some Pearls. 

All things of nature

I've taken a break from clearing out the kits for my next card and gone for a very CAS look. The sentiment is a very old Paper Artsy stamp and I die cut a butterfly out from the card above it, then used foam pads (of which I found a HUGE pack while decluttering my craft drawers, so I'm trying to use them instead of Pinflair glue when I can)  to raise the whole thing above the polka dot background.

I am sharing this with

Less is More - Polka Dots
Allsorts Challenge - Wings  
Use Your Stuff - Pop Dots

Shiny, shiny, shiny

My journey through old kits continues.... today was the turn of a Kanban kit that was crammed with luxurious looking foiled cards and glittered acetates in sumptuous brocade designs. Each element in the kit is gorgeous in its own right, but when it comes to putting them together I'm at an absolute loss to know what to do. However in the past I must have dome something because all that is left of some of the purple and gold sheets is a handful of snippets.

Or rather, all that WAS left, because those snippets found their way onto this card.

The gold part of the design is rather a pinkish shade of gold, more of a rose gold. Which meant of course that it didn't work with any of the gold I had lifted out for matting. However a delve into the snippets box brought up a few odds and ends of purple card, just enough - and I mean ONLY just enough! - to mat everything and die cut a butterfly. The "gems" are actually holographic peel off dots left over from a different kit.

I'm sharing this at Pixie's Snippets Playground where I was delighted to be one of last week's picks. This week it's the Easter Holidays so who knows what shenanigans the playmates will get up to?

I did make two other cards while I had the kit out, but they flatly refused to be photographed. My camera simply couldn't focus on the acetate I used for one, and when I focussed it manually it said "You've got to be joking" and reset itself. While the other was loaded up with so much reflective bling that you could see me and the camera all over the front of it rather than the card itself.

Hello again, Hunkydory

Every now and then I set myself a personal challenge to lift out all my old kits and make three cards using each. I've been doing it for years and it's a great way of restoring a lost mojo, building up a supply of cards to sell for charity and stopping myself from feeling guilty about all the kits I've bought and hardly touched. Kits look so attractive when a TV presenter is flicking through the contents and showing samples, don't they? But 9 times out of 10 you get them home and find there is too much in them for your needs, or they stifle your creativity rather than encouraging it, or even that the card and paper is just too lovely to cut in to.

I find that ALL of the above tends to apply to Hunkydory kits, and yet I'd bought several of them before I realised that I have a problem with kits!

Anyway, I got a couple of them that I have merged together out this weekend and have been trying to do something a bit more creative than I usually do with them. I think the backgrounds and toppers are a mix-and-match selection from both kits. I can't remember the names of the kits, I've had them for years! Here are the three cards I made from it.

I am sharing these with the Flowers challenge at Fab'n'Funky.

Kraft and mint for spring

This card is made with some printed corrugated card from a DCWV stack, along with matching plain mint green card (in real life, it's a much better match than the photo suggests). The border is punched with a Martha Stewart punch, and the butterfly is one of my oldest dies, I think it is a Marianne one.
 The panel the butterfly is sitting on is stamped with Brilliance ink in Pearlescent Lime  - you can't read the script but it is a list of flowers and their meanings, just right for spring.

I am sharing this with
Butterfly Challenge - Margins and/or Mint
ATSM - Anything Goes

Tick-tock

This week's decluttering concentrated on my snippets box - I went through it and discarded anything that had got shabby or dog eared, or really WAS too small to be useful, and arranged the remainder into a rough-ish order (which, over the last 24 hours, has already slipped into chaos).

While sorting it out, I discovered a few treasures like this half sheet of clock patterned paper. I can't remember where it came from, but being both old and clock themed it was perfect for the Clocks theme at Shopping Our Stash. And I also found a few scraps of patterned metallic card. How old are they? Well, older UK readers may remember a notorious Vintage kit that QVC sold, it must be at least 15 years ago, that many of us bought thinking how wonderful it was, and then couldn't think of what to do with it when we got it home? Well, the card came from that kit. There was just enough of this pattern to cut a few cogs with.

I added a stamped pocket watch and words panel, and a panel made by swiping a stone wall embossing folder with a little Walnut Stain Distress Ink before embossing.

The matting, too, is done with ancient stuff;  on my first ever trip to Hobbycraft - literally in the last century - I picked up a pack of what I thought was matt silver and gold card which turned out to be paper with a rather odd texture, and most of it is still lurking around unused.

March Rudolph Day is here!

It's the 25th of March and that means it is Rudolph Day over at Scrappymo's. It's our monthly chance to get ahead with out Christmas cards - and there's a fab prize of a choice of dies to be won too!

Here's my Design Team card for this month - I made the reindeer's faces by inking up my fingertip and pressing it in the card. The smiles and antlers are drawn freehand, I used tiny googly eyes ( a fab find in my local bargain shop, bags containing at least 100 of each of three sizes for 79p, that's about $1 to you US folk!) for the eyes, and tiny red adhesive pearls for the noses. A simple fun sentiment using a Studio G stamp is all that was needed to finish the card. This would be a great card to make with children, they'd love the fingerprinting part, and if my own grandchildren are anything to go by, googly eyes will fascinate them.

 

You have until the end of the month to pop over to Scrappymo's and link up your own Rudolph Day card.

 

I'm sharing this with

Winter Wonderland - For a Child (to make or to receive!)

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Cute