More of the Craftseller magazine embellishments and papers

Hello there

As promised in a post a few days ago, here's some cards I made using the embellishments and papers which came with the issue 15 of the Craftseller magazine.

This card started off really well. I thought almost immediately of having the tag embellishment from the magazine layered onto a die-cut larger tag and that on top of a stencilled inked tag. I used plum Baker's Twine as the bow. I learnt that Hunkydory silk art card die-cuts like a dream - why I haven't learnt this before is another point altogether! The stencil comes from the negative of the diecut tag - I LOVE using the negatives and positives of die-cuts, as it makes it feel like I'm getting more out of the paper stock; makes it feel more of a creative process.

Then I got stuck.

I had the three tags on the left hand side and didn't know how on earth to fill the big white space on the right. I was also tired after having done my first two early shifts back at work after being off for almost a month. ..... excuses, excuses, I hear you!

It took my poor little muse quite a long while to slowly create the result, for better and worse. It'll become clear in a little while!
I thought of using Baker's twine again to create links with the tags and then realised I needed to form a link from the left to the right, so just took a piece of Baker's twine from the right of the tags and took it straight across. NO! Far too boring! Instantly I just dragged the twine up instead of just across. YES! I like that. I added two more pieces to enable it to show up more and used light blue as well to tone in. Unfortunately the glue I used was playing up and it ended up going far too wide from the twine. At that point I was ready to throw it away. That's defeat though and I can't have that, now can I? May Flaum has taught me to never give in; there's always a way of hiding mistakes to enhance your card further. To this end, I decided to add more glue and glitter around the twine.

There's a reason I don't use glitter alot; I can't stand it! It gets everywhere!

Anyway, use it I did and then thought of putting the word 'enjoy' in the space still available. Nothing for it but to glitter those letters too - groan!

I used a die-cut of 'enjoy' on the envelope too but decided to steer clear of the glitter and I used LV2 Spectrum noir pen instead - much easier!

 

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The base card and the papers have a deep pink
hue, so it's really irritating to see it
looking bright orange in this photo

This card came about as the bloom dots embossing folder I'd ordered arrived and I 'had' to play with it. I instantly used it on the blue card which has been floating around, so to speak, lately. I then matted the tag embellishment with coordinating card. I used a strip of the patterned paper (which is actually meant to be a sentiment on the other side but it fitted almost perfectly onto the embossed card) as another element and matted that onto more of the patterned paper from the magazine. I then used some pearlescent card as the card base and used my Crafter's Companion Clever Cut to make the vertical edges scalloped and hey presto, there's the card!

I did more embossing and some die-cutting on a small piece of matching patterned paper to create the stamp for the envelope.
I'm much happier with this card as there's NO glitter anywhere in sight :-)







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Card number 3.

I have really enjoyed making these cards, despite that first one taking much longer and being far too fussy. This last one was fun in particular as I used alphabet spaghetti i.e die-cut left over letters.  I also got to use the new brads and ribbon which I got as part of my Stampers 15 club; which is a Stampin' Up club.
Spectrum Noir colour CR9 used for these letters.

I used Spectrum Noir colour GT2 to edge the card base and to colour the letters for the envelope.

If you get the Craftseller magazine, I hope you enjoy creating fun stuff too with the freebies and put a photo of your creations on their Facebook page.

Take care out there

Fun and games

Hello there

Here's a birthday card all of my own. I didn't look through books and magazines for inspiration. I haven't seen a card demo which has inspired me. I just used my own inspiration from this:

Yes, that's right; a scrap of paper left over from some tags I've cut out in the past. From this I thought that I could line up three on the left, then go down to two tags and then one large tag with the sentiment on. So off I went to play and practise and loved it.

The photo on the left shows what I ended up when messing around with my Big and Juicy, mountain meadow pad = not good but that pad was tipped every which way during the house moves I had to make in one year, so not sure it's much good for anything now but I'm not throwing it out.

having fun trialling ideas out

I finally decided on Wild Honey distress pad and it all rolled from there. I applied it by stamping onto my craft mat a couple of times, sprinkling a bit of water on and then rubbed my blending tool into it and then rubbed that onto the card covered by my improvised stencil. Easy! I also coloured the large tag that way.

It doesn't look crash hot on it's own

I then decided to make the second layer out of die-cut tags (size 6.5cm from Plantin Schoolbook) and coloured them with brown sugar dabber by Jenni Bowlin and gold Adirondack dabber. I've actually made two of these cards; one lot of tags had a gold base with brown splodges and the other vice versa.
I used Wild Card cartridge to cut the happy birthday sentiment from (page 61 of booklet). Using the Craftroom made it so easy to match up with the large tag and get the size exactly right. You're able to cut layer by layer, so as long as you put the selected icon onto the 'mat' as a separate layer in the first place, it makes cutting just one part of the overall image, extremely easy.

I dabbed around the large tag with the gold dabber.
Outlining the inked tags helps give better definition to them.
The backing paper is from a K&Co paper pad I use alot as it's HUGE!

Let's get this card assembled

 With a bit of help from Baker's Twine:

I had the idea to emboss/deboss a tag image onto the envelope to put the address into; it's from an embossing board which came with my Crafter's Companion Ultimate Pro. Love it!

Not easy to see on white card but click on the image
to get a better view if you're daft like me
 and get kicks from such things :-)



Take care out there

Stamping

Hello there

I own some stamps. I have been to stamping classes using Stampin' Up products; I have enjoyed them. I love watching people like Barbara Gray, Melanie Heaton and many others, create gorgeous pieces with their stamping projects. I have not 'got into' it much though due to the expense mostly but also due to lack of talent. There are so many products you need to buy for stamping; stamps, inks (so many brands and types), papers (so many brands and types) and pens (yet again, so many brands and types). There's so much out there in the marketplace that it becomes a bit mind boggling to know which will suit me best and which of them I can afford. You have to be good at shading and remembering paper/ink/pen blends which work without smudging your work all over the page. Aarrrgghhhhh! It all seems too stressful and expensive and I just get overwhelmed by it all, so up to now I've stayed away.

I hear you. Yes I know I have used stamps before but I haven't coloured them with pens in the past; I've avoided it like the plague. I haven't tried braying before either and I still haven't! :-)

The very first laying down of colour with one of my
new Spectrum Noir. I love how no stripes are visible.
The edges are lighter because I made them like that.

May Flaum has the right attitude to it though. I follow her blog daily and I was on her BigPictureClass earlier this year. She has a real 'gung-ho' attitude to scrapping and she has confidence in herself to die for. For those of you who either don't know about May or you don't know what I mean by the term 'gung-ho' then a) go watch her videos and read her site - you'll love it b) gung-ho means 'get in there', 'go for it', 'be brave', 'just play'. May isn't scared to share her 'failures'. Sometimes she layers ink over paint, over stamping and it can look amazing but other times it just looks like a brown blobby mess but she'll adapt that at another date to work for her. She doesn't let it stop her creative flow. She makes an almighty mess and comes out with wonderful stuff.

That's the secret.

Let go.

May goes on and on and on about not worrying about whether you're using the 'right' thing to re-create her projects (which is great); although she does also list the contents/links under each posting which is great, if you live in U.S.A!  I don't live there, so I often have to improvise with what I have but that's what it's meant to be. It's meant to be my interpretation; my skills; my time available; my money available; my recipient's needs (if it's a card) etc. I'm not May. I love creativity not copying.

So recently I got the chance to buy some Spectrum Noir pens at a good price, so I took the plunge. On Saturday I just grabbed some cardstock, stamped a Stampavie (Helz Cuppleditch's Ruffle puppy plaque) stamp with black archival ink and set to colouring the image with a little help from a Leann Chivers video on youtube. Sure enough, I didn't have all the pens Leann used or the right type of stamp really but I carried on. I just coloured. I quickly realised that the cardstock wasn't great, as it's not smooth coated. I also saw that the ink was being smudged by the pens. So what?! I was playing. I was learning. I was growing in confidence.

Take care out there