May Elemental Inspiration

 

 

Hello

 

 Keeping it short this time as I'm still catching up with things after our little holiday.

This week on the Daring Cardmakers its time for May's Elemental Inspiration Challenge.  How come January and February are at least twice as long as the other months in the year?

Hello, Joanne here this week.

 

May Elemental Inspiration

We have an “elemental” challenge for you today — just choose at least three elements from the inspiration picture (colour scheme counts as one element so pick two other things as well if you decide to go with colours).

 You can see lots of inspiration from the Design Team by clicking this link

 

 For my elements I chose the pink and green colours. the black and white stripes, a flower, some little droplet stones and a stencil

Info

I've used a smooth white square card base and made the background by masking off some areas with washi tape and also some masking fluid before applying various shades of green Nuvo embellishing mousse.  Once I'd removed the masking 'stuff' I used some gold mousse through my favourite stencil.

For the flower I inked up some thin card with several shades of pink Nuvo mousse, spraying water to get a random colour effect.  While it was still damp I scrunched it up, flattened it out again and left it to dry.

Im not entirely sure that last bit made any difference to the finished flower but it seemed a good idea at the time!

 

The flower petals are cut using an old Spellbinders 'carnation' die set, which has different sized petals in it.  I achieved the frilly  effect by using reverse tweezers on each petal

 Next I built up the focus of my card; a rectangle of striped card. a chipboard swirl inked in green with a little Nuvo mousse for shine and some gold gilding flakes added, some green leaves from another Spellbinders die set and finally the sentiment piece made with more black and white card

To complete the card I added a few small droplet stones - I can't remember the proper name for them!

Thank you so much for coming by. 

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

 

 

supporting Ukraine

HAPPY card 2

 

Hello

So, last week I shared a birthday card made using a Crafters Companion HAPPY shaped die set.  Today's card is in a similar vein, but in a different colour palette and with some different flowers.   Shabneez and Sarah's birthdays were in December and the opportunity to get away from Christmas colours and shapes and "go girly" with pretty colours and lovely flowers was just too good to miss!

But one day I shall use this set to make something more masculine - I have loads of 'boy' birthdays coming up so watch this space!

Anyway, back to Sarah's card

 Info

This time I chose a yellow, orange, peach mix of colours for the background shaped card, the upper layer of the letters and also for the thinner card I needed for making the flowers.  I used inks and Nuvo Embellishment mousses for this both sides of the thin card were coloured as the flowers would be 3D

 

I've not had the chance to make a big rose since the card and box I made for my nephew and new niece in law's wedding in July. so as this card would be hand delivered I took the chance of going ultra dimensional with my flowers!  Well, it would be rude not to, wouldn't it?

There is something so relaxing and satisfying about making a paper rose, I always enjoy making them. 

I cut the petals for this one using an extra large flower punch.  I have instructions on how to make paper roses HERE

 

 

 To balance the large rose I used a little trio of small coiled paper roses on the 'H', and added some green die-cut leaves to set them all off.

 To complete the card I made e sentiment piece using black and white sentiment and patterned pieces from my bag of bits.  I can't remember what font I used on this one, but I really love it!

Obviously, with the big flowers this was never going to fit into a regular DL envelope so I custom-made one to fit it. If I'd needed to post it I'd have made a box for it instead

Thank you so much for coming by, please don't go without leaving a little message, I do love to hear from you.  

Or maybe I really am just talking to myself

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

Pretty Pastels

 

 Hello!

I'm sharing another 'catch-up' card this time.  

It's q feminine and colourful birthday card, with stencilling, lots of flowers and some lovely black and white to make it all pop!

 

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I used washi tape to mask off the border, then filled the remaining square area with pastel coloured inks.  Next I taped a stencil over the top and used some glitter gel paste through it to add some sparkle

Once dry I added a Tonic Scribbled Square die cut to be the frame for my flowers. Various leaf and flower dies were used and arranged across the frame.

The sentiment piece is another of my White on Black printed ones, matted onto scraps of patterned B & W papers - I never throw the little bits away, they often come in useful!

To finish I added some tiny gems, but with hindsight, maybe this was an embellishment too far!

 That's it for this time, Thank You so much for coming by, please don't go without leaving a little message as I do love to know what you think.

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

 

Just Checking, Pizza, Pudding and Fund-Raising!

 

Hello!

I'm late with my 'Friday' post - it's been quite busy around here for a change _ I'll add a bit more about that later! But here's this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge and my card

Just Checking!

 All we're asking this week is that you use some kind of check pattern on your cards. 
It could be stamped, embossed, patterned paper, stencilled, hand-drawn...
You could use checks as a background or as part of a design element of an image e.g. on a Chef's apron or tartan rug...
We're looking forward to checking up on your makes, but for starters here are some ideas from our fabulous design team to help inspire you
All we're asking this week is that you use some kind of check pattern on your cards.  

Click here to see what my fabulous Teamies have made this week

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I stencilled my check pattern by using a stripes stencil first vertically, then horizontally. I used a Spellbinders embossing folder to add texture to the rest of the card

The gold Scribbled Square Frames are by Tonic, as are the petal shapes I used to make the flower.  The deep aqua paper is from a Studio Light paper pad and I used some ready made black stamens and some gold micro beads for the flower centre. 

The sentiment piece elements are a pc generated check strip and Happy Birthday message with a piece of the gold card behind.

To complete I added some metallic aqua gems

 

 Well, I've mentioned before about the wonderful neighbours we have on this street, and how supportive everyone has been during these difficult months of Covid19.  Well, at one of our socially distanced Meet-in-the-Street Sunday drinks someone mentioned that they'd heard of a local Pizza Van company - I guess the kind of thing that usually parks up at festivals and other events to help feed the punters!  One thing led to another and once we were sure we could get the minimum 50 pizza orders it was booked to come and park on one of the neighbour's drive on Friday. Then the idea of adding a charity element to the event was suggested - if some people made cakes and puddings we could then have a donations bucket and maybe raise some money for our local hospice.  One of the neighbours is a wine merchant, so he decided to set up a wine table, also for donations.  Well, it all went swimmingly - almost literally as after a couple of weeks of blazing sunshine and high temperatures, of course it absolutely threw down most of Friday! Undaunted, gazebos were set up in front gardens and our garage (still pretty new and clean!) was earmarked for the pudding servery.  

In the end we were lucky as there was only some occasional drizzle during the evening, and everyone got into the spirit, collecting their freshly made pizzas from The Roaming Dough to either take away to their own gardens, or use one of the gazebos nearby for shelter.  

We had SO MANY puddings! Two trestle tables full of them and people came to help themselves and pop their donations into the bucket. We've just heard that we raised well over £350, just from selling pudding! 

Which from a street of around 30 households is quite a lot of pudding

 

 

Needless to say, there was plenty of cake and puddings left over so our garage had various visitors over the weekend popping back for more treats! I just feel so lucky to live in a place like this.

Thank you so much for coming by, please don't go without leaving a little message as I do love to know what you think.

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

 

May's Elemental Inspiration challenge - more hot foiling

 

  Hello

  Happy Friday, I hope you've had a lovely week, its been very windy here at times and not very warm. The wind plays havoc with my hay fever, so its been a very 'drippy' week for me,

This week over at The Daring Cardmakers Miri has chosen the board for our monthly Elemental Inspiration challenge

Welcome to May!

I picked this picture for our monthly inspiration:

 Choose at least three elements (colour scheme counts as one element) from the picture to kick start your project.

 Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

Having been quite pleased with my hot-foiling exploits last week, I thought I'd use the same hot foiling plate again - after all it looked to be a perfect match for the various dotty patterned squares on Miri's mood-board.

So, my chosen elements were; Squares, Dotty pattern, Blue flower and the heart

 

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My base card is a smooth white square card blank

The blue paper is a gorgeous heavily textured paper from Tonic Studios.  I glued some onto scrap cardstock before hot-foiling with the Spellbinders dots Glimmer plate then cutting into squares. 

The flower is made using the same paper and one of those fab die sets from Spellbinders which have several dies of varying sizes  . 

The heart is also from a multi-sized pack, cut in Tonic mirror finish card, 

For the flower centre I used a blob of Glossy Accents, added some shiny gems, then filled any gaps with those teeny weeny gold micro beads that manage to go everywhere you don't want them, and just occasionally in the place you do want them.

To pull all the components together I added a tiny sentiment, and a gold thread bow, plus some of the blue and gold jewels around the flower

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when you do!

Happy Crafting, and please take care of yourself.

Love April

  Hello, Happy Friday!

I hope you've had a good week, it was really warm earlier in the week, but now Easter weekend has arrived its turned a bit chilly - typical!

Hubby and I had our first doses of the Covid vaccine on Monday.  I felt a bit achy and tired for a couple of days, but other wise it was fine, but what with that and hayfever symptoms shooting through the roof its been a tricky kind of week.

The only crafting I managed was my card for this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge, its Jenny's turn to select the moodboard for our monthly Elemental challenge

 

April's Elemental Inspiration 

Just pick a minimum of 3 elements from Jenny's beautiful moodboard to use when making your card. 

The Colour palette counts as 1 element. 

we can't wait to see what you choose, and what you make!

 Click here to see this week's design team inspiration 

I loved the subtle book page background, so decided to create something similar, then use a heart and a flower as my other elements - I thought I could use this to trial an idea for a wedding card I need later in the year.

 

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Smooth white card blank

Digital papers from Raspberry Road (via Etsy), resized and printed onto textured Bazzill white card. I covered the card blank with one of the papers, then inked up a fab 'love' words background stamp from Spellbinders in a deeper peach/brick red shade - ,my idea was to only ink parts of it to get a mottled kind of imprint - but I may have got a bit stamp-pad happy!

 Next I printed out another of the paper designs to die cut the glorious Heart (also Spellbinders).  Its quite a large die so doesn't get used as often as I'd like!  This time I also cut a couple of extra hearts from a toning plain pinky-peach shade of card and layered the three together before adhering off-centre to the card.

For the flower I chose another of the digital papers and this time printed on both sides of the white Bazzill.  A large flower punch was used for the petals, my Rose Tutorial is HERE. 

I placed the rose to the side of the heart then cut the 'Love' word it two layers of deep coloured card to match the stamped words and once in an embossed gold card. The coloured layers were matted together, then the gold one added on top, but offset a little

Thank you so much for visiting today.  I'd like to know what you think, so I hope you'll leave a comment - they are really appreciated

 Happy Crafting, and please Stay Safe

From Flat to Flouncy!

Hello

Today I've a Bubbly Funk project to share with you

A few weeks ago, I posted a paper rose tutorial and it got me thinking about all those lovely 'flat' mulberry paper petals you can get.  I have a load of lovely ones from Bubbly Funk, they come in packs of the same shape, colour and size and I was interested in finding out whether I could use the  technique as in the tutorial to make some mulberry roses with them.

It turns out it works just fine, though I did need to use an extra set of petals to get a nice 'full' rose

.I chose petals in brown, cream and a lovely bluey-turquoise colour to make the roses.  As mentioned I used an extra flower shape to fill out the rose - to do this I separated the flowers into single petals and trimmed off the inner point from each.  Next I just dipped the now straight end into some glue and tucked them into the rose wherever they seemed to be needed to make a good, full shape.

The basic Rose Tutorial is Here

From the Bubbly Funk shop I used

Brown Primula

French Vanilla Primula

Whirlpool Primula

From my stash; Kraft Card blank, Pearls,

The die cut sentiment is by Spellbinders and comes from

 the May Die of the Month set

Why not have ago at making some flowers yourself - I bet you've got loads of flat paper petals to practise with, and if you don't, well Bubbly Funk can help you there!

Happy Crafting

Rose Tutorial

Hello!

I love making these roses, they always draw admiring comments as they look so beautiful and effective - the secret is, they are not nearly as difficult to make as people think!

I've added lots of photos to this tutorial, so hopefully you can see clearly how its done. You can click on them if you need a larger view.

I like to use Bazzill-weight card for my roses as it holds its shape really well.  Once you've got the idea you can experiment with other paper, card etc

You'll need to die cut, punch, or hand-cut 4 flower pieces, all the same size. 

 I prefer to use a 6 petal flower for roses, but they can be made with 5 petal ones or ones with a couple more - you may have to adjust the number of shapes you start with and which of the layers you need to make

With scissors cut out the centre of three of the flowers and make other cuts as indicated in the photo below

From the first flower you get the inner "bud" (layer 1) and layer 4

From the second flower you get the outer bud (layer 2) and layer 3

The third flower is layer 5, just make one cut into the centre
 

Make the two bud pieces

Use a bamboo skewer, Paintbrush or something similar to curl the SINGLE Petal piece.  Curl it into a bit of a cone shape, and quite tightly.  so it holds its shape, then set aside

  Shape the 2-petal bud section by curling the two petals, again in a conical shape. Overlap the edges and add some glue to hold them together. I hold the edges together with tweezers for a minute while the glue is setting

When the glue is dry, gently curl the top of one of the petals over the skewer as if the bud is beginning to open

 

Here are both the bud sections ready to use.  You can see the curl on one of the petals 

of bud section 2.

You may find you need to trim a little off the lower  ends of these pieces when you come to build your rose

Now you need to trim away a little from the petals which will be used as 'tabs".  It's a case of trimming off the top of one petal next to where you've already removed petals from, or for flower 3, next to the cut you made into the centre.

Whatever you do, don't cut the tops off the wrong petals!  This photo shows how they should look

 Making the other Layers

At this point you can use the skewer, or something slightly thicker to start adding shape to the rest of the petals.  If the card is a bit thick it can help manipulate the fibres a little.  Nit its up to you and you may prefer to curl them later.

To make each layer, add a little glue to the trimmed down petal, then bring the one on the other side of the gap (or cut line) over to cover the 'tab' petal

and hold the layers together till stuck firmly. I use a mini bulldog clip to hold them in place while they dry, Repeat for the other 2 layers

You've now created all the layers and should now have five pieces like on the photo below, plus the extra one you put aside. 

Cut a circle of the same card big enough for the largest flower (with 5 petals) to sit on and apply some glue to it. Press the largest flower into the glue.

 Now add a little more glue to the bottom (where the hole is) of the 4-petal flower and sit it inside the first one,  Be sure to off-set the petals to make it look realistic

Repeat with the 3-petal flower and leave aside to dry while you make the bud.

 

 Apply glue to the single petal section of the bud, then place it inside the double petal section. Using wet glue means you can move it around until you like the shape of your bud.  Give the petals a bit on shape by curling them over the skewer.   I stood the finished bud in some blutak so that I could get a good photo - obviously, you don't need to do that!!

At this point pop the bud into the rest of the rose to check whether you need to cut a little off it.  I usually find the bud stands a bit too high and need to trim off a few mms.

Once I'm happy with the height I add glue to the centre of the main rose section, and also around the lower part of the bud (about the same amount as in pic 1 above)

Then tuck the bud into the main rose, move it around until you like how it looks and leave it to dry

 When dry, add any more shaping to your petals, remember to move it around to check all angles, then glue it to that last petal die-cut you saved right at the start, it gives some extra fullness to your beautiful rose

 My finished rose measures about 6-7 cms across.  I made a couple of smaller ones then used them on this project, which you can see HERE, using some little extras from the Bubbly Funk "Love Is...." craft box

Thank you so much for looking, I hope you'll give these roses a try, let me know how you get on if you do

Happy Crafting