Butterfly Profile

I want to share a card with you today... but it's not one made by me!

 

In fact, this card has been made by the incredibly talented Manderly, using one of my new digi stamps, called Butterfly Profile.

 

 

Isn't it just gorgeous? I love the intense colours on this card and how beautifully she has coloured the image. I only started selling my digi stamps just a month or so ago so it's still a huge thrill for me to see other people creating with my images... and especially making something this incredible! :)

 

 

Manderly created this card for her stint as guest designer at Quirky Crafts Challenges and she has kindly agreed for me to share her creation here on my blog. I love everything about this card... the shape of the card, the delicate die-cuts and flowers, and the way they overhang the edges of the card, the ribbon bow and metal tag, the fabulous soft colouring and shading on the image... and also how she's glittered and glossed the butterflies on the image, and even printed some out in a larger size and cut them out as extra embellishments. Just beautiful!

 

You can buy this image, and my other digi stamps, from the Stitchy Bear Digi Outlet and you can see some other creations using my stamps on the Alipeeps' Art tab at the top of my blog. :)

A Rose By Any Other Name

I love working with Sweet Pea Stamps... not only because of the gorgeous stamps I get to create with, but also because of the awesome team of creative ladies I get to work with and the fabulous inspiration I get from seeing their creations.

This week I have taken a bit of inspiration from one of my fellow-DT members and done my own take on Milo's gorgeous, super-detailed style:

 

I have to admit that I love how this turned out. :)

I've used Ching Chou Kuik's beautiful Red Rose digi stamp. I love the Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls influence of this image. I coloured her with Promarkers, using red and gold colours and keeping her skin super-pale.

 

 

I teamed the image with a red and black colour scheme and lots of texture and detail for a rather gothic/baroque feel.

 

 

I cut a card shaped card blank with My Cameo and layered some gorgeous Basic Grey paper (from the Boxer collection) onto it. I then added lots of texture and dimension with flowers and lace and fabric and trinkets, cutting out the image and layering it over the top of it all:

 

 



I added lots of little decorative touches like a little metal pendant which I filled with more of the patterned paper and layers of UTEE, into which I set a paper rose, and a little shrink plastic butterfly.

 

Other additions include a little wooden key with I coloured black with my Promarkers and coated with Glossy Accents...

 

And some heart-shaped decorative pins and a ticket stamped onto kraft card.
 

You can buy this gorgeous image in red rubber or digi format from the Sweet Pea Stamps store. Hope you like my card and that Milo doesn't mind me "borrowing" her fabulous style. :)

 

Feeling All White

Geddit? ;)

 

All White (or no patterned paper) is the theme of the new challenge starting at the One Stitch At A Time blog today.

 

It was different - and really interesting - to work without any colour on my card and I'm really pleased with the results:

 

 

I used a lovely digi stamp by Stitchy Stamps called Lite My Fire. Another thing I've done differently this week is that I've not used my Promarkers for colouring the digi stamp - due to the death of my Putty Promarker, which I use for skintones, I've been using my Prismacolor pencils instead lately and I actually think the softer colouring medium works really well on this image:

 

 

To make up for the lack of colour/patterned paper, I used lots of embossing and detailed die-cuts to add texture and interest. I cut a shaped card blank on my Cameo and also cut smaller circles which I embossed with a Stampin' Up! embossing folder. I also cut a delicate border and a sentiment label using the Cameo:

 

 

I finished things off with a leafy flourish (again cut with my Cameo) and some flowers and some Perlen Pen dots around the edges.

 

 

It's easy to enter the OSAAT challenge - you don't need to use a Stitchy Bear Stamps image to enter but if you do you'll be entered into the draw to win a $9 gift voucher for the Stitchy Bear store. Entries not using a Stitchy Bear image will be entered into a draw to win a $3 gift voucher.

 

And don't forget, now's a brilliant time to pick up some Stitchy Bear Stamps products at bargain prices as the birthday celebration is on at the Stitchy Bear store until Friday with a whopping 33% off everything!

 

 

I'm also entering this card into the following challenges:
Little Claire's - Cards with Folds
One Stop Craft - Anything Goes
Lady Anne's Challenges : Friday Sentiment - Anything Goes
Clearly Inspired - Die Cuts
Totally Papercrafts - Easel Cards
CCEE Stampers - Pencils, please
My Heart Pieces Digital Stamps Challenge - Not To Be Square

Get In Shape

Can I just say, how freaking awesome is my Cameo? :D

 

I must admit, I haven't used it a huge amount since my lovely hubby bought it for me in November - I am still getting the hang of how to do various things with it (and I must admit to not spending as much time in the craft room as usual over the winter months! :lol:).

 

But it really is the coolest, cleverest darn thing and I really must use it more. Cos look what I did with it over the weekend:

 

 

I made my own shaped card base!! How awesome is that?! :D

 

The challenge at Passion for Promarkers this week is to make a circle card and I really wanted to have a go... but I don't have any circle card blanks and I don't have any dies big enough to cut a card blank in the BigShot so I decided to have a play with my Cameo. And by overlapping two scalloped circle shapes and welding them I was able to cut out a shaped card base. Am so impressed with myself! :lol:

 

I decorated my card with some gorgeous freebie papers that came with a craft magazine and added a butterfly and flourish (also cut with the Cameo) and some flowers - including a resin flower from a matching set that came with the pretty papers:

 

 

And for the image I used this adorable Alisa With Roses digi stamp from Mo's Digital Pencil. Isn't she so sweet?

 

 

I'm also entering this card into the following challenges:

Addicted to Stamps - Bring on Spring (lots of flowers)
Great Impressions - Going Green
Hobby Cutz - Anything Goes
No Matter Which Challenges - Anything Goes
Scrappy Frogs - Green
Sunday Stamper - Something Pretty
That Craft Place - Anything Goes
Hiding In My Craft Room - Green

Floral Fairy

A happy confluence of events came about for my DT card for One Stitch At a Time this week - I needed to make a birthday card for a good friend, I was given a cute but sassy fairy image to use for my card (perfect for my friend), and I got these goooorgeous floral papers free with a craft magazine:

 

 

 

 

I also got bored of making mostly square cards and decided to do something a bit different. :) This is what the card looks like closed:

 

 

I card my shaped base card and covered it with the floral papers and coloured the digi stamp with my Promarkers. I wanted her to extend out over the edge of the front of the card:

 

 

I also added some glitter to her wings with a touch of Stickles:

 

 

To decorate the rest of the card, I added a sentiment (also free with the craft magazine! :D), positioning it so it would be hidden when the card was closed, and finished off with some flowers and a few dots of Perlen Pen.

 

The theme at OSAAT this week is Use a Digi so it couldn't be easier to enter - you don't have to use a Stitchy Bear image to do so but if you do you will be entered into the draw for the main prize. If you enter with a non-Stitchy Bear image, you'll be entered into the draw to win a $3 gift voucher to the Stitchy Bear store. :)

Let Me Look Into My Crystal Ball.....

When I saw the Anything But a Square challenge at Sparkle and Glitter the Rick St Dennis Challenge Blog it sparked a bit of an idea in my brain...

 

I looked at the fabulous digi of Esmeralda, holding her crystal ball, and had the idea to put her in a crystal ball of her very own. This was the result:

 

 

I printed her on white card and coloured her in with Promarkers and used a Flexmarker for a pale blue colour wash around her and added Stickles to her crystal ball. I drew a circle around her (using the lid from my kitchen blender as a template, as it happens! :lol:) and cut it out and then coated the whole panel with a nice thick layer of UTEE for a glass/crystal effect. I also added in some fine gold glitter during the process of melting the UTEE:

 

 

I stuck the UTEE'd panel onto thick chipboard to give the card some strength and added some highlights with Stickles.

 

I had-drew the base section onto white card and coloured it with Promarkers. I then made a sturdy stand from thick cardboard and fixed the base and the UTEE'd panel onto it and printed a greeting inside a banner shape using my computer, cut it out, and attached with a foam pad.

 

 

I'm really pleased with how this came out. :) It was fun doing something really different and a really unusual shape and most of all I'm pleased with the results of my UTEE experiment... somehow the layer of UTEE seems to have given a richness and sheen to the Promarker colours, they seem to almost glow:

 

 

 

I'm also entering this card into the following challenges:

Digistamps 4 Joy - Anything Goes

I Love Promarkers - Anything Goes

Paper Pretties - Try a New Technique

Deep Ocean Challenge - Anything But Square

Passion for Promarkers - Use Your Favourite Colour Combo

Digital Tuesday - Favourite Color Combo

Fashionista Challenge - Red as Main Colour

 

Geisha Girl

It's digi Wednesday over at the Sweet Pea Stamps blog.

 

For my card this week I used Connie Fong's adorable Yuki image:

 

 

This little geisha is so cute and she's just lovely to colour in. I coloured her with Promarkers and a white gel pen for some highlights. I decided to try something a bit different and made a little diamond fold card which I decorated with pretty oriental-themed papers from K&Co.

 

 

I cut out Yuki and attached her to the card using foam tape for added dimension and finished things off with a filigree butterfly cut with my Cameo.

 

 

You can buy this image in either red rubber or digi format at the Sweet Pea Stamps store - and don't forget there's still a fantastic sale on with 30% off red rubber stamps and a $6 gift voucher (the equivalent of 2 digi stamps) if you spend $30 on digi stamps.

 

I'm entering this card into the following challenges:

Addicted to Stamps - Markers

Lady Anne's Challenges - Anything Goes

Creative Moments - Anything Goes

Flutterby Wednesdays - Open

I Love Promarkers - Anything Goes

 

 

 

 

 

Shaped Cards? Hai!

The challenge at Passion for Promarkers this week is to make a shaped card - basically anything that's not a rectangle/square! I liked this challenge cos I must admit I do get a bit lazy occasionally and keep on using the same old square card blanks for my creations. So it was good to think outside of the box a bit.

I had a gorgeous geisha digi stamp that I picked up recently from A Day For Daisies that I was dying to play with and I had the idea of wanting to put a kind of "rising sun" image behind her. And that led to this:

I coloured the geisha with my Promarkers and cut her out and then I made a stepper card base. I cut a piece of card with a rounded top to fit on the back section of the stepper and then cut gold mirror card and patterned paper into sunrays to fit onto it. I matted more patterned paper onto mirror card to fit on the front section of the card and attached the geisha image over it.

Am entering this card into the following challenges:

Passion for Promarkers - Shaped Cards
Inspire Me Fridays - Anything Goes
Stampin With The Dragon - Anything but a Square or Rectangle
Moving Along With The Times - Shape Up - Anything But Square
Colour Me Creative - Use Blacks/Dark Greys