Time to Celebrate

Hello

It's TIME for a new challenge over at the Daring Cardmakers and Sylvia has set the them this week

We are into May already and nearly half way through the year, Where does time go!  This week I would like to see

 "A Moment In Time"

featured in your cards, it could be clocks, watches, hour glass, or a time such as fairytale once upon a time, or Victorian, swinging sixties, tea time, play time, work time, anything time related. 

 Its still the Month of Mainly Males for my card requirements, so I decided to make a more masculine looking card for this challenge

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To begin with I cut a square of plain white card to 14x14 and embossed it with Teresa Collins A4 "About Time" embossing folder (I don't have a smaller one so had to make this do!)

I used small ink pads in a few shades of blue to colour the embossed image, and then rubbed over with Alchemy Wax in
silver and gold with my fingers to get a more interesting colour mix and
a lovely soft sheen finish.  This was trimmed down slightly and adhered to a dark blue card blank

 

The large sentiment panel was made on the pc, as was the smaller Happy Birthday piece

 I die cut the gold and white circles, plus a 'hanger' from a Christmas Bauble set in gold to create the pocket watch, adding tiny silver gems for the 'numbers' and a couple of pointers hand-cut from scraps of the gold card.

 I used some gold twine to  make a chain (like when casting on in knitting, or the first chain you make in crochet)

Then it was just a case of arranging and adhering the carious pieces to finish the card

I hope you like it, I'd love to hear what you think so please add a comment if you can. It would be great to see your own ideas on this theme, you can see the rest of our cards, and join in HERE

Thank you so much for visiting

 

Happy Crafting! 

One Big Balloon

Hello 

I hope you had a good Bank Holiday weekend - not too long before the next one either!

Today I’ve  a balloon card to share which was inspired by my lovely friend Joanne made for the balloon challenge of a couple of weeks back over on the Daring Cardmakers. 

Joanne’s was stamped but of course I don’t do much of that sort of thing so I had to come up with a different plan

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I scribbled some shades of blue Gelatos onto my card blank where the balloon would cover any messy boys then used a wet wipe to move the colour around for the background. 

 I inked up a piece of card with a few shades of orange and red to give depth of colour and used a large circle die to cut the balloon. I also cut a triangle with a wavy lower edge for the bit you blow into!

The balloon shape was adhered in place, then the overhangs trimmed off and the Bakers Twine string attached.

The  ‘happy’ word is made with Thickers letters (I found a whole box full of sticky alphas of various types that I’d forgotten about so I need to start using them), and ‘birthday’ is a sentiment rub-on. 

To give a bit of shine to the balloon I applied a layer of slightly diluted PVA glue over the whole area. Usually I’d use Glossy Accents to get this kind os effect, but this balloon would have taken a whole pot and I’m not that generous.

That’s all for this time, thanks for visiting

A Few of my Favourite Things!

Hello, Hello!

I hope this Friday finds you well.  Did you get the thunder, rain and hailstones yesterday?  The chap who comes to cut our grass and generally keep order out in the garden was here yesterday morning and moaning about how dry the ground was and how brown the 'lawn' would look after he'd cut the top growth off.  Maybe the Weather Fairies were listening.....

Anyway, back to things crafty, as its Daring Cardmakers day again:

 It's Shabneez here and as it's the start of a new month, the May Elemental Challenge is on the calendar this week.

You just need to choose 3 elements from the board (colours counts as one element) to use when making your card.
So here's what I've chosen:

Pretty Inspiration Board, eh?  I chose the flowers (no surprise) ,
the butterfly (no surprise there, either),and the 3x3 square LO.  Plus I stuck mainly to the colours and threw a bit of gold in for the 'fairy dust' in the bottom left square 

Info

My first step was to make a background piece to cut my squares from.  I used some white card with a pearlised finish - it was in my scraps box and I have no idea where it came from!

I damped it all over with a wet wipe, then tore the wet wipe into bits and dabbed the card with various inks from the colour palette, gradually filling in all the white space. When it was dry I flicked some gold paint over it then again left it to fry before cutting into squares.

The edges of the squares were inked in a deep lilac shade and arrange on a panel of pale lilac card from Hunkydory's Adorable Scorable Pearl Bouquet card pack. This was then matted onto a smooth white card blank.

I inked some scraps of white Bazzill card on both sides with the colours I wanted for the flowers then but the petals using a set of 4 dies where the largest is about 3cms in size.  I think the die set is from either Marianne or Britannia

I used a ball tool to shape the flowers with 2 or 3 petals in each. I added small white stamens to their centres. 

 I cut a few leafy swirls using a Spellbinders set from a dull gold card to tuck behind the flowers and add a bit of background interest.

The sentiment is also cut in gold using a Spellbinders die set

 

Beautiful Butterflies die set, Hunkydory crafts

For the butterfly I inked another piece of scrap white card using a couple of aqua inks and cut a plain large butterfly, and a small fancy butterfly from this piece of card.

I cut two fancy large butterflies gold vellum, one is a pearly gold vellum, the other has a gold rose pattern on it The four shapes were layered up with the small one as the top layer. They were all glued together only down the centre to allow the wings to stand out from the card.  I cut the body from black card to complete it

To finish I just added a few dots of gold Stickles for extra blinginess.  Yes, of course that's a word 😆

That's it, quite a bit of work in this one, but all enjoyable.  Whats not to enjoy about making pretty inky backgrounds, flowers and butterflies!

I hope you like it, I'd love to hear what you think so please add a comment if you can.

Thank you so much for visiting

Happy Crafting! 

Hunkydory Butterflies and Pearl Bouquet

Hello!

Today I've a quick post to share some cards using the fabulous Beautiful Butterflies, Moonstone dies by Hunkydory crafts  and also their Adorable Scorable Pearl Bouquet card pack.

I've loved using the dies and this card so much that I've hardly stopped using them at all!

I am totally hooked on the beautiful pastel colours in this card pack. The finish is soft to the touch, and somehow very tactile.  I wouldn't describe it as pearlescent, but it does have this rather gorgeous pearly effect which makes a beautiful base card, or to use in layering.  I also really like that they are plain white on the reverse - so I can get away without making inserts! Yes, I know that's a bit lazy - but I maintain that not adding that folded sheet inside the card gives me a couple of mms to add something to the front before it gets too fat for a regular stamp!

Adorable Scorable Pearl Bouquet card pack

Okay, lets see some cards!

Base cards all made with card from the Adorable Scorable Pearl Bouquet card pack

 

Info

I made a card blank from a sheet of the green card, then embossed the white side of an off-cut with a leafy embossing folder and lightly inked over it.

I cut both the plain and fancy layers of the largest of the butterflies in two shades of the lilac card. A scrap of black card was used to cut the vody section, then the layers were adhered together and some black gems added along the body.

I added a strip of the lighter lilac card across the the embossed panel and added the die cut sentiment in the darker shade. The butterfly was glued in place, leaving the wings free

To finish I added 3 sizes of lilac gems in a pattern along the panel, plys a few down the lower edge

Here's the die set I'm using

Moonstone Dies by Hunkydory - Beautiful Butterflies

I've used card in the cream and a deep peachy shades, plus the two smaller sizes of butterflies for my next card:

 Info

To start with I cut apertures in the front panel using the plain shapes of the two smaller butterflies, matted this panel onto the deeper coloured card, then adhered to the cream base layer.

I inked up both sides of some card scraps in pinky-peachy-orangey shades and used these pieces to cut the plain and fancy butterfly layers.

As before these were glued in place just on the central body area so that the wings could sit up.

To finish I added a sentiment sticker and a lot if teeny tiny iridescent 'sequin' stars.

 

Next I have a few photos of projects I've already blogged using these products.  If you want to see more about these, scroll back through my recent posts to find them.  I've waffled on long enough!

No butterflies on this one, I just wanted to show more of the gorgeous card!

And finally. here's a tiny sneak peek from the project I'll blog here tomorrow.  I've cut these dies using quite a few different media; paper, thin card, thick 350gsm card, and for this butterfly I've added a couple of layers of vellum to the mix.  They have cute beautifully through everything I've tried them with!

So that's all for this time, if you missed my home decor Butterfly Garden project, please click HERE to see it.. 

Anyway, that's it for today, thank you for coming by - please leave a message 

before you go - I would LOVE to hear what you think about this project

Happy Crafting! 

Balloons

Hello!

I hope you've had a good week.  Just a quick blog post today - time is running away with me just now!

Another Friday and another challenge from the Daring Cardmakers and this time it's our lovely Miri in the hot seat:

This week we want to see balloons on your cards.

I think they are perfect for any birthday card and easy to adapt to the recipient’s taste in colours, patterns etc.

There are lots of ideas from the design team to help inspire you, click HERE to see them!

Well, I set out to make a hot air balloon card - the dies I was going to use are still out on my desk. But while trying to work out how to use them I changed my mind completely and made this instead!

Info

The base card is made from Hunkydory's Adorable Scorable cotton white card with a silk finish on both sides. This lovely card has a slight gloss to it which makes the ink slide nicely and gives a lovely depth to the colours' 

I used a few shades of Distress Inks and Distress Oxides to make the background, then when I was happy with the colour I spritzed it with water to get the mottled effect. Once dried I cut off 3cms from the edge of the front of the card.

For the balloons I inked small pieces of the same card with bright inks shades.  The finish of this card means the inks take quite a while to dry.  I could have dug out my heat gun to speed up the process, but I went and had some lunch instead 

Once dry, I cut a bunch of balloons using a Spellbinders die set and arranged them to go over the edge of the card front before gluing down and adding some Bakers Twine strings and a double bow

From the bits of leftover inked card I punched out some small stars and die cut some squiggles.  I don't (apparently) have any 'streamer' type dies so I improvised with the loopy bits from a couple of sentiment die sets, also from Spellbinders

I also cut a few of these in glitter card to add some sparkle.  

On the inside back edge I adhered a strip of matt black card as I thought it looked better than leaving it white.  I cut the top layer of the 'celebrate' sentiment (also Spellbinders) in the same black card, and added a few black stars to tie the colours together. The other two layers of the sentiment are cut from white card.

The black card was some I scavenged from the little folder of 'coming soon' flyers we brought home from the Royal Shakespeare Company's Live-Stream showing of 'As You Like It' at our local cinema last week! 

So that's it for this time, I hope you like it!

Thank you for coming by (and leaving a message, I hope....)

Have a great weekend, see you soon

Hunkydory Crafts Review pt 1

Hello!

I hope you had a lovely Easter.  We were so lucky with the weather this year, weren't we?
 I mentioned a week or so ago that I'd been asked if I'd like to have a play with some goodies from Hunkdory Crafts and review them here on my blog. I I wanted to choose a selection of things to try, and eventually settled on a die set, a paper set and some of the Adorable Scorable card I've been meaning to try for ages!  So I've been using them on various projects and over the next few weeks I'll share more of the things I've made.

This time I'm concentrating on the a fabulous set of butterfly dies:
Beautiful Butterflies, Moonstone dies by Hunkydory crafts

 Having made a few cards which I'll show next time, I thought it would be fun to try to make those butterflies fly, so I used my set of mini milk bottles to create this Butterfly Garden

I have to say that I really, really love this set of butterflies - you just can't have too many butterfly dies in your collection and this set is already a favourite.
 

Moonstone Dies by Hunkydory - Beautiful Butterflies

 Why am I so happy to have this set?

* I love that you get the plain wing shapes and a fancy set of wings for each butterfly 

* There are 4 different designs in the pack. 2 small and 2 larger butterflies - *  

* They are all perfectly sized for using on cards, scrapbook pages, journal pages....all sorts of projects.
Measurements (approx)
 5.5 x 5cms, 6 x 4cms, 4.3 x 3cms, 4 x 2.5cms
 
* They cut beautifully - even the tiny little detail pieces come out without much effort (this is a big bugbear of mine, dies that cut poorly are a pain in the proverbial!)

* They are thin metal dies so you can use them with most die cutting machines.  I used an eBosser, but also tried them with my ancient Cuttlebug and they worked great.

* The price for the set is a very reasonable £14.99, which I think is really good value!

Toi make the butterflies for this project I used paper from the
Spring Days & Country Life Inserts & Paper Pack £4.99 

I should have checked the size details more carefully, as the sheets are actually A4, which means the pictures on them are a bit too large for most of the cards I make.

Spring Days & Country Life Inserts & Paper Pack

In this pack you get papers intended for inserts which are single sided and a matt finish and also a set of double sided papers which have a slight gloss finish.  If I'm being completely honest (and there's no point in doing a review if you're not) I'm not keen on glossy paper, though lots of people love it, of course!
The designs are a delight and the colours are lovely.  I only wish they were smaller - those lambs, Easter Eggs and ducklings would have been perfect on my Easter cards, but the designs were just too big for my taste.  I will have to think of some other way to use them!
As well as the pictures though, there are lots of pretty, patterned designs which I really like - several have soft blue sky designs which will be very useful!
 

I really wanted to try and use the glossy papers, and they were just perfect for my wired butterflies, as the glossy finish catches the light as they move on the thin wires

 

So that's all for this time, I hope you've enjoyed seeing my Butterfly Garden.  There was a gorgeous flower set right next to the butterfly one on the Hunkdory Crafts website, and it took me ages to decide which to go for. Now I really want that one too - wouldn't it work brilliantly in the mini bottles in a similar way?

Moonstone Dies by Hunkydory - Fabulous Flowers

Anyway, that's it for today, thank you for coming by - please leave a message 

before you go - I would LOVE to hear what you think about this project

Happy Crafting!