Stamp Club Challenge

Challenge Card

I’m trying something different…… throwing out a challenge to the ladies at my local Stamp Club. We meet once a month and I took a whole bunch of items with me last month and shared them out giving everyone two months to see what they can come up with.

The items I took were empty cat food foil trays, fancy plastic cocktail sticks and cleansing wipes. The trays were given to me via an offer on our local FreeCycle, the cocktail sticks I have had in my stash for well over 20 years (bought them when we lived in Southern California and we’ve been back a loooooong time now!) and the cotton wipes are actually just the ‘rough’ side of them – they come apart very easily and, as they were falling off and I was throwing them away, I decided that there really must be something I could do with them.

Here are some close-up photos of the items before I started doing anything to them – well, I did cut open the foil tray and start flattening it.

All had 3 of each

Cleansing pad

Cotton discs

Cocktail sticks

Tray

Altering Bits

I have recently been bought a Wizard and have succumbed to the lure of Nestabilities (not many – yet!) so had a play with the scalloped ovals and then a Sizzix embossing plate. Once I’d got them cut out I coloured them with some alcohol inks, chopped the ‘legs’ off the cocktail sticks and coloured them with the same inks while I was at it. I don’t have a photo of the latter on their own but you can see them when I’ve added them to the card with some fine gold wire curled around them.

Frames

Closer

Large Scallop

Embossed

Coloured

Sticks & Wire

Cotton Discs

As I added colour with the alcohol inks to these they distorted and became ovals instead of circles – not a problem as they echo the ovals I’ve punched out of the tins. They were very ‘floppy’ so I painted them with a few coats of pva and let them dry. I then embossed them with a clear/sparkle powder and stamped into them with a large stamp just to add a bit of texture.

Adding Colour

PVA

Embossed

Closer

The Card Design

A very popular card these days is this Tri-Shutter Card which I found at Crafts By Carolyn (who, in turn, links to Ellen from whom she got the idea) who has kindly posted downloadable files so you can make your own – thanks girls!

I cut the base from some plain card I had in stock and decided to decorate with a double-sided scrapbook paper. I coloured the edges of the card (which will be showing) with some brown inks, very roughly, and after cutting out all the small pieces I attached them patterned-side-up to what will be the front of the card.

Card supplies

Scrapbook paper

Inked edges

Papers glued

Different angle

The Back

As I was doing some ‘stamping’ for the reverse of the card I also used the reverse of the scrapbook paper. It’s a beautiful colour and I thought the black versafine ink was suitable for the sentiments and other stamped images. Also on the back I used some of the side pieces left from punching the ovals from the trays – smoothed them out and then ran them through the Wizard with a Fiskars Texture Plate in the feather design. I just cut small rectangles and rounded the corners before mounting onto some black card for definition. I stuck two of the cotton discs onto the large panel and curled some black wire into loops which I then anchored with tiny black brads.

Reverse

ART

Fiskars plate

Close Up

Faffing About!

Sometimes you can spend so long just faffing with details! I don’t think any card has ever taken so long to assemble but maybe that’s because I was chronicling it along the way? At Port Sunlight Stamp Festival I fell in love with a collage stamp set and so used the main image on the front of this card, again using the reverse of the scrapbook paper and layering on black card and adding some more tiny black brads. Behind it you can see I cut the scalloped shape in half and mounted that on the scrapbook paper and black card as well. I glued one of the embossed ovals to the centre panel and used some flower brads to attach it more firmly – they were gold so I dipped them into embossing ink and then black embossing powder and melted it.

My new stamp

Front

Brads

Finishing Touches

I have some wonderful glass mosaic tiles in lots of different colours so decided to add a few to the front, just glued them in place with some PVA. I then thought it may be nice to have a dangler from one of the creases so threaded a large bead (toned-down with a little alcohol ink) onto black cord and on the end of that used two small scalloped ovals – cut from the trays and slightly coloured – glued back to back. On the reverse of that panel I had to mount the stamped image onto some card as well as its paper and use raised sticky pads to get around the thickness of the cord there. I finished by wrapping some fancy yarn around a couple of the creases just…… well, just because!

Mosaic collection

Chosen colours

Tiles added

Dangler!

Front of card