Tying the knot

It's that wedding time of year and Ruth is asking us to celebrate those tying the knot with this week's challenge over at Daring Cardmakers.

I played with a Celtic knot embossing folder and some copper engraving board (what I would have called scraper board as a kid). I read somewhere that you can use nail polish remover rather than sanding off the black coating.

I tried it and I have to admit it was too successful! Even though I was careful not to have to the pad too wet it still took off too much black in the recessed areas of the design. I ended up putting some black acrylic paint back over some areas and using a sanding block anyway!

I aslo added a bit of gold Rub n Buff in places so the knot has more than one metallic tone. I cut the design apart and reassembled bits of it so that I had some white space to work with. I think Kathy and I must be two halves of a whole - she gets jittery about white space, I get jittery about a lack of it!

Supplies:
Celtic knot embossing folder (Spellbinder)
Copper Engraving Art Scraper Foil (Royal and Langnickel)
Nail polish remover
Black acrylic paint
Sanding block
Rub n Buff by Amaco (Gold Leaf)
Sentiment from a smal Kaiser Craft set
Versafine Onyx Black ink
Corner Chomper

Thanks for stopping by!

Tying the knot

It’s that time of year and Ruth is getting into the wedding mood on Daring Cardmakers this week - our challenge is to make a card with a wedding or anniversary theme.

I needed a card for a friend’s civil partnership - the couple in question has been together over 20 years! At the start of their time together they wouldn’t have been allowed to marry so at least we can say hurray for progress in that department.

With two grooms I didn’t want anything too flowery and since one is Irish and “tying the knot” is something we say to mean getting married I thought maybe a Celtic knot would do the trick. I embossed black cardstock, cut out the central knot from the bigger design and gilded with some silver Rub n Buff wax.

Some Brusho splatters and a simple stamped sentiment are the only other things going on here. I think it’s suitably understated (they were keen to keep the whole thing low key)!

Stamps:
Say It All by Hero Arts

Paper:
Bamboo Mixed Media by Hannemuhl
Smooth black

Ink:
Versafine by Tsukineko (Onyx Black)

Other:
Brusho crystals (Turquoise)
M-bossabilities folder by Spellbinder (Celtic Knot)
Rub n Buff by Amaco (Silver Leaf)

Thanks for stopping by!

Wedded bliss

Card Creations Volume 8 (a special issue of PaperCrafts magazine) is currently on the shelves in the US and I'm delighted to have this card featured in the wedding section.

This is a really fast card to put together as the Scrapblock does most of the work and there's no colouring to do.

Stamps (Cornish Heritage Farms):
Love Scrapblock
Freesia flower
Wedding Centers (Mona Lisa Moments line)

Paper:
Simply Smooth

Ink:
Adirondack dye ink by Ranger (Pool and Espresso)

Other:
Silk ribbon
Pearl by Kaisercraft (tinted with a Copic marker)
Fiskars Edge Punch (Threading Water/Scalloped Lace)

There are loads of lovely projects in this issue if you get chance to check it out - from Father's Day to Christmas and everything in between!

Thanks for stopping by!

One stamp - different looks!

I'm not sure who stole last week - sorry not to have been around! I thought I would share two very different projects made with the same stamp today.

One of the reasons I love my backgrounders is that they are very versatile. My first project today is a straight paper craft project - a wedding card. I'm blaming forum buddy Janice for this one! Not only was her son getting married last week but while refusing to reveal her outfit in advance, she showed us a pic of Audrey Hepburn in the race scene in the movie My Fair Lady as a tease for what her hat was like! I still had the image of those gorgeous black and white costumes in my head when I sat down with this new Fuchsia Tiles background stamp.

Stamps (Cornish Heritage Farms):
Fuchsia Tiles Backgrounder (releasing Tuesday May 18th)
Wedding Centers (Mona Lisa Moments line)

Paper:
Smooth white
Simply Linen Black

Ink:
Versafine by Tsukineko (Onyx Black)

Other:
Velvet ribbon
Rose from Wild Orchid Crafts
Stick pin
Brackets die (Tim Holtz Alterations line by Sizzix)

My second project is a bit different! I revisited the mica shift technique I used to make this polymer clay pendant a few weeks back. I used gold clay this time and made a large pendant piece by cutting a square that takes in nine of the little tiles from the backgrounder. I baked it over a sphere (the top of a tin that had chocolate orange and lemon slices in it - never throw out an interesting container!) to give the piece an overall curve and then added a little loop on the back to thread a necklace cord through.

I think I'm officially fascinated by mica shift now - there's something almost hypnotic about the textural look of the pattern coupled with a surface that's completely smooth to the touch!

Stamps (Cornish Heritage Farms):
Fuchsia Tiles Backgrounder (releasing Tuesday May 18th)

Other:
Sculpey Premo polymer clay (gold and black)
Clay tools (pasta machine, clay blade, acrylic roller)
Klear floor polish (sold as Future floor polish in North America)

Thanks for stopping by today!

Love birds

Typography is fun, isn't it? I don't know about you but I can spend hours choosing the "perfect" font for a project. I'll find something I like and then something like the shape of the descender on the letter "g" will put me off and I'll go hunting for something else!

This new Scrapblock appealed to my sense of typography as a great design element. I love the mix of fonts and styles (some words are very crisp, others have a weathered or eroded look to them). I teamed it up with the Tree Swallows to make a "love birds" card that could be used for an engagement, anniversary or even a wedding - what do you think?

I thought it would be fun to mix the rustic texture of Distress embossing powder with some dressier elements of lace and pearls. The pearls came in one of my advent packages from my Secret Santa over on the Bubbly Funk Forum - we're having great fun opening a small package each day during advent and we have a slightly larger gift to open on Christmas day. We had a £5 limit on these so the emphasis is on fun rather than big bucks - perfect! So thank you Santa, the pearls were just what I needed for this!

Stamps (Cornish Heritage Farms):
Love Scrapblock (releasing Friday 18th December)
Tree Swallows Silhouette

Paper:
Smooth white

Ink:
Tim Holtz Distress ink by Ranger (Vintage Photo)

Other:
Tim Holtz Distress Embossing Powder by Ranger (Walnut Stain)
Copic markers (Brick Beige, Chamois)
Sewing machine and thread
Vintage lace
Flat back pearls

Thanks for stopping by, hope your Christmas preparations are under control (or at least you're at the stage you don't care if they're not!).

Shimmering Marble

Here's my final project in the Cornish Heritage Farms and Shimmerz product swap - something a little different for a wedding today.

I played around with a technique I've seen to make marbled effects from shimmer sprays. Never content to just do things as they're described, I've added "splodges" (technical term) of Shimmerz paint to the basic spray idea for areas of subtly contrasting colour.

To achieve this kind of effect, just spritz a piece of card quite heavily with your Shimmerz Spritz (I used "Concrete"). Once you have good coverage, add random splodges of a toning colour of Shimmerz paint (just drip it off the end of a paintbrush or toothpick). Scrunch up some plastic food wrap, flatten it out a bit and plunk it down onto your card piece and pat gently with the flat of your hand to get good contact.

Now go and have some lunch, walk the dog, pick the kids up from school or whatever happens to fit your day and get you away from the craft table for a while.

Once it's had a good while to dry, peel off the plastic wrap. See what happened? (You can click through on the pic for a better view.) All those lovely mica particles got concentrated into the wrinkles in the plastic wrap and you have a shimmery, marbled piece. Leave it for a while to make sure it's thoroughly dry and then cut it up and stamp away to your heart's content.

I went with an elegance thing and used the beautiful medallion-style stamp from the Ornamental Beauty set so that the background is playing a key role in the piece but there's plenty of interest in the pattern, too.

The other thing I did here was to use the Shimmerz paint on black cardstock. Just enough of the colour shows (and of course you get the shimmer) that you end up with a kind of verdigris effect. My Prima flower also got a coat of paint.

Stamps (Cornish Hertiage Farms):
Ornamental Beauty (Rummage Bin line)
Wedding Centers (Mona Lisa moments line)

Paper:
Smooth white
Black

Ink: Brilliance byTsukineko (Graphite Black)

Other:
Shimmerz Spritz (Concrete)
Shimmerz Paint (Mint)
Flower by Prima Marketing
Antique copper brad by Making Memories

Thanks for stopping by today, hope you enjoyed the card and the few days of shimmer!

Shape shifting

Yay! I've joined the Cuttlebug Embossing crowd! The folders I ordered from the USA arrived this morning and I sat straight down to make a card for the Friday Night Challenge over at the Just Bex forum. The challenge is to make a shaped card - no squares or rectangles. I knew what I wanted to do but desparately wanted the embossing folder to do it!



I used the D'vine Swirls folder to emboss smooth white cardstock then cut three rectangles and rounded off the top corners with a punch. The 'ribbons' are cut from silvery Moondust paper (which doesn't photograph well but has a lovely sheen IRL). Sentiment is heat embossed and the hearts are punched shapes - one triple embossed and the other from the Moondust paper raised on little foam pads.

Right, I've more folders to play with so I'm off!