Retiring Tree

 

I thought I would show you another of my Dirty Dozen cards.  The theme was Neighbourhood.

This uses one of my favourite Stampin Up sets, Forever Young and it’s about to retire :( Actually so is Tiny Tags and the embossing folder too!  :( :( :(

If you live in Tasmania and would like to come to a little Retirement Party I’m having next Saturday please email me for more details.  We will be making some cards with both new and retiring products and I will have some exciting giveaways and retired products for sale too. RSVP by Wednesday please.

 

 

This is not one of the cards we’ll be making :)  This one took me quite a long while to do as I embroidered little french knots onto the tree to create blossoms. I chose a very pale pink embroidery cotton and it looked very soft and pretty.

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Forever Young, tiny tags, very vintage wheel, friendly words wheel

Card : vanilla, black, blushing bride, naturals ivory

Ink : stazon, crumb cake, pip

Other : vanilla seam binding, tag punch, big shot, vintage wallpaper ef, embroidery floss

Kathy

Butterfly friends

 

This week at Just Add Ink we have a fantastic colour challenge.

I was excited to give this colour combo a try because Pool Party is one of my new favourite colours.

Even though these colours are really quite bright, I decided to try making a “subtle” card with them.

 

The background piece is the elements of style flower embossed in white and I used the emboss resist technique again and sponged pool party and crumb cake over the top of it.  Then I sprayed it with vanilla shimmer smooch spritz, although you can’t really see the effect of that much in the photo.

I used crumb cake on the Friendly words wheel and then stamped the kindness matters over the top with stazon.  I also stamped the middle butterfly onto calypso coral and cut it out and popped it on top.

I attached the friends tiny tag with a pin from vintage trinkets and added one of the little buttons to the card too. They were another birthday present (Yes, more … I am lucky aren’t I!)

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : kindness matters, friendly words, elements of style, tiny tags

Card : crumb cake, white, calypso coral, pool party

Ink :  crumb cake, stazon, versamark, pool party

Other : white ep, crumb cake taffeta, vanilla shimmer smooch spritz, vintage trinkets, scallop trim border punch

 

Please check out JAI to see what the rest of the design team have come up with this week and give these colours a try yourself.

 

Kathy

Pretty chocolate for you

I’ve had such a good week. Sleeping in, crafting, playing with the kids and I’ve also won 2 awards for my cards!  I was a top pick at Just Add Ink for my blue butterfly card and I was also a Cut Above winner at Paper Players for my Here for You card.  I was so excited to be chosen by these two great sites.
I have been making more cards using the grid technique to give to my daughters’ violin teacher.  I’ve made them all slightly differently, please leave me a comment and let me know which one you like best.
I found another challenge site this week too which looks fun.  It’s called Stampin’ Celebration and the challenge for this week is chocolate and flowers.  I decided to use the grid technique and use pip and choc chip and of course flowers.



This one has a more vintage feel to it than the other cards I think.  I used pip to sponge onto the vanilla and stamped in choc chip. This is similar to what I did with the other cards, but this time I also wheeled over the entire piece with the very vintage wheel using crumb cake.  It is subtle, but made the card more “vintagy” and lovelier I think.

Ingredients :
Stamps : Because I care, elements of style, friendly words wheel, very vintage wheel, all a flutter
Card : pink pirouette, very vanilla, crumb cake, shimmery white
Ink : pip, choc chip, crumb cake, stazon
Other : aquapainter, pip taffeta ribbon, mini glue dots, hodgepodge hardware, scallop trim border punch, sponges

Here for you

Well I’ve been wasting time this week, crafting and checking out my favourite blogs and finding lots of lovely new ones as well!  I found a challenge site called The Paper Players and they have a colour challenge this week. Their design team have created so many stunning cards, it inspired me to try these colours together too. 
 
I thought I would try the grid technique again but this time use 2 colours Baja Breeze and River Rock.  I also stamped the blossoms from Elements of Style onto watercolour paper, coloured them and cut out a couple to attach to the tag.



My daughter’s violin teacher had to go to hospital for knee surgery just before Christmas, she is back home now and we might go and visit her next week if she’s up to visitors.  I thought I might make a couple more cards using the grid technique and give them to her as a little gift from us.  The last time I gave her a few cards it made her so happy, she said they were so beautiful and hopefully she’ll really like these grid ones too.
Kathy

Ingredients :
Stamps : Elements of Style, music notes wheel, friendly words wheel, very vintage wheel, vintage vogue, friends 24-7
Card : very vanilla, baja breeze, naturals ivory, rose red, watercolour paper
Ink : baja breeze, river rock, rose red, stazon
Other :  pearl, embroidery thread, river rock ribbon (retired) mat pack, aquapainter, big shot, lots of tags, wide oval punch, sponges

Monochromatic Flutter

The challenge at Just Add Ink this week is Monochrome and I love monochromatic cards so just had to play along with this one.  Monochromatic means using tones of the one colour, but in card making I assume it means to use one plus a neutral.  I did cheat slightly though because I used black to stamp the butterflies and coloured their bodies with choc chip.  I’d still class it as a monochromatic card though – Hopefully they do too!  I decided to use my favourite Stampin Up colour, Baja Breeze and its darker shade Not Quite Navy with vanilla as my neutral.




I used the grid technique on the background piece using baja to sponge and NQN to stamp the images.  I stamped the butterfly in choc chip on the vanilla piece but also stamped them onto shimmery white with stazon and then watercoloured them only using Baja, NQN and a touch of choc for the bodies.  Then I cut them out and stuck them on top of the vanilla piece using mini glue dots.  I realised that you can really bend the shimmer white card and it gave the butterflies a lot of extra dimension.  Plus it gives them a pretty shimmer.
So as you can imagine after doing all that it was not a quick and easy card.  But the hardest part about it was tearing my background grid piece!  Stamping 411 have another wonderful sketch challenge this week and I decided to incorporate both of these challenges into the one card.  It meant that I had to tear my background though and it was hard for me to do it because I really liked how it was.  Anyway I am very happy with the end result I think it actually looks really nice torn now, thanks Stampin 411 for making me do it!  I just finished it off with a birthday sentiment which I stamped with NQN and clear embossed.

Ingredients :
Stamps : because i care, all a flutter, elements of style, music notes wheel, friendly words wheel, sincere salutations
Card : NQN, very vanilla, Baja breeze, naturals ivory, shimmery white
Ink :  baja breeze, NQN, stazon, choc chip, versamark
Other :  mini glue dots, aqua painter, sponge, clear embossing powder

I was having trouble rolling the wheels straight and evenly and I remembered a tip I’d read once and decided to give it a try.  Instead of holding the handle and pushing away or toward yourself, you put the handle down on the table and roll it back.  Amazingly I found it heaps easier and it worked really well for me.  Unfortunately I can’t remember who had this tip to give them credit, but next time your “wheeling” give it a try!
Kathy