Sending Prayers

 

This is another card for the challenge at CAS Mix Up

After I had coloured the vellum by dropping on various colours, plus a little Ranger mixative, I allowed it to dry before die cutting. I couldn't decide whether the butterflies would look best with the vellum as the filigree layer or the under layer, in the end I decided to use both versions on the same card. My friend, who is a priest, said that sadly she needed some bereavement cards. I thought that this sentiment would be fine for either illness or bereavement.

The background panel is dry embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and the butterflies are from Simon Says Stamp.

Today I have been working on some 50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration invitations and I've developed a real crick in my neck, I could do with a massage!

Wonderful Memories

A commission recently required a condolence card with specific wording, for a gentleman friend of the sender who had passed away. When a life has been long and full, it is wonderful when good memories remain and that is the message this card needed to convey, so the words were all important, which is why I wanted to make them central to the design.

I positioned the words in a very technical way... I set my screen in Word to 118% which makes the visible page on the screen of my laptop the exact same size as a piece of A4. (On my last laptop it was 105%.) I then cut the aperture using the die with a piece of copy paper, which I could then hold in front of the screen, and using text boxes, could arrange the words where I wanted them to fit in the aperture. Once printed, it was easy to put the sentiment behind the aperture and add a simple die cut soaring sea bird to complete the simple design.

Watercooler Wednesday Occasions (Sorry this is a sad one)

Paper Minutes #696 - Keep it simple

 

With Sympathy

The other day I was looking at someone's blog and saw lots of Gelli prints which were simply beautiful, so I decided to dig out my Gelli plate and have a play. It was actually great fun and I got some interesting prints which as yet have not been added to any projects. Today however, I'm using not one of the prints, but a piece of card which I used to clean my brayer. I have several  bits of card with random rollings on them and this one looked about what I was looking for, for the backdrop of these sprigs of foliage. I used alcohol inks for the first time on my Gelli.

The challenge at Less is More this time is to use More than one kind of foliage.

I just used a couple of die cuts in the same shade as the base of the card and in contrast to the backdrop!

The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted.

Well here we go again into another lockdown, what a good job we have crafting to keep us happy!

Take care and stay safe everyone!

 

Wonderful Memories

A friend asked me to make a card for her with this specific wording. Needless to say I had to make the sentiment on the computer, which in a way is a good thing, because I could choose a font to suit the image I was using.

I began by cutting the aperture with a die which I bought from a French company called Simply Graphics. Isn't it delicate! The flowers were cut (using a die by Alexandra Renke) from a piece of card which I had coloured by smooshing with some purple inks with a little platinum Inka Gold. I popped a tiny, tiny  gem into the centre of each of them. 

To get the sentiment just where I wanted it, I  die-cut a piece of copy paper with the aperture die. With my Word programme set to 105%, the size of the page on my screen matches a piece of A4 paper. So by putting the lines of text into text boxes and making them transparent, I could jiggle them around so that when the die-cut piece of paper is put over my screen, I can see if the positioning is correct. It's a bit Heath Robinson, but it works for me.

I thought that this card would work well for the challenge at Less is More. 

This time it's Shades of Purple.

This is the challenge which I created with Mandi in 2011 and I am simply thrilled that since stepping back, the tradition of wonderful CAS designs has continued with the fabulous bunch of designers.

Thank you girls for all the wonderful inspiration! Long may you continue to inspire!

 

What is the plural of rhombus?

I guess we could get into quite a discussion here... rhombuses or rhombi? Whatever the answer,

there are quite a few of them in this card, or rather they are absent but we can see where they were!

The trellis die is from Memory Box, cut from a simple panel and with just a couple of die cut sprigs of eucalyptus cut from a piece of photographic paper, which had been coloured with alcohol inks.

The foliage die is by Alexandra Renke and the sentiment stamp from Clearly Besotted.

It's my DT card for the challenge at Perfectly CAS, where the decoration must not take up more than a third of the front of the card. In other words we need to see lots of white space!

As you can see, the challenge is to include SHAPES!

DO join in the fun!

Today I am having an arthroscopy on my knee, something that has been needed for about 2 years, let's hope it will be successful! It's just day surgery so I'll be hobbling around at home again tomorrow!

Getting messy

I treated myself to a few new Sizzix sets of dies recently when they were on sale, of which the background die here is one. I used it because of the absolute pickle I got myself into trying a new technique (to me)!  Oxidised Metal!

I watched the video suggested on the CAS MIX Up Challenge and got into the most awful inky mess. I think I must have used to much reinker, and although I really liked the look of the effect I'd achieved, I couldn't stop the ink coming off. I tried wiping with a baby wipe, (as suggested in the video) and clear heat embossing, but the ink kept coming off. Maybe if I'd had a little more patience it may have dried in time, but sadly I'm not very patient. My solution with all this inkiness was to place it behind a die cut  screen so that it could be seen, but wouldn't be rubbing of on anything it touched.

The next frustration with this card was trying to make the sentiment strip. I used a Clearly Besotted stamp which I wanted to emboss in Copper, to tie in with the 'metal' panel. I kept getting stray EP 

around the words despite copious use of an antistatic bag. The stamp looked clean to me, but I thought I would give it a clean with my new Lawn Fawn Shammy. What a difference... a piece of lint appeared from off the stamp, (which hadn't been apparent earlier) probably from the baby wipe with which it was originally cleaned and the image from my next attempt at embossing came out perfectly! So the Shammy is something I would recommend! 

A couple of cards

Here is another card for the challenge at CAS Stencil which is to use Baby Wipes.

I made a stencil in  vellum from a Sizzix die. After daubing some Pumice Stone Distress Ink onto  a piece of  card, I laid the stencil over it and removed some of the colour with a Baby Wipe. I cut a couple of leaf sprigs, one from some packaging (in fact I think it was the rolled centre of some wrapping paper) and the other from some white card which coloured slightly here and there with some more Pumice Stone ink.

The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted and a few tiny pearls finished the card.

This next card is for a few challenges

I took the sketch from CAS(E) this Sketch

The Theme from Inspire Create

and the word prompt from Inskirational

I cropped the corners of this card with my We R Memory Keepers 3/8 corner rounder. It matched the contours of my Framelit die cut (which I used for the embossed piece) perfectly.  I actually used a rectangle die but shortened it to make a square. 

I used Paper Mill Direct pearlised card for the base and backdrop of this card. It's a really pale blueish colour. I've had it for ages... waiting for the opportunity to use it! I have so much hoarded away since before their retail outlets closed. The foliage stamp is from Altenew and the sentiment from Avery Elle. I dry embossed the background with a Sizzix/SU embossing folder.

Both of these cards are similar in sentiment and i think that both have  tranquil feel.

She thought she could, so she did!

This card was a bit of an experiment. I made it for the challenge at CAS Stencil which is Alcohol Ink / Alcohol lift. As my friend of many years Anne Ray says... "Alcohol really does give you a lift!"

Anyway for this card, I thought that I would try NOT to use YUPO paper, NOT to use Alcohol Lift ink and NOT to use a commercially produced stencil... I did however use alcohol ink!

To begin with I cut a stencil with a Sizzix flower die from a piece of vellum. I used a piece of the smoothest card in my arsenal and added a few drops of various blue toned alcohol inks and some blending solution onto it. Because this card is more porous than Yupo it dried quite quickly. I then put my 'stencil' over the card and used Stazon Stamp cleaner fluid dabbed onto a piece of paper towel to lift some of the ink through the stencil. It worked reasonably well and gave a somewhat hazy outline but I really rather like the effect!

I used the actual vellum die cut as a bit of an overlay and the glue I used to stick that, makes it somewhat translucent.

The sentiment is from a set by Clearly Besotted.

Now you may see the reason for my post title.. things like this don't always work out, but this time it did!

PS Big WELCOME to Viv on the Design Team at CAS Stencil... what a great addition to the team. well done Viv!

CAS on Friday Use a Stencil

CAS Mix Up Alcohol ink lift

PS Just saw that I had already added three cards to the Mix Up challenge so this one can be ignored!!!!

One Layer for Happy Little Stampers

 Sometimes it's a little difficult to give definition to a one layer card, but a simple technique is to dry emboss a frame. Here I used a little pierced rectangle die to surround the Blockhead stamps image. As this is image has no defined edge I think it would look a little odd by itself on a one layer card. I had to emboss from both ends as the die was slighted shorter than the image itself. I coloured the flowers with watercolours as alcohol markers show through to the inside of just one layer.

The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted. I am very fond of combining script and printed fonts for sentiments and this set  does just that. It would be nice to know the name of these fonts so that I could use them on my computer! 

This is my DT card for the CAS challenge at Happy Little Stampers... if you don't often try one layer cards, now might be a good time to have a go!

We would love to see you join us!

New to me

Today I came across a challenge blog which is new to me. It's called Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge... quite a mouthful, but there's a great sketch this week!

The flowers from SSS were stamped onto vellum and clear embossed. I then coloured them on the reverse with alcohol markers. I die-cut them adding plain white die-cuts behind them, finishing with a few tiny gems in the centres and attaching them to the card with glue dots.

The sentiment is from Just Rite Stamps, die cut with a Framelit rectangle, shortened just a tad to fit the sentiment exactly. The embossed strip was added from a scrap left on my craft table.

I'll be having lunch with a friend on Wednesday and she wanted some of my cards... sadly she needed some sympathy cards too!

Another new to me blog which I just spotted is Crazy for CAS!

Their challenge this time is Fall in Love

Here is the inspiration picture, I hope my card fits the bill.

I used Rubbernecker stamps inked with varying colour Distress Inks, applied using my MISTI. For the sentiment I simply inked a piece of card with various colours of inks and then die-cut the sentiment which is  from Creative Dies.The  background which I used to echo the inspiration photo was embossed with a Stampin' Up folder.
It's also for the challenge at Addicted to CAS where the challenge is Foliage

Clean and Simple butterflies

Four of my favourite things for cards...  die-cutting, smooshing, butterflies and a CAS design.

A piece of smooshed card was placed behind the Sizzix die cut and the three All Occasion Dies butterflies were die cut from the remainder of the card.

For the smooshing technique I placed a small amount of Inka Gold paste onto a craft mat and added some Aqua Tint inks before spritzing with water. The colours merge together beautifully and the Inka Gold adds a subtle touch of metallic shimmer. It can be used for backgrounds or as here, for die cutting.

The sentiment from Just Rite stamps was stamped with Ranger Dye Ink in Caribbean Coast. The front panel of the card was cut with a stitched rectangle die from Simon Says Stamp, elongated slightly to fit British card proportions.

It's for 

The Paper Players

Happy Little Stampers  

What's outside your window?

We have an interesting theme at "Less is More" this week... What's outside your window? It leaves the challenge open to lots of possibilities, so I have a few varied examples here!

This is a stamp from a set of a dozen little squares of springtime images. It doesn't have a maker's name on but it may be Hero Arts, but I'm not entirely sure.

There are a few of these flowers in my garden at the moment

We have an arched window on our stairs and the view through it from the landing is similar to this.

Here it is!

We do have a few bird visitors in our garden, the robin being one of the most regular!

This die set is from WPLus9

Sentiment from Clearly Besotted. 

Snowdrops are one of my very favourite flowers as they are SO delicate. We have a clump in view when I stand at my kitchen window!

This is a digi image from Fred She Said coloured with watercolour pencils and a water brush with a computer generated sentiment.

Whether real or imagined we'd like to see what's outside your window!
Addicted to CAS Delicate

Sequins

We never like making Sympathy cards and this one was particularly difficult as it was for my son's Godmother whose husband passed away recently. She loves green and for me butterflies always signify change from one state of being to another and so is a focus I use often on this genre of card. The background was smooshed with inks and the butterfly cut with Memory Box dies.  The sentiment is from Die'sire.

The sequins are a mix of tiny ones from eBay (which are perfect for shaker cards) and some pretty shaped ones from Clearly Besotted.

I cut the front panel with a large, stitched, rectangle die from Lil Inkers, extended to make a square.

It's for AAA cards Sequins challenge

Addicted to Stamps - Anything Goes

With Sympathy

Just us Girls this week has the challenge to make a Sympathy card... these are no-one's favourites because of the reason behind them, but I have just made this as the mother of one of my husband's childhood friends has just died. In fact for someone of this age, the occasion is probably more one of celebrating a long life, but there is sadness also.

The background was made with Amethyst and Old Silver  Inka Gold paste placed onto a craft mat, spritzed with water and a print taken from it using absorbent card. It can be buffed to a beautiful sheen when dry. The die cuts are Memory Box and the sentiment is from a Crafter's Companion die.

Die Crazy

The Challenge at Simon Says Stamp this time is entitled Die Crazy. I think that crafting has gone a little die crazy over the last few years, with so many companies and so many wonderful dies available, I must say that die cutting is one of my favourite techniques!

Here is a Sympathy card using a Crafter's Companion sentiment and a Simon Says Stamp stitched square and rectangle.

The coloured panel was made using the alcohol ink marbling technique, where alcohol inks are added to a container of water and the porous card dropped into it!

The Happy Little Stampers butterfly, embossed with WOW Sparkling Snow powder was stamped onto vellum and cut out.

I made two sympathy cards yesterday, the first being for the son of Sir David Willcocks who died yesterday aged 95. He was a formidable force in the music world and choral music in particular. He was choirmaster at King's College Cambridge for many years and his work and influence will long be remembered. RIP.

Garden

The theme at CASology this week is GARDEN.

SO I thought that I would try a little watercolour technique using Inks and Stamps.

I wet the  cardstock and then dragged a little Distress Ink across it using a large wet watecolour brush. I then added the tiny Art Impression foliage stamps, using Adirondack Inks, whilst the base was still wet. Once dried I stamped again, this time achieving  more definite impressions. Sadly I don't remember the make of the little sentiment stamp.