You Warm My Heart and Faux Ribbon Technique

The Design Team have just received this month's stamp set from Creative Expressions.

It's the rather wonderful "Butterfly girl set by Sam Poole" and the "Bubble Wrap background stamp also by Sam Poole".

I couldn't wait to cut them up and get stamping!
For my card I decided to follow the CAS route. And in playing about with distress stains for another project I came across a very simple technique that gives the effect of a ribbon across the card without actually using a ribbon. I'm going to call it the Faux Ribbon Technique. From a distance it certainly looks quite effective! A great way of creating a ribbon without adding another layer and hence great for one layer cards.

 So what do you do....simply drag the bottle of distress stain across the paper or card, start a little before the edge of your card and finish a little after your card otherwise you get a dot at each end.

I used the bubble wrap stamp at the bottom of my card with spun sugar distress ink and then stamped the heart balloons and hanging sign in black archival. The sentiment was from Sam Poole's art sayings that we had last month. I coloured the hearts and hanging sign using cosmic shimmer paint from the summer set. Once the paint was dry I coated the hearts, strings and sign with glossy accents.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

"Love to create - anything goes"
"Make it Monday - Anything goes"
"Pile it on - Make your own embellishment", mine's faux ribbon...bit cheeky I know!
"Robyn's Fetish - No flowers anywhere"
"2 Sisters - Anything goes"
"ATCs and cards with attitude - Anything goes"
"Dilly Beans - Dots"
"CASual Fridays - Pretty in Pink" might get disqualified...wasn't sure if you weren't allowed to enter the challenge more than 4 times or enter more than 4 other challenges.

A Trip to Paris - I wish!

Hi, can you believe the weather, one minute it's winter and the next it's high summer.  The garden is really confused!  The veggies don't seem to want to grow and every time the flowers recover a bit, along comes another torrential downpour to strip them all off again! 

Just one thing to do then....stay inside and craft!

This week's make using "Sam Poole's Art Sayings stamp plate" is a tag.

The tag was cut from mount board and then painted in Eco green paints. I stamped and distressed this with distress ink and stamps from the Just Rite greetings from Paris and Bon Voyage sets.

The tickets were stamped onto die cuts using Spellbinders Small Labels. Tickets and the large tag were spritzed with gold cosmic shimmer and edged in gold.

I dyed some chalk white seam binding with tumbled glass distress ink (I didn't have a stain or reinker, so I did this directly from the ink pad). I attached this to my tag and then ripped up some cream and blue mulberry papers, these I stitched together and then added a stamped image of the Eiffel tower. I coated the Eiffel tower in glossy accents.

The flowers were made from brown parcel wrapping paper using the Spellbinders Rose Creations die.  Each layer of the flower has a hole in the centre when you punch them out, so I fix them together with a brad.  To get a more realistic flower centre I coat the brad with glossy accents and them smother it in micro beads.  The leaves were cut from coloured card using a Spellbinders foliage die. Before sticking these onto the tag I spritzed them with silver and gold cosmic shimmers.

Et Voila! a Paris themed tag.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:

"Cup cake craft - something in the eyelet"

"Make it Monday - Anything goes"

"Simon Says Stamp and Show-Show a bit of brown"

"Gingerloft - Vintage"

"Great Impressions - Die Cuts or Punches"

"One Stitch at A Time - Stitch it"

"Quirky crafts - Hand made flowers and ribbons"

"Lets ink it up - use your fave embellishments", need you ask, hand made flowers, ribbons, tags and glossy accents!

Splish, Splash, Splat!

The new ""Tanda Teaser" is all about throwing your paint/inks about and generally making a mess!!

And most of all having fun!

I needed to make an anniversary card for an old college friend and I wanted something a bit edgy...not mushy.  I stamped in black archival and then did a splat, splat with fired brick distress stains.  Once dry I went over the stamped image with glossy accents giving a wrought iron sort of effect.

I used the same distress stain to dye my seam binding to finish the card off.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:
"Paper Shelter- Anything goes"
"Craft your passion - anything goes"
"The ribbon girls - use ribbon or lace"
"Speedy and friends - Black and white and a splash of colour"

More Art Sayings and something new....

Another week has flown by and so it's time to share another project using "Sam Poole's Umount Art Saying stamp set" , but before I share that with I want to just let you know that Creative Expressions have just started a new blog which you can find "here" it is a great way to see what's new at Creative Expressions and also it has links to the whole design team's blogs so you can see what we are all up to!

This month, the idea is that we combine the text with other stamps available from Creative Expressions.  This week I have combined my word stamp with the campion and bee stamps on the Eco Green Garden Chic set.  My tag was cut from a mountboard off cut that I was given by a picture framer.  I covered this with eco green paint and used PVA glue to get the crackle effect...I'm not sure I did it correctly as my crackle is barely visible, but it is there. Before stamping, I sprayed the tag with cosmic shimmer.

I coloured my stamps using distress markers and stamped the flowers across the bottom of the tag.  I used first and second impressions to get depth.  I used the green distress ink to distress the edges of the tag and the fine tip of the green distress maker was perfect to quickly draw in some grasses amongst the flowers.

I stamped the bee onto cream card and cut it out, this was mounted onto the main tag using some thick double sided tape to give it dimension.  I then cut out a small tag, just big enough to take the words.  The tag was sprayed in cosmic shimmers and the words stamped in the same ink as the bee.  I ran a line of gold Krylon pen around both tags.  I coated the be and three of the flower stems with glossy accents, again to add a bit more dimension.

While the glossy accents was drying I dyed some chalk white seam binding with Victorian Velvet Distress stain.  When everything was dry I finished the tag with seam binding top and bottom. I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges:
"The Cheerful stamp pad - in the garden"
"Craft your passion - anything goes"
"Love to create - Recycle something", I've recycled waste mountboard off cuts.
"Make it Monday - Always anything goes"
"Simon Says Stamp and Show - Anything goes"
"Emergency crafters - Anything with wings"
"Stamping for the weekend - bugs and butterflies"
"Totally Papercrafts - doodle on it"
"Inspire me Fridays - anything goes"

Make Your Mark!

Just playing catch up here....there has been so much to fit into the last week!  Working extra hours and the National Schools Regatta with my daughter.
I guess all the jubilee celebrations today got me into the red white and blue mode when I came to design a card for the next Creative Expressions project using Sam Poole's stamps.  I have to admit that I did get a lot of  inspiration for this from "Kim Dellow's" card. After using Distress stains to dye seam binding, my next favourite thing to do with them is to make great big juicy splats.  I thought the sentiment for this would be perfect for my daughter when she goes off to Falmouth University to start her Degree
(grades permitting) in Graphic Design.

The card is very simple....three ink splats (Chipped sapphire and Fired Brick), I used picket fence on the word stamps to stamp on the ink splats and chipped sapphire to stamp the make your mark on life sentiment onto a die cut label.  The seam binding was dyed using the chipped sapphire distress stain.  A button and bakers twine finish the card off.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

"Moving along with the times - Red White and Blue"
"Craft your days away - Red white and Blue"
"Less is More - Red White and Blue"
"Speedy and Friends - Use Buttons"
"Delightful challenges - Red White and Blue"

I just want to finish this post by saying congratulations to my daughter for Friday.  She and her friend Emily were entered into the National Schools Regatta held at Holme Pierpoint in Nottingham where the Olympic rowers train.  They had to take part in a time trial to see if they could get through to the semifinal heats.  They completed the 1000 m in 4 mins 5.7 seconds, unfortunately they missed out by .7 of a second.  But they did incredibly well considering Emily has only been rowing since September and this is only their second competition.  Their coaches are really pleased with how they performed as this is the toughest regatta for school aged kids where the opposition is all the elite private school rowers.  Emily and Sarah were rowing for little old Stourport Boat club.  I'm just sharing a picture of the girls in action,  Emily and Sarah are in the nearest boat, Emily in the front and Sarah in the rear.  If you are in the UK, enjoy the rest of the weekend!