Bit of a pickle

I love seeing new ideas for card making and one superb source of inspiration is Jennifer McGuire. The other day I watched one of her videos where she used her laminator to make different backgrounds. She put little tiny bits of die cuts, embossing powder and all sorts of things through her laminating machine and some of the effects were awesome. 

I thought I would have a go!

I have been doing some knitting for my granddaughter and wanted to laminate the pattern anyway, so out came the laminator. Only half of one laminating pocket was required for the pattern and so I cut off the other piece to use with some embossing powder. BIG mistake! I think I should have not been so mean and used a new pocket as this half sheet jammed up the machine and was not visible from  either side. I think the machine must need the fold of the pocket to take it through the feed. 

I looked online to see what might be done to rectify the problem and I read that someone had taken their laminator apart in a similar instance (although probably not with embossing powder). I tried it and eventually managed to sort it out, but it was a real pickle!

However all's well that ends well and here I have managed to make a card with a laminated, twinkly embossing powder backdrop for the die cut corner.

In order to make the dragonfly tie in with this backdrop I decided to make a black base and then cut the filigree layer from white card,  to which I had added some double sided adhesive sheet on the front. Once cut, I peeled off this layer and then sprinkled on some Gold Glamour Dust.

I was quite pleased with the end result (after all the drama).

CASology Dragonfly

LIfe is just a bowl of cherries!

I had this piece of grey card left over from an aperture card I had made for a friend. SO when I saw the challenge at Just Us Girls, I decided to use it as a panel for my card. I stamped some script and some blotches on it in a slightly darker shade of grey and then die cut a few stems to superimpose over it. The green card was coloured by daubing some Cracked Pistachio ink over white card and stamping a few splotches in silver. The white piece was just distressed at the edges with Hickory Smoke ink. I added a few pearls and a simple sentiment.

Just Us Girls

I coloured this Penny Black image, cut it out and mounted it on my cards base, where I had computer generated the sentiment. I looked at it for quite some time before I noticed that I had missed the word 'a' from the sentiment. So it was taken apart and and a new base printed!!! I think these words come from a song but I don't exactly remember who sang it... I think it may have been Doris Day!

 Just Add Ink Just Add food.

Addicted to Stamps and More

Just a note

This stamp and die set from Altenew is a recent acquisition. I saw some of the stamps on cards on various blogs and was immediately drawn to it. I don't think I've done enough colouring recently and it's something I really enjoy. I have bought many alcohol marker sets over the years and now lots are at the stage of drying up and it's  hard to decide what to do about replacement. I have sets of Mirage Pens, Copics, Promarkers, Spectrum Noir, Chamaeleon, some Stampin Up Markers and some old Dovecraft ones. I think I need to go through all of them and throw out the ones which have dried up and that I don't think I need. I do have some refills for some favourite Copic shades, but it's tricky to know what to do. I think my two favourites are Promarkers and Copics.

For this card I used Copics. I used the sketch from CASe this Sketch

Flowers for the Flower Challenge

A Dragonfly for CASology

AAA Cards Up to One Third

Sunday Morning

 

Today we have been invited over to a neighbours for something to eat at lunch time and so without Sunday lunch to prepare I have a little time in my craft room.

This card is based on the challenge at TIMEOUT

         

I love the bold pop of green in the picture and I used a piece of photographic paper which I had sploshed some shades of green alcohol inks onto, for the die cut leaves in my card.  The stripes were from a SU stamp, which I was considering taking off the block in order to get a clean image using my MISTI, but the second stamping, peculiarly, was really pale until I realised I had used Versamark instead of Versafine  (made a mess of the ink pad  too with the black ink from the previous stamping). SO I decided to sprinkle on some black embossing powder and use that instead.

The Hello is triple stacked from a Stamp Market die.

Just US Girls Stacking die Cuts

This is another card using the freebie Crafter's Companion stamps and die, from Simply Cards and Papercrafts Magazine.

Once more I cut the sentiment from the wreath to use separately. The only thing I added was a Memory Box die cut of hanging mittens, but I put the stamped and heat embossed mittens from the freebie set on the string instead of the die cut ones.

Christmas Kickstart Scandinavian Holiday

Here is a simple card using a leaf which I die cut and coloured sometime ago. I used distress inks and a little mica spray.

I heat embossed the Clearly Besotted sentiment and added both it and the leaf to a piece of hessian.

The Male Room Autumn