New Year's Resolution 'I must blog regularly'

New Year, new me. Well that's my intention today, of course by the end of next week it could be different.

I am determined though to try and maintain my blog a lot better than I have been doing. I let Christmas card making and Christmas present making get on top of me and haven't posted in ages.

To make up for it I am going to post a few cards I made at the end of last year and also the first two of 2010.

The first card was made for a forum member over on CraftTelly.com's birthday.
The background paper is Basic Grey from the Lemonade collection. I overlayed two ribbons to give the effect I was after and the flowers are prima. The mat behind the image is a metallic foil embossed with a cuttlebug folder and cut out with a label nestie. The image itself is from Incy Wincy and she is called Chelsea and I coloured her with prismas/OMS.

The next pic was also for a CT.com member's birthday and the background paper is from the Tiffany collection of WRMK. The pattern is a Martha Stewart Deep Edger Punch. The image is from my favourite deisner Mo Manning and is called Patience. Again coloured with prismas and OMS.

Now to my first card for this decade. Well it sounded smarter than 'this year'.


The background here I created from a paper in my stash, which i scanned in and then embossed using my graphics program's settings. This turned the paper grey and I added colour to it afterwards. I confess to having got the idea from the lovely Sharon Duncan who creates a range of cds called 'Embossibilities'. This one I have not got the settings quite right, I should have scanned at a better resolution to start with as the end product to my mind looks slightly wishy washy. The papers on the mats are a combination of K&Co and MyMind'sEye. The stamp is a gorgeous one called Vogue Silhouette dress, which I stamped with Distress Ink called peeled paint, dragging the colour out from the edge and away from the image with a paintbrush. I then stamped the image again onto acetate which I had previously backed with double sided self adhesive film, and then glittered with some ultra fine glitterm and matted it onto the previously stamped image. I did try using plain glue but I either had it too thick, and it just didn't want to dry under the glitter or too thin and the glitter looked patchy. Suffice to say my whole upstairs now looks like it has been in a battle with the Glitter Fairy and lost! I even have glitter on my birthday flower boquet's leaves!

The little message mat was a promise I made myself. I discovered an entire container of die cuts which have never seen the light of day. I promised myself that I would try to use at least one of them on all future cards until they are gone or I am sick of the sight of them. I was successful here and used two! The next card, however, none of them looked right so none got used up here.

The final card is for a friend's birthday.
The whole card is made from items from Graphicus, apart from the flower and small gem centre. The background is from the pack I got when I joined their Guild. A whole slew of the lushest papers you could wish for. The gorgeous lady is from a matching peacock stamp sheet, as are the small peacocks.

I stamped the lady with versafine black and let her dry. Then I went over the black areas of her (apart from her hair) with an opalite inkpad. These look good on dark card, but it does depend on where the light is coming from as to whether or not you get the true beauty of them. I have included a smaller pic, taken at an angle, which I hope shows it as green. I also edged the mat I stamped onto with black ink and also the opalite green. I then used Inktense pencils to colour the rest of her in.

The peacocks were from the same stamp sheet, and I stamped them onto shrink plastic, and the one with his feathers on display I coloured in with Sakura Stardust pens.

Sorry for length of post.