Pink & black scrap card

I used up more scraps than I expected in making this card because I didn't like my first effort, so I salvaged the stamped panel and made a new base. Then I picked up a small black piece which just happened to be under my hand, decided it was exactly what the card needed and stamped the sentiment by Hobby Art in Versamark then heat embossed with detail white powder. The main panel was one of my experiments with Distress Inks back in July when DH was in France; I stamped the weeds and grasses using Versamark/white embossing powder and Memento tuxedo black. The stamps are by Darkroom Door and Elusive Images.

That pile of scraps is shrinking most satisfactorily......then I shall start on the bits in the stuffed drawers.....

There are birthdays in December too!

And I have to make 6 birthday cards for the month, although one has already gone for a friend's birthday on the 2nd. This new one is for my brother-in-law who was a Christmas Day baby; he and my sister will be in the States visiting their daughter and her family so I had to make the card in good time - no good leaving it until the day before as I sometimes do! I was tidying my craft room after the Christmas card marathon and sorted out a pile of scraps. Three pieces landed together and I liked the effect so much I decided that would be the base for the card - the plain brown Bazzill, the gorgeous copper coloured paper (which is far more brown/gold IRL than the pink it appears to be here) with embossed ovals, and a piece I had coloured myself with Distress Inks in light yellows and oranges. The latter made the edge strip under the trellis and also the background for the sentiment. And all the little scraps which were created from the old ones have gone into the waste paper bin!!!

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we are off to the German Christmas markets.....if I don't post in the next couple of days, you may assume we have managed it this week.

Not a Snowman To Be Seen!

I promised to do something different, and snowmen don't come much more different than this!

The challenge on the JustRite blog this week is 'Colors of Autumn'. Despite being a JRS junkie I never manage to take part in the weekly challenge - most of my crafting is done at the weekend which in theory is perfect since the challenge is posted on Friday, but I need time to think about a possible design and by the time I've thought it's always too late :( But not this week! Being an autumn nut I was determined to take part and have been chewing over ideas. I thought of a rainbow done in red-orange-yellow-brown wth the basket of apples as the crock of gold at the bottom...unfortunately enthusiasm outran ability and it turned out rather differently but I'm still quite pleased with it. IRL it's quite a lot brighter than it appears in the scan, with a band of yellow that 'lifts' the background. I'm going to put it in a frame and hang it in my workroom - I'm slowly gathering various autumnal bits and having plain white walls gives me plenty of scope to play with touches of colour.

The background was sponged with Distress Inks in about ten shades. I used the largest size Trompe Script font by JR for the heading and stamped it in Memento Rich Cocoa ink. The apple basket is from Autumn Blessings - despite being an oval set it fits nicely with only a small trim into the large border from Backyard Birds.I coloured them with Promarkers and used a couple of pale chalks on the background to reduce the glaring white (with hindsight I could have used a slightly deeper shade). I mounted the circle on a layer of brown (both circles cut with Nesties) to define the edge and was going to mount the whole piece on the same brown until I discovered it looked much better on red. Oh, and the outline leaf is by PSX.

Now it's back to Christmas cards.....

One Out of Two: Must Try Harder!

It was our wedding anniversary yesterday and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't make my husband a card. I was full of good intentions on Saturday evening, having spent the day at a craft shop's demo day, but by Sunday morning all inspiration had flown and it didn't return on Monday. However DH totally forgot our anniversary, so honours were even.

It's his birthday tomorrow and I've just made this card kneeling on the floor of my workroom in the most ridiculous cramped conditions! The trouble is that I usually work on the dining table, but the dining room gives direct access to the garden and DH has been trimming the hedge and cutting the lawn so he's been in and out like a fiddler's elbow. My craft room is too small (OK, too untidy) for a table so rather than risk him seeing his card before The Day I worked behind a closed door. That didn't stop him coming into the living room via another door when I was using the scanner there, but then occasionally our house resembles a French farce with characters entering and leaving rooms with multiple doors and unintentionally pursuing each other while the cats look on in amazement. Their only concern is who will stop long enough in one place to feed them.

Anyway, the card is made in two shades of Bazzill card, with leaf paper by Nancy Watts from Making Cards magazine. The bird is by Stampin Up stamped in Versafine sepia and cut with a Nestie and the background sponged with Vintage Photo distress ink. The brown leaf was a button but I chopped the shank off so it lay flat. And the punch is my latest Martha Stewart acquisition, Iron Gate.

And now for something completely different...

I'm home alone this weekend, DH having gone to France for five days with friends from the motor club to watch the 24 hour classic car race at Le Mans. It isn't the 'BIG' 24 hours contested by professionals which takes place each June: this one is held biennially for cars over 30 years old driven by amateurs. DH is lovingly restoring a 1953 baby MG saloon which he bought to be his retirement project; so far it's taken 15 years to strip, restore and rebuild, but at last it's looking like a car again with 4 wheels, doors, a roof...even the headlights are installed and working! But don't ask when it will be on the road - it won't be this year, that's for sure. And no, he doesn't intend to race it :)

Anyway, with the house to myself (apart from two large ginger cats) I've spent the day playing. First up was a birthday card which I can't show because it won't scan and DH has borrowed my camera, so that will have to wait for a few days. I started the second one by making 4 background sheets using Distress Inks in various colour combinations, applying them with Cut 'n' dry foam. The selected one is a mixture of Faded Jeans, Dusty Concord and Milled Lavender. The plants were stamped in Versamark and embossed with white detail embossing powder and the verse was stamped in blue Versafine. I first saw these words in a magazine project about 18 months ago and have wanted them ever since, but it's part of a set (together with the bottom two plants, and others) by Darkroom Door and I always felt I couldn't afford it. Yesterday I caved in and ordered it on line when I found it reduced and with free postage, and justified its purchase by thinking that the ferry to France plus 4 nights in a hotel will be costing DH considerably more! It was a shock to receive the set this morning just 20 hours after I placed the order but I'm really delighted to have it and foresee that it will get plenty of use. Over the past year I've collected quite a lot of stamps with weeds/wild grasses - quirky, maybe, but I do like to be different! Oh, and the stamp in the top corner is from a wild flower set by Elusive Images.

When it came to turning the panel into a card I spent a long time trying to find a suitable background. It looked good on the dark blue as seen in the top left corner, but that is literally the only piece I had - plenty of other blues, but they just didn't look right. The purple in the bottom right corner looked good, but it wasn't big enough for the whole card front and all I have left is a piece about 3 inches square! Finally I decided on the checkerboard effect....very unusual for me and I'm not sure what DH will think about it, but at least it's a finished card.

Another challenge entry - and frustration!

I couldn't resist the CPS challenge #154 when I saw it this weekl! My card follows the given sketch almost exactly; the top layer with the quotation (unknown stamp) was sponged round the edges with Distress inks in various shades, the other yellow layer(yes, it really is yellow!) was made with Adirondack Color Wash sprays and the edges again sponged with Distress Inks. The leaves were punched from another Color Washed piece. And all the colours are much lighter in real life - I did try to alter the scan but obviously I didn't do enough.

The frustration referred to in the title comes not from the card making (although I wish I could cut straighter, considering the care I take in measuring and marking!) but from trying to tidy up the lists on my blog. Maybe I've become complacent about the way I've found my way around Blogworld, but I've spent a considerable time trying to transfer some 'Favourites' to another section, only to have Blogger insist on changing the addresses to something which cannot then be found. OK, so I also discovered that I had forgotten to Save some of the edits I made, but it isn't entirely my fault that I'm having problems. If only I could do it by clicking and dragging......now, did I try that I wonder?!

Autumn Fat Book

I made this 15 months ago for a magazine's 'Papercrafter of the Year' competition. Entrants had two submit two items: one card (mine being the snowman never ending card), and another item not a card, demonstrating papercraft skills and design ability. Hmmm, that last requirement was my big problem! In the end I didn't win anything but wasn't bothered; I had produced two items I wouldn't otherwise have done, and both projects gave me enormous pleasure and satisfaction in their making and in handling them afterwards.

I decided to make a Fat Book sampler of papercraft techniques, tied together by an Autumn theme. The covers were made from mount board with a separate piece stamped and triple embossed with UTEE then applied to the centre of the front cover (Photo 1).

The pages are the standard fat book size of 4 inches square, cut from white card stock then sponged with distress inks in shades of brown, red, yellow and orange with touches of green. Photo 2 shows all the right hand pages with the following techniques: stitching; iris folding; mizuhiki knot; teabag folding; origami; magic card (details below); paper pricking; spirelli with moulded air dried clay leaves; exploding card (details below); 3D decoupage with lacé border. The inside covers were embossed with the Cuttlebug folder Pumpkin Harvest.

The reverse of each page (Photo 3) was decorated with rubber stamping and a quotation about autumn.

The 'magic card' (second row, third from left in photo 2) appears to be just an outline leaf stamp until the top tab is pulled and a coloured leaf magically appears (close up in Photo 4).

The exploding card in row 3, second from left, is shown unfolded in Photo 5. I used the extra space for a lovely little poem about October leaves and decorated it with an appropriate stamped border.

I love the colours of autumn!