Seaside diorama

I fancied having a go at a diorama card after seeing the tutorial at Splitcoaststampers and when my Seaside set arrived I thought it would make a perfect diorama subject! I remember those postcards you used to get where things appeared to move depending on how you held the card and thought the diorama had a bit the same effect!

Here's the card front on - it sort of loses the depth a bit but I wanted to get the whole sentiment on there as I think it's so sweet! The shells are on the card front, the little girl is on the middle layer and the sea and sentiment form the backdrop. I stamped the images so that they overlapped where the ovals would be cut and then used an oval template and a blade to cut the apertures, trimming round the images to leave them cutting into the space.

Here's another view, this shows the multi layers and the depth a bit better and lets you see that little flock of seagulls hoving in to view - hope they're not about to spoil her fun and dive bomb her sandcastles!

This kind of card just pushes sideways so that it flattens to go into an envelope - fun!

Supplies: Seaside stamp set (Crafty Secrets), Versafine Vintage Sepia, Adirondack (Cloudy Blue, Stonewashed, Denim), Tim Holtz Distress ink (Antique Linen, Scattered Straw, Broken China), Nick Bantock ink (Charcoal Grey), Prismacolor pencils/OMS/stump, sponge, white gel pen

ETA a shout out for Dani of Four Creative Seasons - she has a fabulous eBay store and ships quickly and as cheaply as possible. She's my Crafty Secrets supplier of choice! Areas of California are suffering terrible fires at the moment and Dani is donating a portion of profits from the store to charities concerned with the fire fighting and relief effort. Why not check out the Four Creative Seasons store if you have some crafty pennies to spend?

Thanks for dropping by, hope the sun is shining on you today even if only metaphorically!

Time flies...

Ooops, bad blogger! I thought I'd show you this card - I made it a little while back but it's been in an anonymous voting process and I didn't want to blow my cover! The lovely people on the Tanda Stamps forum have a card making competition every month with forum members voting for their favourite card from all the entries. The theme for May was Bugs and Kisses - so anything with butterflies, ladybirds etc etc.

Being a last-minute minnie I had to choose something reasonably quick. I cut the dragonfly from the Crafty Secrets Earthy paper pad and just added a little sparkle to his wings with a clear Spica glitter pen. Edges of the paper (from the Radiant pad) are sponged and then overstamped with the swirls and the sentiment (which I thought went nicely with the fleeting nature of a dragonfly).

Supplies: Beautiful and Time to Stamp sets (both Cornish Heritage Farms), Earthy and Radiant paper pads (Crafty Secrets), Tim Holtz Distress ink (Tea Dye), sewing machine and metallic thread, nail art gems

Big smile - my card won the vote this time so I got to pick out a prize of some new stamps! Thank you very much Tanda, I'll enjoy playing with my vintage transport set just as soon as I get my (work) life under control!

Pop-up book?

Darlene's challenge this week in the Crafty Secrets member forum at Splitcoaststampers is a great one! She's asked us to "check our calendars" and make a card for any occasion that's printed on there (so not all those birthdays and anniversaries etc you write in for yourself). As soon as I spied International Literacy Day on September 8th I knew I'd found my calendar occasion!

I love to read. I've always loved to read. I don't even remember learning to read and I was pretty fluent by the time I started school so it obviously didn't present too many difficulties for mini me! This little bookish chap is obviously having a fine old time in his imaginary world and I thought he'd be perfect on a surprise pop up card which was yesterday's technique challenge at Splitcoast (there's a tutorial here if you'd like to make a card in this style yourself).

I used a cheesecloth background stamp to make my card base a bit leathery looking like an old book binding and sponged the edges too for a more aged and handled appearance and added a border of machine stitching, again because it made me think of old style book binding techniques.

I made a little tassel at the top of the slider as I thought it looked a bit like a bookmark! I stamped the panel that's revealed when you pull on the slider with a handwriting style stamp in Antique Linen ink so that I can add a message without it being swamped by a strong pattern but there's still some interest there.

I thought I could turn this into a gift by tucking a book token in there so it slides out at the same time as the message is revealed (not sure if my American visitors have book tokens - in the UK we have a national scheme which means you can buy a token in almost any book shop and send it as a gift that can be spent in almost any other book shop).

Supplies: Story of Me and Journaling (Clear Art Stamps by Crafty Secrets), Cheesecloth backgrounder (CHF), Tim Holtz Distress ink (Fired Brick and Antique Linen), Versafine Vintage Sepia, Prismacolor pencils/OMS/stump, sewing machine and thread, Brass and Cream Hardware stickers (Heartwarming Vintage/Crafty Secrets), Nestability Classic Circle (used as a guide with a scalpel), copper gel pen, old gold cord from stash, corner rounder.

Thanks for your visit today, hope you enjoyed it!

Three in one!

I've managed to kill three challenge birds with one stone here!

The girls at Cornish Heritage Farms are having another Blitz, this time to celebrate new Kim Hughes releases so the focus is on KH stamps. I only have one Kim Hughes set so this is my fourth challenge card using Silhouette Blooms I and it's for Challenge 4 - combine with other CHF stamp lines (which is actually Sunday's challenge but I'm trying to stay ahead of myself!).

Daring Cardmakers this week asked us to use quotations on our cards. I picked one from Eleanor Roosevelt and printed it out from the computer. The fonts are Baskerville Old Face and Edwardian Script ITC (Am I the only one to take an absolute age to decide on fonts for projects? An Ice Age would be faster sometimes!).

Finally, Notimetostamp Challenge #38 is to use silhouette style stamps in this week's Stamp Simply challenge.



Supplies: Silhouette Blooms I, Beautiful and Weathered Wood backgrounder (all CHF), Tim Holtz Distress ink (Antique Linen, Tea Dye, Walnut Stain), Clearsnap Chalk ink Chestnut Roan, Antique copper square brad, computer and printer.

As ever, edges are scissor distressed - I still haven't quite grasped the point of having a specific tool for this!

Thanks for visiting today - hope you enjoyed it!

Is it time for tea yet?

Now I work freelance from home, one thing I don't miss about an office load of workmates is the endless round of making cups of tea and washing up afterwards! It would be nice to have the social aspect of the tea ritual without the actual making and clearing up wouldn't it?!

The Crafty Secrets member forum challenge at Splitcoaststampers this week has a new host - Darlene is challenging us throughout June and her first challenge theme is: dots.

I hope she'll forgive a fairly liberal interpretation of the theme!

I started thinking about dots and thought it would be fun to have one big dot as the base for the project so I reached for one of the freebie CDs that are stacked up beside my craft table as they're bound to be useful someday! I made clocks as Christmas gifts a couple of years ago and still had a couple of movements left so I decided on a CD clock and added more dots to mark out the hours around the edge.

Working days are often divided up by meetings and (sometimes hasty) cups of tea so I thought it would be fun to have a clock to reflect those "Is it time for tea yet?" moments with the kind of lined paper you might be jotting notes on in a meeting (it's from the Earthy Paper pad). It has dotted lines as well as solid ones - think Darlene will let me count those towards my quota of dots?

Supplies: Kitchen Classics, Tea and Coffee and Story of Me (Clear Art Stamps by Crafty Secrets), Earthy Paper Pad (Crafty Secrets), Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Antique Linen, Tea Dye, Walnut Stain), Prismacolor pencils/OMS/stump, office hole punch, eyelet punch, CD, clock movement

Right, time for tea I reckon - thanks for stopping by!