Let The Magic In

Equipment Required

A4 Sheet of Water Colour Card
Easel Card with Scolloped edge
Glass Mat or Wipe Clean Surface
Adirondack Lights Alcohol Inks in 3 Colours
Cool Peri, Stonewashed and Aqua
Lavinia Stamps A Tree and small Maple Leaves
Heat Gun
Clear Versa Mark Stamp Pad
Heat it Up Embossing Powder in Gold
Gilding Wax Empire Gold 
Collall Glue 
Silicone Glue
Masking Tape

I absolutely loved making this card the messier the better! Again I didn't know where I was going with this card. I had an idea of where I wanted the tree and that I wanted the background colours to flow into one another so it took so playing around with using different medias and applicators. To start this card take the A4 watercolour card and cut out a circle with a 3.5 inches diameter 1 square to fit in the base of the easel card  and 1 large rectangle  and 1 small rectangle for the stopper. Set them aside and here comes the fun messy part.

Wipe down and clean your glass cutting mat. For the next bit I wore gloves, Using the masking tape make a square directly on to your glass mat which is slightly bigger than your largest square, then take your 3 Alcohol inks and pour them into the square area you have just made and make a random pattered and let them merge in to one another. Once the inks have covered the whole area take your square piece of watercolour paper and place into the ink face down and let the ink soak in to the card. Lift the card up and check to see if the ink has covered the whole area, if not don't worry just add some more ink and place the part of the card back in  to the taped off area. Repeat this process for all the other pieces of card and leave to dry. Don't forget to clean the inks from your cutting mat I just used water and some kitchen towel! 

Once the backgrounds are dry take the circle piece and take the tree stamp and place on to a stamping block ink it up by using the versa marker pad and stamp it on to the circle background. You will faintly see the image take it over to the embossing powder and pour over the top and then tip off and heat from beneath with the heat gun. I then repeated the process but using the maple leave stamps and stamped them on to the rectangle pieces of background. On the card stopper I wrote "let the magic in" with black pen. The final part of the card before putting together was to take the Empire Gold Gilding wax and using my finger rubbed it around all the edges of the backgrounds and toppers I also did around the easel card itself.

Dreams

Dream

Equipment Required.

A4 sheet white card 260 gsm x 2

A4 sheet black card 260gsm

8 x 8 scalloped card 

Tattered Lace Rose Corner Die

Tattered Lace Sweetness Wrap Die

Grand Callibur or any die cutting machine

Lace Ribbon

Double sided tape

Glue 

Craft Knife & scissors

Spectrum Noir sparkle clear pen.

The easiest way of making this card is to start by cutting and embossing all the embellishments using the Grand Callibur. Cut two of the Rose lace corners and 3 of the Sweetness die. We only need the main part of the die once so place the other two pieces in your crafty stash and save for another day, but take out the other two dream words as we are going to use them. I never know where these cards are going to take me until I start playing and I happened noticed that in the rubbish pile were little flowers and heart shapes so i decided to collect them up and use on the card, which meant I needed more so I cut out the dream die another 5 times ( I must of been mad !) The Next step is to cut the black card into a square  slightly smaller than than 8 x 8 scalloped card base but don't stick it down yet! Take the main part of the Sweetness die and position and glue down onto the black card thread  the lace ribbon either end where it looks like a buckle doubling it back on it self and I placed a bit of double sided tape to keep the ribbon together and then fold the ribbon around the edge of the card with double sided tape. Put double sided tape all around the back of the black card and stick down to the scalloped base. Glue down the three dreams diagonally across the card remembering to place on in the middle of the heart. Glue the two Rose corners one in the bottom left hand corner the other in the top right hand corner. Place and glue the flowers and hearts randomly around the card. Finally take the Spectrum Nior sparkling pen and colour in the the three dream words and the hearts and flowers. You card is now complete. 

TOP TIP ALERT:  When gluing buy some spray glue as the Die are very fine and delicate I used Collall and a cotton bud but it still made a little bit of a mess.

Hope you enjoy making this card as much as i did!

Happy Anniversary

Hello it has been a couple of days since I last posted a card but like many households we have been getting ready for the start of school.  I made this card for two very special family members who are celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary in the next couple of days. You will probably agree its a  massive achievement to reach such a milestone.

I loved making this card I never know where a card is going to take me, I have a rough idea with the main image but until I start playing around with colour schemes and papers, I go with the flow until I come across something I like which can be very time consuming at times. For the 65th wedding anniversary it colour is blue sapphire I could not find the right shade of blue I was looking for but I settled on this deep blue paper for parts of the church along with some oyster pearl card, which has a lovely shimmer to it although its hard to see from the photo. The church image has been embossed using a Glitter Girls embossing board called "Gifted" which is a lovely board to use. The only problem was the Oyster card stock was a little on the heavy side and found it hard to fill the channels in the board, but I loved the out come. I used the "Glitter & Glitz" art deco wedding CD Rom by Debbie Moore which I feel works beautifully with the embossing board. After I had glued it all together I set about looking for some papers for the background and came across some high quality paper with blue flowers and lace from my crafty stash of card and papers. I cut the paper to size and glued it to 6 x 8 scalloped card. To finish the card I carefully made a cross with 6 light blue "Basics Rhinestones" by Kaisercraft and found a happy anniversary topper from my stash of  crafty bits and bobs.  I hope you all enjoy this card as much as I have enjoyed making it.

Happiness

 Hello this is another card in which I have enjoyed making and I can't help myself with the amount of colour I have used. I love colour!

I started this card by using a Shenna Douglass Happiness rubber stamp from her little bit sketchy range and stamping it onto some Neenah solar white ultra smooth card stock and coloured it with the lights and pastel sets of Spectrium Noir pens. I was really happy with the way the colour has turned out on the image as I wanted a subtle look and nothing to heavy.  Once I was happy with the topper I carefully but randomly tore around the end of the stamped image.  For the background I embossed a piece of deep blue card stock which I found in my odd paper box with my Spellbinders M-bossabilities Flora design A folder. I love the pattern on this embossing folder and in some way it seem a shame to cover it up. I though the card was a little bit dark to show up the lovely pattern so using a red and yellow pencil crayon I drew around the patterned. I was really please the way it came out. In the centre of the flower I used a drop of Cosmic shimmer pearlescent coloured pva. I then glued both the topper and backing card together  and set about distressing a piece of A4 card folded in half with Tim Holtz Tumbled Glass distressing ink. For the final embellishment I used my Tonic butterfly punch on some Neenah card and coloured it with the Spectrium Noir pens. I hope you like this card.

Best Wishes

 Hello here is a card I really enjoyed making and wanted to share with everyone. This was a little messy to start with but I love making a mess in a name of creativity. I started off by stamping directly onto my craft sheet with Tim Holtz distress inks Forest Moss and Mustard Seed in roughly the size of A6 rectangle and with my water brush I mixed the two colours randomly together and splashed a few drops of water onto it. I then got a piece of A6 200gsm white card and placed onto the top of  ink on the craft sheet and gently pressed down, moved it from side to side to give a random colour pattern. Carefully picking up the card I dried off the ink using my heat tool. I wasn't completely satisfied with the result so using a sponge and the Forest Moss distressing ink using circle motions starting from the outside and headed towards the centre but not all the way. When I was happy I dried it off  again using the heat tool. To finish the background I used an ivy rubber stamp from "Docrafts" Ive had this stamp for a while but this is the first time I have used it and I pleased with the way it has stamped out. Using a permanent  black ink I stamped a random pattern and once the ink had dried I added more colour on the leaves using a yellow, green and blue pencil crayon.

When I was happy with the background my focus was turned to the foreground and I have been dying to try out my Spellbinders Shapeabilities Cherry Blossom dies and now I had my chance, I cut and embossed them onto some Coredinations from Tim Holtz and Ranger distress collection card stock and using a sanding block I sanded the embossed area of the branch and cherry blossoms. I glued it to the back ground and decided it need more so I hand drew a bird onto some 200gsm white card stock and using some Zig Kurecolour alchol based markers I coloured it in.  I stamped the best wishes stamp using a permanent black ink. I hope you all enjoy this card as much as I enjoyed making it.

Christmas Wishes

Christmas Wishes

Welcome to my blog! This is the first time I have written one so here goes.
This was the card I sent out to family and friends last year in which I ended up making around 50 of them. The task was turning into an up hill battle as time was running out and the deadline for getting them into the post before the final delivery was getting closer and closer. My fault really for leaving it to the last minute to make them, especially as there were so many to make.  To my relieve I managed to finishes them with a few days to spare.

To start this card I got some A4 black quality card and divided and cut the sheet into six  panels, I then stamped the the lamp post in to the centre of the black card using a Versa mark clear ink pad. The stamp is from "Flower Soft - The Lamp Post." The set came with ivy stamps too which I wrapped around the main body of the lamp post. I absolutely love this stamp especially in a Christmas scene. I heat embossed the lamp post  and ivy with a embossing powder scented creamy vanilla, I am not normally a fan of the smell of vanilla but making so many the kitchen smelled lovely by the end of this stage. While the embossing was cooling down I got to stamping Christmas wishes onto DL cards using a silver ink pad. Before I started the final stage I decided to mount the stamped image onto the DL card as I thought it would be easier doing it first before applying the "flower soft." For the final stage using "flower soft"glue I carefully placed the glue up the vine of the ivy and covered it in "Flower Soft" gold form the diamond range which has a sparkle to it. Once that had dried I returned armed with the "flower soft" glue and carefully placed it on the leaves of the ivy and this time covered them in "flower soft" silver diamond  range. Once it had dried they were ready to send.  Despite the fact of getting a little stressed in making them because of time I did really enjoyed making them and love the final result and I hope you like it too.