Sunday 29 April 2018

Lavinia Stamp Workshop

This weekend I stayed with a friend in the Midlands. We went to a Lavinia Stamps workshop where we attempted 4 cards using a variety of supplies. As we didn't have  a lot of the supplies ourselves there was a lot of sharing going on which meant we had to rush some of the techniques  so that the next person could borrow whatever we were using at that time. Saying that I think we all did a pretty good job.  All the stamps were from the Lavinia collection and I'll list what else we used along side the photos.
Here are the cards we made:-

This one used  Worn Lipstick and pickled Raspberry distress inks spread and spritzed on a mat and the card dabbed onto it to get the mottled effect the moon was simply more ink blended over a mask circle.  Stamped the fairy and the flowers using  purple and black "Versemark Cair" inks. I just used my Stazon for the black ink. We them bleached out the petals of the honeysuckle and highlighted with more distress inks and white  pen. We also edged the moon lightly with the white pen. I splattered some watered inks to the base card and then matted the and adhered the image to the card.
My blooper was to stamp a dandelion onto the page before positioning the fairy so ended up stamping the fairy on top of the dandelion making her winds look very hairy. Still it doesn't look too bad.

The next card is my favourite. The instructor used 3 shades of cream and green of Distress Oxides and brayered them to layer the background the used the inks to stamp the dandelions. I didn't have my brayer with me so I used my blending tool instead the effect was exactly the same as brayering. We then used a fine tip glue to add drops and sprinkled glitter over the top. It doesn't show on the photo but adding the glitter made the card look really lovely.


The 3rd card again used Distress Oxides. We blended and masked the background to look like hills. Like the previous card we masked a circle and dabbed some purple oxide to create the moon. We used second generation stamping to create the trees in the background and 1st generation stamp for the foreground ones, the birds and the hare.  We put the.....  errm..... what do you call them? ... blobs (LOL) at the top by dabbing wet fingers onto the distress Oxides for the oxide to react to the water. Finally we highlighted the hare and moon using a white pen. I think the hare provided was a bit big buts its OK.

The final card we made used a newish water colour paint product called "Brusho". Its a paint powder/crystal that you sprinkle onto wet water colour paper and let the powder react to the water. The more water you spray the more marbled the effect. A light spray  gives the speckled effect. While that was drying we stamped the base card with script I chose blue ink. We stamped the fairy and dandelion seeds and heat embossed with black embossing powder. The fairy element was matted onto black card. I adhered it to the card base using foam pads to give some dimension. Finally edged the card with a black Promarker.
I had done most of these techniques before but not for a long time so it was great to refresh myself on how to use the materials and techniques. It was a great day.
Let me know what you think of the cards........ but please be kind hahaha!

Wednesday 25 April 2018

Eclipse Card

This is a new style of card that I have enjoyed making. It's called eclipse cards, presumably because you have to move the card slightly to see the dimension of the word. The raised word matches the pattern on the rest of the card. It looks more complicated than it actually is.  The word can be cut out using either dies or an electronic cutting machine. I used my Cameo 3.
 You could stamp/draw and colour a design if preferred but I used patterned paper cut slightly smaller than the base card. The paper is from the Docrafts Chronology Steampunk collection.
 I placed the paper onto my cutting mat and created the name choosing "Rockwell extra bold" font sizing it to ensure it fitted the paper.  If you don't have an electronic cutting machine simply line up your letter dies  and secure with some masking tape so the letters don't move when feeding through your  cutting machine. Keep all the letters they'll be needed later.

 Next I cut out 4 of each letter using the same card as the base and adhered the letters on top of each other to create thick letters. Alternately you could cut the letters again using funky foam and adhere the patterned letters to that to get dimension.
I then adhered the letters cut from the patterned paper on top of each coordinating letter.

I matted the pattern paper, with the letters missing, onto the base card. 
Next I adhered each letter back into the spaces left on the pattern paper making sure the letters matched the pattern. If you use a word than more than one of the same letter it is important to make sure that the letters go into the correct space so the pattern still matches the whole design.
Because the paper was quite dark and heavily patterned I edged the letters with black Wink of Stella glitter pen so they stood out a little more.


This is another eclipse card I made for a female. Again I used my Cameo 3 to cut out the letters also the "Birthday" which left  the base card showing underneath.  The  fonts used were Impact and Milkshake. Because there were 2 letter P's I had to make sure each one was placed in the correct space to match the pattern.  The pattern paper was from my stash. If You would like the cutting file for the Happy Birthday card you can download it HERE. The zip file contains .studio, .svg and .pvgc formats.
I found these cards fun to make!






Sunday 22 April 2018

Inserting photo into a shape in Silhouette Studio

Following my last post showing my grandsons' photos inside a shape on their scrapbook page I thought I'd quickly show you how I did it. It is so so so easy in the Silhouette Software. I simply drew a shape and dragged a photo from my desktop into the shape. That is all.
The recording is a silent screen recording which I think its easy to follow. I could cut out the shape using my Cameo machine, using print and cut, or I could just print and cut it out by hand.




You can download the free software from the Silhouette America website. The link is HERE

1st Day at school

I've hardly done any scrapbooking in ages but had to record my two eldest grandsons first day at school! There is only a few weeks between their ages so the cousins started at school on the same day although at different school.  I used paper from my old stash so unfortunately I can't remember who they are by.   The wording and the quarter circles are all cut using my Cameo 3.  The wording was curved and welded onto a circle and used as a base shape for the segments that were layers indifferent colours. The beauty of the Studio software that comes with the machine is that it allows you to insert photos into any given shape you create. You simple create your shape and drag and drop your photo into that shape and voila! The apple and crayons are clipart images that I printed and cut again  using my Cameo. I finished it off by edging the page with "Peeled Paint" Distress Ink. A simple but lively page.
You don't have to have a cutting machine to use the Silhouette Studio software because things like the photo shapes and images imported to the software can be printed off then cut by hand. The software is free so if you'd like to try it out you can down load it from the Silhouette America Website.

Bye bye for now, I hope to see you next time!

Saturday 21 April 2018

Water Colour Card

To get my mojo back up I have been making a few cards and trying out a few different techniques.

This is my first attempt at creating flowers using  "Akashiya Sai" water colour marker pens because I thought this might be a good way to start using water colours. Hubby kindly bought me the pens from Amazon. Paints might be a challenge for the future.

 I watched a tutorial by MozART Supplies on Youtube  and then had few goes.  You can see the tutorial HERE.  I was pleased with this one but clearly have to practise some more. Rather than waste  my effort I decided to make a card. I cut out the flower design and layered it to plain white card  using foam pads to give it some dimension. That was  matted it onto gold mirroir card adhered to plain white card.

I  created the sentiment by using my new "Go Press and Foil" machine which I got for my birthday two months ago. I foiled the sentiment onto the card before layering it all.


I found it dificult to take this photo without the metallic elements of the card from glaring hence the shadow on the bottom of the picture but at least you get to see how it turned out.



Next time I'll show you another type of card, I wonder what it'll be?

Hello Friends!

Hello friends!
 After  a few years break I've decided to return to blogging.. well that's my plan anyway!
 I haven't done a great deal of crafting in the last couple of years but now I'm back to good health and have retired I have more time to relax and enjoy myself getting covered in glitter, glue and paint!

Unfortunately I made the big mistake of getting rid of my previous blog ( of the same name) and deleted the whole thing. I lost all the contents and files I had there so I'm starting  again from scratch. My advice to anyone wanting a break from blogging just deactivate your blog but don't get rid of  it totally because you never know  if you'll want to start again in the future......... that's a lesson I've learned today.

Please feel free to follow my progress as I attempt to rebuild my blog. I'm amazed at how much I've forgotten about setting up a blog. I hope to add more features as I go along. I'm charging up the battery on my camera so watch this space........