It's not puzzling

Hello there

Last night I went to a craft class run by my friend Helen. I really haven't been in the right mood recently and gave her very late notice that I was going but I'm so glad that I did. She packed 8 of us in her craft room plus herself and still stayed calm, smiley and organised despite quite hefty provocation from the other giggly, talkative ladies :-)

The theme was butterflies and in particular the Stampin' Up swallowtail stamp, as Helen is a demonstrator, as are most of my other crafty friends who attended last night. 

This was the first card we made, which was a great one to quickly get us into the right frame of mind.

Rich razzleberry was the colour of the ink and the
coloured card

We then moved onto one which I have sent off already as a get well soon card for my step-mum, who has unfortunately contracted dvt and definitely deserving of a card to try to lighten up at least a couple of hours, after getting something nice through the post.

Rich razzleberry, island indigo and a
pink colour I can't remember the name of,
 sorry :-)

My favourite of the night was the last one we made due to the intense colours of rich razzleberry, island indigo and tangerine tango. I really loved the way everyone's colouring in of the swallowtail was completely different. It was stamped with craft black Stampin' Up ink and then embossed with black. The background was created by embossing the flower stamp in white first and then brayering over the shiny cardstock. Again everyone's was slightly different dependant on which stamp they chose to emboss and how many times they brayered them.

I don't fuss too much with cutting out the antennae anymore;
I just cut them out as best I can and then quickly run
a matching colour pen over them, so they look perfect.

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Those were what we made last night but Helen had given us enough card to make one more card. She put a photo of it up on Facebook for us and blogged about it, so I was able to do that today and I really enjoyed this 'new to me' technique called puzzle piecing. It took me a little while to get my head around it but when I did, it became clear how easy it is and yet effective and millions of possibilities open to you. Have a look at Helen's post for a link to a tutorial on how to achieve this.

Those of you who will look closely, will see that I didn't quite fit my orange layer in brilliantly but I can cope with that. It's my first attempt and I'm happy to put an appropriate sentiment on there when I know what I'm using it for. This is a technique I'll definitely be doing again. 

Take care out there and I hope that you too have friends who can inspire you when you're feeling low.