Sunday 27 February 2011

CD crafting

I was playing around with My Craft Studio and created a lovely image which I printed onto glossy photo paper. But what to do with it? Inspiration, as ever, came from a number of Challenge blogs and so I created the following card:


I only wish my ability to photograph things was better because the above does not show off the wonderful glitter effect.

How was it made...

In my MCS collection, I have Simply Silhouettes. The main image is made from a background, a silhouette of a fairy and some butterflies. As I mentioned above, I then printed the image onto photo paper. I love the fact that you can resize images in MCS to match the paper sizes in your printer. Basically, I resized the image to 10x15 photo paper and printed it out from the photo paper tray. No need to waste a full A4 piece of paper!

I then matted the image onto some more yellow paper from the Docrafts Goody bag (I know it just goes on and on) which I darkened to match the colour of the topper with Wild Honey Distress ink.

I added some Fairy trails glitter from Hunkydory to highlight some of the elements of the image. You simply cannot get the full effect of that glitter in a photo! It is magical.

The topper is then matted onto Centaura Pearl card which I have punched down the side with a Martha Stewart border punch.

I punched out some butterflies with an old hand punch I found in a drawer and have been dying to use for a while. I decorated the butterflies with a black glitter Sakura pen.

The flowers were made from copy paper! I cut out a multitude of flower shapes and then using the scrunch technique turned them into petals which I layered on top of each other to create the roses. A quick spray with Crafters Companion iridescent spray and they were done.

The whole lot is mounted onto an A5 black card (i.e. an A4 sheet folded in half!).

I am entering the card into the following challenges:

Charisma Cardz - Black and White with one other colour
Crafty Cardmakers - Fairy and two paper punches
Allsorts Challenge - Make your own flowers

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Sketchy Thursday and YELLOW!!!

More yellow...

More inspiration from the Docrafts goody bag. It just goes on and on and I haven't even opened the buttons, bows and flowers yet. Fantastic value.

I read in a book on making scrapbook pages that yellow was a colour to use sparingly. I disagree. I am not normally one for bright colours. I maybe a girl but I hate pink.

Anyway how did I put the page together?

The main sheet is yellow coredinations paper from the bag. I have cut a piece of the yellow patterned paper from the bag and overstamped the edges with a branch stamp from the Three Birds 'Clearly handstamped' selection. I cut out a square of black card and overstamped it with white ink using the same branch stamp. The yellow ribbons used to form the frame were stuck down using the Xyron. The ribbons also came from the bag.

The photos are matted onto more of the yellow paper. The crossed ribbons are actually sticky borders from the bag.

The journal is another stamp from the Three Birds selection and is stamped onto a scrap piece of the yellow paper and matted onto a scrap piece of black card. The scallop edge was done using a freebie pair of scissors.

The letters of the title were from the Forever Friends springtime selection.

Saturday 19 February 2011

Heart card and Docrafts goody bags

I have the January 2011 Docrafts goody bag which is bursting with bright yellow 'stuff'. Kinda daunting to know what to do with it all when the outside sky is grey and dreary so I have been ignoring it somewhat.

The sun came out earlier this week and whilst tidying up my craft desk I came across the wire heart from Clarity Stamps club which I hadn't gotten around to testing yet. Valentine's Day has been and gone and its a bit early to be thinking about 2012.

But why not combine the two for a different type of card.

Very Yellow

The card base came from the goody bag and was covered with one of the yellow papers from the bag. I created the second layer from some teal card left over from a challenge card and matted a rectangle from the SAME sheet of paper which I had darkened using Wild Honey distress inks.

From the Glitter Girls Majestic Board, I created a centre element using the same teal card and some more of the SAME sheet of paper. The card is edged with Stickles glitter glue and the central oval is edged with a fine border peel off.

The topper was then stuck onto a ribbon from the goody bag which was suspended on the matting layer to add a bit of dimension.

The heart shape is stamped onto a cut off from the SAME sheet of paper. I have embossed it with gold pearl Meltdust. I find the meltdust embossing powders really good for fine lines and not just for using on meltdust papers. I have coloured the sections of the heart using sakura gel and glitter pens.

I added some gold coloured gems and a sentiment to finish it off.

I am entering the card in the following challenges:

Papertake Weekly Challenge - Putting On The Glitz
Sweet Sketch Wednesday - Sketch 89
The Stamp Man Challenge - Hearts
Cupcake Craft Challenges - I ♥ You

Valentine's Day scrapbook page

From the heart

My husband bought me a card and some flowers for Valentine's day so I thought I would save the memory in photos. Having taken the pictures, I decided to celebrate them with a scrapbook page.

The base is taken from the reds coredinations card. The bottom half of the page was covered with some paper I had "lying around" and the remains of some pink coredinations card left over from another project which I tore to create a border.

I added two borders from a scrapbook pack. I cut out a flourish from some scrap paper using the slice machine and sprayed it with Crafter's Companion gold glitter spray. I made some flowers from the remains of the paper used to cover the lower half. The flowers were die cut from a spellbinders set in two sizes, crumpled and then stuck together with pinflair glue gel, followed by a quick spray of irridescent glitter spray and a red flower gem stuck in the middle.

Using a label die from Spellbinders, I made a journal entry from scrap bits of paper and card. The outer red was edged with Stickles glitter glue and the inner one was highlighted using distressing inks.

The photos are matted onto crushed jewels card from the Glitter Girls.

I then stuck the whole thing together and "Voila".

Sunday 13 February 2011

Valentines Day

Here is the card I have made for my DH. I hope he likes it.

The Card

The insert
 The card is an A4 card blank. I printed out a coordinating backing sheet from the Crafters Companion Popcorn Romance CD to cover the whole of the front of the card and the identical backing sheet was used on the inside of the card. I cut down a sheet of red heart embossed card that came from the Glitter Girls and the added a cut down backing sheet onto it, again it came from the CD. All of the papers have been outlined with holographic peeloffs (Glitter Girls) or fine line peeloffs (Pinflair).

I printed out a decoupage sheet of Biscuit the dog onto glossy photo paper for the main image and layered up the images using good old Pinflair glue gel. A little crystal heart embellishment finished off the sentiment to a 'T'.

I stamped a verse from Clarity Stamps onto cream pearlised card and used red glitz WOW embossing powder. The card was cut down to size and then matted onto red crushed jewels card from the Glitter girls.

A bit of satin ribbon across the background, a bow made from a sheer ribbon and some hand made button embellishments were added. The buttons were printed from a My Crafts Studio free download. I changed the colour to red and resized them to fit the corners of the card. Using versamark and some Cosmic Shimmer Thick embossing powder, I added a glossy finish to them before sticking them on the card.

The insert is the matching one from the Popcorn CD, matted onto pearlised red card and peeloffs used to accent all the edges.

I am entering the card into the following challenges:

Crafters Companion Monthly Challenge
Crafty Cardmakers Heart challenge
Daring Cardmakers - Ribbon Reel challenge

Ooh la la Someone special challenge
Papertake Weekly Challenge - Have a Heart

Saturday 12 February 2011

Sketchy Thursday layout - at last I published on time

I have lots of 12x12 papers that I think came from Red Hot Bed. They coordinate with each other really well and I have some sheets of letter and number sheets too. I was looking for inspiration for the sketch when I opened the box with the papers and thought they were ideal. I have used three different papers for the background. I have used peel offs to highlight the edges of the page. The photos are matted onto red paper as is the journal entry. The journal entry was made on a scrap of paper which I coloured using Walnut stain Tim Holtz distressing inks and is written with a red Sakura pen. I have used a red ribbon for the accent. The Xyron comes in useful for sticking ribbon down! The page is finished off with letters cut out from the aforementioned pages which I have edged with gold Stickle glitter glue.

Another Scrapbook page

Dominic enjoying a drink
This is another scrapbook page I made for a challenge and didn't remember to upload in time. I must get more organised.

The base page is green coredinations card that I have stamped and embossed with a flourish from one of the Glitter Girls stamp collections. The embossing powder used is from the WOW powders - green glitz. I have overlaid this with a patterned paper I found in my stash but I can't remember where it came from. The pictures were cut out using the Nestabilities label one and then matted onto gold mirror card cut from the same labels. The page is finished with letter peel offs for the journal and some chipboard shapes I also found in my stash.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Christmas Scrapbook page



I made this scrapbook page from a sketch on Sketchy Thursday. I didn't have time to upload the image to my blog in time to enter it in the challenge, but I thought I would show it off anyway.

I love making scrapbook pages although I only have time to do the occasional page here and there.

The base page is a blue coordination card which I sanded down for a more textured image. I used a sheet of glitter paper for the square background. The snowflakes are cut out from a sheet of white glitter card using a Sizzix decorative strip. The photos of my gorgeous boys are matted onto more white glitter card. I tied some blue and silver ribbon around two of the photos. The Merry Christmas words were cut using the Slice machine and the Mistletoe design card.

Happy 21st Birthday

It was my niece's birthday last week so I thought a handmade card would be the ideal thing.



As she is now a proper grown up, I thought she should have a proper grown up card. Where better to look for proper grown up girly card stuff. You got it - The Glitter Girls. The image, the card stock, the peel offs and the frame shape (majestic embossing board) all came from the girls. Add a few flower embellishments, a punched edge and the numbers and voila.