Crafting For Me!

Over on The Daring Cardmakers this week it's Asia Wu's turn to set the challenge and I think we've all been looking forward to this one since she suggested it. This week we're crafting for ourselves; in the style we love, our favourite techniques and bits of kit and using the stash we love - and maybe have kept back because we can't bear to see it leave our possession.  This is a great opportunity to indulge yourself and in the end you'll have something that you've had a ball making, and get to keep for yourself.

For me it was another chance to reach for those wonderful "Paris Nights" papers from GCD.  Oh, and some lace....and would you believe <> some flowers.

To start with I used a 15cm sq card blank and used a gold Acrylic Paint Dabber around the edge, then a little black ink to "age" it a bit. I'd planned to use one of the flocked papers but it didn't look right, so I ditched that in favour of the shimmery spotty one, backed by a plainer black paper.  I distressed the edges of the black paper and gave them a bit of random Krylon gold pen before gluing both papers in place.

This black rose has been sitting on my desk since before Christmas - I made it to decorate a Christmas gift, but then forgot about it.  It's made from black glitter paper - it's fab snuff, I bought a pad last year and the paper is really thick and strong, but still has enough "give" in it to allow the moulding of the petals.  I suppose it's a bit like grungpaper in weight and pliability.  The the glitter is really intense and rich.

I had to get those lovely Prima Artful flowers in here somewhere!  The turquoise jewel brad wasn't quite a perfect match so I added some Diamond Stickles to bring it more in line.  The central rosette is made from - well I'm not sure what this stuff is called but I've had this in my scrap box for ages and it was perfect for this!

By very good luck a new MS punch arrived while I was making the card.  It's a sort of doily pattern and the punched shapes are about 4cms in diameter.  I cut about 6 or 7 from some vellum, scrunched them up individually, opened then out, piled them up and speared them through the centre with a brad. Added a Cuttlebug slower shape and another Prima then fluffed up the "carnation" style flower after the whole thing had been glued into place.  There's a few touches of Stickles on there too.

Obviously I couldn't do a "favourite things" card without a few coiled flowers, so I made some tiny ones to blance out the left corner. There's a wired pearl spray in there too.

Materials etc:

Paint Dabber (Metallic Gold), Black chalk ink pad ,  Papers (GCD "Paris Nights" 8x8" pad), Tim Hlotz paper distresser, Gold Krylon pen, Lace (black, cream), Quote is pc generated (Nesties Labels 1), Scraps of thick chipboard on reverse of quote section, Black glitter paper, Prima Artful and Essentials flowers, Wide Cream "ribbon" for rosette, large jewel brad, Turquoise vellum, MS "Vintage Doily" punch, Cuttlebug flower die, Small black brad, Scrap of curly ribbon, Wired pearl spray, Coiled flowers from scrap GCD papers dabbed with turquoise ink and Stickles, Prima flat-backed pearls (turquoise, gunmetal)

Phew! That's quite a list isn't it? hehe.  I tried to give everything in the order I used it.

I really hope you'll join in this week - it's almost therapy to make something with nothing but pleasing yourself in your mind.  Doesn't matter what anyone else might think, this is for your own pleasure - you don't often get to do something like that, do you?  

Please head over to the DCM BLOG and see what the rest of the team make when left to their own devices!

I'm going to stick the two bits of the card together, maybe add a backing of chipboard and stick this above my desk - it's about time I had a change of "background"!

I thought I'd show you what my desk looked like after I'd finished having all this fun!

(click for a closer look at the mess I managed to create!)

Before I shut up waffling - a quick note that over on Get Funky! challenge blog, Lou has added her project to the "Going Round in Circles" theme for this month.  Remember there's a prize on offer at the end of the month  - just don't forget you need to use at least one Funky Hand product to qualify.  There's also this month's "Funky Freebie" there which anyone can download to use.  If you've got the "Colour Me Happy" CD, you'll find the January freebie matches the Blissful Baby papers on there.

Right, enough of the waffle, I'm off to make a coffee and then I might even get some crafting done - quiet crafting though as hubby works from home on Fridays. 

Oh - regarding the silver thread fiasco - I fished it out of the gluepot with my fingers (gooey!), when the flow of glue stopped  falling I took the reel to the sink and gave it a good rinsing.  Fingers crossed I got rid of most of the glue and the thread is still usable!
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