Xmas Lace

Do you ever see something in a shop or online and know exactly what you will do with it?  I had one of those moments when I saw the lace I have used on this card.

The lace is 9cm wide and so lush.  I bought it at Wild Orchid Crafts where I buy all of my flowers.  I have laced lilac ribbon through the center.  It was just begging for something to go there.  My background paper is from a HOTP paper pack that I bought at least 6 years ago.  I have so much paper and card that I sometimes forget the old gems I have stashed away.  If you click on the picture, you will be able to see the lilac flat back pearls that I have added to the lace.

I made the frame to go round my image by inking with milled lavender distress ink.  I then debossed a swirly pattern on to it using a Cuttlebug embossing folder that I had inked with Duty Concord distress ink.  I added a bit more dusty concord to finish it off.  The snowflake stamp is one that I got free with a magazine last year.  I have used clear iridescent glitter glue on the snowflake and around the edge of the frame, but for some reason it turns up green in my photo.  I have also added ivory flat back pearls to the snowflake.

I will be entering this card into the following challenges:-

Allsorts Challenge Blog - Lavender and lace

My time to craft - Punches and dies.  I have used two different dies on this one.

The Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - White plus one other colour

Tri Acetate

I like tri-fold  cards and have been wondering for a while if it is possible to make one out of acetate.  The answer is YES and it wasn't as tricky as I thought it would be.

I started buy marking out my folds on a sheet of paper and then the rest was easy.  Normally when I make one of these cards i use my embossing tool to mark and score where I need to fold.  It's not as easy to do with acetate, especially when you use flittered acetate.

I have used Kanban Flittered acetate to make this card.  All of the design is made using glitter and it give your card something a little bit extra.

I will be entering this card for the "Acetate challenge" over at Totally Papercrafts and for the "Cards for all occasions" over at Craft Your Passion. 

Naughty or nice

I find making card s for men really hard.  I really have to think about them.  Can't go too crazy with flowers, don't want to over do it with the ribbon and just how much is too much on the embellishments?

Kenny K's Krafty girlz challenged us to use two or more girls on our card this week and to use die cuts.  This card instantly popped into my head.  Well if you see the Christmas images available it just made good sense.

I had the "Santa Claus is coming to town" tune going around in my head when I was looking through the digis that I have.  I have promised myself that I would make more effort to make more Christmas cards now and not leave it till the last minute panic I had last year for people I had forgotten.

This is inside the card.  ll of the working was attached using foam pads to give them a bit of height.  I have edged the different elements with peeled paint distress ink and all of the fur trim bits have been glitter glued in clear iridescent.  

I will also be entering this card for the challenges at :-

One Stop Craft Challenge - Just for men

The Crafty Pad - One for the boys

Bound in lilac love.

Yes I'm sorry.  Another binder.  If you have not been to my blog before, you may not have seen my other two binders.  I have been decorating them to store my acrylic stamps in.  This is my third.  I have gone for different looks with each of them.

I wanted to show a different side to my crafting with this one.  It is a lot more personal in a lot of ways.  I actually have a hand written message on this one, which is unusual for me as I hate my hand writing.  I have embossed the edges of the doily and along the pen design.  there are two different widths of ribbon on this tag.

I love the pen nib design along the edge of this paper, so it was important to me that it didn't get covered too much.  I couldn't resist adding the lace and ribbon though.  Lilac flat back pearls work well with so many different projects, don't you think?

There is a lot going on with this binder, feathers, gems, lace and ribbon, tags flowers and more.  This wasn't a planned project, it has been very much go with the flow.  My favorite colour is purple.  Think aubergine (eggplant) or a rich plum.  There are varying shades of it all over this project.

I will be entering this binder in the following challenges:-

Allsorts - 5 Flowers

Kaboodle Doodles - The Pretty doily

Simon Says - Anything goes

Totally Papercrafts - Autumn - I have used what I consider to be autumn wedding colours.

The ABC Challenge - Anything goes 

We Three Kings

I'm still working on making simple cards.  I'm one of those people who don't feel that  a card is finished until it have flowers or ribbon or more on it.

This card was made by folding one sheet of A4 pearlescent card.

I added gold glitter border peel offs, two Kanban toppers and a couple of peel off snowflakes, which started off silver, so I had to colour them with a gold leaf pen.

I like this sentiment.  Simple bit effective.

I will be entering my card for the following challenges:-

Allsorts - Keep it simple

Crafty Creations - Clean and simple

My Time To Craft - Musical Medley - We three kings (Hymn/carol)

Bound in Orange

If you have been to my blog before, you may have seen a binder that I altered called Bound in Blue.  I made it to give my acrylic stamps a home and soon realised that I needed more.  I had to buy another two binders in fact.

Sorry.  Lots of pictures again.  I have started documenting how I make things. What works and what doesn't.  It means that I take a massive load of pictures of each project.  This is just a sample.

I got these chip board letters as part of a scrapbooking kit that I used to subscribe to.  They have never fitted in with a project I was making so they have been in my stash for about 5 years or so.  It suddenly occurred to me that they didn't need to stay this colour, so I inked and embossed them.

Voila, new letters that I can use.

My background paper was crated using mustard seed, dried marigold, spiced marmalade, rusty hinge and fired brick distress inks.  I have stamped and embossed a rose and a gate and fence along the bottom.  I have decorated a couple of the letters with mosaic mirror tiles.  First time I have used them and they turned out to be easy to use.

I bought this pair of earrings for a pond.  they are pretty long and I liked the tassels.  I've never worn them as they were bought specifically for my crafting projects.  Since I started using jewellery in crafting I have problems not seeing component parts that I can use in cards.  It's no longer just some thing to wear, I look at bits  more as what I can make out of them.  It's great.

I removed the hook from the earring and have hot glued the whole thing to my binder.  I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, as I had no plan for how it would look when I started it.  I just sort of played.


I am entering this binder for the following challenges:-

Crafty Cats Weekly Challenge - Autumn
Just Us Girls - Fall 3D project
Sparkles Forum Challenges - Something that sparkles - I have used a number of gems on this.

Bound in Blue

At the moment all of my acrylic stamps are stored in a drawer and it is a bit frustrating finding the one that I want.  I bought this A5 binder from Paperchase for £3 to store them in.

It was just begging to be altered/decorated.

This is the backing paper I created using Faded jeans, Broken china, Shabby shutters and black soot.  I also used Black embossing powder and clear iridescent embossing powder for sparkle.  I had a lot of fun creating this.

The frame is made from grunge paper which I painted with crackle paint and then inked with faded jeans, Tea dye and vintage photo before coating with more clear iridescent embossing powder to give this sparkly effect.

You really need to click on this image to see the details.  There are close up pictures of the different areas here

I will be entering my binder in the following challenges.

Allsorts challenge blog - Alter or recycle

Creatalicious Challenge - Anything goes

Creative Inspirations - Anything goes

Fab N Funky - Bingo card (embellishment/ribbon/diecuts) (Embellishment/digi stamp/flowers)

MAWTT - Sparkle