Tulips for Easter

Morning All 
I hope you are feeling ticketty-boo and full of the joys of Spring today!
Before I do anything else, I want to say a great big THANK YOU for your messages on my last blog post, both for the good wishes on my Spellbloggers news and that you liked the box - they are pretty simple to make and a great way to make a small gift look special - or even for yourself; a pretty knick-knack box for your desk or dressing table 😉

Back to cardmaking today, and I have a couple of Easter cards to share.  I've used the same colours, stencil etc on both, but altered the LO and die cuts just a little
The LO is from The Sketch File Blog - the current April one

 Info

Stencil 'Mini Spinning Tops' (Crafters Workshop), taped in place and masked to use only a small section.  

Inked with lemon and peachy-pink to match the tulip flowers

Piece of Bazzill White Classic Texture card inked with Tumbled Glass DI then die cut with Eyelet Circles and Lacey Circles Nesties (Spellbinders) 

Pale blue narrow ric-rac braid

Tulips (Joanna Sheen) -  The full die cut looks like this; I cut them down and overlapped, rearranged etc to fit my project, and using some extra leaves to add a little dimension

I cut them down and overlapped, rearranged etc to fit my project, and using some extra leaves to add a little dimension
 The yellow card I used for the flower heads was inked lightly with a 

peachy pink ink pad

This is the Sketch:

The Sketch File April 2017

 

 here are the two cards - you can see they differ slightly from each other

 Thank you for looking in today, I hope you'll leave a comment before you go 
 

Spellbloggers Sunday

Hello!
Are you like me and love Spellbnders products? 
I think they were the first dies I bought after 'graduating' to a turn-the-handle machine from one of those old hand-held QK gadgets that only cut teeny weeny 2" square dies. Oh My! how much easier and more addictive did die-cutting get then!!!
Well, the machines have got bigger, the die collection immense and the scope and fun of the whole die cutting addiction hasn't waned for a minute! So you will understand how thrilled I am to share the news that I've been invited to be part of the Spellbloggers team, sharing  wonderful Spellbinders goodies and things made with them.

Spellbinders

I can't resist a nice bit of alliteration, so from now on I will share a Spellbinders project on either a  Spellblogger Saturday or a Spellblogger Sunday - I hope you'll come by each weekend to see what's new.  Lookout for special offers and give-aways in future weeks too 😁

OK, so exciting news imparted, and time to share my first project.
It's a simple little box, made with Nestabilities dies - we probably all have a good few sets, they really are the staples of die-cutting - especially the basic shapes and Labels sets.
I used my Nesties plain circles set to make this box

Over the last few years I've made a few boxes using different shapes and sizes of Nestability dies, the basics are the same for each shape, but its easy to adapt the idea too.  For example, on this one I added a length of ribbon to join the box and lid together and made a tab at the front to lift the lid.  I have an old tutorial for the basic box HERE 

Box Info

Spellbinders Nestability Dies; Plain Circles, Scalloped Circles

2 shades of green card

Chipboard - I use old cereal packets

Green satin ribbon to match the card

My tutorial for this style of box is HERE

I used the following items to decorate this box, but will share more about that in next week's post

Spellbinders Shapeabilities Moroccan Accents Etched Dies

Spellbinders Die D-Lites Create a Lily

Spellbinders Die D-Lites Sprigs Etched Dies

'Foamiran' foam sheet for flowers

various gems and dots

Here's a closer look at the decorated lid, I hope you'll come back for next week's Spellbloggers Saturday to read more

Thank you for visiting

Happy Crafting

Happy Easter, Cupcake!

Hi there
I hope the sun is shining for you today, rumour has it we're in for a warm and sunny weekend here - lets hope it's true, eh?

This week Nat's April Elemental Picture for The Daring Cardmakers is 'Full of the Joys of Spring' too, definitely one that will raise a smile with all the Spring flowers, cute ducklings etc!

We have a lovely new Guest Designer this month too.

From Nat's picture I chose to use the cupcake, the eggs, the gift tag, and some string,  You only need to use three 'elements', but having spotted the string I thought I'd add some of that in too

Info

Nat's picture:

All papers are "Hooray" (My Mind's Eye).  I've used both 12v12 and 6x6 for this

The cupcake, icing 'grass' and eggs are all cut from my 

own Silhouette templates

The tiny eggs and message stick are hand cut

The sunburst frame is cut using the plain squares, and scalloped squares nested die sets from Tonic, the spotty square is just cut using a guillotine

Tiny Text stickers for 'cupcake' (I have loads of these things and rarely remember to get them out of the box)

Lettering on tag is pc generated

String for the little bow

Black and Green Bazzill

Green Ice Stickles

I could just eat a nice cupcake with lots of gooey icing.......

That's all for this time. Thank you so much for visiting

Delightful Delphiniums

Morning All 👋👋
April is such a great month - I love Spring time with it's feeling of awakening, and how you never quite know what the weather will do.  Monday was glorious with day-long sunshine and a fair bit of warmth, yesterday was a bit dull all day, and today its bright and beautiful again - but breezier and a few more clouds about.
I've been out in the garden, moving things around and taking some of the big pots out of the greenhouse but I've stopped, because although I did use the trolley my back started complaining.  There's no rush though.

I have a flowery card to share today, it's the one we sent to MiL for Mother's day a couple of weeks back, and one of a little batch I made using a similar technique to make the background.  This one was my favourite of the backgrounds, I love the way the colours turned out, and the way the gold wax and glitter gel lifts it.

Info

The oval shape is stencilled; to make the stencil I used an oval die and a piece of backing card from a die set

 (I think this sort of card has a thin laminate over it so it's stronger and doesn't degrade as quickly as ordinary card)

The stencil was fixed to the card blank with washi tape and I applied several shades of aqua ink, and also some deeper blue and purple shades.

The oval stencil was removed while I taped the Mini Window Screen stencil (Crafters Workshop) in place, then I replaced the oval over the top so that I could apply more of the same inks, plus Gold Alchemy Wax and Sparkle Medium  (both Imagination Crafts)

For the flowers;

I inked up some spare white card with several shades of blue and purple inks to get a mottled effect - this is my method of getting pretty shading without  colouring pens or pencils - I don't do colouring in!

I just chose the bits I liked best and cut the flowers with the Delphinium die (Joanna Sheen)

I cut the dies in green card too, then glued the flower part on top of the green layer and added the leaves.

I used the waste from one of my border punches to make some tiny "petals" dispersed by the breeze!  There are a few tiny gems and a few dots of Stickles glitter glue in there too

The faux brads at the top right are more 'waste', this time some larger circles.  They were shaped with a ball tool. then I added a tiny blob of Glossy Accents to each

 I do love the way this background works and I think it would adapt well for Christmas cards - so maybe if I remember nearer the time...........

Thank you so much for visiting.  I really do appreciate it when people take the time to come by, and I love to read the messages you leave 😁

have a great day
 

Simple Stars

Hi there
I hope you are well today!  I rather think my need for a box of tissues has moved seamlessly from "for a cold" to "for hay-fever", without the hint of a pause.  Hey ho!
Anyway, on to a bit of crafting, and today is launch day for the April Sketch over on The Sketch File Blog.

I like this one a lot - I feel there's lots of opportunities to use the LO in different ways, so fingers crossed that actually is how it works out.  Sometimes the ones I think are the most versatile are the ones I struggle with when I come to use them.  Weird.

I've a load of 'boy' birthdays coming up in may, so I've used the sketch to make one of the cards I need.

 Info

I cut a square for grey Bazzill card, then a frame from dark blue card using two Nested Squares (Tonic dies).

the stars and paper strips are old Funky Hand papers - one of my favourite sets for more masculine cards, the blues and greys are just fab.  

The two larger stars are from another Tonic nested set, the tiny ones are cut with a punch, from some foiled paper as the card looked a bit dull.

'Happy Birthday' is by Creative Dies

 Here's the sketch:

The Sketch File - April 2017

 
It would be great to have your company over at The Sketch File this time - we'd love you to join in with us.

Thanks for looking in today, hope you'll have time to leave a message

   

Tinned Tomatoes

Hello
Hope you are enjoying the same lovely Spring sunshine we've been seeing over the last few days.  Doesn't it make a difference to everything!
I'm a bit excited because we've just booked a sneaky little week at the coast.  Being a seaside-born girl I really miss seeing the sea.  I don't even care if its wild and stormy - seeing the sea in all it's moods is good for the soul.  Well, mine, anyway!

We have such an interesting challenge to play with over on The Daring Cardmakers this week:

Wrap It Up 

It's Enfys here with this week's dare....I thought it would be fun to challenge you to use something that was used to wrap a grocery product on your project.

So when you are unloading your shopping this week, take a closer look at those cardboard boxes, acetate, plastic, chocolate wrappers or those little nets that held your oranges......

We've used all manner of packaging items over on the blog - you'd never really guess it was just "rubbish"!   There's treasure to be had all over the place when you actually take the time to look.  

In the end I used part of the cardboard wrapper from a 4 pack of tinned tomatoes, but I do have a couple of other things on my desk which I'm going to try and make use of in the next few days - before the mood wears off
I went with a gardening theme - probably because one of the kitchen worktops is currently home to a whole load of tomato plant seedlings....so it was rather in my mind!

Info

I cut a circle aperture in the cardboard where the name etc was, then glued it onto a card base which I'd already inked in pale blue.

I used a Scalloped Nesties die and a plain circle (both Spellbinders) to make a frame; this covered some of the other unwanted printing on the tomatoes label, the rest is concealed beneath the other die-cuts.

All the various garden tools themed die cuts are made using the

 fantastic set from XCut

The seedling is a bit of a composite; the pot, stem and the leaves are all from different dies, because none of the ones I had were just the right size and shape.  Sometimes you just have to adapt what you've got!

The tiny tomatoes I used to decorate the frame are made using another large Spellbinders die - but just the little circles that are usually the 'waste'.  I added absolutely teeny green stars cut with a Tonic Edger punch - I've never actually worked out how this particular edger is supposed to be used, but its still very useful for the different sized stars (various degrees of tiny!) that it cuts

The sentiment quote is pc generated 

That's it for this time.
Thank you for visiting, I hope you'll leave a message - and don't forget - we'd love to see you joining in over at The Daring Cardmakers this week

Rabbit Pie

Hello

Just a quick post from me today (whoop-whoop I hear you say), because I need to find out whether my crafting mojo has lost itself under the piles of discarded card, paper and what-have-you that's about to topple off the desk.

This is a little Easter card made using the March LO from the Sketch File.  I admit I took a few liberties with the sketch, but then, I often do.  I think sketches are there to spark ideas so that's ok, isn't it?

Info

Blue inked background using a couple of Distress Inks

Grass is stencilled using a trio of different shades of green ink

Rabbits are a dies set by Joanna Sheen (aren't they cute?) - I sponges some fawn ink over a scrap of white Bazzill card to give a mottled 

rather and solid colour

Their tails are White Ice Stickles and I added a bit of pale pink pen 

to their ears and noses

Their Burrow entrance is a die-cut circle of brown card (Spellbinders Nesties)

Sentiment is pc generated and matted onto navy blue card.

Here's the sketch

The Sketch File - March 2017

That's it.  Told you I'd be quick!

Thank you for popping by

 

Air-time

Hello there
How are you?  I'm gradually getting over the horrid cold OH kindly shared with me, it's so lovely to share, isn't it?
We've had 'proper' Spring weather this week, with days of beautiful blue skies and sunshine and days of torrential rain and sometimes both within the space of half an hour.  Only the foolish look out at the bright blue sky and go out to buy their lunch-time sandwich without taking a coat or umbrella 😉

I've not really felt up to much this week, so my blog output has been poorer than usual.  I do have a few things to share now though, so will try to catch up.

Today I've my card for the Daring Cardmakers and also a gift tag made using the March LO from The Sketch File.
First, today's Daring Cardmakers' challenge:

It's Svenja here and this week the sky's the limit - my theme for you is
* * * * Up in the Air * * * *
I'm asking you to make a sky- or flight-related card.

Feeling "blue" at the idea? Just check out the BLOG to seet the creations the design team have come up with to get you started - and see how colourful they are!

Loads of things ran through my mind for this, kites, balloons, aeroplanes, butterflies, birds and bees to name just a few, but also a few songs with sky or air related lyrics.  The one that stuck in my head was an old song from The Hollies, and its those lyrics I decided to feature on my card.  What I didn't know till I checked the song on the internet was that it's actually a Lennon/McCartney song.

Info

I started with a couple of lines from the song, which I arranged and resized using Paint Shop Pro before printing onto a strip of Bazzill Diamond White card.

This panel was matted onto red card.

I embossed a piece of the same white card with Décor Circles A4 embossing folder (Teresa Collins), and matted this piece Black card before adding to the smooth white card blank

Next the lyric panel was adhered in place 

For the heart balloons I inked some smooth white card using several shades of Distress Ink to get good depth and slight variations of colour.

I stencilled over this with my current favourite Mini Window Screen stencil (Crafters Workshop) using gold Alchemy Wax and Red Sparkle Medium  (both Imagination Crafts)

Once dried I selected a couple of areas to cut out with heart dies

 (DieNamics Nested Hearts).  

The ends of the balloons were just cut from scraps and glued in place

The bows and strings are black twine.  The loopy string happened by accident as I'd just used the two ends tucked under the balloons and the twine between just formed iteslef into a lovely loopy pattern!  So I just added a spot of glue to ensure they stayed put.

Next up is a little gift bag made to hold my niece's birthday gift.  I made a tag for it using the March LO from The Sketch File.
Rather than make handles for this gift bag I just punched holes and added extra wide satin ribbon to tie in a bow.  

The papers are all MME "Hooray" and I've used both 12x12 and 6x6 for this project.

I have a tutorial for the gift bag HERE

once you have made one or two its easy to alter to make them to match what you want to put inside!

Here is the sketch I used to make the tag

March 2017 - The Sketch File

That's all for this time, I hope you'll take a minute to visit both the Daring Cardmakers blog and The Sketch File  it would be great if you could join in with us all this time

Thank you so much for checking in, I hope you'll be able to leave a comment. 

 

Going Green

Morning All

It's Friday again and that means a new challenge from The Daring Cardmakers, and predictably enough there's a bit of a link to the date in there this time. 

  

It's Lythan here today with a new challenge for you
* * * * Green with a Glimmer of Gold * * * *
Well it had to be really didn't it.

I'm sure we will not be the only challenge blog to feature green this week but when St Patrick's Day falls on a Friday what else can you do? 

So how about some cards featuring green and a dash of leprechaun's gold if you like!
The team have made some awesomely beautiful cards to get those creative juices flowing (click here to see), so why not join in this week?

Green isn't really my favourite colour to craft wit, at least not as the main colour, so that in itself provided a bit of a challenge for me.  Over the last week or so I've been playing about with a bit of a stencilled background theme, using more than one stencil and a few different inks to add depth to the design - so I thought I'd continue the theme and see what happened.
The first stencil used is Mini Mosaic Tiles (Crafters Workshop), which I inked through with 4 or 5 different green inks.  I also added a little rub of gold Alchemy Wax (Imagination Crafts)
The second stencil is my current favourite; Mini Window Screen (also Crafters Workshop).  I used gold Sparkle Medium (Imagination Crafts) to stencil this time, and I rather like how this, smaller stencil ties the two layers together

Happy with the results I now had to decide what to put onto the background - as of course I hadn't planned ahead!  

Generally speaking when I can't decide what to do I make a flower or two.

In this case one nice big flower would fill a lot of the space, and its ages and ages since I last made a gorgeous peony flower (and peony season is getting closer), so decision made,

I wasn't sure whether to make a gold one or see how a green one turned out (wasn't convinced about the green), but Lythan's challenge had Green as the main element and if I made a gold flower then my colour palette would be more gold and green.

Actually, I've quite happy with the flower, it looks ok in green

Tools and Materials

Smooth White card (PDA Woodward)

Green card for flower (Bazzill)

Stencils;
Mini Mosaic Tiles and Mini Window Screen (both Crafters Workshop)

Various green inks

Alchemy Wax and Sparkle Medium  (both Imagination Crafts)

Punch Bunch punch for flower petals

Medium Ball tool for shaping petals (Rainbow Sugarcraft)

Gold card for swirls with Leafy Sprigs die set (Spellbinders)

Pearl and gold wire spray for added detail

That's it for today, I hope you like what you see.  
Don't forget to head over to the DCM BLOG to see the other DT cards - the blog looks so beautiful today!

Thank you for visiting, please leave a message.....

Have a great weekend

Other Challenges:
The Moving Along with the Times   Handmade Flowers

it's Not a Chicken

Hello 
How are you, well I hope?  It's been lovely and Spring-like for the last couple of days - which hopefully will help everyone get over all these nasty cold bugs.  I'm getting mightily sick of lemsips and Covonia!

I've been having a bit of fun with stencils, ink and all sorts of other mediums (media?) this week, so thought I'd see whether I could use one of the pieces I'd made work with the "Allsorts, Layered" March Sketch File LO

I needed an anniversary card, so made this

Info
Stencilled piece
I used a Tonic oval die to cut an aperture in some scrap card, washi-taped it to some smooth white card and inked the shape using a couple of diffeernt shades of peach and pink ink
I slipped the hearts stencil underneath the piece with the aperture and stencilled the hearts in a couple of shades, then moved the stencil a bit and stencilled some more of the hearts
Next I added some gold Alchemy Wax through the stencil, and then just a small amount of gold glitter gel (Sparkle Medium from Imagination Crafts)

Smooth White card
Patterned Papers MME "Gather" and "Heart Day"

Hearts stencil (Joanna Sheen Signature collection)
Scraps of Black Bazzill
Butterfly die set (Apple Blossom Dies from CraftStashUK)
Card Candy circles - I also punched a couple of tiny hearts from some of the circles 
Computer generated sentiment 

Here's the sketch  
I substituted my stencilled oval for the rounded rectangle on the sketch and flipped a few layers too, but that's ok 😉

Sketch File, March 2017

On my desk the card looked fine, I quite liked how it turned out - but now looking at it on the screen I suddenly thought "Oh!  It looks like a chicken!"

I turned the screen round so Hubby could see and asked him "Does this look like a chicken to you?", for a moment he looked slightly bewildered and then thefog cleared and he saw what I meant!  🤣 🤣

Oh well, too late, this card is long gone into the post and beyond any tweaking!

  

 I used the oval aperture piece and the same technique with a different stencil and colours but its sitting on my desk waiting for some inspiration on how to finish the card. Watch this space.....

Thank you for visiting, I hope you'll take a minute to leave a message, and hopefully you'll pop over to The Sketch File and join in with us this month

Taking the Rough with the Smooth

Morning All, Happy Friday!

I've just been out in the garden and spotted the first tulip to be in full flower.  It's sheltered by the branches of something else, but still how very brave of it to flower already.  We have a few tulips that grow rather strangely;  full-size flowers on tiny stems!  They look really odd!  I suspect its something to do with the naughty squirrels disturbing the bulbs - they seem to think our garden is their larder.

On Wednesday I set about making my card for today's Daring Cardmakers challenge.  It's all about using rough and smooth textures on one card, and I'd decided to raid OH's DiY stash for some sandpaper.  I thought I could do something with a beachy feel with the sandpaper as the sand and some 'sea' coated with Glossy Accents for the sea.  Well, what I discovered was that we have sandpaper in many colours, but not one of them is sand coloured!
My new, plan B stayed with the colours of the sea and Glossy Accents, but added in curvy pieces of some green sandpaper.
Then the panic set in.  Using a thick layer of Glossy Accents would take an age to dry, then I had to assemble it all before taking my photos.  I'd never get it all done in time!  I reached for the heat gun to help dry the stuff, then left it while I tried to get as much of the card done as possible while it dried completely.  
I cut the aqua backing layer, then it took 3 tries before I managed to cut the aperture neatly enough (why didn't I just use my Silhouette to do it?), and only then did I remember that it was only Wednesday morning and I had the whole of Thursday to get this card finished if I needed more time. doh!

It's Joanne's very first time setting the challenge for the Daring Cardmakers this week:

"Take the Rough with the Smooth

For this challenge I'd like you to contrast something rough (or bumpy) with something smooth/shiny on your cards."

 

Info

The coloured panel is made using Gelatos, which I rubbed over with a damp wet-wipe to merge the shades together in a watercolour effect

A thick layer of Glossy Accents was applied over the whole area, then I added my pieces of sandpaper (they are the deep green coloured sections). 

 I also added in some swirls of Diamond Stickles.

It looked a bit bare around the frame so drew a couple of swirls of  Diamond Stickles.  Next I coloured some thinner card on both sides using the 'spare' colours in the same wipe as before, re-dampened to release all the colours and rubbed over the card.  There was enough colour to make matching paper for a bunch of tiny circles to make the rolled roses.

The swirly bits were cut from a scrap of the deep aqua backing card 

using a Spellbinders die.

From the off-cuts of the main, Glossy Accent covered panel I die cut some circles

 (berries from Holly and Mistletoe die-sets), and shaped them with a ball tool before adding them in around the swirls and roses.

I think the reason for Wednesday' "Losing my marbles" incident was that I generally do end up making my DCM card on a Thursday, working against the clock to get it finished.  I could be more organised and get things dine in advance, but that would be breaking the habits of a lifetime, wouldn't it?
I've always been a bit of a last Minute Minnie!

It would be wonderful if you'd join in with our challenge this week - there's lots of inspiration on the DCM blog, and you can click on the names above the pictures to find out more about how the Design Team created their cards.
That's it for now, Hubby is asking "What's For Lunch?", so I'd best get to it 😉😉

Thanks for visiting