Embossing at Cardz 4 Guyz

It's time for a new challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz and this week we would like to see some embossing on your card - heat embossing or dry embossing or even both!

Autumn is approaching so I've made an Autumn themed card, with kraft card dry-embossed with a woodgrain folder and then a brown inkpad wiped over the surface. This gives a messier, more natural look than inking the folder for a faux letterpress effect.

The two leaves are stamped with a pair of double sided stamps which I got from an American company called Just For Fun - one side is solid, and I stamped that with a Kaleidacolour Autumn leak inkpad, and the other side of the stamp has the veins. I used a stamp positioner to place the veins accurately on the leaves, and stamps and heat-embossed them in gold.

I made a border using some Rubberstamp Tapestry (I think they are now called Card-io) stamps and the Kaleidacolour pad again.

Guest recipe - Rack of lamb with a soy and Teryaki marinade

I'm away at the moment, meeting my new baby grandson, so today I'm bringing you a delicious looking recipe from Claire, who blogs over at NinjaKillerCat  - if you like cats, food, countryside and gorgeous photography, do pop over and say hello to her! I'll hand over to her now:

I'd thought I would do a recipe for Jane which is an honour especially as Jane is such a foodie ! However I'm not one for pretentious airy fairy recipe names as my duck legs 2 ways demonstrates.

Ingredients 

 

A nice rack of lamb ribs ( there is no need unless you wish for the fancy trimmed French version )
Salad potatoes
3-4 rashers of bacon court into bits
2 tablespoons of soy sauce

1 Tablespoon Teriyaki sauce 

1 teaspoon rosemary

1 teaspoon thyme 

1 Tablespoon of honey

4 cloves of mince garlic ( or more or less to taste )

Method

 

Mix the honey, soy and Teriyaki sauces together , add in the minced garlic and herbs and mix well.
Heat the oven to 180 c
Place the rack of ribs in an oven proof tray
Cover with the marinade

After about 26 minutes  cook some salad potatoes they'll only take about 15 minutes 

Drain the potatoes
Roughly cut them when they cooled slightly
Heat some oil in a frying pan
Fry the bacon
Then add the potatoes and mix and crush they a bit more as you fry them off

A tale of Beatrix Potter

When we were on holiday in the Lake District, we visited the World of Beatrix Potter attraction in Windermere with our granddaughters, aged 3 and 6. It's a super attraction for children who have read the books and will enjoy the scenes and tableaux. Our granddaughters particularly  enjoyed the garden, where they met the real, live Mr MacGregor (they didn't seem to mind that it was actually a woman) who, seeing that they were genuinely interested in gardening, showed them how to take cuttings from a stalk of geraniums that had been damaged by the crowds.

And if you are going, be aware that it DOES get very crowded. We went on a wet day in August, so probably one of their busiest days of all. It was fine when it first opened and for an hour or so after that, but by the time we had been in for a couple of hours it was absolutely packed.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the crafting. And I thought today that whenever I think of snippets, I forget all about my "CD Snippets" - those bits left over after you've printed out a sheet of toppers but only used one, or a whole sheet of background paper that you just use half of. I don't put those into my normal snippets box, all my CD-related scraps and snippets go into a plastic wallet where they tend to just languish, unloved, until they get dog eared and tipped into the recycling bin.

So, I decided to change that and make a card that will remind my granddaughters of their outing. I rummaged through the wallet and pulled out all the snippets printed from the Crafters Companion Beatrix Potter CD, and put some of the Tom Kitten themed ones together into a card that vaguely resembles something I saw in a magazine a few years ago.

The pretty white scalloped borders are cut with a Marianne Creatables die that actually has a series of slots to thread ribbon through, but I've stuck that part behind the strip of paper so that just the edge shows. The flowers and leaves are cut using Spellbinders - one of the Flowers sets but I can't recall which! All the plain card came from my snippets box too.

I'm sharing these with

Pixie's Snippets Playground - week 193 (we have to keep Sarn busy, don't we?)
Cuttlebug Mania - Anything Goes
Glitter and Sparkle - Anything Goes 

A country Christmas

I've just counted up my Christmas cards made so far this year and it's still only 30, and I have two 2-week holidays between now and Christmas - I'm going to have to go into mass production mode!

This card was nice and quick to make though, so perhaps I will do a few more along the same lines.

I used kraft card with a snowflake die cut shape removed from the centre. Then I stamped the gingerbread man and greeting randomly over the card with Versamark ink and edged the card and aperture with distress ink. I wanted to back the aperture with red and white gingham paper, but I had none left and with packing to go away didn't have time to search through my CDs where I'm sure to have a suitable paper to print out, so I used this festive star pattern instead. Then I wrapped the whole panel with raffia and stuck it to my card front.

I stamped the gingerbread man again onto a scrap of kraft card, using brown ink this time, and also onto a scrap of red, then cut out the red heart and stuck it  to his tummy, then added him to the knot of the raffia.

Finally I finished the card off with a button and some candi.

I think if I use this idea again I will die cut a heart rather then a snowflake, and if I still have no gingham paper, would use something lighter in colour - white or cream with red spots or stars would work well.

I'm sharing this with

Christmas Cards All Year Round - A country Christmas 
djkardkreations - NBUS 5 - the gingerbread man stamp was NBUS - in fact he comes from a completely NBUS set.

Isn't crafting educational?

The latest challenge at CD Sundays is Gorgeous Gowns. To me that always says "Debbie Moore" but I wanted to do something a bit different this time so I had a browse through Joanna Sheen's "Age of Elegance" CD where there are plenty of very gorgeous gowns. When I came to this lovely painting, Expectations by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, I thought it looked both gorgeous and elegant. But rather than expectant, I thought the lady looked as if she was tearing her hair out in frustration!

That led me to the idea of making a totally off-the-wall card using this sentiment from an NBUS Dylusions set (NBUS means Never Before Used Schtuff and Darnell at djkardkreations is currently running a challenge that urges us to get out our NBUS and USE it!)

To preserve the impact of the curious juxtaposition of the classical, elegant image and the slightly crazy sentiment, I kept the rest of the card as simple and elegant as possible, just layering with some subtly printed paper from my stash and using a smaller version of the image as a "stop" on the base.

Now for the educational part. I realised when I was browsing the CD that I knew very little about Alma-Tadema and his work. Apparently he was born in the Netherlands, but in later life he and his wife became the last official British Denizens, before the denizenship ceased to exist (although apparently here in the UK it hasn't actually been abolished.) - the denizenship gave them certain rights normally only available to full citizens.

I have been searching through his works trying to find out where the beautiful setting for the painting is, and found that it, or somewhere very similar, features in many of his works. It appears to be a generic "Mediterranean" view. Apparently his work was heavily influenced by a visit to Pompeii, but then again what appears to be the same marble seat and wall appears in a painting supposedly set on Lesbos.  But wherever it is, painting representations of  marble was something he excelled at, as you can see from the picture.

Right, lesson over! I think I would send this card to somebody who was going through a tough time. They'd have to be a close friend, though!

I'm sharing this with

CD Sundays - Gorgeous Gowns
djkardkreations - NBUS 5

Three of Something at Cardz 4 Guyz

This week at Cardz 4 Guyz we want to see you use three of something - and please don't make it a treasure hunt....  we'd like it to be obvious. If you have to explain it, it's probably too obscure for us!

I've actually used TWO threes on my card - three characters and three cork-top sentiments. The paper, topper and sentiments are all printed from The Wine Buffs CD-Rom from Katy Sue Designs,  a very useful resource for making masculine cards (although there's plenty for the ladies on it too).

 

and here's a close up of that topper in case you can't make it out properly on your screen:

Twas the night before Christmas....

Have you ever wondered why, in the poem "The night before Christmas", there wasn't even a mouse stirring?

Well it was because all the mice had gone out carol singing. But it had been dreadfully cold, so they'd stopped to warm up inside a lantern!

This scene is stamped with a Joanna Sheen House Mouse stamp, coloured with Promarkers and with Stickles added for snow. The verse was stamped with a cover gift stamp from a magazine last year or the year before. The papers are from an old HOTP Christmas kit.

I am sharing this with:

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Twas the night before Christmas
Christmas Card Challenges - optional colour combo
Allsorts Challenge Blog - Lots of Layers
Creative Card Crew - Christmas
Glitter and Sparkle - Anything Goes