Triple Flower

This is my final card for my Card Captain week – and I think I’ve saved the best ’til last (well, it’s my favourite anyway ). I’ve called it Triple Flower for the obvious reason – there are three of the large Cloisonné Flowers on it.

I’m not very good at planning ahead so it sort of evolved as I worked on it with no clear direction. No great details on the photos this time, I’ve described it below instead for a change.

I used some heavy dark silver card for the base and a piece of white card on top. I firstly die-cut the flower shape from the upper left using the matching die and then stamped the flower 3 times, once on the main card topper (with part of it missing, of course, due to the hole I’d just cut ); once on a spare piece of white card and once more on the die-cut piece from previously.

All three images were then coloured with ProMarkers and the ladybird stickers put in the middle of them and covered with Glossy Accents. The three small pearls on the left are partly to cover the hole left by the die – I did have a ‘washing line’ type of thing going on between the two holes but decided I didn’t like it after all.

I drew around the metal die on some of the same card as the base to make a larger flower and glued the die-cut one onto that, dotted around the outside with a gold pen and then attached it with 3D foam pads to raise it above the rest.

The flower on the spare card was lined-up below the aperture making sure the orientation matched the other two…….why? I don’t really know, just decided it was important somehow . I paper pierced all round the outside of the white card after it was glued on and added the peel-off border just to finish it all off.

Step One

Step Two

Step Three

Ruby Anniversary

A couple (obviously!) of very dear friends celebrated their 40th Wedding Anniversary in December so I made them a ‘lovey-dovey‘ card . I’ve only one photo to show here but there’s more information on the following photographs describing the processes involved for ‘Technique Thursday’ – the second heart features Burnished Velvet Glitter.

I still don’t have the Michael Strong Cloisonné Heart   so I had to stamp other images and die-cut the hearts out of acetate. I used Staz-on ink for the acetate and then decorated the back of them with glitter.

Mini hearts

Glitter heart

Second type

Glittering

Front and Back

Close up

2nd heart

Swing Card

Day Three of my Card Captaincy and this card took quite a bit of time to construct! The Swing Card instructions were found at Splitcoast Stampers – Beate does a great video tutorial for these but I’m not sure I can post a direct link or if you need to be subscribed there, sorry.

The base card is quite sturdy – a heavy-weight stock – and after scoring as directed I covered the insides and the front with co-ordinating papers. I used Michael’s Kimono Die to trace the shape on half of the front and cut along the traced line with my craft knife. I then used the die with the stamp to cut the image out of dark grey shimmery card with the stamped image embossed with Blue Glass powder.

Further details can be found below the photos – click to enlarge and read .

Closed

Kimono close-up

Butterfly

Inside

Kimonos

Butterfly Two

Wedding Day

Some very dear friends of ours got married in December and this is the card that I made for them. We had recently learned this technique at our Stamp Club so I felt it was a nice style to use for this occasion.

I used lots of Spellbinders stuff – as usual – but what I didn’t do was photograph the stamped verse underneath the one which says ‘Wishing you a Lifetime….’, oh well, you’ll have to take my word that there was something cute there.

The hearts are made from acetate which I stamped with Michael Strong’s Cloisonné fan and kimono and die-cut with Nested Hearts.

As usual, click on each photo for a description.

Happiness

Sparkly

Inside

Twisted Easel

This is my week to be Card Captain* for the Michael Strong Group and so I’ve made my five cards and here is where I’ll give more details on how they’re made.

*[a card is posted on the MS Yahoo group each day for 5 days by a volunteer – hopefully as inspiration to the other members or maybe just a little eye-candy )

Today, Monday, I'm showing a Twisted Easel card which I'm sure you'll be able to find instructions for if you search Google . It's a simple construction and a pretty simple stamping technique – click on each photo for written details.

Front closed

Open

Card Open

The Easel 'Stop'

Over at Quietfire Designs there’s the annual Queen of Hearts Challenge happening on February 14th, St. Valentine’s Day. The title says it all really but you can click the link to go see for yourself what it’s all about and maybe post an entry of your own.

I used a lovely textured lilac cardstock for the base, simply an A4 sheet folded in half and trimmed down just a little (I always feel it’s a bit too big if you don’t cut a sliver off the side ).

The Ice Queen is from a set by Rubbadubadoo – I’m not sure if they’re still in business  – and I stamped her and coloured with ProMarkers trying to make her gown look like the sun (to tie-in with the sentiment). I cut her out with a Nestability Heart and cut a second scalloped one to layer behind. The small hearts stamped on there are from a Prickley Pear set and I punched several small hearts to have them tumbling from her hands as if she’s scattering love.

The large sun is die-cut with a Sizzix Bigz Die and I used a metallic pie plate left over from a CostCo chicken pie (yummy!) and then embossed with Circles Impressabilities before colouring with alcohol inks. There’s a second die-cut in purple card layered behind it for depth.

The sentiment is from Quietfire and looks a little distressed in close-up as it’s stamped on a textured card, I used purple ink for the stamping and for edging the label after die-cutting it.

I had a space in the top left of the card which needed something and – as I didn’t have a suitable sentiment for it – I dug out my calligraphy pens and some purple ink and wrote out the title (I really must practise more…. ).

So that’s it, my Queen of Hearts entry for the challenge – it’ll be fun to see what everyone else comes up with on Tuesday.

The whole card

Sentiment

Queen of Hearts

After a lot of research he did it (didn’t doubt it for a minute ) and so you now have the option to tick one of the “reaction” boxes below (directly below each post) and let us know what you think. It takes ½ a second but still shows you’ve been here and also shows your appreciation.

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Thanks.

Boxed card

My sister-in-law had a momentous birthday this month and so I made her a special card. It took me about 3 evenings of faffing about with it to get it how I wanted but I was happy with the final results. To compound the lengthy business my mother-in-law asked me to make one to give from her so I guess I spent about a whole week working on this birthday (only evenings, I don’t feel I can play in my craft room during the day ).

As our family name is Mackintosh the circular element in the middle just had to be a Mackintosh Bauble from Chocolate Baroque (the set is about to be retired) – two of them back-to-back suspended on white cord.

The flowers were made using Spellbinders Spiral Blossom 2 in a couple of different papers (and tissue for those on the box) and then lightly dusted with a bit of glitter. The butterflies have twisted wire antennae and are sitting on some gorgeous gold/copper wired ribbon. I used a border cut from IronWorks Accents and a couple of layers of Labels 4 one of which I ran through an embossing folder and lightly inked the raised parts.

On the inside, I used the second part of the borders I’d used earlier and cut the other side with Classic RicRac Edgeabilities, the stamped flourishes are from Technique Tuesday and the aperture was cut with Spellbinders Ovals with a second contrasting scalloped oval inside. [I was actually lucky enough to win these Edgeabilities in an online competition – just for leaving a comment on a blog post! ]

Card front

Inside

Flowers

The second card

Well I had to think of something completely different to the one I’d just made so this one is very monochromatic and yet still glittery. A stepper card with lots of layers and bling.

I cut the card base with a Grand Label Nestability and used other Nesties to make the layers from an oriental-style paper. The main image is Michael Strong’s Kimono stamp embossed with a holographic powder over Versamark and cut out with the matching die. One of the Spellbinders Fancy Tags holds a ready-made greeting and there’s a Mackintosh image stamped and silver-embossed on the back panel.

The huge flower is made from a set of blossom Nesties with sunflowers mixing-in between layers. A button in the middle and some silver glitter and it was finished. I do hope she liked them.

Stepper 70th

Flower

Folded Star

This was made for a friend of mine – not a special birthday or anything but she is a special friend. If you Google Folded Star you’ll find lots of tutorials for these in various sizes, mine was made from a piece of 12×12 scrapbook paper and I made sturdy templates out of plain card for future use.

The templates made included those for the designer papers used on the triangles and the trapezoids so the next one will be really easy to make. You can see that on one panel I layered a piece of plain paper (stamped with a small rose image) so there’d be a place to write a greeting. The sentiment is a purchased one which I lightly coloured with distress ink and the flower is actually slightly scented – at least it was when it left here!

I made a double bow following the instructions on Jak Heath’s blog and glued those three tiny flowers on top and then decided it was too white so I masked off the rest of the card and spritzed the bow with some gold glimmer mist. I didn’t take a photo of it after that I’m afraid so you’ll have to use your imagination.

Folded Star inside

Close up

The main image was made using the large Cloisonné Flower which I stamped randomly over some glossy card stock using a Versamark pad. I then sprinkled with fine, clear embossing powder and heat set. Using a brayer I coloured the whole thing with Kaleidacolor Dye Ink in Calypso and then rubbed lightly over the embossed images to remove excess ink from the flowers.

I trimmed this piece down to a suitable size and layered it onto purple card – it’s raised up on 3D foam pads for a bit of height interest. I chose yellow card for the background for a sunny theme (much needed at this time of year!) and used scraps of both the yellow and the purple for accents and layering just to keep it all ‘together’.

I put the trimmings of the main image through the Grand Calibur with the long strip die from the Ironwork Accents set and glued them to the yellow and then the purple card to make the ‘ribbon’ strips. The faux brads were made by punching two different sized circles from the card and rounding them slightly with a large embossing ball tool before sticking them on to the card with rolled-up glue dots to help keep them in shape.

Embossed resist

Die-cut strip

The Sketch