Some cards I've made this week!

I thought I'd blog a few things I've made this week and shown only of the forum they fit into a challenge on!



I found out that one of my customers is moving on to a new job and thought it would be nice to send her a little card to congratulate her. Adding spotty ribbon meant that it fit in with the Get Spotted challenge on Carolyn's, too.

NEW JOB is stamped with the See-D Typewriter alphabet set in Whispers Sugarloaf Green on green cardstock. I've rounded off one corner and inked the edges, too. The little flower is made with the QK football die for the centre and punched hearts for petals. The good luck stamp is from a HOTP set and I used Tangerine Cat's Eye chalk ink.

One of DH's colleagues had his 60th birthday this week. At short notice, I was asked to make a card with beer, whisky and hill walking as themes! This is a bit out of my normal range but I had fun with it.





It's a trifold and each panel has a pocket and tag with something appropriate to the question for that panel. The boots are cut on the CraftRobo and I plaited embroidery thread for laces and used mini brads as 'anchor points'. I snuck the whisky reference onto the beer tag (it says A fair few (and maybe the odd wee dram to follow)). I tried to make the tag here look like the clips you get on beer pump handles and T.A. are the recipient's initials. The answer to the candle question is obviously 60!

I showed a card on Just Bex that was made for the decorative edge scissors challenge. The shell on it came about as a result of a forum conversation with Kathy about paperclay. I decided to have a go at making my own push moulds and this is the first experiment! I used a cockle shell and moulded Fimo around it and baked. Then pushed paper mache into the mould (still waiting for my paperclay to arrive!) and rubbed chalks in various shades of brown/grey white over the resulting paper shape. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Check out the scraps!

Today DCM dare is set by Jane who's asked for card designs inorporating checks. I decided to combine this with the 'use your scraps' challenge at Just Bex and made a very quick and simple card.



I had some white card embossed with the Cuttlebug D'vine swirls folder left over from the wedding cake card a few posts back and there are always scraps of black in your bits box, aren't there? I just punched squares with a small punch. I thought it would look striking against a bright colour and this orange laid paper (also fromt he bits box) did the trick. Stamped greeting and a bit of gel pen are the only other things going on here.

Thanks for looking!

Last minute Minnie - Haberdashery dare

Gillian set the dare over at DCM on Friday. Yes, I know that's nearly a week ago now and I have no reasonable excuse! Still, the dare was to visit the haberdashery department and include stuff on your card. I actually did something earlier in the week but I didn't feel it qualified since I didn't do anything different than I've done a million times before!



I tried a bit harder here! Haby bits: button top left (I pushed the plastic centre out of this one and replaced with a copper brad), silk fabric for the stamped image, row of mixed mother of pearl buttons, narrow petersham ribbon, seed beads threaded onto tiny gold safety pin. The whole lot is on a piece of cardstock embossed with the Cuttlebug Stylized Flower plate and coloured with a bit of gold rub-on wax.

Sorry the picture's a bit naff - I had to scan since it's so late in the day!

Bend me, shape me...

There's a chance to get a personalised challenge over on the Crafts by Carolyn forum. Just say "Challenge me" on the special thread and Mel will come up with an individual challenge. Mine for July was to make a shaped card, not a square or rectangle.

Having promised not to recyle the wedding cake card I showed a few posts back, I made this... (clicking on it should give you a more detailed view)



I was inspired by the lovely flower on Anna's blog and had a go at something similar using dark red paper to make a sort of poppyish thing.

I cut two circles for each petal with a Fiskars circle cutter, curved them with the help of a brush handle, stuck them onto a circle of black card and used the largest asterisk from the Cuttlebug set to cut 'stamens' for the middle.

The pot is cut from heavy card stock with the fold on the left and had a piece of white card embossed with the Cuttlebug D'vine Swirls folder stuck to the front. The leaf is one that was left over from the sunflower project a few posts back. Finally, the Happy Birthday message is embossed with a Cuttlebug folder, matted onto the same red as the petals and stuck onto green craft wire made into a coil by wrapping round a pencil.

Beady-eyed

This week's DCM dare is set by Saffa who wanted us to make a card featuring beads.



This card started out as something completely different and sort of turned into the DCM dare card as I worked on it! I used the Cuttlebug Textile Texture folder to emboss black cardstock and then rubbed over with gold metallic wax. I think it looks sort of like those beautiful embossed brass plates and bowls you see in Middle Eastern or North African settings.

The plaque is thick packaging card which is triple embossed to give it an enamelled look. I wrote the greeting with a gel pen and use clear embossing powder to 'set' it and used a brass brad to fix it to the card. I made the butterfly using the body from an old broken brooch and drew markings with a gel pen onto black card hand cut into the wing shapes.

Last but not least, the all-important bead is the brass barrel hanging on the embroidery silk tassle at the base of the plaque.

Roses and royalty

The Just Bex forum launched about a gazillion challenges on Friday so I've had a little play with a couple of them this morning despite the fact I should have been doing other things.


This card is for the Paper Roses challenge -- make a card with paper rosebuds, not blooms or Primas.

I had to hunt a bit but I finally found the last two paper roses in my stash, these little peachy pink tea roses. I made a 'chipboard' plaque from thick packaging card covered with a bit of linen textured paper and inked with Rouge chalk ink with a Chestnut Whispers pad swiped round the edges for a bit of aging. I used the Cuttlebug D'vine swirls folder to emboss some pale pink vellum, added some grosgrain and a spiral clip and finished off with a few lines of machine stitching.




This one's for the Something to Wear challenge. It might be a bit cheeky but I reckon you wear crowns so it counts!

This has a circle of silver card embossed with one of the small Cuttlebug folders from the birthday set. I grunged it up by dabbing black dye-based ink on, leaving it to dry and then polishing it with tissue paper to take the ink off the high spots and make them shinier. I did the same with the Happy Birthday strip which was done with the Dymo and then added a silver star eyelet and mounted the whole lot on rib textured navy blue card.

Paper roses... pa-a-per roses...

Well OK, they're not roses but since the paper blooms competition was launched on Just Bex, I can't get that song out of my head!

I took the instruction to make a bouquet 'ready for summer' rather literally and went for the sunniest flower I could think of!


I made a paper mush for the centres by liquidising torn up scrap paper with a load of water and then draining it and squeezing into a sort of clay consistency. I used a pastry cutter to keep the edges of the circle while I pushed the mush into a firm blob. I rounded the edges off with a wet finger and then left them to dry out (here's where having an Aga helps - nice warm spot to dry your paper mush projects!). I inked with brown and black ink and then painted over with the bronzey colour from the cheapo H2O-alikes from The Works.

The petals are cut on the CraftRobo - it's actually a water droplet from a dingbat font called Mostly Waves. I chalked the tips and stuck two layers round each centre.

The leaves are stamped with a big foam stamp onto glossy green cardstock and then cut round them. Flowers are on bamboo skewer stems and a few narrow strips of green paper got shoved in the vase to make frondy foliage bits. The bud is a spun paper ball with the yellow and green papers scrunched round it.

I'd had this square olive oil bottle for ages because I liked the shape but hadn't found a use for it. A few glass nuggets and a bit of raffia tied round to give it a more rustic look made finishing touches.

I decided I quite liked the way these turned out so I didn't tie a gift label on cos I'm keeping them!

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!

Raise it up

Oooh, I love embossing! Lythan has set this week's dare over at DCM and it's an embossing theme. Any kind of embossing will do! I've got a load of Cuttlebug embossing folders on order but they haven't arrived yet otherwise you'd probably have been overwhelmed by Cuttlebug textures. Instead, I've done two cards with some DIY embossing plates I made ages ago:



The Bundle of Joy sentiment is embossed onto pale pink cardstock with the trusty old corner rounder and chalk ink in Rouge swiped round the edge. I punched holes in the star, covered in lots of layers of silver sparkle embossing powder to make a 'button' and attached it with a bit of ribbon. A border of machine stitching and a bit of gingham ribbon finish it off.



Same basic techniques here but the embossing is on DCWV cardstock so I've distressed it a bit with a Silkimitt. The big flower is a Bosskut die and the little ones are the QK flower doodads. I used chalk ink and a freebie foam stamp to do the border pattern.

If you fancy the DIY approach all you need is some die cuts and a die cutter plus an embossing mat (or funkyfoam at a stretch). Stick your diecuts as you want them onto a piece of card stock cut to a size that will go through your die cutter. If you're using shapes made of reasonably lightweight card then you can build up a couple of layers to give it a bit more 'bite'. Then just plunk your cardstock on top, add your foam layer and put it through your die cutter. You can have any sentiment or texture you want and it will be unique to you. I've given mine a coat of paper varnish to give them a bit of protection but they'd probably be fine without.

Little green men

Sorry, I seem to have faded from view in Blogland - never could keep a diary! I just made a quick card for this week's Daring Card Makers dare though.



It's Keryn's turn to set the dare and with a little help from her son the theme is 'Celestial' (or 'Space' if you're going for the simplified version!). Chris on the BubblyFunk forum collects together cards for use at a children's hospice. I don't often get to make kids cards so I'd decided to make a few and already had the bits and pieces cut out for this one. The alien is designed in Inkscape and cut with the CraftRobo - inked with two shades of green chalk ink and has wiggly eyes at the top of the eye stalks. I find it difficult to judge kids' cards - hope this is OK!