6/52 Bite Sized Books

Well hello!

Today is Valentine's Day - wishing you a 'love'ly day - show yourself some love - drink you favourite coffee, read your favourite book, eat those reeeeaaaally good chocolates while binge watching your favourite show - whatever would make you feel pampered and loved - do THAT! 

Week 6's book has a lovely pretty Valentine-ish feel to it... I didn't intend for it to be like that (it started off with mushrooms!) but thats how it is  - and I like it!

I was going through my dies looking for interesting small ones to use in the books and found these fun Sizzix Tim Holtz Funky Toadstools... I didn't think there was mushroom on these small pages for too many.. get it MUCHroom/MUSHroom... oh, don't worry... I'll stop now... lol  cute dies aren't they.

Nothing scary about a pink, sparkly, googly-eyed skull!  Bet you didn't expect that to come out of the pocket did you?!! 

Lots of doodling on these pages - white and gold on kraft!! love it!

I was looking through my postage stamps - could this one be any more appropriate!!  What a lucky find!

Here's the flick-through video.....

Thanks for popping in!

03/52 Bite-sized books...

Hello

Week 3 of #52bitesizedbooks ... this week's book is predominately made of kraft pages - I love a bit of kraft as a substrate! 

Here are the first 3 books stacked - its great how thick they look and all those lovely threads and bits and pieces poking out! Gorgeous!

Here is book 3/52

Thanks for popping in...

 

Colour puddle card....

... I reeeally like painting 'colour puddles' and usually use them as the base to stamp flowers. I'm always thinking and looking for other ways to use them... when I saw a post on Instagram (linking to the Sizzix blog) where they had used these (very lovely) flower dies as a stencil on cards I had a lightbulb moment... and this card is the result...

I posted this photo on Instagram and said I would put simple instructions here on my blog - 'simple' because it is reeaally simple..

Step 1.  Paint a colour puddle... this is done by painting a circle of paint (going round and round and round until the paint on your brush runs out..) then adding another circle/ring of paint in a second colour and painting round and round and round and round until your paint runs out again - blending the colours as you go...  its very relaxing! 
NB. The photo below shows the colour puddle cut to size to fit the card.

Step 2. Die cut the chosen flower in the bottom right hand corner of the card blank (mine is 12.5x12.5cm)

Step 3. Attach 3d foam pads around the edges of the colour puddle panel.

Step 4.  Attach the colour puddle panel to the inside of the card.

I really liked the clean and simple look of this card... but realised it was a bit too clean and simple! I mean there is such a thing as too much white space surely! lol

Step 5. Cut the white card blank in half and cut the front panel down to fit a 12.5x12.5cm kraft card blank - this will warm the card up and give a frame all around.

Add a strip of coordinating washi tape, a small tag and tiny die cut heart. Still clean and simple but not quite so much.

I wasn't kidding was I when I said it was a simple card - simple but lovely (in my humble opinion! lol)


Thanks for popping by!

Christmas cards....

.... are on the {ever growing} christmas 'to-do' list... and I wanted to share with you a couple of cards I made using stamp set JOFY69 and the smaller of the two trees...  they're quite simple, a little bit 'less-is-more', bit of paper piecing and a sprinkle of glitter...

When I designed these trees this is how I planned to use them - layering up different patterned papers.  I picked out some papers from the 8x8in pads I have in my stash (Basic Grey... sigh.. I miss their papers). 

I chose three patterns that I thought worked nicely together and, using my stamping platform, stamped 3 trees and cut them out.

I cut the trees up ready to be layered - leaving a tier above or below the required tier so that there is something to attached it to (that's quite hard to explain lol) 

The trees below are created from the trees above... (I used a Tombow glue stick to attach them together as it gives a bit of wiggle time)

The trees looked a bit flat so I added depth by shading below the line of each tier to create shadow. (Tombow Brush Marker in pale grey) - simple but makes a big difference when you compare the above and below photos.  (I also added a white top tier to one of the trees, I thought it didn't have enough pattern changes).

I stamped the tree trunk several times onto brown printed paper and cut out leaving excess at the top (looks like a little mushroom!) so the trunk could be attached to the tree.

Here's the trunk from the front.

These trees are a bit time consuming but worth it! (in my humble opinion).

To make the cards I took a 10cm panel of kraft card and stamped JM07 down one edge (this snowflake stamps is a definite 'go-to' for me!), mounted it onto a 12.5cm card and 3d mounted the tree on top - overlapping the edge to tie the two panels together.

This card is the opposite colour combination to the card above - they're the same but different.  I like that.  I added a touch of glitter (Stickles) and gold paint (PaperArtsy White Fire Fresco) for a bit of sparkle.

I think this is a good card to make sitting down in front of the tv with a nice christmas film... a bit of stamping, bit of fussy (but not too fussy) cutting and some sticking!... and you can attack the stash in the process.!  ho ho ho!

Thanks for stopping by!

JoFY Bingo Wk.16

Welcome to JOFY Bingo Week16!  Halfway through the 32 weeks this little project is going to take!

These christmas stamps keep coming up in the draw don't they!  This week the numbers are 7 & 11- a nice mix to create cards with this...

I wanted to move away from the christmas theme and so created 3 birthday cards using - the first of which are created using the star on JOFY07 as the main motif...

I kept the design quite simple - stamping the stars on to a background created with Distress Oxide inks, cutting them out, embellishing them and adding them to card base decorated simply with the little background stamp also on JOFY07.  The word blocks are from JOFY11 - useful little motifs.

The third card I made uses one of my favourite techniques - paper piecing - and uses mostly the flower images from JOFY11 - but I couldn't resist adding bunting from JOFY07...

To create a colour palette for the whole card I used the same Distress Oxide Inks for the background and painting the flowers, and also the same pack of paper for the bunting and the flowers.

The hitch is that the bunting spells out 'noel' which isn't good for birthdays (unless the recipient is called Noel, but that's a long shot isn't it! lol) so it has to be masked off ...

I mask off parts of the design by stamping the image onto post-it-notes (across the sticky part), cutting out the required elements and adding them to the stamp...

This is how it looks when stamped with the elements masked off...

The masked off image was stamped several times onto patterned papers and then cut out ready to be added to the card design..

The bunting looked a bit plain so I added die cut hearts (cut from the leftovers from the star cards)..

Flowers were stamped in black ink onto the background and again onto patterned papers.  The images were cut out and matched up...

I drew and painted simple posts for the word blocks so they look like little signs...

Phew!... half way through the JoFY Bingo project!

Thanks for stopping by!

Watercolour paints.... (part 1)

... aren't something I use very often...

 ... and when I say watercolour paints I mean palettes of traditional watercolours... but I 'recently' bought a set of Prima watercolour paints to use with my flower stamps and am loving how this simple mini stamp (JM59) looks when painted with these fabulous colours!

I really enjoyed painted in watercolour - I really like how the paint can be moved about, diluted and layered up... you have to be quite gentle with it though! lol

 I assembled all the flowers and leaves I painted onto a card:

The leaves are from JOFY61 and seem to be my 'go to' foliage at the moment - they seem to go with everything!.

I'm looking forward to working with these paints more in the future....

All that glitters....

I may have mentioned before that I like a bit of sparkle and shine, and today its all about the SHINE!

I made several cards featuring the seedhead silhouette from JOFY63.  They are the same but different - on each card I used simple clean and simple layouts and the same embossing powder which was WOW's Metallic Gold Rich Super Fine - very lovely & great at keeping the delicate detailed line of image.

I think I like kraft as much (probably more) than I like shine! I like to team them up & I was keen to use the silhouette stamp solo on a card :

The second card I made teamed the silhouette seedhead with the original line drawing from JOFY38 on a white background. 
Very happy with how they look together! :o)  (its like I plan these things! lol)

This is my favourite of the three cards.
I painted an ombre background using Infusions (A Bit Jaded) on a wet Fresco Finish (Mermaid) base and brushed it in - how GORGEOUS is that background!  even before the seedheads were stamped and embossed on top! swoon!  I really like how the different colours in the Infusions become lines across the panel - especially the dark slashes which are the walnut stain powders.

Here are the cards together - great to see how they are the same but different... I would happily frame the Infusions one and put it on the wall!

Thanks for visiting!