the Valium card!

This is the card that drove us all mad last Sunday at our regular get-together at Moira's - she saw a similar one on C&C TV, worked out how to recreate it, and proceeded to drive us all crazy! We all innocently turned up with the requested 4 sheets of A4 card - asembling the basic card wasn't too bad - the square back is 6x6, with  2 pieces of A4 cut down along the length to measure 6" deep, then scored at 4.5" and at 7.5"  to form the gatefold bits...........the rest was eventually stuck behind the original square to make the base card. The stamps used are all from the Elusive Images wild meadow plate, stamped in smoky grey and black versafine on silver card - the back piece was slightly smaller than the base square, then the 3 strips in front were cut from across the narrow side of A4 (if that makes sense) and trimmed along the stamped edges. OK so far, then the 'fun' started...............the 3 stamped strips had to be fitted into slits cut in the 3" wide fold behind the front gatefold.....and the slits had to match on both sides ................and the printed owl (from the Jayne Netley Mayhew cd) on its strip of acetate had to go through yet another slit..................oh, and all the strips had to have a stopper bit at each end to stop it sliding completely out, which didn't help getting them through the slits in the first place ........and any sharp edges on the strips stuck anyway..................
We had to admit that the result was great - but I'm convinced there must be an easier way to get the same effect - I just haven't worked it out yet!
Sorry for the photos, will try to get a better one later

journal cover and cute

Seeing journals on blogs reminded me that I had bought at least one sketchbook with good intentions last year............feeling guilty I rooted around and found one, still pristine and totally untouched. I felt that at least I ought to do something about the nice white cover, even if it never got any further - I felt that the colour scheme for PlayDate Cafe 18 was quite appropriate for something that would be quite likely to gather dust for some time before being touched again! I applied large quantities of black soot distress ink, then stamped the bird's tails around the edges - then attacked it with baby wipes to lighten everything up. The text from Tim Holtz was stamped with versafine onto white card, torn out and rubbed with more black soot DI - I went over two words with white gel pen, then added clear gloss to some of the words. The bird cage is from Elusive Images, as are the birds themselves. I had intended to use birds stamped on blue tissue paper, then stupidly stuck them down with the wrong glue - white glue shows through tissue paper! I hurriedly ripped them off, substituting birds on blue card - to hide some glue I couldn't get off, the larger bird had to go on a tag - black soot again, with another image from Elusive Images stamped in white stazon and then coloured with a promarker.

I don't normally do cute, but fell in love with some Whiff of Joy stamps at the Sincerely Yours Thetford show recently - felt that Iought not to buy them, having spent a small fortune on promarkers, but decided that if they were still on the stand after lunch, then they were mine! Needless to say, there they were .................I bought 2 of the city girls, and a sweet mother and baby. They were both stamped with versafine, coloured with my new promarkers - backing papers from Artylicious and flowers from rarely used stash. I went over the dress of the dancer with a clear sakura pen to give it a bit of glitter. The punched strip uses a Fiskars punch - saw a lady demoing MS punches at the show, and was very impressed with the results she got punching both sides of a strip- she was using a half-flower punch, and ended up with a strip of whole flowers, which looked great - the punches had sold out, so resorted to trying something similar with my one and only border punch - can't think why it never occurred to me to try this before! - result nothing like with the MS punches, so they are now on the wish list, although behind the new Elusive Images stamp plates of eastern grasses and keys...............

playdate 14

The Playdate Cafe challenge 14 has a colour scheme of lilac, dusky pink, orange, dark green and white this week - not one I would have chosen! However, I suddenly realised that these were ideal for the Elusive Images peacock stamps when looking for a bp for something else on the Artylicious Peacock Summer Party cd...........I found this orange/pink/lilac paper, so dug out my stamps.

The peacock was stamped onto dark green card, embossed with Ranger seafoamwhite ep, then coloured with orange mica powders and a sakura pen also orange. Matted onto white card, then onto lilac card folded to make an easel fold - the narrow 'ribbon' is leftover from another sheet
printed from the same cd, also matted onto white. The 'stops' for the easel bit are acrylic flower stickers I found when making a start on tidying up...................

This card also fits for the fancy folds challenge 48 on Corrosive Challenges

challenge

Rainbow Lady's current challenge is teatime -well, I don't drink tea, so have gone for the coffee option! I couldn't think of anything I could use for this challenge originally, then remembered the sheet of Murray and Ethel stamps I received as blog candy from Sue at Particraft..... they had been waiting to be mounted and cut out along with a few others.... and there was the ideal stamp! I would like to think I look somewhat better than this first thing, but the coffee is an essential. Image stamped with versafine, coloured with my new Promarkers, background paper from Artylicious.

patchwork butterfly

This birthday card for a friend uses stamps from the new Elusive Images patchwork butterfly plate, and backing paper from the Artylicious decadent brocade cd. The flourishes and words were stamped and embossed in silver, and the huge butterfly was embossed in denim blue on acetate, then coloured with promarkers - had intended to glitter it, but ran out of time before the birthday! The butterfly is only stuck down along the body, so the wings can flutter a bit.
This card fits the challenge for Playdate Cafe (blues) and also for Crafty Ann's challenge (embossing)as well as Gingersnap (also embossing)

silver and gold

My first crafty effort of the year - the snow and cold have driven all inspiration away, despite having new goodies to play with, crafting wearing fingerless gloves just doesn't have the same attraction somehow! Anyhow, thanks to Chrisf for the link to the Play Date Cafe - the idea of gold and silver just seemed to be right. The stamped flowers are from the Elusive Images butterfly poppy plate, stamped in black versafine onto gold and silver card - some embossed in detail black, some in clear EP - funnily enough, the clear powder made the stamped image seem a deeper shade of gold/silver rather than black....the multi flower is just layered and held together with a brad. The single colour ones are my version of grungepaper roses, although they don't look very rose- like! This is also entered for Rainbow Lady's challenge, which is 'recycle' - the backing paper is from rescued gift wrap, as is the ribbon - the embossed card is cut from a chocolate box, long since empty.
Apologies for the rather poor photo, would have been better in daylight!

Guild card

After much mucking about with 'clever' ideas that weren't- and a heap of scrap in the bin - I decided to stay simple for the card to send to a fellow -member of the Graphicus Guild

in what is becoming an annual swop, thanks to Moira's organizing abilities.

Having devotedly followed the 12 tags of Christmas on Tim Holtz' blog, I felt that a tag had less opportunity for being ruined, and the tags featured seemed to have the blessed ability for a rescue job at several stages! So I dug out my last few remaining tags from the stash I bought when Woollies closed last year, my new distress ink pads and the cut'n'dry foam, and proceeded to get inky.

Following Sir Tim's instructions, the tags were first inked with a base of old paper, then with splodges of peeled paint and fired brick inks. It looked a bit messy, but a lot better after overstamping with the pine needles from the retro holidays set by Sir Tim in vintage photo ink - somehow this sort-of merged into the background and muted the colours nicely - I then inked the edges of the tags with black soot ink. Until reading the blog I hadn't realised that the distress inks could be embossed - I did heat dry the first two, but the ink was still wet enough to pick up the embossing powder, although they felt dry. The next two sat on a storage heater for the afternoon, and were much better, although there were still some stray specks of powder that I didn't notice until it was too late!

The tree stamp was a Graphicus Guild one, and embossed with white detail powder, and the sentiment was by Elusive Images. The tags were finished with a scrap of gold ribbon, mounted on a piece of paper printed from the Artylicious Seasons greetings cd (the lovely smudgy holly set) mounted on a gold card - the pattern down the side of the card usd the pine needles stamp again, this time using brilliance black ink.