Happy Easter

Well, Easter is nearly here and to celebrate, Sue set a Rabbit theme for the Tanda Teaser this week. And...
I had a card that was sooooo suitable - here it is

This is a side step card that I made as a demo card for the card makers group.

The colours are not very bright in the picture, but the base card is lemon. On the steps, I have layered a striped paper with another paper with a Cuttlebug embossed edge (in mauve tones).

The picture is actually decoupaged with several layers, but it doesn't show it well in the picture. Wrapped a ribbon around the bottom of the card and finished it off with a Happy Easter sentiment that I did using Word Art, then cut out with the cricut and coloured using yellow and lime green inks.

Enjoy Easter and don't eat too much chocolate!

Altered Folder

Last week, Jan gave us all a blank, white glossy folder to do something with. This is what I did with it:

I covered the folder with alcohol inks with a little bit of copper highlights.

Stamped with a set I haven't used before using Stazon ink.

Coloured the flowers with pens, kindyglitz. Added some kindyglitz to the wings of the butterfly and dragonfly on the front of the folder and left the ones on the back plain (to show the difference between front and back!)

Finished off with a ribbon to tie the cover together.

The folder will hold 6 cards and envelopes, so it will be good for a gift.

More cards

More cards to post this afternoon...

This card was for the Spring challenge on Lots To Do this week. The card was based on a sketch from Lauren at 2S4Y. The colours of lavender, lemon and green are all very springlike colours.
The scalloped circles were cut with nestabilities dies on the CB and topped with a Hero Arts flower stamp which I cut out, coloured and topped with Glossy Accents.

The wavy line separating the two top layers was made with a peel-off wavy strip.

Stamped spring with alphabet stamps. Finished off with little flower eyelets in mauve.

I also made some easter cards for a swap with members of the NZ Crafters forum on Card Making World. They have now been received so I can blog them!

I used my cricut to cut out all of these cards. The designs came from Sure Cuts a Lot and Make the Cut.

This card has a base card then two layers. I threaded ribbon through the top layer. Used Kinyglitz to highlight the other holes on the top layer.

The sentiment was made on the computer using Word Art, then cut with the nestabilities scalloped circle. Topped this with a double layered flower and edged the circle with yellow ink.

Made little stands for these cards as they don't stand up properly on their own.


These two cards are slightly smaller than the one above.
Again, cut with the Cricut. The base card was cut first then the top layer was cut from coloured paper.


The flowers were punched from the same paper and layered on the circles. Kindyglitz was applied to the centres of the flowers.

Gold peel offs were used for the sentiments.

 Used the same cutting file for this card base and a variation for the top layer.

Top layer was cut from coloured paper and highlighted with gold kindyglitz and gold glitter.

Gold peel off used for the greeting.

Demonstration cards and more

We had a very good meeting of interested card makers (and one scrapbooker!) on Tuesday night. It was great to meet a couple of the NZ Cardmakers from the Card Making World Forum too. We talked about designing cards. The first two cards here are ones that I made to show some of the elements of design and the use of a sketch as a plan.

This card was a very simple one using a wide green strip layered with a lemon based patterned paper. The scalloped circles were cut with Nestabilities from green and lemon card.

The stamp on the circle was a Tanda stamp which I coloured using Tombow markers. I edged the circle with yellow ink to provide a little more contrast.

The sentiment is from my favourite Hero Arts set.

The second card was based on the same sketch but has more decoration. The green strip layer was embossed with the swiss dots folder (CB) and the lemon layer edged with a Fiskars edge punch.
I overlaid that with a purple ribbon.

The edge of the card was topped with the lemon background paper which has touches of the green and purple. The sentiment was stamped on the leftover bits of the edge punched card and layered on a piece of the embossed green. To finish the card off, I added three purple brads.

Next time we are going to look at step cards.

ATCs and other things...

Since I posted my cards and ATCs, I thought I would blog some more stuff, including my ATCs.

These ATCs were all made using Tim Holtz Distress Inks - blended around the edges then stamped with swirl stamps on the edges. The centres were stamped with arty stamps that I have had for some time! The theme for this series was A for Art.









I also made a couple of wedding cards recently. They were both personalised by the addition of the initials of the bride and groom. I used the Cricut to cut the letters and embellishments for both.



I have also just joined a new forum - Lots to Do (see the sidebar for the logo and the link to the website).




Lots of lovely people there as well and some of them are already followers - thanks peeps!

Busy couple of days!

A few cards for the blog today. Have been busy playing with some new techniques involving distress inks - again!


To get the design on this card, I tore a square from a sheet of paper and used the hole as the mask... Coloured using distress inks, then stamped a script stampe on top. The sentiment is from my current favourite Hero Arts set.

The next card used an oval instead of a square. Also tried a scalloped circle and different coloured inks.









The red card was one I tried out using a pop-up in the inside. The front was decorated with a scalloped circle and punched sakura flowers with black, little daisy punched centres.

I made the stalks of the flowers from green card. To get them to stick easily, I put DS Tape on the card before I cut the stalks. It worked a treat.

This is the centre of the bouquet card. I punched little red hearts and attached then between the card and the inner with cotton so they hang down into the opening.

Birthday Time

This week it is the birthday of both my daughter and my son, today in fact. The two cards are the ones I made for their birthdays.

This card was for my daughter. First, I made the background layer for the card, using Tim Holtz Distress Inks, Antique Linen, Dried Marigold and Fired Brick to colour the card. I used a Tanda flowers and swirls stamp for the background and stamped with Aged Mahogany Distress ink. The second layer on the card I stamped with another swirl stamp around the edge using Mustard Seed Distress ink, then blended the Mustard Seed and Dried Marigold inks on the edges of the card. I stamped a long swirl on the middle of the card then cut out 3 larger flowers and layered them down the card. The dark brown base was edged with a Fiskars border punch.

The sentiment was stamped on the scalloped circle and the flower was made from shrink plastic and coloured.

This card for my son was designed to match the presents he got for his birthday! He is starting to plan a building project at his house, so the hammer, measure and saw were very appropriate.

The stamp is a very old one that was given to me by a friend from a collection of school stamps that were used in junior classrooms many years ago.

The Happy Birthday stamp is from Montarga.

Catching Up

Today has been a busy one with the garden needing to be tidied up. However, I did manage to snatch an hour or so in the craft room making a couple of cards - actually, finishing off some I had started some time ago!

This card was inspired by the last CS magazine and the stamp that came with it. I stamped the image 4 times on yellow card then stamped some stitch lines across the centre, between each of the images. I layered this on green card then attached to a square ivory coloured card by stitching around the outer edge of the yellow card.

The sentiment is from my favourite Hero Arts set. I use this one a lot!!

This Mother's Day card was supposed to be for another challenge, but i missed the timeline. However, I did finish it and was quite pleased with the result. Some time ago, I bought a whole lot of Tim Holtz Alcohol inks and was playing around with them. I dabbed the applicator with three different coloured inks (so long ago I can't remember which ones - I need to write these things down!) then applied to acetate.

I stamped a Tanda image onto white card and used a Montarga sentiment. I then layered the white card on a wine base card and attached the acetate with square brads in the corners. Finished off with a wine coloured ribbon.

Pink again!

Had another week of not getting a lot done in the card making line - but the garage is a bit tidier!
A couple of cards this week, another pink one for the 2 Sketches for You challenge and a transport theme for the Tanda Teaser this week.

This card was inspired by the 2S4Y challenge this week. It is not exactly as per the sketch but has similar elements.

I used stamps from one of Tanda's Art Deco sets for the centre and the corners. Stamped onto pink card with Versamark ink then embossed with white. Layered each element on wine card. The strip across the middle was punched with a Fiskars scallop edge punch and layered with pink, brown and white ribbon.

Unfortunately the colours have not come through as bright as they are in real life.

The second card is for the Tanda Teaser this week.
The theme is Transport Delights. The stamp is one that was sent to me by Carol from Hamilton. she sent a really exciting bundle of stamped images and punched shapes the other day. Thank you Carol!

I edged the stamped image with Tim Holtz distress inks - Aged Mahogany, Antique Linen and Black Soot. The key was another image from Carol and I used a gold lame Smooch ink to add a touch of gold colour to that. Attached the key with a gold cord attached to a round paper clip. Again, the colours are not as bright as they look in real life.

I have been playing with a Photo Effects Editor program suggested to me by the lovely Sue Law (from Tanda Teaser Forum). I am quite pleased with the effects you can get on photos.