Floral Birds

I have a card for Anna's Craft Cupboard to share today.

I used this beautiful bird from the American Crafts, All the Good Things collection by Vicki Boutin.  The stamp set is called Floral Birds.

It was fun dreaming up colours this bird could be, but I went with my favourite combo of blues, aquas and purples :)

For the sentiment, I used the MFT Love You Die again.  There are just so many ways to use it!

I decided to die cut it from white card and then cut it out to just use the "You".

I left it like a stencil so that you can see the watercolour background through the negative space.

I white embossed a sentiment from the Up in the Air set by MFT, masking off the "you" and glued them together onto the card.

I decided to create a background for the bird by smooshing some Tim Holtz Distress Inks with water onto watercolour paper.  

I used Salty Ocean, Tumbled Glass and Broken China.

I also added some jewels from the Jillibean Soup Watercolour with Shapes Shaker Card Sequin Pack.

These are very pretty and were just the perfect colour to work with the rest of the card and give it a little something special.

I'd like to enter my card in the following challenges :

Fashionable Stamping - One for the girls
Southern Girls - Nature
Word Art Wednesday - sentiment
The Cat's Pajamas - Animals


Thanks for dropping by today :)
Kathy

Our Story Bookmark

I have another MFT card for Anna's Craft Cupboard to share today.

I wanted to send someone a gift card to a book shop and I thought it would be nice to make a little bookmark to go with it too :)

I obviously wanted to use the MFT set called Our Story to make the bookmark.  I LOVE this set!!!

And I used the MFT Bold Stripes Cover Up die to hold it and the gift card in place on the front of the card, for something a little different :)

I cut the die from grey card and then cut an extra piece to adhere to the bottom.

I then decorated it using papers from Photoplay's  beautiful Vintage Girl collection.

I used glue to adhere the die to the base layer but I only glued around the very outside edge. 

So that I was free to insert the gift card and bookmark through the stripes/slats.

I was happy with how this turned out.  The die held everything in place really well.

I think this would also be a great way to send someone a photo or tickets to a show, for example.

I'm sure the recipient would get a lovely surprise when they took this card out of the envelope :)

Thanks for dropping by today

Kathy

Floral Birds

I have a card to share for Anna's Craft Cupboard today.

I used a stamp set from the American Crafts, Vicki Boutin All the Good Things collection called Floral Birds.

It has these beautiful butterflies and pretty flowers, plus some other goodies I'll use another time.
I loved colouring them!

I used Copics to colour and I took my inspiration from this gorgeous paper in the 7 Dots Paint Chip collection. 

I added a few drops of Tonic Studios Nuvo Crystal Drops - Morning Dew to the flower petals to try to mimic dew drops.  

I also added some accents to the large butterfly with a white gel pen.

The set also comes with some dies, which I used for the flowers. 

I cut the butterflies out myself, which was easy enough to do.

I used a white card base and cut the 7 Dots paper the same size. Then I lightly distressed the edge of it before adhering.

The paper is thick and card-like and it left a nice white edge after distressing which I liked.

I used the MFT Bold Stripes Cover Up Die over the top of the paper.  This is such a versatile die and looks great with these flowers and butterflies!

I stamped a sentiment from the MFT New Best Friend set onto one of the stripes of the diecut.

The stamp actually says "Pets make life sweeter" but I masked off the first word to change the sentiment :)

The "YOU" is from the MFT Love You die.  

I cut it out of black card and trimmed around the YOU to fit in between the stripes of the cover up die.  Then I cut it out again, this time from white card.  I inlaid the white letters into the negative space and glued it all down.

I'd like to enter my card in the following challenges :

Stamping Sensations : Flowers

Fashionable stamping challenge : One for the girls

I hope you find some time to be creative this week and thanks for stopping by :)

Kathy

Wild About You Art Journal

I have something other than a card to share for Anna's Craft Cupboard today.

For Christmas, I bought myself and my girls Art Journals and we've had lots of fun creating together.

I must admit I've only done 2 pages so far but I've really enjoyed it.
The first was purely just experimenting with how paints and pens etc looked on the page.
Then I created this one and I was really happy with how it turned out :)

Firstly, I used Dylusions Paint and some Tim Holtz stencils to create a fun background.

I decided to do blocks of 3 different colours and then used an alphabet stencil over the top in the same colour paint.  I love this effect with Dylusions Paints!  The yellow didn't stand out as much as the other colours though and so I went over it with distress ink instead.

I also added some white and black dylusions paint to the background through some circle and arrow stencils.

I am hoping to use favourite quotes, lyrics and sentiments that mean something to me in my art journal.  And I love this sentiment from the MFT Wild About You set and decided to use it with the animals from the set too.

I stamped and coloured the animals with Copics to match the colours of the paint  and cut them out.

I then stamped this sentiment and used the Love You Die-namic from MFT with it as well.

I glued the elements down flat but they look as if they have a lot of depth and dimension because I drew around them with a charcoal pencil.  

I then drew a border around my page added a few details with a white gel pen and finally called it done :)

I love that I can use my stamps and dies and other crafty supplies in my journal.

While it's great making and sending cards to people, this is artwork that I actually get to keep.

And it doesn't have to be perfect, I can experiment and make mistakes and that's okay.

This journal is about me and is for me :)


I  really recommend giving art journalling a try if you haven't already :)

Kathy