Happy Birthday and Faux Mother of Pearl

Before I go onto my 'Happy Birthday card I just wanted to show you this. If you looked at my post yesterday you saw the two cards I posted and know this is one. It was just that as I was walking from the lounge room through the dinning room I saw the sun was hitting this card and showing it up in such splender. Here you can see the purple sparkle on the stars but the photo still shows just how wonderful it is. Look at the stars near the edge of the dress, it looks like they continue off the dress, so cool.

Okay so now back to business : Faux Mother of Pearl technique.

Yes if I do one, I have to do a hundred, this is some of what entertained me this morning. Can tell I have the place to myself - wahoo and I love those brights and lights. 

There are so many combination to try and I still haven't tried them all. Certainly learnt as I went, my first cards I didnt pounce off on the mat enough so had big clumps that looked yuck when blended, binned. Then of course I had watched Lolls Youtube description but cant keep me still too long, paused the recording part way through, cause I had watched it before like months ago. 

Off to the carft room blend blend blend, mmmm sure theres another step.... ohh I know wipe with wet wipes....nah this is normal card stock so it warps when wet and just wasn't right. 

So again I sat and watched, this time to the end, sorry Loll, not your fault. Ahh we burnish with paper towel, perfect.

Now I liked this so much I decided I wanted to do Faux Gold (no its not a technique). I used gold acrylic paint and did the same as with the pearls. It looks fantastic. Next post I will show you a card using a panel, I love it.

Check out this card- same card, slight different angle. On the left it looks like there is hardly any pearl effect and a bald yellowy patch. One the right its a bit better. Just could not get a good shot,

Here you can see all the Faux Peal looking wonderful with the blue/green colours I have blended.

Here you can see that patch that on the first photo looks like its rubbed off and yellowed. Here its obvious its pale blue  and plenty of the faux pearl.

I finished the card off by die cutting the panel with stitched rectangle die, stamped 'Happy Birthday' Added a few little sparkly gems and a white lacy butterfly.

 If you notice that this card looks a wee bit skinnier than my usual cards that cause as I lifted card up to look at it and I managed to add some fingerprints, being my usual careful extremely tidy self, and had to do a little surgery on the card. Another lesson people, make sure you scrub your hands till they nearly bleed to get rid of excess ink all over your hands from blending. Lucky you have me to give you these life lessons you know.

Challenge to link to

Happy Little Stampers March CAS Challenge Faux Mother of Pearl

Seize the Birthday: the great Divide Topping

This time without the topping, Birthday card only.

The Sisterhood of Crafters: Use your Dies and/or Punches

Hope you enjoyed your visit, and lesson on what not to do, and come again soon.

'Hope you have a beautiful day' cause 'You are so sweet'

I bought myself a  Julie Nutting cling stamp. "Kate". Love it, couldn't wait to play. Made two cards for a  paper piecing challenge then found I had missed the closing time (though it still showed as open here, it had not only closed, but the winner picked. Talk about slow)

But not on this stamp. It means that a card for me is tall and skinny and needs little else. I want to use for cards, not tags, as tags are not something I have really gotten into except for Christmas.

Don't they just look so stunning, minimal colouring with copics and added some colour to the dresses for shadows.

For some reason the pink dress looks red no matter what so I took a photo of another piece this morning in different light and as you can see its a pretty pinky/red colour with pink foil flowers.

If you enlarge the blue dress one you will see that her dress is a beautiful blue with foiled purple stars, very elegant.

I have added a bit of shadow, on the blue you can see the shadow in different colours for depth. Still working on that bit.

Don't they just work perfectly and so easy with paper piercing. Cant wait to do more. Added bling by adding earrings, bracelets and necklace on one.

Did a couple of different types of blending for the ground on these. Another area that needs lots of work.

Finished then off with a stamped sentiment, being skinnier than usual it limited my sentiments if I didn't want to cover the girl at all. My ohhh my I think I will have to get some more.

now to see if theres a challenge they can go in:

Create and Inspire: Challenge 41: Anything Goes

Crafty Sentiments Designs: Anything Goes Challenge

A Bit More Time To Craft Challenge: #16 : Anything Goes

FanTastic Tuesday Challenge: Anything goes with a Twist Spring is in the Air

okay peep's thats it for today and my second challenge. I'm off to play with Faux Pearls.

Hope you enjoyed your visit and come again soon.

Welcome to the World Little Angel (for a baby boy)

I know this looks as though its a soft lilac colour but you are going to have to trust me its a beautiful pale blue (baby blue is my opinion) for both the die cut panel and the spotty paper.

I die cut the world panel twice once in blue and once in white and glued them together. I die cut the blue spotty paper with a die that was not related but close enough, I wanted to use it as it had rounded corners and I thought that looked softer. It took a bit of fiddling but wasn't too hard. The paper was too thin to use on its own so I die cut a piece of white card stock and stuck them together to make that panel stronger.

I played some more and made half a dozen shaker sections using the fuse tool, by golly gosh its brilliant once you get the hang of it. It still scares me that I will accidentally burn the house down or myself trying to grab it when it falls but DH found a solution:

Soldering iron stand on eBay, cast iron base $7 including postage in Australia. There was one from Hong Kong $4 or $5 including postage - how good is that. Bloody brilliant, cant wait for mine to arrive.

Fiddly bit was lining up all the pieces, so I used repetitional tape on the back of the shaker towards the bottom of the bag so it wouldn't show through later. Was a great way to get it in position. Then added dimensional foam to the spotty panel and attached. Lastly I attached the die cut panel and just slightly tucked on one side so the square corners disappeared into the curved cut.

If course I couldn't resist adding some Wink of Stella. Glued a few sequins on the outside of the shaker part so there would always be glitter showing. The mix I used was bits of everything, Its just way too expensive to get into select little selections with our dollar so low and our postage so high.

Finishing the card off with this really cute little silver charm that looks like a little boys suit on a hanger and attached to the card with a wee bit of silver ribbon. Of course I'm not going to tell you how hard I had to work to get that ribbon to look the way it does especially since I can now see one side is tighter in the twist than the other. I was fixed on this idea and all I will say is it took me as long as it took me to make the card in the first place and was a bugger.......

Thats it, deep breath and all is well. I will use a different idea to attach my charms in future and I'm going to make a swag of these cards, its already been claimed with an order for more please, thanks mum.

Lets see if I can find a Challenge or two.

Crafty Catz: Challenge #316: Baby

This is all die cuts and no stamping so I'm not sure if its okay to enter this. I could find anything that said not but please delete if its not right.

The Crafty Addicts Challenge #11: Anything Goes Option Add a Charm

 Sisterhood of Crafters : Use Your Dies and/or Punches

Clear it Out Challenge Blog: Its Challenge time!

I reckon the paper I cut up to use for this card is at least three years old so it fits the bill as does the piece of pale blue card stock that is probably older.

Okay thank you so much for coming to have a look and I hope you come again soon.

P.S. My apologises to those who got my last post more than once, I needed to do some editing and I think it then posted again to you all, sorrrrrrrrry, really I am :)

Watercoloured Shaker Card

I have used the same background stamp from Hero Art as I used yesterday. Again silver embossed on watercolour cardstock. I watercoloured using Distress Inks using oranges and yellows. Some straight colour, some mixed and some very watered down. I love how it turned out.

I carefully cut out the centre so there is a split in the main panel half way down each side. Again I was careful to cut along the silver embossing.

As you can see I haven't used much in the way of sequins as it is so full of colour anyway. I also attached a few sequins on the outside of the card, in the centre of the flowers on each side.

If you click on the image you will see you can see the fusion of the plastic around the centre petals. This was the first time I used this tool, yes I have had it a little while but I really worry about burning myself as I am rather on the clumsy side. It was only after first trying to do with dimensional foam tape around the petals and the end result looked totally crap that I decided to try the fuse tool.

First I had to try a bit of experimenting then I did by placing the insert under the plastic sleeve for guidance when fusing but that didnt look right so I ended up putting the cut out inside the sleeve and fused.

That left little room for sequins and movement but I was still happy with the look.

Had to then line up the top panels, the biggest problem is that I used dimensional foam tape to keep everything up off the card and it has a habit of grabbing on tight so as you can see the glitter ribbon I added at each end of the card ended up uneven in look.

The white you can see isn't as obvious as it is here and I think if I did it again I would try to fuse wider and also blend some colour around the image but that said I am fairly pleased with my first fuse tool shaker card and I didnt burn myself and my husband has ordered a better stand for the tool on eBay so it doesn't fall and set the house on fire (which is something he is well aware could happen when it comes to me:)

Okay this card is for a couple of Challenges:

Edited to remove challenge  CAS Mix Up - my stuff up.... truly could I not see that this was not CAS. Off to do another to meet the criterial. Now to remove this challenge.

    

 New Addition

a2z Scrapbooking March 2016 Challenge : Embossing

'Just Us Girls' Challenge #334- Trend Week

Shaker card -yes

Addicted To Stamps Challenge #122 - Any Shaped Card

I know its not an unusual shaped card but the top is so thats why I entered this one.

Thanks for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.

Happy Birthday Monochrome card.

It's one of those cards that could be used this way

or this way, depending on where you do the writing on the inside. This is a Hero Art background stamp and since I bought it I have fond myself using it more often with the blending of distress inks going from light to dark. In this instance I have blended from each end going towards the centre for the dark colour.

I originally silver embossed this on watercolour cardstock that is quite expensive and I regret not using it that way but it basically sat there unused for ages. A couple of times I picked it up to do something and changed my mind each time.

Then I thought about the challenge Seize the Birthday with the Challenge to split the panel and decided to use for that.

After I had coloured with the Distress inks I cut the panel top and bottom along the silver embossed line. I went back and ran the embossing pad along the cut lines to soft the edges with the Distress Ink.

I  added a layer of coloured vellum to the card base first and oiginally it was the correct size, but needless to say I picked up the wrong base, glued the vellum, thought ohh too big so trimmed then found I had grabbed the wrong card base and so the story goes. Moral of story:

Don't leave card bases laying around on desk when working because you are likely to

a) grab the wrong one,

b)get crap like glue/ink/ sticky residue  etc on the card base that makes it unusable,

c)waste ages looking for the right one

d) trim down the next layer so it ends up too small for the correct card

e)waste precious time doing fix ups 

f) end up throwing away precious stock like the last piece of purple vellum

g) then fish it out of the bin again and use it with a bit of blending to hid the white of the card.

Look at those wonderful colours with the silver embossing, I love it.

The outer section is attached flat to the vellum, the inner layer has dimensional tape attached to lift it slightly. I also attached the outer area a bit further away so you could see the vellum underneath that just works perfectly with it.

Final touch is a few different coloured/sized gems.

Was going to add a sentiment but didn't like anything that I put there. It just took away from the beauty of the front panels so sentiment of 'Happy Birthday' stamped inside.

Would like to enter this at :

Seize the Birthday: The Great Divide

Moving Along With The Times: #15: Purple Haze

Crafting by Designs : Monochrome

a2z  Scrapbooking March 2016 Challenge: March Embossing

Silver embossed Hero Art Background stamp.

Ok thats two posts today so I better stop. Thanks for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.

Every great dream begins with a dreamer.....

Love the sentiment that goes with this image. This stamp was a prize from Unity Stamp  Company from when the 'Hop to Stop Domestic Violence' challenge at The Damsel of Distressed Cards was on in October. Keep your eyes open for the challenge this year, wonderful way to raise awareness, make cards and maybe win a prize. We all had to do cards using Purple, it was great. My prize was $200 worth of stamps picked out by Unity Stamps. I got some of the most amazing stamps that of course have joined my NBUS that is the size of a small trailer piled to a great peak

nah only joking but just imagine!!!

As you can see by the close up I have kept the colouring to a minimal as its a one layer card and I didnt want to copics coming through. Was quite impressed when I finished with the small amount of bleed through on this particular cardstock.

So I coloured with copics and went with a blonde/brown hair colour.

Finished her off by going over the stamped hearts and dots with my red glitter gel pen and rather like the effect.

Nice and simple and wonderful sentiment, all finished off with one sparkly red crystal gem.

Start to finish less than 15 minutes and once thought out could make them in bulk very quickly.

Cant wait to try more of the Unity stamps - big thank you for your wonderful prize.

Less is More Challenge Week #267 One Layer Sentiment

Sweet Stamps Blog Challenge - March 2016 - Anything Goes

Cards 4 Galz: Challenge #17 Woman or Women

Thanks for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.