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!!