Here are just a few of my creations - I mainly make cards, but I've been known to dabble

Friday 30 January 2015

Gorjuss Ladybird

Good evening everyone, I hope you're having a fun time reading blogs and being inspired!

I just popped in to share this card I finished tonight with you all.  And hopefully there'll be a few more posts because the weekend has arrived, yay!

This card features a Santoro Gorjuss girl image from the stamp set Gorjuss Ladybird.  And fittingly enough, I've included a Stampin Up punch and stamp combo Four Frames with the Decorative Label punch (which actually has a bird in the image!)

The cardstocks I used are SU's Elegant Eggplant and a pinky purple cardstock from my stash.  The image was coloured using Tim Holtz distress markers and a SU blender pen on Strathmore watercolour paper.  (I think I did a pretty close match to the image on the stampset).

The flowers are also from my stash and have pearls in the centres.  Oh and I also used another SU punch for the scalloped parts on the sides of the main image.  I should also add that the white background behind her has been dry embossed with SU folder called Happy Heart.


I hope you enjoyed viewing my card, thanks for stopping by!
Happy crafting to you!
Cheers

Monday 26 January 2015

Diorama Pop Up Cards - Pleasant Purples

Hi everyone, gee I'm on a roll here, so many blog entries!  So many cards made in one week, it's unheard of!  I think it has a lot to do with this Diorama Pop Up Card base, it's just so versatile and easy to play with! 

Today I made yet another of these fabulous cards and switched it up again by adding some lovely bits and pieces to it.  

The purple oval shape on the card front was cut from the inside part.  The problem with that though was that the inside bit only had about 2 or 3mm on each side of the opening and I was worried it wouldn't last.  So, I thought about it a bit and came up with the soloution to shrink the opening using a normal oval (the biggest spellbinders oval I have - the bigger ones are on my wish list).  So in the end, I stuck an extra panel over the cut out window and later embellished it with some corner die cuts as it was a bit too plain.

The stamp set used is Cake and Candles by Avery Elle.  It's a really versatile set and this is the first time I've used that sentiment, and I love how it came out!  That onyx black versafine ink is so dark and crisp, I love it!

The bigger flowers were from Blitsy and are by Prima and the smaller flowers started out white and were from Wild Orchid Crafts.  I inked the white ones with SU Wisteria Wonder, sprayed with water to spread the ink, put some liquid glue on there and sprinkled them with Twinklets Diamond Dust and a tiny sprinkle of glitter.  I'm telling you, before that tiny bit of glitter went on there, they didn't sparkle nearly as much.  And yay, I finally used my Diamond Dust, I've had it for about 2years and never used it until now.  It looks like course sugar and looks just like the stuff that is on the prima flowers - which is what made me think of using it for the other flowers.  Finally, I put some opal coloured paper pen in the flower centres but decided I didn't like that once it was dried.  So I put some adhesive pearls on (with a little glossy accents to make sure they stick good and fast) and finally a sparklet (also from Blitsy) at the top and a couple more pearls.

I have to say, I have a new favourite!  What do you think?



Watermarking Your Pictures

Oh and I have started making instructions for the watermarking process.  I've written up instructions on how to watermark using the paintbrush program that comes with Windows.  I'm not sure if they are clear enough or even maybe confusing, so I've asked a couple friends to test it out and once I find out and perhaps tweak them, we're good to go.

Well, I'd better go and do some chores, thanks heaps for stopping by and I hope you have a great creative week!

Saturday 24 January 2015

Diorama Pop Up Cards

Hi there everyone.  I'm hoping you've been enjoying the rain that we've gotten over the last 24 or so hours over here in Queensland, hopefully you haven't been getting flooded though.  We're safe from flooding at home here thankfully.

Well my cardmaking friends discovered a video on youtube this week and it has inspired many of us to make the card featured in the video.  The video was created by Splitcoaststampers and it is shown below :)  


This is such a versatile style of card and it's a real unexpected surprise when you open it to find it's got a popped up window inside too!  Several of my friends and I are having a ball making these.  So far I've made two.  I have had to adapt my card to metric as I don't have inches on my cutter and score board.

The dimensions of my card have been made as simple as possible.  I start out with a piece of cardstock trimmed to 29.5cm x 14.5cm.  With the long side at the top of your score board, score at 10.5, 19, 20 and 28.5cm.  Fold the card as shown in the video and you'll find the front flap is a little too big.  I take a pencil, draw along the edge and trim this piece off, and hey presto you have a slightly larger metric version of this card!  Yay!

I started off by making a bunch of bases in different colours.  I thought having different coloured bases would inspire my mojo to create totally different cards each time.  Here's a picture of them.

My first completed card was made using Cherry Cobbler (cardstock and ink), Garden Green and Wild Wasabi StampinUp inks, the Fabulous Florets stamp set for the images and the IBS Fancy Sentiments stamp set for the greeting.  I found it would be best to cut the inside circle piece as a complete panel to fit inside.  This one was a little short and I stuck a thin strip of white cardstock down the left side to try to fix it, covered with a flower it's barely noticeable.



I messed up a little on my first card, but that is the beauty of making things from scratch.  You work out the bugs and the second one is always lots better :)

My second diorama card was completed tonight somewhere around 11.30pm.  I've had a ball tonight just playing around with it and trying different things.  I totally love how it turned out, I think it's absolutely gorgeous (even if I do say so myself!).

I tried another monochromatic type of card, using StampinUp's Coastal Cabana cardstock and inks along with white cardstock.  I luckily found that my Martha Stewart Wintermint glitter is a perfect compliment to this cardstock and rubbed it into some scoretape - love it!  I also punched out some MS butterlies and layered them with a diamonte in the middle.  The images are from the StampinUp Flower Shop stamp set (and matching punch) and the sentiments are both from one of my newly purchased sets (from my Kaisercraft Boxing Day shop) called Pop! - Quotes.




I can see so many different ways to use this card type, the diorama card is definitely going into my favourites list!

Happy crafting to you all and thanks for stopping by!


 

What's In My Shopping Bag?

Hey everyone, just a quick post to share what's in my shopping bag this week.  I should probably warn you, I love to shop and collect crafty products and decided I might as well share my purchases with you and maybe try to review some of them as well.

Well this purchase is directly due to my cardmaking friends as they've told me that the best gold ink to use is Delicata Golden Glitz pigment ink.  I already had Brilliance Galaxy Gold pigment ink (both by Tsukineko) but have not been all that happy with it since I bought it (years ago!)

Well!  I love love love the Delicata Golden Glitz ink, it's wonderful!  It seems to be thicker, so when it is dried it feels almost heat embossed, with a slightly raised feel to the fingers.  It's super pretty, sparkly and a bright, though a full bodied golden colour.  I bought it here if you want to race over and get it right now!  I was lucky enough to get the last one in stock when I purchased.

I have done a quick comparison for you in the second picture below between these two inks and I even re-inked my Brilliance ink pad as it was stamping lightly, it's much better after re-inking, however it just doesn't hold a candle to the Delicata one in my opinion.

I hope you've found this mini review useful and wish you lots of fun crafting on this Australia Day long weekend!



Take care 


Sunday 18 January 2015

2015 - A New Year, A Fresh Blogging Start!

Hi everyone, I wanted to say sorry to you all for being missing for so long.  No posts for a good long while.  I have been making cards here and there but at some point I'd decided I should watermark them and never got around to uploading anything until now.

Well!  Tonight I re-figured out how to watermark using the free software I found via google called GIMP2 and my paintbrush program that comes with windows.  If anyone wants any instructions on using GIMP2 to watermark their pictures, please leave a comment and I'll do a post on it.

I hope you've all had a great Christmas break.  I had a lovely Christmas with my Mum Judi.  We spent the day having a Game Of Thrones marathon and cooking and eating roast pork and veggies for Christmas lunch/dinner.  I also made a humongous trifle which was delicious, but lasted the week almost! 

We also went to the boxing day sales on the day after boxing day (to avoid the madness, and it worked).  We had lots of fun and lunch whilst there.  And hows this for an unexpected bonus? I discovered a Kaisercraft store I didn't know existed.  I'd never been in one and had to be pretty ruthless and quick as Mum is not into crafting and she was waiting on me.  I picked up some lovely papers, stamps and glitters and was lucky enough to find they were having a sale that day too!  Lucky me!  I'll pop some pictures below so you can see my goodies :o)   Sorry about the hand shadows on some of the pictures.
   

 


I've had a rather great christmas in relation to crafty stuff, I won't post all the pics as there are just too many.  I've also been saving some of my christmas pay so that I can have a big buy up from the Stampin Up new Occasions Catalogue and Sale-abration...plan to do my shop on Tuesday :o)

So, being a cardmaker you might like to see some cards!  Here are the birthday cards that I've made so far this year.  I've managed to incorporate a lot of my new purchases into them so I'm not feeling too guilty about my crafty shopping sprees! *giggle*

Below you'll find two masculine cards and a decidedly femine one.   The car one was my first for this year, the 6 year old liked it :o)  The top one was for a man in his 30's, I used all new stuff on this card!  And the third card was for my lovely friend Virginia.  I really love how each of these turned out!

 
For this card I utilised double sided tape and put cosmic shimmer gilding flakes on there - I think this shade is called Autumn.  The tag was put through a cracks embossing folder and I rubbed a brilliance galaxy gold ink pad across the raised cracks.  I also inked the tag and insert with frayed burlap and aged mahogony distress inks.  Finally, I added some cog shaped brads that I've had in my stash ever since I started card making.  Oh and the letters of Aaron were die cut on this sparkly black wrapping paper that I adhered to double sided tape before die cutting, turning them into stickers.

This car birthday card uses the technique called "Colour Blocking" which I learned recently from Youtube by lostinpaper.  I worked out that it's best to stack up a full size sheet of each of the papers and then cut them together, which leaves enough cut bits that fit together to make three cards!  You should have seen my first attempt - a total disaster, lol!

 
And last but certainly not least is this beautiful card I made using a free hostess set from StampinUp called Bloom With Hope.  I stamped the image on the smoother side of watercolour paper using the SU Cherry Cobler ink pad and coloured it in with a waterbrush, no extra ink was needed!  I also made the envelope (from KMart) match by sticking adhesive to the back of the cardstock and die cutting some spellbinders borders into it, making an easy to adhere sticker!

Well, that's all for now, I hope to pop in again soon and put some cards up that I've made since my last post.  Don't forget to comment below if you want me to post instructions on watermarking pictures using the GIMP2 software.  You can also find helpful videos on youtube for that.

Take care and keep on crafting!