Happy Birthday, Paul!

Tomorrow, my brother-in-law hits the big 4-0!

He's coming up for a visit at the weekend but in the meantime I thought I'd send him a card to arrive on the big day.

So I made him this:

I went all Tim Holtz/grungy/steampunky with kraft resist cardstock, Distress Stains, steampunk/vintage stamps and metal numbers coloured with alcohol inks.

I hope BIL will appreciate the subtle placement of elements that leaves the word "Antiques" from one of the background stamps nicely visible on the card. ;)

I'm entering this card into the "What Do You Say?" challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show.

Bright and Beautiful...

...is the theme of this month's challenge over on the Crafty Individuals blog.

I had lots of inky fun making my entry:

I decided to really go with the "bright" part of the theme and had a play with some lovely bright coloured alcohol inks. I dripped the inks onto glossy card and used a straw to blow them out into brightly coloured, overlapping splotches. I cut out a section of the coloured card and stamped over it in black Archival ink with CI-182 for a lovely flourish. I matted this piece of card onto black card and attached to the right-hand side of a white card blank. I also stamped CI-108 onto the alcohol ink coloured card and cut out just the wings section, then stamped her again onto plain white card and cut out just the lady. I painted her dress and hair using alcohol inks and glued the cut-out, coloured wings section in place behind her before attaching her to the card using foam pads. To finish, I added a stamped sentiment to the card base and used my SU embosslits die to cut some little butterflies from more of the alcohol ink-coloured card, bending the wings up and attaching to the card with a dab of Glossy Accents. Et voila. :)

I love how this card turned out. It's really vibrant and unusual and a bit different from the "look" I usually go for when using Crafty Individuals stamps... just goes to show how versatile they are, eh? :)

Fun with embossing

This week's theme over at the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge blog is embossing so I've been having a play. My entry for the challenge involved dry embossing, heat embossing and even double embossing! It's an embossing extravaganza! :)

This little decorated frame started life as a small box canvas. I turned it back to front and covered the "frame" part with tin foil which I had folded in half twice, run through the BigShot with a Tim Holtz Texture Fades embossing folder and then coloured with alcohol inks. I then cut and folded a piece of shimmery white card to fit the centre aperture and inked the edges with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and then stamped over it with a Tim Holtz Papillon stamp in Tumbled Glass ink. The butterfly was cut from Grunge Paper with a Tim Holtz Movers and Shakers die, inked with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink, and run through the BigShot in a Tim Holtz Texture Fades folder. I then inked the raised areas of the embossing with Distress ink and heat embossed it with pearlescent embossing powder. I curled the wings and attached the butterfly inside the aperture with a foam pad. The number stamp is from the Stampin' Up! Nature Walk stamp set and was stamped onto shimmery white card and then heat embossed with blue embossing powder. I cut it into a small rectangle and inked the edges with Tumbled Glass and attached inside the aperture with foam pads.

I then used a hot glue gun to add a few finishing touches - some Tim Holtz Ideology cogs, a strip of beaded ribbon along the bottom edge and a chain to hang the frame up by. The chain was upcycled from a charm necklace that I got cheap in a sale; I removed all the charms except the little metal butterfly which I coloured with alcohol inks to match the frame. :)

I had lots of fun getting inky and messy making this project, and digging out all my Tim Holtz toys! :lol: I love embossing and you can get so many different effects from it. And I must thank my friend Pam for giving me the idea to try colouring tin foil with alcohol inks! :D