I also must admit that I am loving the challenge! The hardest thing is choosing what to do for each card – I made a table in Word and listed ideas for each letter and I have far too many ideas for each – and that’s my biggest problem.

I’m not working on the cards in A-Z order – just picking whichever letter appeals to me at the time I’m in my craft room – so they’re not going to be shown here in order either. If you click on each photo you’ll see the description of the card, just in case you can’t work out which letter it’s depicting . The first 6 are shown below.

D

D

D

D

D

E

E

F

F

G

P

P

W

W

Flippin Gardener

I have 3 sisters and one of them is a very avid gardener so, with her birthday fast approaching, I got out my LaPasche stamps and set to work. I’m re-using the backs of cards which have been sent to me (both Christmas and birthday cards) – trying to re-cycle as much as possible – and so I stamped the two main images onto some nice smooth white card using black Versafine ink embossed with clear ep.

Colouring is definitely not my strong point but I’m determined to try so I got out the ProMarkers and set to work. The ovals were cut out with a Grand Nestability and a little yellow ink sponged around the edge whilst it was still in the die. I have a big problem with white space unfortunately so I just had to add some clusters of flowers around the edges too.

Having not thought this through beforehand (as usual), I now needed to mount the ovals to a card and remembered seeing a technique for partial cutting with a die over at Ikki’s Cuttlebug Cupboard.  I’m not sure if this is the post I was thinking of but it certainly helped me cut half an oval in the piece of A4 card I wanted to use.

Front and Back

Inside

Front

Once I’d cut the semi-oval and scored and folded the card I used some of the accent stamps which came with this Flippin set to decorate and then glued the stamped oval panels into place. I’m really pleased with the way it’s worked out and thankful to Ikki for her blog post which helped enormously – I had a terrible mental block when I tried to work it out myself!

Inside finished card

Front of finished card

All Creatures Great & Small

Sir Stampalot are having their February Challenge and the theme is All Creatures Great and Small and I thought I’d have a go. I firstly dug out this lovely stamp from Third Coast Rubber Stamps of a cat with wings (I can’t direct you to the exact stamp – they have thousands of them! Go have a browse ). I coloured different sections with various colours of embossing pens, huffed on the stamp to moisten it again and then stamped it onto some glossy card. This was then covered in clear EP and heat embossed. The mice are from the same company and are stamped in Memento Rich Cocoa.

Once that had cooled and dried I painted over the images with Art Masking Fluid allowing that to dry thoroughly. I stamped a decorative flourish (Third Coast again) with Versamark across the top of the piece and also a bare branch design from De Stempelwinkel across the bottom for some foliage before brayering over with the only Big & Juicy ink pad I own (so far) – Vibrant Primary. When the masking fluid was rubbed off it left the stamped images as they had been originally and so I coloured the cat and her wings with some ProMarkers. I found the perfect colour of card stock for the base card – it matches the yellow of the ink pad exactly and is soooooooo not what I normally would use! It’s an A4 card simply scored and folded in half.

I grabbed a couple of sheets of A4, white glossy card and attacked them with the brayer and Vibrant Primary. You can see on the photo of the full sheet that I went across the width and it formed broad stripes, on the other I went diagonally with the brayer, you can perhaps see that on the photo of the Sizzix Flourish die. I cut a couple of pieces, put them coloured sides together and cut them with my Wizard.

Have you ever spent so much time faffing around that a single card takes two evenings to make?!

I trimmed a sliver off each side of the main panel and then spent ages arranging and re-arranging them with the die cuts! Some low-tack masking tape was needed to hold the finished layout in place so I could flip it over and apply glue to all the intricate swirls. I outlined the cat with dots of white and then decided the whole thing needed…….more! So, my Tim Holtz idea-ology ruler and a pricking tool allowed me to make lovely neat puncture marks all round before showing me that the swirls also needed to be dotty. Perhaps it’s all a bit too much? I quite like it anyway .

Cat and Mouse

Masking Fluid

Brayering stuff

Rainbow

Sizzix Flourish die

Tools

Left

Right

Valentine Challenge

A Valentine card with no red or pink in sight – that was the challenge thrown down by Michael Strong this week. I’m showing my contribution here, just the one scan this time as I didn’t think about photographing each step – it’s all quite simple really.

I took a piece of recycled A4 card (that is why you can see ‘bits’ in it) in a neutral taupe colour and cut it in half. One half was folded to make the base card and the other I used for the die-cuts.

I stamped over the base with a pale lilac ink using just one image from a cube stamp full of hearts and then edged the card with a darker purple. I cut the nesting hearts (middle and smallest sizes) and the wings out of the remaining card and then embossed them using the Grand Calibur (love it!!!). The raised, embossed areas were then inked over with a brayer and Versamark ink and sprinkled with ‘Tequila Sunrise Sparkle N Sprinkle’. The scan doesn’t really do it justice – that stuff really does sparkle.

I backed the hole in the heart with a bit of cloisonné – the same way as in the Blog Hop – using ‘Victorian Violet Archival’ ink and then glued the larger heart and the wings down flat (spread some pva lightly with a sponge brush over the back of the wings as they are really hard to get sticky!) and raised the smaller heart on sticky pads.

Not a bit of red or pink to be seen – hope it still says ‘Valentine’.

Half-Step Card

This card is based on an idea by Sheila Weaver which you can find on Joanna Sheen’s website. Sheila uses a lot of CD printables where I have used rubber stamping. The template is very cute and quite easy. I always make one out of cheap cardstock first  – and keep that to work from in the future –  rather than mess up a sheet of proper card .

I used a pearlescent cream heavy card and my Scor-Pal to make all the fold lines. The main image of the ducks (BTW, this is for a guy so I was trying to keep it masculine) is from Crafty Individuals and I used a Versamark pad and detail gold embossing powder. It was cut out with a Nestability (one of the labels!) and then I used the same die to draw around the outside and then cut that out with scissors. This is because there wasn’t room on the front part of the card to get the next size up of Nestie on there so I made my own smaller border this way. I rubbed Versamark around the edges and embossed with the same detail gold powder. This ensures a perfect match of colour to the stamped image.

I layered these together and stuck it to the front of the card. The ‘belt and braces’ part of my brain made me also add a couple of brads to help secure it.

At the sides are a couple of smaller cards which have the greetings inside. As you can see, my friend is 50 and I did succumb to a little flower power by drawing a light circle around the numbers and then stamping leaves and flowers with my Tapestry Peg Stamps. I smudged the edges with the same distress inks and then glued them on top of some ribbled ribbon. This was plain white and I coloured it with the red and green inks used above, glued it to a strip of card and ran it through the ribbler for a different texture.

I’m quite pleased with the way this turned out for a first attempt, thanks to Sheila Weaver.

Love these ducks!

Left side

Right side

Anything Tim!

The Stamp Man Challenge Blog has tempted me with their “Anything By Tim” (as in Holtz) Christmas post. I don’t have many of his stamps – in fact, only the one!, but I used it three times to make it look like more

I began by pressing Distress Ink pads (Fired Brick and Peeled Paint) onto a craft mat, spritzed with some water and then rubbed the tags into the watery mess that was left. I tried crumpling them but wasn’t happy with the results so I ran them through my Wizard in 2 different snowflake Cuttlebug Embossing Folders. Once embossed I brayered over the top with Versamark ink and dipped in Detail Gold Embossing Powder.

I stamped “Reindeer Games” 3 times onto watercolour paper and coloured them with sponges and Distress Ink Pads – Fired Brick; Peeled Paint; Mustard Seed; Antique Linen & Vintage Photo. I cut two of these down to place partly on the back tags, the last one is nearly whole.

The tags were layered onto some green holographic card to brighten them up a little and then layered again on some dark green holly/berry paper. I thought this looked a little dull so added yet another layer of holographic card in red. The diagonally placed ribbon is from a huge roll I couldn’t resist buying at my local CostCo and two of the tags are tucked behind that, the last one placed as a focal image on top. Gold snowflake brads help to hold the heavy tags in place.

None of the ribbons in my stash were the right colour so I took some plain white and ran it over the red and green distress pads, spritzed to blend the inks and then left it to dry – I think it looks pretty much a perfect match for the rest of the colours on the card (well, it does in real life).

Close Up

Another view

Pretty Lady

Well, it serves her right! My M-I-L is always telling me how much she loves the cards I make so I decided that for her Christmas present this year I’d give her a box full of cards she can use throughout the year. She is 90 years old now and it’s so very hard to find something to buy for her so I hope she’ll like the thought behind this gift.

I actually had a blast doing this – it was very liberating just making cards and not thinking about who they were destined for. I could try out all sorts of techniques and, what was really great, go through my box of bits I’d made over the past few years and finally use some! I had all sorts of ‘toppers’/panels/trial stampings in a drawer and they were just sitting there being wasted until now.

I did try to make sure there are cards for both male and female, just noticed I haven’t done any kids ones though – let’s hope that’s not too big a deal.   I have since put peel-off greetings on some of these cards but haven’t put any verses in them so as not to limit who they can go to. I have gathered a whole bunch of different verses in various categories and printed them out for her, she can choose whichever she likes and write them in to suit the recipient (hopefully!).

Joan's Collection

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That's Odd!

Over at StampTV they’re having a Release Party Challenge which called for using odd numbers of ‘things’ on a card but more than just ‘one’.

So I cut some Heirloom Ornaments out of plain card using the Spellbinder Dies and then coloured them with Copper Paint Dabber by Adirondack. Once dry, I over-stamped them with a Christmas script die using green Versafine ink. After the stamping was dry I rubbed a Versamark ink-pad all over them and embossed three times using clear powder. I only had the ultra-fine powder in but it seemed to work OK for this technique called “Embedded Image”.

I found the idea at:

http://toyzhaven.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/2010/10/31/embedded-image-technique/

and used snowflakes and stars to stamp the images on top with a variety of embossing powders. On the small shapes I firstly used a stamp of a similar shaped ornament but it actually spread too much into the clear e/p and just looked smudgy so I used the stars stamp – which you can see on the card base – on top of the first try. I edged these little ones with gold glitter for a bit of sparkle.

The heavy-weight, hammer finished, dark green card-stock used for the base was stamped with gold ink and small stars and I embossed lines using my Scor-It board and lightly rubbed over the top of these lines with the same gold ink pad to represent the hanging ribbons.

The large die-cuts curled a little with all that embossing and so, after gluing onto the card (using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive - great stuff!) I left the whole thing under something heavy to flatten. I heard a crack as I did this and, as expected, found the largest shape had cracked in a few places. A quick blast with the heat gun fixed this

This card will need to be handed to someone close rather than posted – there is no way all that triple embossing will survive the Royal Mail!

Jasper, Cloisonee & Lapis Lazuli e/p

I like the red e/p

Another view

Rust, Gold & Ivory

Well, three challenges in one day! I have only ever entered one before, a couple of years ago – don’t know what’s come over me

This one is from StampTV, perhaps it was the colour choice that appealed to me – or perhaps it was the need to make a card for my brother-in-law encouraged a bit of killing two birds with one stone.

I stamped and gold embossed this ducky stamp from Crafty Individuals onto a rust card stock and then die cut it with Nestability Eyelet Squares. Another of the same die cuts was layered behind the first to make the medallion shape. I stamped and embossed just the small square portions of the image onto the same card, layered it onto gold holographic (which looks much more colourful on here due to the flash) and then again onto rust card.

A strip of rust card was covered with gold ribbon and adhered to the ivory base card and gold brads were used to help keep it in place. The small squares were mounted on 3D foam pads for dimension.

Small squares

Ducky stamp

Mojo Monday Challenge

This sketch really appealed to me this month so I thought I’d have a go! The outline is shown below and my interpretation of it started with an ivory base card. The dress stamp is from Elusive Images Funky Fashions and I stamped it on neutral card and embossed with a lovely sparkle powder called Peanut Butter. It doesn’t really show well on here unfortunately.

I edged this with a little fired brick distress ink and layered it onto some red card which I cut out with some decorative edge scissors. The next layer of dusky pink pearlescent was mounted in the same way and the glitter-card bit at the top was cut using a Tim Holtz alteration die.

A little ribbon with a bow finished it off, hopefully as the sketch suggests.