Catching up – cards, skirts and hanging around.

Been almost a month since my last post – how time flies! Holidays are over, work and school started again, back to the regular routine. Crafting does happen, but blogging less. Hope to be able to make something for the Chocolate Baroque challenge in time!

I’ll show some things I made the past year (or still haven’t finished) which I might not have shown yet on my blog. These things include a skirt for my son, natural ink and many cards. First a gallery with the ink, then a gallery with the rest. The ink pictures are from May. I haven’t touched the jars since except for once, and then I threw out the onion one as it smelled horrible. Not sure how moldy the rest is… Ink was too ligh to be really usable. Another chance soon, the walnut is shedding it’s nuts and they /their shells are great for ink. (But then again, what do I do with this ink? It’s not stamping ink…)

And now the rest:

Cut edges in old cards with shaped scissors

Apply molding paste with the card for texture.

My first try at an art journal page. Didn’t like the result, too many layers

My second attempt, I liked this. Didn’t know how to go from here, so I left it like this. No 3rd page made yet.

Cute little swimming dragon – I gave it to my nephew for his birthday, but due to the focus on the outside of the card, I forgot to write something in it 😛

A basic card in browns

One of my favourite cards, with the Sea Steampunkiness.

Chocolate Baroque stamps and a M-bossability embossing folder.

This frame is still waiting for a cardbase.

Card for a man. Something different.

Side 1 from the skirt. The other side is jeans.

Oh a card from a bird in between. Nothing special to see here, move aling.

The other side of the skirt.

He likes the swirl of skirts. Might be a bit heavy though.

Jeans side. Note that I can’t sew. By that, I mean that ofcourse I can put fabric under a sewing machine, and sew from one side to the other. Straight lines? A complete pattern? (I did look up how to make/draw the circle, but as the jeansfabric was from an old jeans I had to change bits here and there. It’s still like this, I’m stuck at: what kind of band do I put on top and how do I do it without breaking my needle?

Like this card a lot too. VivaLasVegaStamps, text is from Crafter’s Companions.

Canvas. I did do more to it, it’s hardly reconizable. Not prettier, just different 😛

As seen on facebook, my masculine card but trying to stay away from too much brown.

Some glimmerspray

And ofcourse some “relaxing” in the garden with the kids.

scanned card

Creeper from Minecraft (scanned, no picture)

scanned background, loved the look of it.

My youngest son (turned 1 in July)

My oldest son and oldestand youngest daughter.

Spring is pink

I posted a snapshot of the finished background on facebook allready, but here is how I made it.

Put some pink/soft purple tones on the paper, then place the stencil and go over it with a brighter colour. Make sure it’s dry, and use anti-static bag. Put the stencil back in place, dab some embossing ink through it with a sponge, remove the stencil ans sprinkle clear embossing powder on it. Tap off the excess embossingpowder (ofcourse pour it back in the jar) and heat it with the heating tool.

I’m not sure if I added the dots before or after this, could very well be before this step. The dots are a tim holts stencil, and one part was done with mdelling paste and acryllic paint and the other with ink spray I think. Not sure anymore…

 

Next, take some contrasting colours (not too hard, but light) and ink it over the image.

Below the paper is cut in 2, for 2 cards. First picture is with a flash, second without.

This last card turned into this one:

I added the butterfly, it was a precut vellum shape, which I coloured with alcohol inks a while ago. The stamp is from ArtSpecially.

The second card still isn’t finished, I got a very pretty fairy to put on it, but it covers too much of the background. Maybe I should leave it as it is? Less is More? Hmm. but the fairy matches it so well… I guess I’l have to make another background like this.

This is my first entry for the Designs by Ryn May Customer Creation Challenge.

Shere Khan in the jungle

Not sure about this card. Closeup it looks better then from a distance, due to the colours I think. It does look like a moist indian jungle, filled with heavy scents and lots of plants. This was the atmosphere I intended for it. Maybe with a different backing card… At least I used up some scraps again, as the backing card came from my stash, made it a few years ago even when I just started cardmaking I think! I did add some distress stains to it to get more of a camouflage/jungle look.

 

The background was made earlier with bister. I made several backgrounds then and this is the first card made with these backgrounds.

This is my third entry for Designs by Ryn Customer Creation Challenge of April.

Stamps/materials used:

• Tiger – Sheena Douglas Crafters companion
• Text – Sheena Douglas Crafters Companion
• Leaves – Designs by Ryn
• Patio Stone (in the red/orange/yellow background) – Designs by Ryn
• Foam swirl stamp used on the background card.

Here are some other cards I made about half a year ago but I think have never showed.

They started out as scraps, as I had just received these fishes stamps and wanted to try them out. I stamped it on a long strip of blue/green paper, and then decided to play around with it. I cut it up in 3 or 4 scenes, but didn’t take pictures of all the finished cards I think. I know at least one card I gave to my mother for her to use as a birthdaycard for someone.

This one was made later, starting point was the turtle which I hade made a while ago with a background of alcohol inks onto the backing paper which was on the stamp when it arrived.

Watch out for my next post, it contains some cards/half finished cards that are failed or just not right!

A magic song

I was running late for another entry for Designs by Ryn for the March challenge, so I decided to post this for the April challenge instead. And what a coincidence: the main stamp I used is on sale now! And one that I don’t have is on sale as well, so I think I’m going to order that one as a birthday present (ok my birthday has allready passed, and I got myself plenty of hobby-gifts, but hey, one more stamp…or a stamp and stencil…or two…)

How I made this card

Start by gathering pink/lila coloured paints. I don’t really like pink, but I think in a moment of sanity loss I had ordered some pink paint. So I decided to make a very pink card.
Also, I had bought the Winter sheet, to which I’ll refer to as the Celtic sheet from now on – it removes some mental limits to its use. Pink isn’t really a winter colour, so perfect for this stampset (to show that it’s also nice on non-winter cards).

Pour drops of it onto glossy or very smooth A6 cardstock, and press another piece of cardstock on top of it. Wiggle it around a bit, pull apart, turn one cardstock, put togehter again, pull apart, etc. Divide the paint with the papers so the entire surface (or almost all of it) is covered.

Then, spray with glimmer mist (or water, but a tutorial I once saw they used the glimmer mist because of a special reason I forgot). I had also used perlescent paint by the way.

After wetting it, wrap it in kitchenfoil. Wrinkle it and let dry.

Meanwhile, clean your dining table on which you sprayed perfect pearls mist because you managed to leave only 2 small A6 sized spots open to craft on on the edge of your craftsheet.

Ofcourse I have not taken a picture of the results at this point. Wouldn’t want you to spoil the surprise for you, just try for yourself!

I did this technique also with some other colours for another challenge, these are the results near the end. 4 cards, 2 backgrounds, (actually the right paper is where I put on the remaining paint, as I hate to throw away those leftovers.) The paper on top are the colours for the Chocolate Baroque colour challenge.

 

On the next picture you can see the foil effect very well.

HEre too, and here you can see how shiny it is. It is very shiny. A bit too much, so I covered it with stamps and ink. (Ofcourse I wanted to try out the new celtic stamps too.) Colouring the celtic symbols was tricky – I can’t paint inside the thin lines and making everything white is a bit boring. To bring out the figures more I added the blue.

I chose for white embossing this time, as it fit the celtic symbols. Gave the fairy a bronze colour and blue hair, blue and red dress and green/brown leaves/feathers. Some bronze/brown in the wings and harp, and accented the eyes.

 

I like the shiny bit above her head, like the harp produces magic.

Before matting it onto a white card I lightened up the edges a bit with some lila colour.

It could be a winter card still. Or it could just be a mystic summer card. Hope you like it!

Halloween roundup

I’ve been a bit absent lately, mostly due to focussing on getting the house ready to sell, which also means I didn’t have much time for crafting.

So now is a good time to catch up on my backlog of unposted projects!

I’ll start with 2 more hallloween ones, these were also made for the Country View Challenge Blog Guest Designer post, but in the end, I liked the  cat the most. The 4 halloween card I made are portraied here. More information about the unicorn and cat card are in my previous 2 posts.

I actually started with the card with the portrait. I thought spooky portraits, with holes where the eyes should be and a big black void behind it, being watched (If you look closely you can see little red pupils). Somehow chess fits the evil overlord or haunted castle too, so I added the chesspiece with the checkmate words. I loved making the background and almost didn’t want to cover it.

Some steps when making that card:

splattering the cardstock

All dried up.

Start of the grame and original stamped inmage

Black eyes

Almost finished – unfortunately I don’t have pictures of the in between steps of adding the background celar embossed stamp or the other stamps on the background.

The final touches were ofcourse some white highlights and matting the card.

I really liked the fallen over chesspiece, so I went and made another card. It’s from the Chocolate Baroque Chess stamp set.

You can see the light through the card because the background is the border of one of the other cards, which I cut out carefully. I enhanced the back by a little strip of cardstock, and then added another layer (after taking the picture). But I like this effect, I should have left it uncovered.

The shoe-stamps are from VivaLasvegastamps, and I thought they looked kind of spooky here, empty shoes on a dancefloor. The fairytale of the little red shoes, but a bit spookier. (Do you hear footsteps echo through the empty hallway, hear dancing in the ballroom while no one is there?) The branches on the side are coral stamps from Chocolate Baroque and a coral stencil, I embossed alternating in red, black, red, moving the stencil just a lottile so the colours wouldn’t blend too much. I further embossed the edge of the purple card with black. (And I had embossed the chesscastle stamp, shoes, chesspiece, just lots of embossing!)

Last, a card which I didn’t finish, I thought something ancient could be spooky too. I combined two stamps from a Chocolate Baroque stamp set, (after making the background with the very light script).  I made the scratched lines with something that was lying nearby.

Just using the tools at hand.

That’s as far as I got with this, I didn’t know where to go from there. I often don’t make a plan (which probably shows in my cards sometimes), but I go with the moment. But no moment came 😛 Maybe later, another time, I’ll know just the occasion and the way to finish this card or cut it up.

Materials used:

• Chocolate Baroque stamp sets:
  UA5SP0366 The Art of Chess A5 (chess related stamps on first two cards)
  UA5SP0401 Steampunk Butterfly A5 (the bat and the lacey corner on the first card)
  UA4GW0145 Antiquities (Card with the car)
  UA5SP0326 Underwater Kingdom (coral branch on 2nd card)
• Chocolate Baroque: Lady (portrait) – unknown series (was in a grabbag).
• VivaLastvegastamps: shoes
• Christina Renee / Prima Marketing 850029 (frame of the portrait)
• Crafters Workshop Stencil: TCW360s 6×6 Coral.