More of my Creations

These are 5 of the most recent cards I've made...the first three all have a piece of shaving foam paper used as background! This was the technique I taught at the card classes this month, although we made a different card in the classes.



The presents that are being carried are Christmassy, hence the Poinsettia embellishment.



This little girl has collected grapes in her apron, so I stamped grapes onto the background paper - looks like it could have been scrapbook paper, hey?! I love the white swirl in the top left corner...Paola has this collection of punches 'to die for' and I punched a whole bunch (pardon the pun!) so you'll see them feature quite often.



I Looooove this stamp. She's known as "Willow Dancing" and is one of Paola's that I stamped off. The twirly edged border is a Martha Stewart set of corner and border punches and thanks to Susan Nel's help I knew what size to pre-cut my pieces of cardstock. I used both gemstones and flat pearls, you know, it all depends on what colours I have - I just MAKE them go together!



This card I specially made for my friend, Joey. She just gave me specs that it's for her sister and must have a "60" on the front, as you battle to find appropriate card in the shops with the number you want! When I told Joey what colour and picture I'd used, she exclaimed that her sister's bedroom is done out in Lavender! It must've been Divine Guidance! I'll possibly do a similar card in an upcoming workshop...especially because I've used Flower Soft on the lavender flowers...gives a wonderful 3D effect! As always, I coloured the picture in with pencil crayons. Oh in case you're wondering, the 60 was computer generated, printed on cardstock and cut out with a Creative Memories Circle Maker and edged with purple ink on a medicine sponge. I love the effect of two ribbons, one being bold and the other an organza soft.



I had originally coloured her dress red as well, then realised I needed it to be different from the apron, so used black which now gives it an unusual hue. The lacy border is again a Martha Stewart Punch set.
Paola, I hope you notice the hat-pin...and the bridal garland...and the ribbon...and...lol

Trevor's Special Cards

After Trev, Jody & Didi came over for supper on Tuesday, Trev stayed over so that he could make these stunning cards, the collage dragonfly one above for his girlfriend and the "Dankie" for his Manager.
The circle cut-out of the Cuttlebug Cut & Emboss folder has words showing through it that were stamped onto scrapbook paper, and can you see the green mulberry torn circle he's inserted? I'm impressed, my son! Trev hasn't played in my studio for a long, long time and we've decided that we'll try to have him come at least every few weeks so we can spend more quality time together doing what we both enjoy - releasing our creativity!



Here Trev's trying to decide how to place the skeleton leaves!
Oooh a messy workshop table - just the way we like it!!! LOL



We decided to punch the edge of the black cardstock on the right hand side AND run it through the Cuttlebug in the Textile Folder...quite effective! Trev coloured in the kitty with pencil crayons....like mother, like son!!

75th Birthday

I have a friend, Joey who sometimes calls and asks me to make a big card for special birthdays. The first one I made in June 2010 was the black one with the champagne bottles...an A4 folded in half.

The bottles are embossed silver and the silver squiggles are Peel-Offs. The numbers were cut with the Fiskars stencil & blade. The birthday wording is a Cuttlebug folder.



Then today I quickly made this square card with the Fleur-de-lis stamps.
Now its somewhat different from the big one, but I hope Joey likes it! I've had this big stamp lying around for ages and never used it, so finally put it onto EZ Mount and then had to trim off the edges because they were being silly. So in stamping a row, they are sadly not 100% straight. Hopefully the 'oldies' don't notice ;-)

I decided to 3D the images using my 'new' method - a piece of black polystyrene tray with double-sided tape either side. Then I added tiny clear gemstones to compliment the silver from the numbers.

The numbers were cut on a Slice machine - a friend, Igna lent me hers so I can learn it and then teach her! Nice arrangement :-)) I just cut each number twice on the 4" setting, then carefully shadowed the black one underneath the silver before finally sticking to the card.

Look carefully especially in the bottom corners - I used the Cuttlebug folder that has a straight line and a fleur-de-lis on each end...they're embossed all the way around.

As a last touch which sadly gets lost on the photo, I used VersaMark to stamp a tiny fleur-de-lis randomly as a background.

ATC Cards

At our recent Cardi-ologist FunDay we had to make 2 ATC's as our challenge, along the theme of Seasons. I chose Summer and Winter.
As I have no use for an ATC, I decided to make them into square cards seeing as they seem to be the "in thing" at the moment.
The blue card's corners on the ATC were from an EK Success Snowflake stamp that punches out these interesting corners when you use the clip-on goodie for the corners. You have to remove the clip-on to get the corner, as it tends to store it inside!
The silver and see-thru snowflakes are metallic confetti. The blue strip array of snowflakes was from a Cuttlebug folder.



This Summer card was easier...I'm having fun making up these interesting flower combos. I enjoyed making the squiggly border with the Fab Scraps Punch (featured below) and the little suns were a small punch I think I bought from Margo a few years ago. The rest is pretty simple.
We just had the weirdest colours to work with: Orange, Lime Green, Shocking Pink, Grey, Navy Blue, Very Bright Yellow, Olive Green, Chocolate Brown and Cerise...NO black or white! I asked Verna (who hosted it) where she got the colours idea from & she said she just picked them randomly. It was quite a challenge and really made us climb out of our boxes!!

Passionate About Purple

I recently bought a Provo Craft Cut & Emboss Die, but wasn't overly inspired by it...until Paola showed us at the August Cardi-ologist FunDay how to highlight the raised areas by lifting a plastic flap after running it through the Cuttlebug and sponging colour over them - you will see that I have done white on the owl card and black on the face card.
I wanted to include a link on what the product looks like, but I can't find anything yet under Provo Craft's many links - maybe they haven't updated their sites yet!!



The lacy border below the picture, separated by a ribbon is made with one of the Fab Scraps Border Punches that comes in a set of 4 with the handle and guide to help get the positioning right. The side borders are the left-over strips that come away from the pattern that one would usually throw away!
Maybe the flowers I used aren't really suitable, but the colours match and I was going to visit Linda & Francine at Carrots Crafters and I decided to use many products that I had bought at them. I added a bit of Stickles to various raised areas.
I coloured in the owl with pencil crayons from 3 different sets of crayons...it's super how different makes have different shades of one colour!! So I used purple from Staedtler, Faber-Castell and Rolfes. Much nicer than just one solid colour!



I shaded the lady's face with sponges dipped into inkpads. I enhanced her eyeshadow and lips with an earbud dipped in the Violet inkpad. Then she got the sparkles on her eyelids from Stickles. Sparkly was also added to the centre flower. The black border was one of the other punches from Fab Scraps...pretty, hey?!
The pearls were bought from Ruby's, a local Haberdashery Shop. They are on a type of fishing gut, but keep falling off, so I added a few extra purple beads and stuck the end of the gut into the glue & let it dry, hopefully sealing the beads in place. I've used Creative Memories Memoranza packs from a few years ago for the background papers. IF I can find enough dark purple flowers, I may be able to teach this as a workshop card...but may have to change colours, as I heard from our local Paper Enterprises that Purple cardstock is scarce at the moment. I better hoard the scraps I have !!
I used a Heliotrope inkpad and sponge to edge the back flower and also the torn paper, which I then further edged with a black inkpad.