Sketch Show n Tell

The Show ‘N’ Tell at Stamp Club was based on a sketch given to us the previous month – an interesting one with torn pieces and tied-up bits of string to play with . I had recently fallen for a certain stamp which I purchased from Craft Obsessions and so just had to use it somehow.

I made the base card from dark silver, very heavy cardstock simply folded in half and trimmed-down just a little from its original A4 size. There’s a layer of dark-green card which I decorated with green glue dots; a layer of a pale-green, textured card which I pierced around the edges of before mounting it on top of the dark-green. The focal image is the new LaBlanche stamp lightly coloured with AquaMarkers. I stamped it three times  for a decoupaged look and then die-cut the images for the other side of the torn panel. Actually, it wasn’t so much torn as precisely ripped…..I used one of those rulers with the wavy edge and wet the paper along said edge before gently lifting up one side of the card and pulling it away from the other.

The die-cuts used are the pocket-watch from Spellbinders Timeless Heritage Shapeabilities (retired – S4-014)  and the small wings from the Wings of Hope set. The wings and the pocket-watch were coloured while still in the die and the watch also painted with Aquamarkers. I pierced around the edges of the two torn-apart cards – after colouring with light brown ink to ‘age’ it a little – and then tied them together with some fine cream ribbon. The snaps at each corner (all rounded with a Corner Chomper) look a strange colour on the photos but actually matched the colour on the large, single wing quite nicely in reality.

The Sketch

Focal Image

Wings of Hope

50th Birthday

I’m posting a couple of cards that I made in January and forgot all about! The first was for a GoldWinging friend of ours who was fifty that month. I didn’t want to make anything too fancy as it was for a fella but he also likes a bit of sparkle so I used glitter card to provide that aspect.

The card base is cream and I cut out a Spellbinders Ironwork Motif from a piece of card slightly smaller than the base. I coloured this lightly with some lilac ink and mounted it onto deep red glitter card cut a little larger to show a border. The ’50′ was stamped onto a small, circular die-cut and glued into the centre.

I stamped the sentiment onto a Spellbinders Tag and coloured that with lilac ink to match, threaded some sparkly red ribbon through it and then pierced all around the edge for a relatively simple-looking card.

Sentiment

Sparkly!

Poppy

I love the style of Crafty Individuals stamps and this poppy is just gorgeous. I can’t link to it at their site as they don’t seem to have a search box but it can be seen here at Chocolate Baroque. I highly recommend both of these sites not only for purchasing stamps and stuff but for inspiration too.

The card itself was embossed with an Impressability and then lightly coloured with red ink directly from an ink pad. The poppy was stamped in black and cut out with a die – the name of which I can’t remember! While it was still in the die I coloured it DTP with the same ink used on the card base and then, once dry, covered it with a Versamark ink and clear embossing powder to give it the shine (which made it very hard to photograph!).

Closeup

Poppy

Glare!

Easter Chick

I haven’t done much embroidery lately and I’ve been feeling bad about this – especially when for years I wished I had a little girl to sew for and now I’ve no excuse! Mind you, it’s hard to find clothes that don’t already have designs on them.

So, I purchased a three pack of t-shirts and some lovely designs from Embroidery Library and went to work. This one I gave her today along with her Easter Egg, she soon learnt the word ‘chick’ and every-time I asked about it she pressed the chick on her tummy. Maybe I could get a ‘squeaker’ to put in there……?

I used a soft tear-away stabiliser on the back and – once the design was finished – I ironed on a soft mesh lining to stop the stitches from scratching.

Easter *Chic*

Denise's Birthday

My dear friend Denise had a very special birthday today – I’ll not tell you the number here – so I made her this huge card to celebrate the occasion. I had actually made a ‘Star Card’ but didn’t like it at all so that went into the round filing tray under my desk!

I started with a pre-made, tri-fold white card with a large oval aperture and the first thing I did was get rid of the white. I laid my Grand Impressability over the front of the card and air-brushed it with amethyst ProMarker ink and my Letrajet. There’s something about acres of white card which I really cannot deal with, don’t know why!

I then took some gold gift-wrap and ran that through the Grand Calibur with the same Impressability and glued that inside where it would show through the aperture.

I stamped the Lily Background and the Single Lily on white card and then painted them with AquaMarkers (makes a change from ProMarkers!). I cut around the single lily and then edged it with a gold pen and the background panel is layered on purple/gold/purple card which I cut using the Perfect Layers rulers.

The flowers are made with more of the gold gift-wrap and a piece of the same purple card used for the layering, they’re made with Spellbinders Spiral Blossom Two and after rolling them I glittered them lightly. There are a few random leaves under them and the sentiment is cut with Fancy Tags Three with a peel-off greeting. The only suitable peel-off I had was silver so I coloured it purple with a marker pen.

To assemble the card I attached some ribbon down the left side and a small strip of plasterers’ mesh at an angle towards the bottom right of the oval aperture. The panel was then attached with the sparkly brads and a little adhesive. I glued the blossoms on with hot glue and the lily is raised on 3D foam pads. A little touch of Stickles in the centres of all the flowers finished the card front.

I found that the card, being so large, didn’t seem able to stand up by itself so I printed the inside sentiment on cream cardstock and then cut down some purple paper from a kids A3 craft pack for an extra layer in there (and to disguise the fact the cream card is A4 size and therefore quite a bit smaller than the base card itself).

Single Lily

Lillies

Blossoms

The sketch

This month the sketch at the Michael Strong Group was as shown to the right. Once again there have been loads of different interpretations of this, I chose to turn it on its side as you can see below.

The card base is a simple cream card, there’s a layer of red card with simple rounded corners and then a shocking pink layer die cut and embossed with my Grand Calibur. Three strips were cut with an edgeability and layered over the top of the two larger layers.

The lattice shape was cut in red and cream and slightly offset and the middle is Michael Strong’s Cloisonné Circle.

My interpretation

Close up

Shades of Green

Last month Michael Strong set us the challenge to use at least three shades of green on a card. There were some beautiful entries submitted for this – I always find it fascinating how people interpret a challenge so differently – and I’ve just found out that Mike has chosen my entry to be one of the three winners . I am so proud to have been chosen for this, Mike is a wonderful artist and a very generous soul as well. Please, check out his website sometime, the stamps are very reasonably priced and come ready cut-out and mounted on static-cling foam and some have matching dies. You can click on the link to his blog from there too, got some lovely ideas on there.

I have a couple of close-ups for you below. The house was stamped first and then stamped again on a scrap of copy paper which was cut out and used as a mask over the stamped image.

While the mask was in place I sponged the hills using torn paper and various green inks (using a circle cut out of a post-it to mask off the sun first) and then coloured the house (and the sun) with ProMarkers. I put the mask back before stamping the tree so it would be behind the house and then used the same tree to add some foliage in the foreground.

There are some small dots of pink and green blossoms on the foliage and tree and a piece of green and gold ribbon wrapped around the card and tied in a bow. I’m not much into bows – even though I have a lot of ribbon! – but they are very popular on cards these days and so I am trying to add them when possible.

I layered the main image onto some gold card to echo the gold in the ribbon and used my Perfect Layers tool to cut it to a nice, neat border.

Ribbon

Little House

Album

A couple of years ago I tracked down the box of ‘family photos’ and kept the reasoning quiet so my big sister wouldn’t guess what I was up to. On Sunday I presented her with the results and I think (no, I know) she was thrilled with it – she cried again .

I’ll post the photos below and there’ll be details – if needed – which you can read with the enlarged view. I haven’t done an awful lot of Scrapbooking but plan to remedy that this year with a concentrated effort to sort out my photos and get them chronicled. I keep telling my sons that I will do them one each and they will not care at all at the moment but will be very glad when I’m gone .

Scrapbook box

Front cover

A very young Jacqui

Blossoms

Dad in the army

Soldier

1952

Astra

Brothers

8 Sisters

My sisters

Mum's sisters

Whitby

2 pages of cats

Cats

Friends

1970's

First wedding

Getting arty

Nephews

Baby David

Dad & Mum

Iris

Davids

Resemblance

Purple pages

St Ives

50th

Cousins

Family

Parents

Stu & Amy

Millie

1st birthday

Santa

Llandudno

Hidden pockets

SISTER

So, now that it’s past the day and she’s actually had the card I can now blog about it . These cards are very time consuming (unless you’ve got an electronic cutter that’ll do it for you) but this was a real labour of love so the time didn’t matter at all.

I printed large letters using Word and then cut them out, attached them to some heavy card and then cut around them to form the base of the card. Once they were all cut out I layered them up and trimmed the left sides at the sizes I needed to make the word ‘Sister‘ look right when it’s stood up.

Each piece of card was covered in scrapbook paper and trimmed; peel-offs used around the letters to make them stand-out a bit. After that, it was a case of decorating.

I printed out lots of ‘sister’ sayings and cut them into various shapes; found embellishments I fancied using and then just placed them where I thought they looked best.

The flowers on the front are made with Spellbinders Spiral Blossoms 2 using some old book pages. I glittered them lightly, sat them on some foliage and twisted some pearl, wired beads between them.

Have a click on the photos to see more details. I know my sister loved this – she cried .

Front of card

Family Ties

Perfect Sister

J is for Jacqui

Two women

Jewels

Nearly finished

Back of card

H.O.M.E.

I bought a plain white set of letters with the intention of making a cute decoration for my sister’s kitchen and the following photos show you the results. I firstly painted the shapes with some acrylic paint – just mixed brown/white/yellow until I got the colour I hope I remember rightly from her kitchen walls !

I’m afraid I didn’t take step-by-step photos so these are just some close-ups of the finished articles. No great planning involved either – I just kept adding stuff until I thought it was enough.

There is torn paper adhered to the top of the painted shapes the edges of which I distressed lightly with Antique Linen ink. I then stamped over the whole thing with my Michael Strong Lily Stamp and then painted over the top with dilute PVA. The mesh is some plasterers mesh on a roll left for me by my builders when they’d been working here – it’s awfully useful and there’s masses of it on a roll. More PVA holds that in place.

I punched the flowers from the same decorative papers I’d torn earlier using my Martha Stewart punch and these I dipped into UTEE in my MeltPot. Once they’d dripped a little and hardened I glued a metal popper in the middle and hot-glued them to the letters.

The cats are cut using  a Spellbinder die (my sister loves cats, has 4 at the moment) and also dipped in melted UTEE to protect them and make them nice and sturdy. Now all I need to do is pray that she likes it .

Before!

After!

H.O.

M.E.

Flowers

Details

Feb Sat Sketch

I am delighted to announce that my card was chosen by my peers to be the winner of the Saturday Sketch Challenge for February. It means my card will be on the home page of the Yahoo group for the next month for all to see there – but it means more to me as it was voted on by all the members of the Enjoy Michael Strong Stamps Group and not merely a random drawing. 

I have already blogged about the making of this card so if you scroll down this page a little you’ll be able to see all the details.