Wedding Card - Freshly Made Sketches 124 & Case this Sketch 65

I am back today with another card that I LOVE. As soon as I saw the inspiration sketch for Freshly Made Sketches, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to fuse my love of card making with my love of New York….. I had a gorgeous die from Tattered Lace that I wads desperate to use and so all of this combined would create the perfect Wedding Card for my best friend who gets married in the summer.

I wanted to make use of the New York skyline in my card and picked out the infamous Rockafeller, Empire State and Chrysler buildings and recreated them in a stylised way using black and white card. This part was quite painstaking and involved a lot of measuring, precision cutting and the use of a sharp craft knife.

The Empire state makes use of foam pads in order to recreate the 3D look of the building.

This card actually uses very few materials and so the real focus is on the lines and images created. I quite simply love it!!

Here it is……

To finish the card off, I added a bit of sparkle to the dress by way of some stick on crystals on the Bride's dress.

Any comments as always very much appreciated xx

Cardstock: Super Smooth White and Black from Papermill direct

Die: Tattered Lace

Tools: We are Memory Keepers corner Art deco punch

The competitions I will be entering this card in are:

Freshly Made sketches 124 & Case this Sketch 65

Uniko Studio Challenge 7………squealing with delight!!!!

Good Afternoon all,

I am here with a post to introduce my entry for the latest Uniko Studio Challenge. Before I show you, I want to share a revelation I had the other night. I was showing my husband a card I had made for a challenge and he said that he didn't really like it! I then realised, that I didn't very much either…..

It then occurred to me that I don;t want to get in to a cycle of making cards just to fit a challenge, I want to make cards that I love, and only enter them if I love them.

When I saw the challenge for Uniko studio my heart fell when I saw the word 'distressed'…..I just am not a fan at all of that look. I was delighted however when I saw there was also the option of vintage and so that is the road I have gone down.

I typed vintage in to pinterest and lots of florals and lace were coming up and so I began planning in my head what I wanted to achieve.

I wanted to create some 'lace' and so I embossed with paper mania seam foam white on to card. It was nice, but not great. I tried again using vellum (my favourite medium) and this worked a treat. The sea foam white EP goes kind of crackly when it dried which further gave the illusion of lace. I used two different stamps for the lace which worked brilliantly together.

I decided to make a square card, but to give a more vintage effect, I cropped the corners using an art deco corner punch. I LOVED what I was beginning to build up.

Oh, in order to get one of the stone colours for the colour inspiration part of the challenge, I tried tree staining my card thinking that it would give an 'old' look - but this looked rubbish so that idea was scrapped.

Uniko Studio do such beautiful flower stamps and so I decided to use them to introduce the colour inspirations. I used my Spectrum Noir pens to colour in the flowers and leaves.

I decided to add pearls to the centre of the flowers which just really made them pop, but I got a bit carried away and added them to perts of the lace too - I am super pleased with how this looks though!!

I had made a big mistake when using my heat tool on the Vellum, in that I melted a corner of it! I thought I would be able to cover it up, but in fact, I decided to crop the vellum to just the top two thirds of the card and leave the bottom third as the ivory card. I added a ribbon to cover the join and place my flowers off centre. I was actually squealing with delight by this point as I just LOVED it so much.

I was feeling that this was a card that had to go to someone really special and I remembered that Mother's Day is coming up at the end of next month and because she has had a really rough few weeks as you will know from my last post, this just HAD to be a special card for her. I therefore got out my 'Mum' stamp fro Papermania and stamped in a co-ordinating light teal colour. The final touch was to add an extra pearl on the stamped 'Mum.'

I can honestly say, I have never ever been so delighted with a card I have made. I am so excited to share it with you.

Here is my 'Vintage' card……..

I just know my Mum will love this card. I hope you like it too after I built it up so much!!
Any comments so very very much appreciated.
Laura xxxxx

Stamps: Uniko Studio Pure Florals (Chrysanthemum and the leaves), Bright Butterflies (smaller flowers on the lace), and Flower Power 2 (coloured in flowers)
Cardstock: Papermill Direct Smooth Ivory, Vellum from stash.
Inks: Hobbycraft green, Spectrum Noir BT1 & BT2 (leaves), PP3 & PP5 (flowers), Papermania Seafoam White EP.
Embellishments: Ribbon and Pearls from stash.
Tools - We are Memories Corner Stub&Art Deco tool.

Runway Inspired Challenge 53 & CASology 82

I was blown away by the dress given as the inspiration this week for the Runway Inspired Challenge and I was desperate to take part and to really do the dress justice. For the first time, I decided to take the whole week to make my card. I tried out an idea, put it on the card, left it a day, then added the next part or made a revision to the previous part. In this way, I have created what I feel is the best card I possibly could. This week, I also had the dreadful news that my Nan passed away. We are a very close family and so this has really hit us all hard. My Nan really was the creative one in the family and so I feel I owe much of my creativity to her. So, this week, not only is my card going to be entered into two competitions, but is going to be a dedication to my Nan….

Here is the beautiful Temperley London dress given as our inspiration….

The part that really stood out for me was the gorgeous shape created at the neckline and I aimed to replicate this at the edge of my card.

Here is my interpretation….

I started by embossing with black EP, 3 small Chrysanthemums from Uniko Studio. I cut these out using the matching die cutters and coloured the flowers in using Spectrum pens from the turquoise, purple and pink sets.

I then die cut the larger Chrysanthemum's from card stock ands embossed each using a Sizzix Lattice folder. I could not find any card stock in my stash that matched this bright fuchsia shade and so I just used white card stock and then colures it with my Spectrum pens. I used a black marker to then run through each of the lattice indents.

I also embossed and die cut the matching leaves from the Pure Florals Chrysanthemum range which I colures in with a gold metallic pen. I also coloured around the edge of the actual leaf in the same fuchsia pens the flowers to help it blend in more with the rest of the design.

I really loved how the dress neckline had a black curve that seemed to create an almost backwards S shape. I tried to recreate this by adding two black circles cut from black card stock using Xcut thinlits. I alternated which way they faced as you can see above.

Today I added my final part of the card which was the greeting. I wanted to layer up card in the fuchsia, gold and black. I did this and hand wrote the greeting on the black using the metallic pen, but this looked awful!! I then remembered that I had some gold peel off greetings and decided that these in fact looked perfect. I added the butterfly and bent back the wings so that it stands up as 3D, but unfortunately, this is not captured in the photo.

Just the other day, I saw that the the theme for the CASology challenge is BOLD…..well I would say the colours in this card are pretty bold and so I am going to enter this one too.

I really hope this card makes my Nan proud….Love you Nan, Rest in Peace xxxxxxxxxxx

Less is More Challenge - 'Rainbow'

So card number 2 today….. This card is for the Less is More Challenge which I read about in Beverley from Uniko Studio's post. She is GD there and offering one of the prizes!!

Do you ever have a card idea in your heard that you think will be amazing, but when you actually create it your heart just kind of sinks?? Well that's kind of how I feel about the card I have made for the challenge. I feel that it should work, but I just don't think it does??? Why bother posting it then you might ask….well, I am going to post it in the hope that some people who are much more experienced with card making, can maybe suggest how this card could work better.

When I heard the theme was rainbow, I straight away saw visions of 'rainbow' colours - which would mean lots of different colours of inks. I had a few of the typical rainbow colours, but not enough. I decided to head to Hobbycraft and spend just a little money!! I was having great success with Hobbycraft's own brand of ink and so planned to buy more of them. However, I saw a fabulous deal of 30 mini inks from Hobbycraft for only £10. I snapped it up straight away.

I knew the two stamps that I wanted to use - a peacock and a peacock feather. The peacock was bought from ebay last year and the feather was from Hobbycraft. I wanted the have the feathers in each rainbow colour and then have the round bits of the peacock's feathers (on the actual peacock) each rainbow colour - one of each.

I started with the feathers first. I don't have a die for the stamp and so I would have to cut them all by hand. I decided to draw around the edge of the stamp first and then stamp the image - this would give me a cutting guideline. Originally I was going to stamp the feathers on card, but then I decided that vellum would give a more feathery, light look. The red feather was done with an existing Hobbycarft ink that I had, the remainder done with the new inks. Oh, how different the two inks are……The red dried perfectly, but the new inks (which are very 'juicy' and state that they are pigment inks which I am now guessing are slow drying???!!) just took forever to dry. As a result, you can see that many ended up being smudged and the ink then transferred on to parts of my actual card…..aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!

I embossed the actual peacock in silver (which I think looks beautiful) and cut it out using my circle thin lit. I was going to try and paint each of the circles of the feathers, but I had my stick on pearls in front of me and so I tried inking one in each rainbow colour, drink with my embossing heat tool and then attaching to the card….they are not perfect as it was a pretty fiddly task, but you can at least see what I was trying to achieve!!

The feathers were attached to the back of the circle with some double sided tape, and then the circle was attached to the main card with foam pads to give a bit of dimension.

It's one of these cards that I feel the 'idea' is great, but the actually card is not as good as the idea itself - does that make sense?? Perhaps actual feathers might have been better, or some feather dispersed between the stamped ones?? Any ideas much appreciated.

Here is the card anyway…..you can clearly see the smudges - sorry!!!!

Thanks, Laura xx

Dynamic Duos Challenge 88 - Red and Teal

Good morning all,

I feel I have not posted for ages, but I have been choked full of the cold and also life with two kids is never that quiet!! I have been spending my free time looking at lots of blogs and learning about new techniques to try. The biggest problem I find is that I see a technique that I think would be great to try, but it always means spending more money!! I am a bit of a clothes fanatic (especially shoes) and so now I am having to try and split any money I have between craft items and clothes. I did quite a bit clothes spend in the Christmas holidays (all things I needed of course!!!!!) and so I am having to ensure I pay that off first, before doing any more spending.

Anyway, I do actually have two cards to share today, one for the Dynamic duos challenge (my first every entry) and one for the Less is More challenge (again, first time entry). Lets look at the Dynamoc Duos one first.

The challenge was to use Red and Teal

I was delighted, as I already had both these colours of card stock AND inks!! I pulled out a Chrysanthemum stamp that I purchased from Hobbycraft and decided that I wanted to try the rock and roll technique which I had seen demonstrated by Catherine Pooler. I had already tried this technique with other inks and I came across a big problem. I had seen this done by inking up the stamp in one colour and then rocking it in the second colour…..problem being that the first stamp colour then covered my ink pad….anybody else found this/have a solution??????

I decided that this time, I would ink up in the red and then use a sponge, dipped in the teal to dab around the edges of the stamp. I had also seen a beautiful effect created by spraying the stamp with water before stamping the image in order to have a water-colour type image. I tried this, but the inks just ran and looked awful - perhaps if I stamped on the water-colour paper, this would help???

Anyway, I gave up with that thought and just stamped the un water sprayed image on to my card stock. I was really happy with the result :-) I don't own a flower stock stamp and so I came up with the idea of creating the stock using a repeated sentiment - Thank you. This stamp, by personal impressions was the perfect size for the job. I alternated the image being stamped in red and teal.

I then layered up a red and teal strip of card for my sentiment. It took me a while to decide how to do this. At first, I was going to add a layer of vellum over the top and stamp the sentiment in teal, but that just didn't sit right with me. I had just bought some sea foam white embossing powder and so I decided to try that…..I really like the effect - however, I found it really difficult to dry the powder  - perhaps because I already had the two layers of card stock behind it????

I attached the strip onto the card using foam pads to add a bit of dimension and then I thought I was done. I left it on the coffee table and glanced at it every so often, feeling that something was missing. It just needed that something else. I had my stick on pearls out for the Less is More card and thats when it came to me - It needed some pearls on the embossed Chrysanthemum. I was so happy with how this looked.

This morning, just as I was about to photograph the card, I got that 'something missing' feeling again….I had bought some red crystals for making Christmas cards with my son and I still had some left over. I felt these would just finish the card off nicely, and personally, I feel it does.

Here is the result……

If I had the tools (on my 'to buy list'), I think I would add some cute die cut butterflies with maybe a bit of glitter or such like on to, but for now, it will have to remain as it is :-)

Thank you so much for looking and please let me know if you have any ideas of how to stop the spread of inks for the rock and roll technique, and if you have any suggestions on how to make the watercolour technique work better.

Cardstock: Red from stash, Teal from Papermill Direct

Stamps: Chrysanthemum from Hobbycraft, Thank you x 2 from Personal Impressions

Inks: Red from Hobbycraft, Memento Teal Zeal, Papermania Seafoam White EP

Embellishments: Pearls/Crystals from stash.