Peek-a-boo! Guest designer at Country View Crafts’ challenge site!

Peek-a-boo!

So, finally! A few posts ago I told you about being in the top 3 for the Country View Challenge Blog. Now it´s time to share more about it! Read my introduction of the card I made at the Country View Crafts Challenge blog and then come back for more details in this post.

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Are you done reading the other post yet?

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I know, it’s my own fault for talking too much…

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Allright then. Let the making-of begin!

The making of The BOO

After having made 3 cards I wasn’t completely satisfied with, (see my previous posts, but don’t go looking now!) I started anew. Deadline was coming closer, and I guess that pressure unleashed the good ideas. Startingpoint for this card is the word BOO. Next inspiration is actually a background I made on linen-paper for one of the other cards, it just wanted to be used.

The background. It kind of looks spooky allready. Insert noise of scratching nails here.
It reminds me of the game Silent Hill I used to play. Creepy console game.

The paper was a bit too big for my design, I wanted a rectangular card not the more square card, so I cut it to size.
I am also enjoying the glow-in-the dark embossing powder, it’s not a very long lasting effect but ofcourse I could not NOT use it. BOO should be seen in the dark, so I embossed it before going on. My original idea had been a black card with only the glow-in-the-dark embossed BOO on it, but I’m just not good at CAS, so I didn’t even try making that one asI knew I’d add stuff.

The BOO making extended version

This card has been finished 3 times. With that, I mean that I thought it was finished 3 times, and the last time I was finished, I was right. So I’ve got lots of pictures of the first finish, the second, and third.
My amount of Halloween stamps is very very limited, so I was looking through all my stamps for something fitting. And thus I came across this cute cat from Vivalasvegastamps. Cute didn’t fit in my idea though, so I un-cuted it, by narrowing the eyes and adding fangs and claws, and embossing those as well with glow-in-the-dark powder.

A were-cat?

Searching through die-cuts and stamps for some bushy things, as if the cat is peeking from behind bushes. Then I remembered my dark, unfinished backgrounds with a border stamp fomr Hero Arts. Purr-fect! Inking the edges a bit with brown, moss green for a bit more darkness.

Here I had just used the Hero arts stamp

Still, it didn’t have that spookyness I was looking for. (Or rather, horror). Next brilliant idea was to use the trickling water stamp in red, as if it’s blood. Blood dripping down the card.

I also added a raindrop and waterdroplet. Both are stamps with multople drops on it. I inked up only 1 drop by masking off part of the stamp before inking. These three stamps are from Designs by Ryn

Spot the difference between the drops on this card and the end result!

Colouring the cat black with a black marker and adding some white lines for more contrast were the finishing touches. (In fact, after having taken the pictures I added a bit more lines. Pictures show more then I see while looking at the card!)

Ending of the making of The BOO

Or was it the end? I matted the card onto black cardstock, but not before stamping the background/edge stamp on the black cardstock and embossing it with black embossing powder. Just a subtle shine.

And then, the end result.

As you can imagine it was quite hard photographing the card without effect, with only the effect (like you would see in the dark) and in “dusk” light. So here is a gallery of a selection of pictures taken. (I know, it doesn’t look like it, but it really is a selection!)

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I hope you liked it! Don’t be a silent ghosvisitor, make some noise: Comments are very much appreciated!

Untill next time,

Debbie/Daqa.

Hallo-ween: Hello tears.

Halloween.

Hallo – ween.

In Dutch, Hallo means hello, and ween is an (old) word for “cry”. (I cry because something sad happened. The verb “crying” is “wenen” . Ween also looks like weeën, with an extra e, and which means contractions (as in, a pregnant woman being in labour).So a bit of creativity with the words, and it says: Hello tears. Or hello painfull spasms?

Anyway, it both can be applied to my first tries in making a halloween card.

I wanted a fairy scene which is brutally disturbed by evil. Or a normally fairylike scene with some sinister twists. I have unicorn stamps, and I thought of the pretty pure white of the unicorn. Do you know the movie The Dark Crystal, with a young (and not yet arrogant and strange religion worshipper) Tom Cruise? If I rememberd right, they tried to corrupt the unicorn.

This was my first theme, a corrupted unicorn. Lured into a trap by evil, having to kill and loose it’s innocense. Covered in blood, delirious with rage it traples all in it’s path. On the card I wanted to show a unicorn that is battling bats, with the light being clear before it, but turning dark with eerie faces behind it. Evil oozes from it’s skin now.

Default colours for evil are usually black and purple, so those colours where my starting points.

You’re wondering, no pictures yet? That’s right, because I want to tell the story first, as it’s prettier then the card.

I loved the background I made. Instead of cutting it to size like I planned, I left it, with the frays of dark shadows still lingering. I ripped the end of the card (which I did with each layer on that end) to give it a torn look. Left side of the card is still good, right side is not right.

I stamped bats (It’s one of the few halloween type stamps I’ve got, from the Chocolate Baroque steampunk Butterfly sheet, (the unicorn is also from Chocolate Baroque) and partially embossed the card (putting the card in the embossing folder which was a bit inked up, and press really hard with a heavy thing on the folder on the place you want the embossing. I think I used my salt-rock lamp for that.  I used the Spellbinders M-bossabilities folder Twigs and Tweets.

The ugliness came when I used glow in the dark embossing powder on it for the first time. Then, as it was ruined anyway, I tried a special effect with a skull stamp and placed that on the card as well.

Here it is in pictures:

A mask for the moon and a mask for the unicorn, and very inky fingers. See the swirls on the right? I kind of loved the look.

Blood…

I was making a crunchy blooded bat. The other bat was made out of regular cardstock, this bat was made out of tissue paper and richly embossed with black embossing powder. And then drowned drenched in blood.

So far so good. It was missing something though. So I though, hey! Let’s use this glow in the dark embossing powder! (I had ordered a skull stamp from De stempelwinkel which I wanted to stamp behind the unicorn, like skulls floating in that dark cloud behind it). But before I show you that, I show you the card on which it would be matted.

Beter. Lovely grunge look. Too bad I am going to cover it up.

I added some blood in the bloddy spots, and darkened some parts even more.

I wanted to add a bit of a bright colour into the mix, so I took tissue paper and used the other Halloween colour: orange.

Somwhere before or after this I used the glow in the dark powder on the unicorn and moon. I wanted to simulate moonlight falling on it’s nose and back. I didn’t take into account the shading or fading of the light.

A good view of the left looking floating skull.

Here is the finished card. The tissue paper isn’t glued down, but the effect is not what I hoped, it had to look a bit more wild. I guess I should have torn it instead of cutting it.
The skulls were a bit bigger then I thought, so no room for several skulls.

You can sort of see the special effect of the skull here allready: One skull, the red and black embossed one, is looking to the left, while the glow in the dark one is staring at you. Embossing both wasn’t a good idea, as it melts together a bit.

EEEK! See what I mean about the gradient / fading? If only I had drawn smaller lines…

 

Do you know what I’ve just realized? My workname for this project was “The Nightmare”. Well, isn’t this kind of like a nightmare for crafters, to have a good idea, and a possible good card, but which is ruined because of something stupid you nearing the finishing of the card?

My next project with the Glow in the dark powder turned out lots better! Check back the next few days for that post.

I hope you this posts was helpfull to you in preventing you from making the same mistake. Happy crafting!

Birthday Girl – 1 year! Hieperdepiep, hoera! CAKE!

Warning: picture heavy post!

She’s usually moving too much to get a good picture when she’s really happy/laughing.

Cake nr 2 – presenting it to F.

Dikkie Dik! This is what they were supposed to look like. As you can see, I’m not much of a drawing artist. Luckily the image of Dikkie Dik is printed on the tag as well.

Last week my daughter turned 1. We celebrated this on saturday and sunday (half of the visitors preferred saturday, the other half sunday, hence the celebration on two days).We also had 2 cakes: A big mocca one made by my mom, and a smaller chocolate one made by me. I did make the decorations on thursday, for both cakes.

Stamps are very versatile, I used the stamps from Design By Ryn on the fondant and marsepan! And while making this post, I thought of using liquid food coloring on the stamps to actually stamp onto something, instead of only embossing with the stamps!

Here is a photo impression of the preparations, the cake and preparing the treats to hand out at the daycare.

Day 1: lots of flowers. And a gap in the cake due to my toddler who tasted the cake when he was on kitchen stool and I was making his bottle of milk.

Day 2 Applecake/applepie and Chocolate cake.

Day 2 Applecake/applepie

Very Chocolatey cake, as much more cacao then was meant to go in, went in. The other half of the applecake went in the freezer, to be taken out later as a treat to the daycare staff.

Day 3 – making more decorations.

Day 3: Cut out a small flower (with the tool) in white

Day 3: Then place a bigger tool on top of it

Day 3: Press the whole tool down, press the “handle” down (it embosses the marsepan) , wiggle to get it to loosen from the rest, and release from the tool.

Day 3: Heey maybe I can use my stamps! Duh, not for stamping with ink (Although, now I think of it, I DO have fluid foodcolouring! That would have been great! AAah yes! (*makes mental note for next birthdaycake*)

Day 3: Me playing around on the fondant . I figured it was going to be covered in flowers anyway, so why not add some more? I used stamps from Design by Ryn.

Close up

Close up

Close up

I can do that with leaves as well!

Rougly cut with a kitchen knife (don’t bother with the stems, they are too small!)

Lift from below with the knife

And voila, leaves!

Leaves and blue flowers

Lifting up the fondant to put over the cake.

After putting it on the (chocolate) cake

Pressed down and cut. It’s not smooth, but I knew that wasn’t doable for me. I was ok with this, I knew F. won’t care 😛 I also forgot to turn the cake over, so the bottom is the top. That way you have a flat top.

Close up – it’s still visible! Autumn fairies on the cake!

Origami flower

A bowl turned upside down as a lid

The decorated cake – filled with cherries. The flavour was not very strong, it could have been stronger (of the whole cake, apart from all the sugardecorations ofcourse).

Cake nr 2 – presenting it to F.

Happy Birthday – cake nr 1 (On day 3)

I was telling Tobias to watch out for the candle, or ask him to blow it out. The candle was out of reach from F, but not the cake! I didn’t see what she did there: Dig in!

Maya de bij

Mjam! (Actually she didn’t quite like it, she was mostly just playing around with it)

She loved rubbing her plate over her head… look, gel!

Hanging around again. (She is not allowed to put her foot on the table)

Cake nr 2 – presenting it to F.

Fake laugh! Not sure when this picture was taken, I think during the preparations sometime. And no, the fake laugh is not because of the flash! Might be a bit because of the focus light on the camera…

Dying some fabric handkerchiefs

I didn’t entirely follow instructions. The lighter pieces is a piece of cloth added later.

Wrapped the napkins around a mandarin, and drew a catface on it

Dikkie Dik! This is what they were supposed to look like. As you can see, I’m not much of a drawing artist. Luckily the image of Dikkie Dik is printed on the tag as well.

She’s usually moving too much to get a good picture when she’s really happy/laughing.

A few days before…A yoghurt mask…

Feels good mom, you should try this too!

A song for each step

It was fun making this card, it was a bit different from what I usually make. I started out with a page from an old thin book for people who start learning english. The paper is a bit more fragile then my usual paper so I had to work a bit more careful. I refound my sizzix flower dies, and had fun using them on fabric! Fabric? There’s no fabric on the card! That’s right, but I only decided against using the cut out fabric after the inkin/masking, when I tried them on the page. It didn’t look right.

I look forward to using my dies on more fabric scraps.

I masked both the negative and the positive cut of the die-cut, which gave a nice layered effect. I seem to be in love with the Persimmon orange colour from distress in combination with blue (Peacock Feathers is still a favourite!).

Then, time for the words. “May songbirds serenade you every step along the way”  has a very poetic feel to it, it matches the page very well. Also, there are a few times when the word “footsteps” jumped out of the text – some are hidden in the end result though. I think on this page they are tracking someone, or following a path (I did read the short story back when I checked if this book could be used). Songbirds singing from between the flowers, lovely!

I stamped with versamark+stazon jet black and embossed with black embossing powder. Next was adding some more diecuts, and I set myself to the challenge to use some of my scraps of paper. I did find some good matches.

I also stamped a bird from Prima Marketing Pixie Glenn with Stazon Jet Black, and Non-Sequitur’s Tree Trunk with brown.

Last, I die-cut the tattered flowers from tissue paper (after colouring the tissue paper with distress ink and water and drying it). But that’s not all, I took my M-bossabilities folder Twigs and Tweets, inked up a part of it (and removed the ink on the leaves, leaving only the birds to be inked reddish) and embossed the flowers. So on every tissuepaper flower there is also a bird (or part of a bird) inked, and the embossing of the folder itself. In the end I didn’t use all 4 diecuts, I only used 2 and inked them up a bit, made them a bit greener as I thought the red was too red.

The branch is stamped on with a stanp with versamark and then heat embossed with shabby shutters distress embossing powder. The little die-cut birds from Marianne Design are inked up with versamark with a brush, and then dipped in embossing powder.

I used a Cheery Lynn die (Celtic Frame I think it’s called) to partially cut the top and bottom of the page.

Before gluing on the die-cuts I wanted to put a little bit more protection on the page, so I put decoupage glue on it. I was a bit slow in thinking, because only after rinsing the brush (which I do immediately after using the glue) I realized I ofcourse could glue on the die cuts now easily as well. No fussy gluing with small bits, as the entire surface of the card was sticky. I did end up having to add a bit of glue to some parts where it was too dry allready, but none the less it was fast and easy to add the diecuts.

Before adding decoupage glue – would it ruin the card by smearing out the ink? Also visible, on the right: die-cut fabric tattered flowers (blueish) and the flourishes die (and cut), inks and oh the antique greenish embossing powder! Love it!

That about sums it up. (I didn’t describe all steps, it’s obvious I inked the edges and matted the card onto cardstock etc).

Used materials

• Distress inks, (distress) embossing powder, stazon, decoupage glue, tissue paper, old bookpage, scraps from the scrapheap.
• Sizzix movers and shapers Tattered Flowers
• Sizzix Swallow
• Marianne Design creatable (The small birds, Ivy and branch)
• Joy!Craft Vintage Flourishes
• Stampendous stamp May Songbirds serenade you every step along the way
• Prima Marketing Pixie Glade stamp on the branch for some more texture
• De Stempelwinkel Tree Trunk from the Plate 101 Trees
• Cheery Lynn Celtic Fire

Challenges

I’d like to enter this card in the following challenges:

• The stamping cottage – October challenge #4 Surprise us (anythin goes) (Must use a product they sell, which is ofcourse the inks and the Stampendous Stamp I bought there a while ago)
• Ladybug Crafts -Oktober Challenge Use die cuts
• The Crafting Cafe – Oktober Challenge Anything Goes
• Stampin for the weekend – Anything Goes (closes around 24th of October)

Thank you for the visit!

WOYWW # 227, my showcase cupboard and a happy boy

I’ve been seeing various people join in on WOYWW (What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday) from Stamping Ground, and I’ve had the idea of joining for some time now, but I was too late each time. It’s 23:35 now, and I was in a rush as I thought it was Wednesday allready. Guess what, it’s still Tuesday! So I’m on time. Technically, it’s a picture taken at Tuesday, but I have to clean my workdesk each day (as it is our dining table), and tomorrow I won’t have time to craft (so no interesting picture there). Also, I don’t think I’ve cleaned it up before midnight – still some minor things to finish, and then clean, so actually it IS a Wednesday situation. Well then, here’s the picture:

Yup, that is my table, on it is a card I am working on, before applying the mod podge. You can see diecuts lying around, those are supposed to be going on the card. My box of cuttlebug folders and a few sizzix dies,, the rest is either quite clear what it is or not visible enough. Let me try a different angle:

My crafting cupboard. Or rather, one of my crafting cupboards. I’ve made an extra shelve last week (in my previous posts I had mentioned cleaning up), it’s the one shelve in the different colour. The brown oranizers contain my stamps, and there’s lots of paper. Behind the blue bin with folders is a decoupaged box with scraps, on top of that is my box of rubber unmounted stamps which I won’t put on ez-mount because they are too small or because the foam doesn’t stick anymore, I use an acryllic block with a sticky thingy on it. (I forgot the name. Tacky stuff?)

My showcase place

Another important place is the place I take my pictures. Or used to. It’s across from the table:

Actually it’s different now, as it has two copper lamps and a copper phone on it. Also the 3 chests of drawers are gone, and the stuff on top of the cupboard which is seen in the mirror is gone. The big cupboard with drawers also contains mostly crafting stuff. It is a bit of a showcase place though. I love the mirror, love the lavalamp, like the dried flowers (Don’t tell anyone I do, I only like THESE dried flowers). And I love bananas.

I still love the lava lamp, it’s fun to watch.

My “pressing station” and a frame with postcards from French Kissed Postcards, which are in split in new frames now (see previous post Copper Kisses).

The pressing station exists of a spare glass plate (for inside a cupboard) with the cardboard from the packaging (I glued a wallpaper sample on it so it looks pretty) and a salt crystal lamp without the lightbulbfitting and wire. (I still need to replace the lightbulb, it’s broken, and therefore the fitting is not in it). Also seen is my card-stand thingy. I found that the light is better if the card is slightly tilted, but ofcourse it won’t stand on it’s own so I made this simple ugly thing. Good thing it’s not visible on pictures. Oh, and the purpose of my pressing station is to reflatten cards or papers. Just put it beneath the glass plate, put the heavy salt lamp back on top and leave for a day or so. Papers come out almost completely flat.

Ofcourse, with all the moving of stuff I’ve done, the pressing station has moved to. Or actually, has been “dismantled”- I still have to find a new spot for it.

This is what is on top of the cupboard now:

One polished and one unpolished ship lantern and a copper telephone.

The copper telephone is complete, but I took some parts off to clean it better. It still has to be cleaned more, but it’s ok for now. I love the ship lanterns, although I doubt if they really were used on a ship – I think these were made and meant for in a house. Maybe one day we’ll reinstall the wire and hang them, but for now, I like them on that cupboard.

Happy birthday boy

One more thing I’d like to mention: In my previous post preparations (and a birthdaycard for a 5 year old) I showed the card I made for that boy. We also gave him a toy bus, and at the last moment I decided to add some coins to the card. I don’t like to give money to a child, but I know children love getting money, or coins. Not paper money, but coins they can count. The boy who these gifts were for is lightly autistic, and has a strong opinion about toys he does or doesn’t like. We were told he liked public transport things, hence the bus and the train-themed card.

The toy was very well received, he and his younger brother play in turn with it, they both love it. He was delighted with the coins, counting them several times a day. And the card? He loves it! He even insisted on taking it to school to show his teacher the next day, and later that night was in tears because he couldn’t find the card when he went to bed, and he wanted to take it to bed with him. He had been walking around with it 2 minutes prior to that, so it wasn’t far gone – it was actually lying on a cupboard near his bed.

This moves me. How a child can be happy with simple things like that! I’m so glad I decided to also make  card for him. Usually, when we go to a kids birthday, we only bring a toy, it is not a custom in this part of the Netherlands to also bring a card. You mail a card, bring a gift.

So, it’s half past twelve now (00:30), and the table hasn’t changed much. So here it goes, my first WOYWW.

(Oh, the post isn’t up yet on the blog – I’ll add my entry in the morning!)

And here is how the dining table / crafting area looks now:

Preparations

It’s like a hurricane was in the dining room – why? I’ll explain further down the post.

Somewhere in between creating the hurricane-look I also made a card for the son of a friend, who will be 5 (or was it 6?). He is really into public transport, so I did my best to relate to that. I started out with a tardis from Vivalasvegastamps and chalk (well I did that (the tardis) more for his mother, who probably knows dr. Who), a track  from Stampinback and a Thomas the Train stamp-cut out. And some balloons. After I had done my best to colour in the balloons with my Neocolor crayons to get a good color coverage, I remembered another stamp from Crafty individuals: Boys Toys. Stamped that on top and then I had to “fix” the balloons a bit. I used my white gelpen freely. I would use it less if I had thought of that stamp sooner, but now it was just too much going on on one layer,  I used it to create another layer. More Caran D’ache Neon Colors later, and gluing it on a red card and it was done.

The idea was that T. would be making a drawing, but he got caught up in “cutting”. I just recently started to let him cut with a real steal (childrens) scissors, as the so called safe ones from plastic are too difficult to cut with. First, he got a little plastic scissors which was in a drawing set. It didn’t cut, so I searched for my old one when I was a kid, but the blade was loose so that didn’t really cut either. Then I bought plastic scissors which were a bit bigger, thinking those would be better then the first ones as it wasn’t included in a cheap set, but they didn’t cut. Today I bought metal childresn scissors, they cut perfectly. Only they are for left-handed children, and although T doesn’t have a clear preference yet, I think he’s right handed…. so… *sigh* still not the righ scissors.  so he was cutting enthousiastically, and not really making anything anymore, he was just cutting. Even in his drawing. The remaining bit of paper looks too much as a left over to be given. So after he went to bed I finished my card (I stopped at the balloons bit, so when I got back to the card I remembered the stamp).

I also told you my daughter will be 1 soon. I am preparing a little bit for it, I made a small chocolage “biscuit” cake tonight, and put it in the freezer. A day before her birthday I’ll get it out and decorate it more. I also have to make a bigger cake. Theme for the cakes will be Maya de Bij.

It is not going to be very fancy, just green fondant over the cake (oh and some filling, don’t know what yet) and then these flowers I made tonight as decoration, together with a toy Maja.

Not really perfect… my previous “cake biscuits” ones were better. I guess that’s beginners luck.

Flowers and bows. Flowers with cutters from Albert Heijn (a Dutch big grocery chain), and the bow is from a mould.

When I was done I remembered I hadn’t thought of the treats for the daycare! How could I forget! Luckily I still have 1 week to think of something.

So, back to the hurricane. In my previous post I mentioned renovation, storing and storage. So I am in the process of cleaning out cupboard and organizing my crafting stuff. I knew I had lots of wasted space (and lots of waste too, actually, because of bad usage of storage. I’ve got 3 Ikea drawer chests, (If that is the right english word for “ladekastjes”) – they don’t sell them anymore, but ever since my previous move (so not the last one but the one before that) some of the drawers were kind of filled with stuff I didn’t know where to put or which I still had to sort. Others kept my jewelry making stuff (nothing fancy like gold or silver, but the beads kind of jewellry). I haven’t made a necklace or a bracelet in ages, and still the beads and tools were taking up 2 drawers. I moved most of it into 1 drawer now, and plan to use it on cards. My inks and inking tools were kept in little shoeboxes (childrens shoeboxes are great storage – they still fit inside the cupboard, as opposed to some of my shoeboxes which are just an inch too long to put in efficiently). Anyway, the inks have moved to the chest of drawers, and I added wheels to the bottom, and moved the whole thing under the dining table. Tadaaa! The 2nd cupboard is dedicated entirely to my kids crafting, none of my stuff in there (ok except for printing labels). Also with weels, and on the other side under the table.

Halfway – the little sidetable I made on a blue monday in furniture / woodworking school, it was behind a big chair but placed here because it would go to storage. Ofcourse it got used immediately to put my binders with stamps on, while I was cleaning out the bookshelves on the left.

So much junk in this picture, most of the used and usefull stuff was allready moved to the cupboard on the right. Because I made an extra shelve in that cupboard (and I needed to paint it), the organizers couldn’t go in yet.  And there is also the Med-Comfort: the latex gloves which I bought a size to big, so they are annoying to use. I bought household gloves the other day, and thinking about my mistake here, took a small size. You can guess what I’ll say next. Yes. They were too small, my fingers went numb if I wore them for more then 10 minutes. So, onto the positive things in this picture: Look at my “work in progress board” – I still have to make a post about it. I like it a lot 🙂

Bookcase gone, sidetable gone, empty walls again! But the table is still cluttered, and I didn’t dare put the extra table in the picture…

The top between the lower and upper cupboard on the left also is full of stuff that needs to be sorted. Laundry is under the kids chair. See the chest of drawers next to the red childrens chair? On the other side of the table is my chest of drawers. I know the memoboard is full too, it can be taken off as well, but first I’ll sort all the loose stuff that is lying around.

I think you’ve seen enough junk and chaos. I’ll conclude this post with a beautifull image. Please respect the authors copyright, and if repinning/sharing it, include the name of the artist and website. (phatpuppy facebook.com/phatpuppyart).

Pinned on Pinterest “My World and Welcome to It by phatpuppy (facebook.com/phatpuppyart) By request of the artist: please do not remove artist name or facebook link when repinning.

Treasurekeeper

Renovate, birthday, store, sort, fix, clean, sell?

Lots of words, none to do with the card, but all to do with my life now. It’s a busy time, with the first birthday of my daughter coming up, more progress in renovating the appartment as we really want to put it on the market soon, also we have rented storage space to put our surplus of things in while we renovate. So that means storing things. Which means sorting things. Which means reorganizing, throwing stuff away, making decisions what goes where, what to keep and what to store later. Later? Yes, later. We’ll have to rent a bigger storage when we want to sell – right now we just want more room to renovate. The required space when we want to sell would be about as much as our appartment :P. No, I’m not looking forward to be selling a house. Why? 2 reasons. First reason is 2 1/2 years old, and the second will be 1 years old soon. We would love to be moved into a new home before T. is 4 though, the age when he has to attend school. Preferrably we’ll move a bit sooner so he can make some friends at the daycare before going to school. (We’d be moving halfway across the country, near family and a house with a garden and garage). I love living here in Den Haag with my friends near, but I do miss a garden and garage. Here it’s quite expensive, or you’d have to move to one of the smaller villages near here, but then I wouldn’t be living “here”, where I do now. And in that case, I’d rather move south where houses with gardens and garage are still in our budget range and where we will live near family. On to the card now.

Baby Jasper

A while ago we received this birth announcement card. I love making a card which is based on their card (see also my post “Copy Cat” where I made two baby cards based on the announcement card).

Jasper means treasurekeeper, that is why I added the sleeping baby on top of the key and crown.

Getting the color right was difficult!

The baby stamp is from Stampinback (Sleeping Baby SB 816), the crown from a Primna Marketing set(Viva Decor: Crown, Lion, Wing set), and the key is a Marianne Design creatable (LR0193- – Key). Embossed with queens’gold embossing powder and a little silver embossing powder on the key as well.

Sometimes I make a card I am not entirely satisfied with. The idea is ok but the execution could be better. Example:

Which was based on this card (anonimized for privacy):

Oh, before I show this card: The paper version didn’t include a name – it did include an instruction on how to use layar for it. Then you saw the full card with all details! I loved that! IT and cards :D.

On to the card:

So I wanted to include the pink and blue, the bird and egg, and her name. In that, I managed. I messed up when wanting to add some highlights to the card (before placing the letters) and where the chick would stand. I was originally thinking of making an egg with feet, but somehow I forgot that idea and made a chick of it, but the shape is more egg like. Also the style is too cute still, not “modern” enough to really fit with this card. So not my best card. The quilling was new, I made the strips with Nellie Snellen’s die, but it doesn’t cut really sharp strips of paper. I rolled them anyway, and inked it a bit, trying to give the chick some depth. (I know, the light part should be on top if that’s where the light is coming from…) In the end, I did like the embossed letters a lot, although maybe I should have sticked to 1 color pink. (the embossed twisted paper legs were a horror to make).

Back to Jasper:

Challenges

I’d like to enter this card (baby Jasper, not Noor) in the following challenge:

• That Craft Place – Challenge theme: Baby (closes 13th of October)
• Crafty Catz – Challenge # 201 Anything Goes (closes around 9th of October)

Thank you for visiting!