Still slogging through the Census

However,while waiting for my team to call in with their numbers on Tuesday I made four quick baby cards. I also made boxes for several of the vintage cards with large flowers on them, and have now passed these over to my one sales outlet - my friend Denise, who is also my nail technician, and who puts them on display at her salon.  I sell a few each month that way. 

The papers all come from the stash or freebies - so are quite old and relatively cheap! The card bases are from commercial stock, and the small elements have been hanging in my stash for several years.  I have used rub-ons and either SU ribbons, or scraps and bits of bling or other again hanging around for ages in the stash drawers, containers and desk! AND I have just noticed that the star on top has slid up off the star it was sitting on! Ooops! Oh well. The insides are all also decorated and contain sentiments on stickers still remaining from my Joann's stash that I purchased in USA (Denver) four years ago now!

Brakefast Club Summer Madness Swap

I participated in this recently, and my card from Deb arrived a few days ago - it is quite lovely and really shimmers.  With her card Deb also sent me a small present - so unexpected and so nice of her. My card created for Verna arrived yesterday so I can now put it up here.

Deb's card -- she painted the butterfly card with shimmery H2O's before punching out the butterflies.

Mine uses a Stamp-It stamp, coloured with Copics - I sprayed the background after masking my girls, using my new Copic Airbrushing System which as given to me by my husband for my recent birthday.  Yummy! A die-cut labels frame and paper scraps to create the background, and some flowers from Prima.  My conversation bubbles were free cut after I printed them on the computer. 

Vintage, sort of......

I got the idea of these from a recent copy of the magazine Cardmaking, Stamping and Papercaft. Labels and pink and cream, and vintage style was what I took from them, and this is what I ended up with.

They all use a commercial base card in heavy cream, portrait and opening from the bottom. The card has a bit of texture. The labels are cut from SU Vanilla and the background paper is either the folio sheet by Making Memories - Ava Ric Rac Ledger, or some free Hunkydory papers from the latest edition of Creative Cardmaking, an English magazine. The lace and ribbon is from the stash and the flowers or basically Prima. The crocheted flower is from Kaiser. 

The pearl brad was coloured to match with a copic pen. The sentiment is from a set of sentiments from Lili of the Valley - and I used them in all four cards.  The inks used are a combination of Memento Close to Cocoa and Tim Holtz' distressed inks, swiped around various edges as well as an occasional swipe with pink sponges as well (colours varied). 

This image is a fairy from Lili of the Valley and it has been coloured with watercolour pencils (Derwent Inktense) and sprayed with gold mica spray - it is very shimmery.  She is holding a small star from AnnaBelle Stamps. 

The small flower stamped on the tag is from the SU set Silhouette Sentiments, embossed with clear EP -pearls added are from a pack I have with no name but they are a lovely dawn colour. 

Again I coloured a pearl brad with copics but left the pearl stick as it was. Love those miniature roses from Prima. 

This is from AnnaBelle Stamps:


Can you believe we are a month out from our second birthday??  So we thought this year we'd throw a party, and we'd truly appreciate if you could help us send out the invitations in the form of this blinkie :

As a thank you to those who add this blinkie to their blog we have a little something for you :)  Simply follow the instructions below and you could be the randomly selected winner of 2 6 x 4 sets of your choice!!


- Copy and paste the above code and add it to your sidebar.
- Include the blinkie in a post with a link back to this blog letting everyone know about our Birthday Celebrations, and where they can pick up their very own blinkie.
- Come back here and add a link to your post in the Inlinkz box below.
- On the 7th September we will select a random winner just before our party begins!

What a colour combo!

AnnaBelle Stamps have had a challenge to use the colours raspberry, olive green and orange - I thought they sounded  a lot like two of the new In Colours at SU - Lucky Limeade and Calypso Coral, and I added in Rich Razzleberry. 

This colour combination is difficult I have discovered, after spending a lot of time trying to make one card with them and ripping it up finally (or in fact, ripping off parts and reconstituting it into a smaller card) and make three small cards and a belly band with the work done so far.  I used a Kaiser clear cling stamp set (no idea of its name as I have thrown away its packaging) of foliage and the sentiment comes from a Studio G Clear Stamp set Series 46 given to me by a blogging friend Deb in USA from Hudson, Ohio in fact (more on that later). I ended up spending several hours and didn't like the finished product - too big - and so threw my hands in the air before making the items below:

Three cards inside a belly band - the band is made from the background paper I was trying to create but which was too loud for the card.

The three cards - I know that the coral looks more pink than orange but it really is more orange than pink! The base cards are black.  The paper lace is from my newest SU punch.

I'm trying to give an idea of the size of the cards - about 3" by 3 and a half" so they are gift cards probably.

I made another card this morning - CASED it from a magazine - and it had to first stamp backgrounds of music/word/writing/numbers or whatever was suitable and then tear these into strips, glue to another base sheet and cover with a thin layer of white gesso paint.  I think my layer is a bit too think or less opaque that it should have been.  Once this is done I stamped it with a circle stamp and Momento London Fog ink.  I cut it to size and layered it onto black and then gold card.  My base card is black.  I then used StaysOn black ink and stamped my image, cut it out and laid it on the base and traced around it lightly with a pencil. I removed it and using a paper stump I smudged the London Fog around the area to create an impression of a shadow for my image before I stuck it down. I added the little metal tag (coloured with sprayed Copic) and decorated this with a black bling and bling corners as shown. It's a very masculine card.  I have some background paper left over so will try vintage again tomorrow!

Rolled roses

I am learning how to make these, and after I rolled three from the same piece of paper from DCWV's Whimsy Stack, I decided I better do something with them.  Most things are made with Stampin'Up product, except for the leaves (stash), the flourish dies which are Sixxix, and the pearls, which are Kaiser.  I cut the rolled roses with a die from Die-namics (Just Right). 

I will enter this in Paper Creations Ink, who are running a challenge called Show Us Your Flowers. and Creative Card Crew, whose challenge is to make the flowers. 

The colours of the card and the inks are Island Indigo, Calypso Coral, Lucky Limeade and Pool Party - four of the five new In Colours being issued next month.  The stamp sets are Delicate Doilies and Happiest Birthday Wishes from the new catalogue. The lacy strip is a new punch. The sentiment stamp punches out with the old scalloped circle punch. 

Wooden pieces

I stole borrowed some wood veneer from my hubby's workshop to see if it was stampable, and it is.  I stamped it with Momento Close to Cocoa and then had to go over it with fine black pen, to define the images.  I used the SU set Thanks for Caring, and the newest In-Colours from SU markers - Coral Calypso; Island Indigo; Lucky Limeade; Pool Party and Wisteria Wonder to colour the image and layered it up on card from the same set ( PP, CC and II).  I smooched the edges with brown Momento ink.

The sentiment isn't straight and the rounded edges are hand done (badly) as the veneer was too thick to get into my punch, but now I know it can be done.

Another quick one

Still knee deep in Census, but the night is over - now just have to get the forms all back! Made a quick card two days ago and have just found time to post.

This one uses SU products mainly, except for the Alchohol inks (Time Holtz Vintage) and the Copic pen to deepen the colour on the edges of the flowers. The flowers were created on SU Shiny White and the rest is Whisper White, Glorious Green and Old Olive. The EP powder for the sentiment is called Malachite (Judi-Kins).  The stamp sets are Natural Beauty (for flowers) and Thanks for Caring. I used a Nestability label and layered up. The vine leaves are a die cut from BossKut. It was finished with three red sprinkles from AnnaBelle. 

The flowers were first stamped with clear EP onto the shiny white card and then coloured with the alcohol inks before being fussy cut and then coloured a bit more with the Copics.  The areas where I had coloured the flowers with the ink using Tim Holtz dabber thingy was too good to waste so I added a bit more ink and  die cut the vines from it. As you can see the flowers and the EP have quite a good shine going. 

Taking time to breath

...and to share one card I sneaked in on Sunday afternoon while I was waiting for all my team to complete their deliveries (door to door) of the census materials. On to tonight .......Census night ........ when hopefully everyone will either do theirs on-line or on paper and leave the latter out for my team to pick up over the next two weeks!

I am going to enter this in Craft Us Crazy #14 Anything Goes

The outside light has changed the red card to a pink tone - believe me, it is SU Cherry Cobbler!  The image is from WMS stamp set Roses in Bloom, stamped onto SU Soft Suede with Brilliance white ink.  The rose was stamped three times onto shiny white photographic paper, embossed with clear EP (with difficulty!) and then I used alcohol inks on them - Tim Holtz's Distress inks Antique Linen, Vintage Photo and Forest Moss and then topped with Barn Door.  I then sprayed it with Tatted Angles red and some gold mica.  I layered up after cutting out one whole and two part roses and added a jewel centre coloured with Copics to match.  The red spots actually match the red in the base card and you can see this in the photo below - also the shine of the mica. I used a Shapeabilities Tag and added white satin ribbon and the sentiment comes from the same rodent set, stamped in Cherry Cobbler ink.