Wednesday 25 June 2014

scheduled posting, I hope lol


It was a couple of my buddies birthdays this month and while they were blowing out candles I'll have been blowing sand off of my kobo & knocking back cocktails all while sweltering in the Egyptian sun.  Well I hope the sun will be sweltering lol.  Never scheduled a post before so it should be interesting to see if it's worked when I get home.

Both cards are using a new Jofy set which I'm half regretting buying as the vase plus flowers means you need best part of 8" high card and I do like making 6*6. 

This one is a bit of a blast from the past as I stamped everything on to white card in many layers, cut with a blade and 3d decoupaged it.  Flowers were coloured with my trusty albrecht druer watercolour pencils before being blended with a clear wink of stella.  The vase was blended with a couple of blue distress inks and sprayed with biscotti perfect pearls.  Whole lot was then placed on some paper from First Editions It's a Girl paper pad.  Freebie mag butterfly die (I'm ashamed to admit it's the only butterfly die I own) from a scrap of dsp. 



Same vase again stamped on to white card but this time instead of cutting them out I masked them (wasn't sure where the design was going) and played around with lilac, preserves, concorde, peacock feathers and evergreen distress ink, a mesh type stencils.  Quick blast with the biscotti perfect pearls mist and 1 background was done. Instead of painting the flowers I stamped on to scraps of SU card and glued in place. Bit more of the wink of stella and some diamontes in place and I was reasonably happy with this effect against the background. The vase was stamped and cut from First Editions Dream Catcher paper before a tiny bit of colouring in with a blue water colour pencil.

Sentiment on both is from an old SU set, just stamped on to scraps, cut into a rough tag shape before edging the edges with black archival and a bit of cord added.

Friday 6 June 2014

New goodies


One of the things the playday ladies hate hearing me say is that if they buy anything at the Taunton Sincerely Yours show they have to make a project with it and prove it before the next playday.  I can't really enforce the rule if I don't follow it myself so I dragged out the inks and settled down to make a birthday card for my daughter.

I started off using seedless preserves, victorian velvet, squeezed lemonade, wild honey and dusty concorde distress ink to create a mottled background.  I then went over with my new memory box stars stencil and seedless preserves di, then an old script stencil & wild honey di.  Next out came the biscotti perfect pearls mist and I sprayed through the stars stencil.  Then came a really old dimension fourth script stamp and yet more seedless preserves di and black archival with a birthday sentiment stamp.  Matted on to black pearl and cream pearl card.

The band was cut using a spellbinders border die, both top and bottom glued underneath a strip of the same black card and some cream grosgrain ribbon from SU.

The Prima doll was another new purchase at Taunton.  I watercoloured her skin & hair with my albrecht druer pencils before adding touches of glittery highlight with a wink of stella.  Once totally dry I cut her out and paper pieced her dress using paper from First Editions "Dream Catcher" pad and lifted her using tiny foam dots.  Despite the card being 5" by 7" I still had to chop her feet off to fit on to the card!

I'm entering the card into the following challenges


A Creative Romance - Birthdays 



silver wedding anniversary card



One of my buddies saw the card I made for my nephews wedding and asked me to do something similar for her to give to friends who's wedding she witnessed 25 years ago.  This is what I came up with, not the same but very similar in that I used the same white stardream card, SU sentiment (stamped and embossed with silver ep) and 2 spellbinder hearts.

As well as the hearts I used a decorative "plaque" die from Spellbinders & very old font die, a cheery lyn flourish die and I used scal to cut 6 petalled flowers to make into roses.  I also used a crafts too a4 embossing folder to create some texture to the base layer.  The pic doesnt really show it but I've used a very sparkly glitter around each petal and teeny dots around the plaque.

I'm going to enter this one into

Southern Girls Challenge, Sparkle, Shine & a bit of Bling.

and

Creative Knockouts, Diecuts/Punches

Sunday 1 June 2014

Taunton today, yippee and a tut.


Today was Tauntons turn to host the Sincerely Yours papercraft show and I've been looking forward to it for months.  It's probably my favourite of the shows I go to, small enough I can do a quick in & out but being only papercraft I can also spend hours there.  It's also good to go with my friends & meet up with other friends & stall holders I've known for years.

Now I've got a bit of a running joke with Tracey & Martine from Oysterstamps ever since my other mate Tracy mentioned lemon curd and I ended up taking a jar for Tracey & Graham. Martine likes Cadburys buttons though.  Roll on a couple of years and we'd found out Tracey likes the grub but Martine likes the box so I've started making pretty boxes to take her goodies in.

This was todays box and it's based on an old sewing/quilting pattern.    Not quite how I intended it to be, it was supposed to be handmade white roses but I couldnt find the right sized punch, but it's made using white stardream card, a spellbinders fancy circle die cut into a frame, embossing folder and shedloads of glitter which isnt showing in the pic.  The butterfly die came free with a magazine next year, Memory Box make some nice ones though.







I promised Martine I would do instructions for it, there's probably better ones out there than mine but I've never seen this box made with card before, only material.

2 ways to make it but they're basically  the same, just different boards used to get the same scored diamond within a square.

First seeing as Martine loves her WRMK envelope punch board we'll use that one.

Cut 2 identical sized squares, size isnt overly important but it does help to round them to full or half measure rather than cutting say 7 & 7/8"ths or 7.7cm. It's also better to use inches on this rather than cutting at metric.

Line your first edge on the punch board so it's meeting the measurement of half of your square, so if you've cut a 6" square line the edge to the 3" mark, if you've cut a 5" square line up at the 2 1/2" mark and so on.  Punch down and score along the groove (scores the blue line on diagram) as you would if you were making a normal envelope.  Quarter turn your card, line up to the same point (or use the guide) punch and score.  Do the same for the other 2 sides and repeat with the 2nd piece of card.  Use a ruler and score down the long red lines to create the flaps then snip away the 4 corners as per the grey area on the diagram on ONE of the pieces.  Fold and burnish all fold lines.

On the second piece of card cut along those red lines to leave a diamond within a square and no flaps.  Fold & burnish all scores.

 
 For the hougie, 

Cut 2 identical sized squares, size isnt overly important but it does help to round them to full measure rather than cutting say 7 & 7/8"ths or 7.5cm because it makes it next to impossible to find the central point without getting a ruler involved.  Score at 1/2" or 1cm on one side (doesnt matter if you've cut in imperial and scored in metric of vice versa as long as you do the same to the 2nd piece). 1/4 turn and repeat.  If you've used whole numbers it's now easy to score down from the top to show the mid point which is where to score the diamond by hand.  I've used short red lines on the diagram to show this.  Use a ruler and embossing tool to score between the midpoints (blue line on diagram.) Fold at all score and burnish.  Snip away the sections coloured grey on the diagram.  On the second square cut along the red lines so you just have a diamond within a square.


Assembly instructions aren't easy to describe and they don't really make much sense until you have to 2 pieces in your hands and are sticking it all down.  Here goes though.

Place a strong double sided tape to the right side of the flaps of 3 of the corners (all 4 if you don't want to hide something inside the box)  Match up the first of the flaps to the smaller square as shown and firmly stick together.  Work your way around the box taping and glueing flaps inside until you're finished or keep one point open to allow gifts to be placed inside.

I found it to be better to use a cropodile to make holes for the ribbon after decorating otherwise it's easy to get them in the wrong place.  I also found it harder to decorate when fully assembled but if you're using a paper/decoration which has a definite way up/down/diagonal you're less likely to make a mistake if you decorate after assembly.

Been a long day today so shout if it doesnt make sense.