All of a Flutter

This card was made for a swap on Craft Telly forum where the monthly swap theme was All of a Flutter. The background is made in 2 halfs using a brayer, a Kaleidacolor ink pad (Melon Melody) my cuttlebug to emboss the lower half and stamps by Elusive Images to heat emboss the sparkley Dragonflys and butterflys on the top half. All the stamps for that are on the Butterfly Blush themeplate and I used Stamp N Stuff Kaleidascope EP which changes colour when heated.

The main Butterfly is from another Elusive Images theme plate, this time Just Butterflies. The image was stamped using Adirondack ink in Butterscotch, heat embossed with more of the Kaleidascope EP and then painted using Twinkling H2O paints in colours to coordinate with those in the background. This was mounted onto card cut with Nestabilites dies. The ribbon is from Maya Road.

Apologies and a Tiddley card

I just want to say sorry to friends who's blogs I have not been visiting a lot recently. My old 'puter was getting very wobbly, dying on it's feet actually. Anyhow I had to nurse it along and avoid having it turned on for too long as it was running too hot and getting ready to fry itself. Thankfully the guys in my local computer shop are very cool guys, they kept my old 'puter running for about a year longer than I had expected and they have now built me a nice new one for not too large a number of pennies. Well not too large in the scale of 'puter stuff, but enough pennies to buy rather a lot of rubber stamps with if I hadn't needed the new 'puter.

Anyhow here is a "tiddly" card I made for a swap on Craft Telly Forum recently - the swap theme was to make a small card.. The card is what we refer to in the UK as A7 size - I know I have some American freinds who drop by occasionally so for you guys the card size is close to 1/4 of your American Letter size card which has then been folded in half to make a little card.

The whole thing was made from a piece of lovely pearlescent Moondust card - the butterfly was cut and embossed from some of the Moondust card with my Cuttlebug using one of those dies that has a matching embossing folder. I brayered some ink over the embossed butterfly using a Kaliedacolor ink pad - Calypso if I remember correctly - and finished by adding some sparkle with Stickles glitter glue.

The layer underneath the butterfly was stamped with a small text stamp which I had inked using the same Kaleidacolor pad and the daisy border at the bottom was stamped and embossed with gold EP then painted with Twinking H2Os. I can't recall who made the littel set of text stamps, but the border comes from a set made by Crafty Secrets. The other matting layer was simply another piece of the moondust card which I had coloured with the brayer in the same way as I coloured the butterfly. I did find it was best to give the ink a gentle heat set on this kind of card.

Owl Always Love This Stamp

Yes, it's that Elusive Images owl again, sorry if I am being repetative, but I adore that stamp and it helped me out of a creative hole recently. The "hole" was the monthly swap theme on Craft Telly forum. The theme was to make a "half and half" card. Well at first I just couldn't get an idea of what to make, and then it dawned on me that it would be fun to have a go at making this card with the Wise Owl stamp.

First I cut two rectangles with my nestabilites, one in black and one in white. Next I laid the 2 rectangles on top of each other and cut them in half. The reason I did it this way was so as if my cut was not quite dead center I could match the left hand side piece from one colour with the right hand side piece from the other and still end up with a rectangle that was the same size as my orignal rectangle which would fit on the scalloped nestie layer underneath.

The next step was to join the 2 bits of card together on the back with some masking tape and then stamp the owl with versamark onto the front, postioning the owl as centrally as I could over the centre join. With that done peeled the masking tape off the back of the stamped image taking care not to smudge the versamark impression and seperated the 2 halves. This allowed me to sprinkle white and black embossing poweder over each side without any cross contamination of colour and heat emboss. Once that was done I rejoined the 2 halves and matted them onto the scalloped nestie shape which had also been cut twice in both colours and cut into 2 halves. This in turn was layerd onto 2 more pieces of black and white card which I had edged with a gold Sakura Pentouch pen.

The golden amber eyes were stamped seperately onto white card and embossed with black EP. They were painted with Twinkling H2Os then cut out and stuck down over the original image. The golden card was chosen from my stash to theme with the colour of the owls eyes and was stamped with a stamp from a Graphicus Guild limited edtion stamp using Encore gold metallic ink.

Glitters from Foilplay

Perhaps I should first explain how I got started Cardmaking and Stamping. I got hooked while awaiting surgery. The condition I had would often wake me up in the middle of the night with pain and at 2am there is not really a great deal to watch on Television except for Shopping Channels - I found Create and Craft and got hooked. Through that I ended up becoming a member of a craft forum, Craft Telly, and on that forum I met Winspiration, the owner of Foilplay, and found out that she stocks a fabulous range of glitters..... not sure if I have said this before, but I am a glitter junkie as well as a stamp and ink addict... if it sparkles it's MINE. Anyhow the end result was that I bought some glitters from Win, who I might add offers not only great prices but also excellent service to her customers. The glitters are lovely, ultra fine art quality and have become a mainstay of my craft stash, especially for Christmas cards.

Recently Win asked if some of the forum members would design some cards for her to use to illustrate her products, and she has even sent me some foils to try, so watch this space for my first efforts using foils. But meantime here is my first card for Foilplay using some of Winspirations delicious glitters.

I have used one of my all time favorite stamps, the Floral Spray Themeplate from Elusive Images - an all time favorite because it is such a verstile image. I stamped and then heat embossed the image onto black card using Silver EP. Then applied the glitters from Foilplay using a Sakura Quickie Glue Pen, also supplied by Foilplay. This was mounted onto sliver mirror card and then onto pearlescent card in a lovely amythyst colour that co-ordinates perfectly with the colours of the glitter. Personally I think the end result just looks scrumptious and I wish I could show you the card for real because the camera just does not capture the intensity of the sparkle from the glitter.