Best cousins

The date of birth of two of my neeces is only 3 weeks apart, and they lived close to eachother so you could say they are best cousins. One of them had an accident in June which resulted in heavy braindamage and from which she is recovering still today.

When their birthday was coming up I made each of them a canvas, sort of similar, to reflect their bond.

It was a bit of a new thing for me, working on those hardboard canvases, and was quite some work, but it was good to do.

Lots of photo’s ofcourse. The project is made in a few weeks, doing bits every once in a while, and letting it dry often.

I started with applying gesso to the canvasses, and painting one turqoise. I took a large foam stamp and put paint on it and nonchalantly stamped in turqoise on the white frame, and in white on the turqoiuse frame, trying to get some dimension with the paint. I then I took the TCW microbial stencil and applied copper acryllic paint. Last paint layer is with TCW star stencil, placed twice on a frame, and applied silver paint on both frames.

Now a few shots of my messy desk (dining table) while making the flowers, butterflies and dragonflies out of tissue paper and parchment paper:

Above you can see some dragonflies and butterflies of parchment paper. I embossed some with holographic embossing powder and glow in the dark embossing powder. Maybe also silver embossing powder.

And now the flowers, drying. I did heat emboss some of them, but thne decided it took too long and the effect wasn’t that visible, so stopped after a few.

 

Now some positioning testing:

 

And when it’s glued in place:

  

Adding this one to Vandicraft’s Artistry challenge – January: anything goes.

Flowers for mothersday and more

No, we don’t celebrate mothersday now, it’s just that I still got several cards I haven’t posted yet.

Which is ok, as I hardly have time to craft the past few weeks! So I still have some cards left to post.

Here are 6 cards, probably made more then 6 months ago.

Butterfly butterfly

Stamps from Prima Marketing – Christina Renee

The flowers for mothersday

The stamp was part of a bigger stamp, and you can see, I messed up a bit with stamping/ inking. 😦

Before stamping the text

I love the look of it. Soft flowers, soft colours, clear embossed flowers and green accent colours on the banner. The top and bottom part of the bannerpaper were used as masks for the previous card. Stamps are from the set 3D Amelie from Viva Decor

Some lovely papers -turqoise acryllic paint on paper, then embossed with inked up embossing folders – which I still haven’t used!

First and second card. I learned from the first. But not enough to not mess up the 2nd card after this picture so horribly I threw it out (I think).

Background stamp is from the serie Chronology from…? Peacock is a clear stamp from cArt-us

Papermania – Square Urban Stamp  – Chronology – PMA907138 – Beautifull time pieces

Playing with the Designs by Ryn stamps which I just got then (I think). The lady was part of a grab-bag of Chocolate Baroque, and it was only after stamping that I noticed the fish in her cape.

  What did I learn from this card: Think before stamping. I added the lady after clear embossing the circles and colouring the background. I would prefer for her to be without the circles and colours in her. So she would be less of a ghost. Leaf (from Three leaves set) and Patio Stone are from Designs by Ryn, other stamps (lace, flowers, lady) from Chocolate Baroque)

Fairy garden

I still have this card, didn’t find the right occasion yet. I love the card, I love this Hero Arts stamp. I had the fairy for a while, but don’t actually use here so often. She’s embossed with rangers distress embossing powder shabby shutters. The raindrops were then also just newly received from Designs by Ryn, I love how it looks like she’s in a garden, and I love the sizes! IT jus t matches very well. Looking at it in a digital way now, (You know, on screen…) I think I should make more of these cards. I love the frame, the fairy, the drops, and they match together perfectly! Also used on this card: Patio Stone.

With that, I conclude this post of 6+months old cards.

Which do you like most?

Dear Cynthia

First: Cynthia, if you’re reading this, stop reading… check back in a week!

My last CPS sketch (well, the last for this challenge-series):

CPS#231

And here is my card: (This is a scan of the card, due to the embellishment it’s not entirely focused but the colours are most realistic)

With this card I would like to enter the following challenge:

• Card Positioning Systems – CPS 5th Anniversary with Kim Moreno and Flower Soft, sketch #231.

How I made it

Originally I wanted to use this butterfly, and chose the two pinkish distress colours I have as main colours: Victorian Velvet and Tattered Rose. I started with white cardstock, and distressed it with those two colours and a bit of Old Paper and Scattered Straw. When I was done, I browsed through my stamps looking for a stamp that matched the colours, and I chose this faded lacy stamp from Christina Renee, I put it all along the left side and on the bottom with Dew Drop Crimson Copper. I liked the result 🙂

The butterfly was stamped on purple cardstock which was distressed with Victorian Velvet, and stamped with Smokey Grey Versafine.

But uh oh, the butterfly was a bit lost up there! It needed a frame, like in the sketch. So I took new white cardstock, put down my Tumbled Glass Distress Ink just once on it, and smeared Rusty Hinge directly from the pad around the blue square. Next, I stamped a windowframe (hence the blue for the glass) with Dew Drop Coffee Bean, and stamped it. Hmm. I put it in place and laid the butterfly on top. The colours were too bright for the card, and the size didn’t match. Hmm. Something else, but what?

A little timejump to before I started the card:

I had some fun with two digital images from the FrenchKissed blog. (Etsy store here). I used the secretary lady and edited in the text “Dear Cynthia, I write you just to say: don’t remember our tea-date!” But in French ofcourse ;).  I had invited Cynthia in September for a high tea at a nearby cute lunchroom, but so far we haven’t managed to set a date, so this is a reminder that we should do it soon! I used the font “Traveling Typewriter” – I love the font! The wall on the back of the lady was quite empty (I had edited out the stamp wich was there), so I put in a painting – of another image of French Kissed Postcards, the image of the Golden Lady at the Tea table. It was sort of an inside joke, at this size you can hardly see the teacups, though if you look closely you can still see it. I stamped a nice frame round her, like she was really hanging on the wall.  So, that bit was finished, I only had to make the rest of the card, but first, the CPS challenge card…

Back to the time before the jump

So, no butterfly or frame. Could the image for Cynthia work? Let’s try… yes! that does match! Now add a frame around it. I stamped the frame with smokey grey versafine. directly onto the image+card. Hmm not very visible the frame. Stamp again with Coffee Bean. Still not very visible, it’s still two pieces (the background and image). Distress the edges of the image with Victorian Velvet, where the frame is. That’s better, but now the frame isn’t that visible anymore. Stamp again with Coffee Bean. Hmm.
Hmm.
Nah. This doesn’t look right. The frame should be a real frame – so distress a background with Tattered Rose, stamp onto it once with Coffee Bean, cut it out, and .. that is it! The only downside is that I printed my images apparantly a tiny bit too big, as the gold lady is not clearly visible anymore. On the other side, it kind of looks like it’s a door opening now and you look into a ballroom where a lady is having tea! Great effect :).
Only now with the cut-out frame the text “Dear Cynthia” wasn’t visible anymore, it was visible through the previous stamped frame. So I had to think of something else. A nametag for the painting. Usually that’s at the bottom, but then the text would be in the wrong order (duh), so I put it on top. (Dew Drop Galaxy Gold and a purple/red Derwent pencil).

From the frame background I took a strip and stamped with Coffee Bean the three airballoon stamps and tore off the edges, I wanted it to look like it had been taken from the envelop. Now for the overlaying strip. Any cardstock would obscure the balloons, so I used some parchment paper which I got today in some package. Great timing 🙂 I stamped the tea cups, glued the corners, added brown Perlen Pen drops and done! Hmm the drops make the card unbalanced.What if I add a little to the left as well? That’s better, better balance now. But two drops merged sort of together as the Perlen Pen squirted too much. Hmm. Let’s add some more drops. Oops, I smudged one. Help! I tried to get it off the parchment paper, which went fairly well. Then I added new drops…

Result: it was ugly. I tried to look at it in a shabby chic handmade kind of way, but it just wasn’t right. Aha! I can still use my butterfly, jay! It did need a bit extra though, so I just lightly touched the stamp here and there with Dew Drop Galaxy Gold and stampd over hte first stamp. This was just the little thing it needed. Next I shaped it a bit ( I like butterflying butterflies) and glued it over the uglyness!

I realize the middle ribbon effect is a bit lost maybe, and there are 2 teacups hidden behind the butterfly, but it does finish the card.

Oh and I had a little strip of background left over, so I stamped the lacey stamp onto that as well and the teacups in white and pink. And maybe you can even see the roses in two corners… (warning, colours are off, the cardstock is actually cream coloured, not yellow!)

And that rounds up my 15 cardsketches for CPS!

In my next post I will show them all once more, and also all the things I made which didn’t make it onto/into a CPS challenge card.

Thank you card 1

A thank you card. (“Bedankt” is Dutch for “thanks/ thank you”)

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

Craft Catz Weekly Challenge – Things with Wings

Flutterby Wednesday’s – Use embossing

Kaboodle Doodles Challenge Blog – Thank you

Stamp and Create – Anything Goes

Challenge up your life – Thanks

And here is a scan of the card, to show the colours as they are.

Unfortunately due to the embellishments only the butterfly is focused.