A New Beginning!

Over at Card Making World, the challenge for January 2011 is A New Beginning. It is also the theme for Try it on Tuesday (previously Tuesday Taggers). After much thought and suggestions from friend, Carol, I came up with the following.

SVG Cuts has a cute Happy 2011 cutting file on its freebie site here and it can be downloaded very quickly!
I cut the shapes from blue and white cardstock then layered them together. I put Kindiglitz on the words and numbers to make them stand out a little.
I cut a label with my spellbinders die, embossed the edge then distressed it with Chipped Sapphire DI. It makes the embossed edge stand out quite well.
I attached a ribbon with a knot to the bottom of the layer then attached the lot to the card, after I had rounded the corners. The bottle and glasses were from some sprinkles that I picked up at a local craft shop some time ago, but they worked out quite well! The card also fits the Stamp Something Challenge which is on this week as well.

The second article for the challenge is a Challenge Diary. I have been thinking for some time that I needed a diary to note all the challenges that come up each week/month. So I came up with this one. The cover is made from a sheet of DCWV paper which I cut to A5 size then stamped using Stazon Timber Brown and various distress inks in tonings of brown. I also used masks to cover off the images that were most important (the calender and the words). The back cover is left plain.
I made up a template for the pages and printed them onto A5 paper (doubled sided) with enough pages for 52 weeks of challenges!!! I then put them together and bound them with the Bind It All. I tied pieces of fancy yarn to the wires to add a little contrast!

The two tags at the top of the diary were made from shrink plastic. I stamped the shrink plastic using Stazon ink, carefully cut them to size, made holes in the top to accommodate the jump rings, then heated them with my heat tool.

I still have not finished my 12 Tags of Christmas, but I will get there!!

Enjoy.

Two more Tags

I have now finished 7 of the 12 Tags of Christmas for this year!
This tag was firstly swiped with white paint dabber along the edges and allowed to dry. I then coloured the background using Tumbled glass and Broken China. The ink was wiped off the painted bits to retain the white colour. The snowman was cut from grunge paper using the Cricut. The hat, arms and nose were cut from another snowman and coloured using distress inks then attached to the white snowman (coloured with white paint dabber and edged with Pumice Stone DI. Merry Christmas stamped on the snowman's body.
The top layer is heavy acetate (an old package, recycled and cut to shape) and was embossed with the snowflakes folder in the Cuttlebug. Attached to the bottom layer with brads.
The Merry Christmas stamp is from a Hero Arts collection.

This tag was layered with Christmas Carol paper then coloured using Rusty Hinge and Vintage Photo distress inks. The rosette was cut from the same paper and edged with vintage photo DI. The embellishments are from a Tim Holtz collection. The words were cut using the Cricut and MTC software then attached and covered with Glossy Accents. The buttons are from my stash! The brads along the bottom were attached, then hammered to produce a vintage look. The bead embellishments attached to the top were put together from my stash of beads and findings.

Enjoy!

Have a wonderful, safe and happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

SVG Cuts

Follow this link to the SVG cuts great giveaway today! http://svgcuts.com/blog/?p=8018

You could win a beautiful Cricut Expression! 

They are giving away lots of other goodies too.

More Tags

I have now finished a further four tags in Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas for 2010.

Again, I didn't have all the images that Tim used but used some of the stamps I already had and improvised! The pine needles is a Tanda stamp that I picked up in May. The pine cone was cut with the Cricut from the Joys of the Season cart.

Instead of using a stamp for the branch, I cut one using the Songbird card in the Cricut. The bird was also cut with the Cricut and stamped with a music stamp, then coloured using Fired Brick DI.  The rosette was made following Tim's instructions, with tissue tape and topped with a button. The image is one I found in a Christmas set. I cut it out, then edged with Walnut Stain DI and stamped with joy stamp using walnut stain DI. The white specks on the tag were made using the snow cap dabber before I inked the edges of the tag. The DI wipes off the paint and leaves it standing out slightly.

For this tag, I cut the trees, deer and wreath using the cricut. The trees were inked with distress inks. The deer was embossed with the snowflakes folder in the CB, then painted with blue paint and sanded on the raised embossing to provide the multicoloured effect. The tag was coloured using blue distress inks and edged with vintage photo.  The sentiment was stamped with fired brick and edged with vintage photo. Tissue tape was added to the bottom.

For this one, I cut some background paper and attached it to the tag. Added a santa picture that I cut from other paper. Edged the tag with stormy sky  DI. The large clear embellishment was coloured with alcohol ink then the snowflake stamped with archival ink then wiped off before it dried. Stuck the embellishment to white card and cut it out. Added the bling to the bottom of the tag. The sentiment is stamped in fired brick DI.

Have really enjoyed doing these tags and hopefully, might get the rest finished before Christmas - only 5 days to go!

Happy Birthday Series

I was playing round with my Cuttlebug and a Happy Birthday folder last week. I had embossed a number of pieces of card in different colours and decided to do something with them. I came up with these 6 cards, all of which follow the same basic layout, but with different colours and embellishments. I used Copic markers to colour the images.

Find more photos like this on Card Making World

Enjoy!

My Tag Number 1

I was so impressed with Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas that I decided to challenge myself to do the tags as well - along with thousands of other t!m fans around the world!!!

I didn't have all the dies necessary to complete the tag the same as Tim, but I was able to cut similar shapes with my Cricut. So the house, tree, fence and wreath have all been cut using the Cricut. I used SCAL to cut the house and the tree, My Community cartridge for the fence and Joys of Christmas cartridge for the wreath.
I cut the house from grunge paper then embossed it with a woodgrain folder in the Cuttlebug. Covered it with white paint, then laide a layer of distress ink (walnut stain) on top of that. Wiped off some of the ink from the paint to give a more distressed look. The tree and the snow on the house are actually flocking laid over glossy accents (house) and paint (tree). The fence has a layer of crackle paint and that gives it a slightly distressed look as well. I used distress crackle paint (peeled paint) on the wreath along with some darker distress ink (forest moss and pine needles) then laid some distress stickles on top of that. The ticket is cut using the ticket die then stamped with a ticket stamp and christmas greetings. The star atached to the tie at the top was from one of Tim's embellishment sets that I picked up at a closing down sale yesterday!
I am quite pleased with the way this has turned out and plan to get to work on the rest of them in the next few days.

Monthly Challenge for December

Over at Card Making World, we are having a monthly challenge. This month the theme is A Christmas Carol and cards entered must reflect  a Christmas Carol in some way.

My first sample card for the challenge was based on the carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem. I copied the music for the carol and reduced it to fit on the card. Then I distressed it using the wrinkle method and coloured it with antique linen DI. I then spritzed it with gold perfect pearls and water in a mister. It I also inked the torn edges of the paper. The stamped image is by Montarga which I embossed with gold and added gold beads to the bottom of it to make it look a bit like sand! I stamped and embossed the image twice and cut some of the buildings out, which I added to the image to give a bit of depth. The sentiment is from a Hero Arts Christmas set. Finished it off with some blue and gold ribbon across the card and gold star brads in the corners.

The second card was made using a Nestabilities die set. I folded the base card the cut it with the largest die, leaving a bit of the die over the folded edge to create a fold.

I cut another single layer the same size to add to the base card, then embossed it in the Cuttlebug. I cut two other layers, one in the same colour and another in silver to provide layers. On the smallest one, I stamped the Partridge in a Pear Tree stamp (again from Montarga) and embossed it with silver. I stitched round the silver layer with the sewing machine (no thread) to provide a little bit more detail. A Christmas greeting is stamped inside the card.

Thanks for looking!

Challenge Cards Again

Well, it is so long since I did any challenges that I thought I should get busy, especially since I have done most of my Christmas cards (and it is still November- wonders never cease!).

StampTV had a nice sketch challenge this week (STVSLSP3) and Lots to Do Forum Revisited had an embossing challenge so this one should "kill two birds with one stone" so to speak!


The sketch for the StampTV challenge is here.
I used a Christmas theme and stamped the image onto a patterned paper to give it a bit of a vintage look. The sentiment was also stamped on the same paper. I layered both onto wine card. I also edged the image with gold strips to make it stand out a little more.

The background card is embossed with a cuttlebug folder then layered onto the wine card. I layered the image with foam pads to make it stand out from the background too. The three stars are little gold brads.

Vintage Cards

I have been making vintage birthday cards using images and background papers from Joanna Sheen's Vintage Birthdays CD.

This is a slideshow of the cards I have made and uploaded to my photo album on card Making World.


Find more photos like this on Card Making World

Back to being busy again!

The last week has been a busy one and I have got something to show for it!
Found a neat gift card holder demonstration over at Gina K's website - stamptv. So I spent a bit of time making some and was very pleased with the results!
I made the holders slightly narrower than the dimensions given in the demonstration because the A4 card is slightly narrower than the card available in the USA. But it doesn't matter because you can still fit a gift card comfortably in the holder.

Have also been busy with Christmas cards as it seems to be the season again! I did manage to get the cards for overseas into the mail by the closing date for economy post for the first time ever, I think! Here is one of the cards I made this year.

I have been using the Joanna Sheen Vintage Birthdays CD again and printed off some lovely images and backing papers. This card uses an image and background paper. I cut the image using a Nellie Snellen die in the cuttlebug. I then threaded narrow ribbon through the holes in the edges and tied a little bow at the bottom. I thought it was quite effective. The image was printed on textured paper which provided a slightly more vintage look.

And I couldn't help doing a card with a coloured image. This image is called Rain but I am not sure where I got it from - I must catalogue my digital stamps properly!! Anyway - coloured it with copics and layered on dotty card with a dotty ribbon.

Back Again!

Well it has been a month since I last blogged anything here - so I need to make up for lost time.

First up, a card I made for my mother to give to some friends for their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

The card used was metallic gold and cream card. Always nice to use this for a special occasion card.

I cut the corner flourishes with the Cricut using the Home Accents cartridge. The centre rectangle was embossed with the Divine Swirls folder on the Cuttlebug. The numbers were cut using the Songbird cartridge on the Cricut.

To finish it off, I placed tiny pearl bling on the centres of the flowers on the corner flourishes.

A few days ago, I was playing with some tags and Lord Tim of Holtz's book, Compendium of Curiosities and produced these tags. A variety of techniques was used and I had a lot of fun!
 You will need to guess what techniques I used from the book, if you have it already. If you don't have it - it is really worth getting! Send me an email if you really want to know...

I really liked the results when I used acrylic paint dabber to stamp an image then distressing! Hint - there are 2 using this technique!

CMW Monthly Challenge

Carol and I decided to try to revive the Card Making World Monthly Challenge group recently, so we chose the theme SPORT for October. Given that the Commonwealth Games are on in India at the moment and the Ryder Cup for golf has just finished, it seemed appropriate.

As part of the DT for this group, I made a couple of sporty cards to get ideas stimulated for the group. The first card is a golf inspired one. I have had this cutting file for some time (from SCAL) and have not had the inspiration to use it, so this was a perfect opportunity.

The golf bag was cut in the various parts using the Cricut Expression.

The oval backgrounds cut from a Nestabilities oval set. The top oval was run through one of my Cuttlebug folders and the edges of both ovals were inked.

The photo corners were punched using a Martha Stewart punch.

The surfer card was inspired by the digital image - hang ten Kody - (from Some Odd Girl) coloured with Copic markers.

The top layer of the card was cut with a Nestabilities Oval die and the "waste" used as the background. The lines around the edge are peel-offs which I coloured using a felt pen. Attached the lines then masked them and the outside edges before stamping the swirly stamp around the edges of the layer.

The digital image was attached to the back of the top layer then all attached to the card. The sentiment was stamped on a separate card and attached with foam squares, after inking the edges to make it stand out a little more.
This card was also a good one for this week's Tanda Teaser!
Really enjoying my Copics!

Thank you

I made this card to send to a forum friend who sent a selection of lovely tags as a Hug gift. It was certainly much appreciated after the trauma of earthquakes and aftershocks over the last few weeks.

To make the card, I first coloured the image with copic markers. The image is a digital one from Whimsie Doodles (Swing Leah).

I then cut the oval out of the card using a Nellie Snellen die and the Cuttlebug. The image fitted really well behind the cut out. I carefully cut the feet and legs away from the main image and tucked them outside the lower part of the oval shape.

These are the lovely tags that Hilda sent me. They are from Shairon, Julia, Joy  and someone who didn't sign the back. If it was you, please let me know!! Thank you, my friends on the Lots to Do Revisited forum.

Clean and Simple

This week, our Crafty Girls theme was Clean and Simple.

To make this card, I first cut a Nellie Snellen circle die from a piece of card then used the piece I had left to make a mask. I then inked the base card with Antique Linen and Scattered Straw Distress inks to provide a coloured base. The sunflower stamp was coloured with Tombow markers then stamped on the inked design. The sentiment is from my favourite Hero Arts set and was stamped in brown ink.

I added a narrow ribbon in a matching colour along the side of the card to finish it off.

Enjoy!

LTD Swaps

Hilda, from Lots to Do revisited, is hosting an ATC and Tag swap at the moment. 

The theme for the tag swap is Letters. For these tags, I embossed them in one of my new TH embossing folders (Collage) because it has lots of words on it. I then used distress inks to colour the tags.

Stamped letters on cards then punched out and layered on the tags.

The theme for the ATCs was Pen and Ink. I found some lovely card with writing on that I used for 2 of the ATCs. I found one of my old rubber stamps of a fountain pen that I used on two of the ATCs, I coloured the images then covered them with glossy accents. The bottom ATC used a stamp that included the pen with the images. Again, coloured these and used GA on the pen image.

The edges of the cards were coloured using distress inks.

Stamps

Carol from Hamilton set Jude (from Temuka) and I a challenge to use postage stamps in three different projects.For ages I thought about what I could do before I actually got round to doing it!

Lots to Do Challenge for this week is a Distressed Tag so I have combined the 2 challenges! I found some really old postage stamps on some letters when we were cleaning out the garage some time ago. They were all 1, 2 and 3 cent stamps! It is about 40 years since these stamps were used!!! Anyway, the stamps all had moths or butterflies on them so I used butterflies and wings on this tag along with the stamp to try to link it all together. I used distress inks to colour the tag and to stamp the images. I also distressed the edges of the tag with my TH distressing tool.

I found a little box with made with shiny card the other day, so used that to make the little box. I used alcohol inks to colour the box (which you can't really see in the photo) and collaged postage stamps on the top of  the lid. Used lace and ribbon to trim the edges of the lid. Finished it off by adding a butterfly, which I stamped with postage stamp images and added distress stickles to the wings. Used gold wire to create the feelers. 

The final part of the challenge was this ATC, to which I added a special issue stamp. The stamp was to commemorate NZ's involvement in the Shanghai Expo this year. I coloured the base card using Tattered Rose and Pumice Stone Distress inks, stamped the lettering with pumice stone, added the stamp and finished it off with the little coin.

An interesting challenge that made me think a  bit!! Thanks Carol.

Back to creating again!

After all the trauma of the last week, I had to get back to making things again, so went to the craft room today to make some cards and have a play with my Cricut again.

A friend asked me to make her a birthday card for her partner, who is a speed boat fanatic. I found this little boat and waves on the Going Places cartridge and thought it might be OK.

I also noticed that a couple of challenges this week called for layers and Happy Birthday, so decided that this card could fit all three "criteria".

Papertake Weekly Challenge #47 was a sketch, which I used for the design of the card. I had a square card that I used for the base then layered with a Cuttlebugged layer in blue, then a printed paper. The red piece was put through a crimper and the top layer was cut with the Cricut. The boat was cut from a square with rounded corners. I also cut the same from red and white card to provide the different colours and these were layered on the cutout. All the pieces were edged with distress ink  with the top layer being edged with white. The Happy Birthday stamp was from a Tanda stamp set (Art Deco) designed by my friend Sue!


The Cuttlebug Challenge this week was for a birthday card with at least 2 layers because it is their second birthday!

And the earth moved...

Last Saturday morning, 4th September at 4.35 am, we were very rudely awakened by the most violent shaking and loud noise as a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck near Christchurch.

The damage for some has been enormous - not just to property, but to people emotionally as the aftershocks continue - 6 days later. many people have lost homes as well as businesses. Virtually new homes have been lost to subsidence of the ground underneath, as new fault lines are discovered.

We were very fortunate that we did not sustain any real damage to any of the property apart from a couple of glass vases and a large planter in the garden.

In the spare bedroom, the large filing cabinet that sits in the corner of the room was tossed forward, possibly due to the weight of the drawers that opened with the force of the shaking. Books on top of the cabinet were tossed onto the floor, but the TV set stayed put!

The door to the outside has a cat flap in it and the cat was still able to exit because the lowest drawer left a gap that she could fit through.

In the lounge, a bookcase was thrown forward and came to rest against the sofa. A glass vase was thrown from the top of the bookcase and came to rest on the arm of the sofa. Other ornaments were also tossed onto the floor and only one thing sustained any damage - a small chip in the top of a pottery bottle. The bottom of the bookcase crashed against the wall and has left a small hole that is fixable!  My old guitar didn't get any more scratches! The vase of flowers that was on the coffee table didn't move. Photos and a large, very heavy crystal vase were thrown off the piano - again, little damage there - only the stand of one photo frame - which is mendable.

Outside, one of two relatively new plant pots fell over and smashed onto the concrete paving. It is totally wrecked and we will have to try to replace it with another the same to match the one on the other side of the BBQ.

So, we were extremely lucky to have so little damage in such a severe quake. We are very thankful for this and our thoughts are with those who are not so well off at this time.

And the winner is...

ME!

Check out this website! I won the Whimsy Doodles Challenge this week with my grunge paper brooches!

I was so excited as I haven't ever won a challenge before... Check out the pictures here.

Good Luck Gayle!

Gayle is having an interview for a job today so I made this Good Luck Card for her.

I used SCAL and the cricut to cut the letters. It is hard to see but I cut a shadow for the letters as well. I layered the words onto card that had been punched along one edge, then attached it to the card.

The rosette is made by scalloping the edge of a 12" strip of paper, then scoring lines down from each of the scallops and folding to create a mini fan fold. Join the edges together to form a circle with the scalloped edge at one side and the straight edge at the other. You then need to push the straight side into the centre and down so that it goes flat. Have a circle or square ready glued or taped to stick the centre of the rosette on the wrong side. On the right side, you can add a scalloped circle and decorate it as desired.

I added some swirls to the underneath of the rosette then layered it on the card. Added a narrow black ribbon to finish it off.

Cricut Day

Yesterday I had a Cricut day. I spent most of the afternoon playing with the programs on the computer - Cricut Design Studio (DS), Sure Cuts a Lot (SCAL) and Make the Cut (MTC) - then cutting some of the files with the Cricut Expression. How I love my Cricut!

 I used the Songbird cartridge to cut the bird cages out of kraft card. Really pleased with these as I will be able to colour them a bit more with distress inks then paint with distress crackle to give a rusty, grungy look.

The frogs I cut with a SCAL cutting file. It is two different bits that make up the frog - the face and legs are cut in lighter card and the base in a slightly darker. The hardest thing is piecing them together! They do look cute though!

I cut some tags out of a manila folder. Cheaper than buying them and you can get different sizes as well!

I have to make a couple of Spring cards soon, so used the Walk in my Garden Cartridge to do the daffodils. These are a bit fiddly because you need to cut the tops out and then stick them together. each flower has 3 different parts to stick! The word was from a SCAL file.

The hearts border was a file I had for MTC. I thought it looked really cool in white against the red background.

I used SCAL again to do the gears. I used what was left of the kraft card to cut these out. The beauty of using the computer to design the cuts is that you can place them exactly where you want them on the sheet then cut them.

Pop up Box Card

Well, after much promising, here is the next video! This time is is a pop up box card! I loved these when I first saw them and have been making a few. I did a demonstration for the Crafty Girls last month and decided it would be useful to have a video along with the written instructions that I gave them.



Hope you can follow this well enough to  make the card.
 You can also add a plain piece of card to the part that pops up if you want to add a special message, or you can write it on the box itself.

PS Yes Didi the cat made her first appearance on this one too! She was very vocal while I was making the video.

Goth Girls

The pictures on these cards are stamps that Sue Law provided for us to have a play with Copic Markers when a group of us met up at Wantage in May. I have had these finished and mounted on card for ages and have just gotten around to blogging them.

All are coloured with copics and finished off with distress inks. The backgrounds are stamped with distress inks and layered on card that has been coloured with the same distress inks as on the top layers.

Grunge Paper Brooches

Have been doing a bit of experimenting with grunge paper and making flower brooches. First saw these done by His Lordship Tim - not in person of course - but on a You Tube video, and I thought I could adapt the idea by using flowers cut on my Cricut.

I cut the different sized flowers using the Cricut - I forget which cartridges I used for these ones as it was a while ago that I did them!!  Cut shapes from grunge paper and some pages of an old book then glued them together. Found that Mod Podge is the best as it still has some flexibility when it dries.

Used distress inks to colour the petals and distress stickles on the lower two (green and red) flowers. On the other two I used Kindiglitz as it gives a lot more sparkle. Fastened the three together with a brad then glued a brooch pin to the back of each one.

These three I completed today. I used more rounded petals on these ones - I think the cartridge was Plantin Schoolbook and cut the flowers bigger. The biggest was 2.5 inches wide. Again used distress inks to colour the flowers. The top one I used walnut stain distress stickles, the blue one, Kindiglitz and the pink one, I used silver kindiglitz and was very pleasantly surprised by the texture when I smoothed it out with my finger! Instead of using a brad to join these together, I used Glossy Accents as a glue and used bling for the centres of each of the flowers.

Quite pleased with the results!

Roses

This card was made for a Tanda Teaser with the theme of roses.
I used a square white card as a base then added a top layer of red which I trimmed to leave a white border. The rose stamp is a Tanda stamp applied to whote card which was trimmed with fancy scissors then layered on black. I put a lace trim down each side of the black card.
For the corners, I punched corners from red and black card then layered them to produce the wavy line. I used extra black corners to form the wavy square in the centre, on which I placed the sentiment.

I coloured the rose with copic markers.

Since the card also has lace on it, I can put it in the Lots to Do Challenge for this week as well!

My ancestors

Just found this on the internet and wanted to share it with my friends. This is the house my great, great, great grandparents built and lived in on Stewart Island, to the south of the South Island of New Zealand. Click on the link for a neat little video!

Lewis Acker and his wife, Mere Pii, a Maori woman, raised 9 children in this house which is a one room cottage. They originally had a lean-to kitchen at the right hand end of the house. Acker was a boat builder and trader when he lived here. Originally he came from the USA as a sealer.

Blogging again

Well it has been a while since I put anything new on my blog. I have been busy, just not doing crafty things!
I have been busy over the past few days doing some ATCs, Skinnies and Tags for a swap. I thought I would blog them before I sent them off.

These ATCs are designed around the theme - Oriental. I used distress inks to colour the backgrounds with the spray technique - layer colours of ink onto a craft sheet, mist with water then lay the card down on the inks getting a good coverage of colours.

I used the same ink pads to stamp the images. The coin was stamped then embossed with thick embossing powder then stamped again while the powder was still liquid. The stamps were from Montarga, Rubbadubbado, Kaiser Clear Stamps and Tanda.


I used the same background technique for the next set of ATCS (Theme - Time). Again, I stamped the images with the same inks that I used for the backgrounds, except for the word stamps. The stamps used here were from Montarga and Paperartsy.

These skinnies were based on a theme - Scenic, which I took literally! The ones on the left and right used a photo that I "photoshopped" to provide a mountainous background. The pictures were taken earlier this year when we visited Mount Cook. Distress inks used to colour the pictures and again to stamp the images (except for the cats!). The bird and butterfly were stamped then cut out and mounted. The middle skinny used a Japanese picture which I coloured using Tombow markers then layered onto Japanese paper. I punched flowers from the same paper (which is why they are hard to see!) and added a bling flower to the centre of each one. Skinnies are made from a 3" x 5" piece of card.

These tags were made for a swap with the theme Paris/France. Used distress inks to colour the backgrounds and stamp the images. The tag on the left has a flower made from scrunched up circles of paper. The centre tag is embossed on the grey bits with weathered wood distress embossing powder and has a deliciously rough texture. The tag on the right used a kaiser stamp on the background, with another kaiser stamp (chandelier) and a paperartsy stamp. The tickets were cut with a TH die and stamped with ticket stamps I bought at the Craft Barn, then attached with a brad.

I really enjoyed playing with these, but I must make some more cards!!

New Challenge Blog

Just found a great new challenge blog here - Craft Your Days Away - now that is really what I like! The first challenge starts on August 7th - so make a note of it in your crafty diary!


Please take a minute or two to go and have a look.

Thanks.

Challenge for Jude and Carol

A couple of weeks ago, while chatting on Card Making World with Jude and Carol, I suggested a challenge using the flower stamp from a recent Craft Stamper magazine. The challenge was eagerly taken up by both Carol and Jude. What was the challenge? To make three completely different articles using the stamp - one of which could be a card. Jude, unfortunately did not have the stamp, so carol and I both sent her a heap of stamped images to use in the challenge.

The first article I made was an altered tin. I painted the edges of the tin with copper coloured paint (Adirondack Paint Dabber) first. Then I took some metal, stamped the image 4 times then embossed it from the wrong side to get the raised image. I also embossed a separate image for the add on flower. I painted the metal the same colour, but on the add on flower, I used a pearl paint as well to get a lighter image. I used a bright yellow copic to colour the centre of the flower then added some kindiglitz for sparkle. I mounted some leaves (cut with the Cricut) and glitzed them then added the flower with mounting foam to make it stand out from the tin. The metal strip was fastened to the tin with DS tape and tied with fancy yarns from my stash.


The card was made from a bright pink card base that I found in my stash of goodies, layered with an off-white paper that I punched to provide a fancy edge, then stamped the flower image 3 times with worn lipstick distress ink and embossed with clear embossing powder.
The lace edging was a piece of white cotton lace that I coloured using the worn lipstick distress ink then topped with a ribbon. I have not added a sentiment as I couldn't find a place to put it without it appearing too much!!



The third piece for the challenge is a pair of ear rings.
I stamped clear shrink plastic with black stazon ink, cut the flower images out then coloured with a pinky-coloured copic. I shrunk the images which then came out at about 1.5cm across. I added the beads and silver coloured findings to make the ear rings. (They actually are the same length - the picture is a bit off centre!)