CCM Spotlight on …… Decoupage

This fortnight over at the Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight blog we are spotlighting decoupage. If you have never tried this popular craft but want to try there is an excellent tutorial on the blog by our very own Mandy.

We are sponsored for this challenge by Technique Junkie Newsletter.

"The Technique Junkie Newsletter was started in 2002 as a resource for Rubber Stamping Techniques. The Newsletter is published every-other month, featuring 15 or more stamping techniques in step-by-step format.

Each technique has a corresponding pictorial online, and a full page of inspirational artwork by the talented Technique Junkie Newsletter Designers. To date, over 600 Techniques have been published, by far the largest and most extensive library of rubber stamping tutorials available.

Our newest CD has over 79 cutting and embossing machine tutorials with over 850 techniques. The prize would be an Emboss or Die CD (Value $17.95). "

Now that’s a prize I would love to win.

My decoupage is from Reddy Crafts from their Faerie Poppets diecut decoupage range. Now there are some who think if you are not cutting then you are not properly decoupaging, but I say anything for an easy life! Having said that I have a friend who loves nothing more than cutting and sticking!

Anyhow I have had this little beauty for a very long time now, having bought her from Create and Craft ages ago, and then deciding that as there were other things I preferred she was relegated to the back of beyond in my craft room, so when Mandy suggested this theme I knew I had some lovely designs I could dust off.

The backing paper was from the same kit. I stuck the BP to some card and then pricked a Cosy Corner embroidery pattern on the corner and stitched it in three different colours of Joy Crafts Sparkle thread.

Stitching really is my first love, but it’s so time consuming. You need to choose a design and what it will go with, then prick it (which kills my hand) and finally choose your colours and stitch. Be aware if you want to stitch through card you need to be prepared to work with shorter lengths of thread as the fibres in the card can split the fibres in the thread causing them to fray back to the nylon filament that often runs through the middle of the fancier metallic and sparkle threads.

A few butterflies cut from some ribbon finish it off.

My Niece has her eye on this to give to her Mum (my Sis) for her upcoming birthday, so she will soon be fluttering out of my craft room.

I’m popping this into the following challenges:-

The Alphabet Challenge Blog – Up is for Up in the Air (Fairy and Butterflies)

Flutterby Wednesday – Anything Goes as long as it has a butterfly, angel or fairy

Little Red Wagon – Butterflies

One Stop Craft Challenge – Angels and Fairies

Crafty Creations – In Stitches

Sugar Creek Hollow – Sensational Stitching

Wee Memories – Anything goes

Mirror, Mirror ….

I had a good browse through all the lovely creative talents that make up Stitchy Bear Stamps on Friday and treated myself to some downloads. Some new designs by Delicious Doodles particularly caught my eye as I was looking for something a bit different.

The image I have used here is called Steampunk Fairy. I coloured her in with Promarkers and Copics and also shaded with Polychromos! That’s a lot of colouring, lol

Anyhow, having coloured her I was trying to work out how to put her onto a project so in the meantime whilst my brain was cogitating and going over some ideas I decided to cut a few of my new nestie tags out. I bought a lovely set for framing sentiments. I cut one of them out in this lush green card and it suddenly came to me how it would make a gorgeous vintage looking mirror frame if I turned it the other way up.

Now I had my idea. I used BPs from Artylicious from their Filigree Fusion cd which I printed at 8”square and then trimmed down to 6” square. Sometimes printing smaller makes things look overcrowded so it can be better to print larger and trim some bits off.  I distressed around the edge and then added some inks from a Big N Juicy inkpad and dipped the edges into Sheena Wow Holo powder and embossed.  I used the same holo powder to add some bling to the fairy’s wings.

I cut a strip of card to match the ‘mirror’ frame and layered some purple ribbon over the top.

I then had to flip the Steampunk Fairy so she is facing the other way and print, colour and cut her out to fit into the mirror, which I first backed with some silver mirri card. Unfortunately I hadn’t decided on this design when I first coloured her so I couldn’t remember what colours I used in her hair, but I figured it might look slightly different in a mirror anyway.

The sentiment I decided on I based on the Snow White wicked queen speech to her mirror, but as my fairy is only a dastardly DIVA not a wicked witch, I made my own version of the rhyme,

Mirror, Mirror Don’t be Shy …… tell EVERYONE how gorgeous am I. Poor grammar I know but ‘I am’ didn’t rhyme!

I printed this onto safmat. After it was printed and put in place I coloured up some gems to match the wording, and placed them inside all the Os. I put three buttons on the ribbon strip and added gems coloured in the same way to the holes the thread would go through.

I am entering this into

Haunted Design House's Macabre Monday – Dastardly Divas

Crafts and Me – Anything Goes

Scrapbook Sisters – Anything Goes

Wee Memories – Anything Goes

Alphabet Challenge Blog – U is for Up In the Air

Paper Crafting Journey – Up in the Air

One Stop Craft Challenges – Angels & Fairies

Do You Stack Up Challenge – Shine On (all the gems and the fairy’s wings)

Little Miss Muffet – Brads, Gems and Pearls

ABC Challenge Q is for Quilting/Sewing

Welcome to another exciting week of the ABC Challenge. This weeks, Challenge: Q is for Quilting or sewing, is being sponsored by Stamp Fairy. Be sure to check out the store because there are so many cute whimsy digistamps for all sorts of projects!

The winner will received a $9.00 Gift Certificate to use at Stampfairy.com!

Don’t forget to check out the DT cards whilst you are over at ABC as there are some corkers there.

I need, again, to apologise for the poor quality of my picture, light was dreadful and just didn’t seem to suit the colours on my card.

The BPs are Basic Grey Marjolaine, with a smattering of some gorgeous marble design paper from LeCrea.

Normally for a sewing challenge I like to stitch by hand a nice embroided motif or frame, but being a bit short of time I thought I would get the sewing machine out. Firstly it took me an hour to find the thread box. I had put it away somewhere really safe, but apparently the only person it was safe from was ME!

Next if it could go wrong, it went wrong. I broke a needle. The new needle jammed. The bobbin jammed. It was dropping stitches all over the place and breaking thread like there was no tomorrow. So instead of the fancy stitch I had decided to use I had to use a straightfoward running stitch. So I either need a new machine or I should stick to what I always do, prick a pattern by hand and embroider by hand.

Here is the card again in a slightly different light, no direct sunlight. The first one is too washed out and this one seems to be too dull/flat.

I’m entering this into a few challenges:-

Creative Cowgirls – Monochromatic Any colour (mine is clearly green)

Cupcake Craft Challenges – Monochromatic

Ladybug Craft Inks TLT - Monochrome

Crafty Creations – In Stitches

Digital Tuesday Challenge – Button Up

Crafts and Me – Anything Goes

Sugar Creek Hollow – Anything Goes

A quick bit of news before I go. I took Poppy to the Vet to be weighed so I could get the correct worming treatment and in one month she has doubled her weight! So I must be doing something right.

Dream Valley Challenges #3 Mother’s Day

It’s challenge time again at Dream Valley Challenges. Thanks again to everyone that entered our last challenge, we had some amazing entries! Check the blog later for our prize winner and top 3 pick.

On to this fortnightly challenge, it’s an easy one!

MOTHER'S DAY

As here in the UK it is almost Mothering Sunday we would like to see a MUM creation! Remember this can be anything, doesn't have to be just a card!

This fortnight we are sponsored by Digi’s with Attitude and the prize is $10 Canadian to spend in their online store.

I have some lovely memories of Mother’s Day, or Mothering Sunday to give it it’s correct title. Where I live there is a road called ‘The Avenue’ which has daffodils planted all along the verges and under the lime trees. For as far back as I can remember the local children would pop up to Church for the morning service and on the way home to come via The Avenue and pick Mum a bunch of Mother’s Day Daffs. You could see when it was Mother’s Day, one day the verges would be full to bursting of bright yellow flowers and by the Monday, mainly just the green leaves. In all those years I don’t think there has been a year when the daffs were not out in time.  Nor have I ever heard of anyone complaining at the kids picking flowers. In fact when I was very small my local church used to have buckets of daffs in the church and you would be encouraged to go grab your Mum a handful! Perhaps they were trying to stop us picking the ones outside!!

So onto my creation.

Well sadly I no longer have a Mum as she died in 2000, and I haven’t made a Mother’s Day card since, but this is a challenge so I sorted through some stamps to see what might be suitable. Unfortunately I couldn’t use the Sponsor’s images as my printer was broken at the time. Anyhow a Rachelle Miller stamp seemed appropriate so I stamped it onto watercolour card and coloured it in with Inktense Watercolour Pencils.

The papers are mainly from Artylicious’ CD Essence of Nature, apart from the one with the hearts and that is a digital paper I’m afraid I printed a while back and cannot recall what set it comes from. Apologies to the designer. Note to self, pencil in the name of something on the back when you print and store!

The flowers are from my stash mostly from Wild Orchid Crafts, the turquoise coloured bits are actually white stamens which I took apart and dyed with Glimmer Mists, and the two porcelain embellishments are from K & Co and a set I have had for ages.

Inside is a sentiment which was appropriate for the image and so very true.

Apologies for the awful quality of the main picture but the light was absolutely dreadful yesterday and clearly I would never make a genius with the photo editing software!

I am entering this into the following challenges:-

Sparkles Forum Challenge – Mother’s Day

Craft Your Days Away – For Mum or a Special Lady

Easy Craft Projects-Challenges – For Mum

Crafty Catz Weekly Challenge – Mother’s Day

The Stamp Man – Mother’s Day

Stampin’ For the Weekend – Mother’s Day

Digi Doodle Shop’s Best – Anything Goes

Sugar Creek Hollow – Anything Goes

Card Makin’ Mamas – Animals

See you back here Wednesday for the ABC Challenge

Poppy Pics

See me, now who knew I could be this cute – 28th February Is this what they mean by ‘a bad hair day’ – 28th February Here is what happens when you leave the Poppy unattended with an empty yoghurt pot and a tissue on the coffee table!

The brown bits are not puppy poo! Although several times I have very gingerly bent down to remove them. The manufacturers of those chewies should definitely consider a different colour! Here is Poppy in her brand new harness – 1st March Having a cuddle with Em and Oakley 14th MarchAnd for comparison 24th January – What a difference 7 weeks makes Look Mum no hands! 14th March Now what did you want to go and do that for !?!?!? – Poppy’s first shower 19th March   Poppy will be 5 months old on Wednesday and is turning into quite a little monkey. If it’s not tied down she likes to destroy it, including my feet. But I am so glad I got her as she is a constant source of smiles.

Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight – Make your own Papers

 

Oooh its all exciting over at Crafty Cardmakers spotlight challenges this fortnight!  Firstly we've moved!  Crafty Cardmakers challenges will run as usual but the spotlight challenges now have their very own blog to develop a bit more!  They do lean towards the more challenging of challenges, less of the ‘use two buttons, a ribbon and the colour blue’ and more of a ‘show us what you can do with two old loo roll inners and some sticky back plastic (Tracy Island springs to mind). Seriously though the Spotlight blog is all about challenging yourself to do something a bit different, and just to kick things off this fortnight the challenge is to make your own papers. Now they can be digital if you like, or you can get inking, embossing, stamping, or as I have done, make your papers from something other than paper!

The new blog is here - Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight Challenges
We also have some new teamies added to the existing team just to throw in some more diversity and skills and these are...

Paula - A New Beginning

Tracy - Scrapcat's Scribbles

Cazro - Cazro's Crafty Corner

Benita - Smudged! by Benita

Jacki - Cards by Jacki

Uma - A Sense of Uma

I'm sure you'll agree a talented bunch from newbies up to more veteran, but we are not revealing which are the newbies and which have creaking parts (craftwise that is), that’s for you to discover yourselves.

The new challenge which was set by Josephine is to Make your own designer papers. As there is a fab prize from The Stamping Boutique up for grabs I would give it a whirl, in fact if I hadn’t had to enter my own team design I would have been going for this one myself, cos their designs are to die for.

So enough of the waffling and down to business

My card has been created with angelina fibres. I won’t bore you with the before pics, but these are the two layers of fibres I created with an iron and a craft sheet. I am sure even the newbies amongst you can find tutorials on Youtube if necessary.

I put the blue layer down first onto a 6” square card blank and then layered the pink/lemon layer over the top. Having secured them both with pva, I then stamped into opposite corners with an Inkadinkado stamp with memento grape jelly ink. I didn’t want to use black as I thought it might be too stark. But the grape jelly was a little bit paler than I was aiming for.

My image Swan Song, from The Stamping Boutique was printed onto watercolour paper and then coloured with Inktense pencils, with a little angel dust on her wings and some diamond glaze on the water. I layered her over a doily which I had inked to match the background using Tattered Rose and Scattered Straw DIs.

A dolphin charm and some seam binding which I dyed myself to tone in, and a decorative pin finishes it off.

This pic shows the card at an angle as you can’t really see the lovely shimmery backing that Angelina Fibres make in the pic taken from above.

I’m entering this into the following

A1 Factory – Things with Wings

Bling It On – Anything Goes with Optional Charm

Digi Doodle Shop – Anything Goes

Do You Stack Up – Add A Bow

Finally before I close, my apologies for this being so late this week. Two weeks ago my printer died, just as I was about to print out the Swan Song image for my card. My new printer arrived yesterday but it took me 4 hours to install it. For some reason it took exception to my old usb printer cable. Finally in desperation I called my neighbour and he very kindly lent me a cable, and bingo it worked.

I shall hopefully be posting some pics of Poppy in the next day or so. So if you want to see how she is progressing please pop (no pun intended) back.

ABC Challenge P is for Pearls

Good morning all. It’s time for another Challenge over at ABC, and today we are bringing you P is for pearls. Our sponsor this week is Whiff Of Joy and on offer is this gorgeous stamp

This is my interpretation of the challenge

Sadly, I actually didn’t have any pearls, oh dear! Luckily I do have some lovely pearl beads though so I made a couple of pearl pins, which I used to embellish the floral decoration. The image is a Whiff Of Joy stamp called Willow Sitting and I have coloured her with promarkers and shaded with prisma pencils.

The BPs are bazzill for the plain blue and K&Co from an old pad I have had for years. The butterflies are resin embellishments and the floral piece is from the latest Marianne dies. The filigree part I used up a piece of paper from Prima which I managed to ruin after a disastrous attempt to stamp directly onto it went horribly wrong, but there was all this pretty floral image around the outside which I had trimmed off for later. The dies are all filigree designs, but for the flower I ran a piece of the blue bazzill through my BS with just the embossing mat instead of a cutting mat next to the die and it very neatly embossed the flower instead of cutting it out, which meant I could put a solid shape beneath the filigree top and have it look like it all belongs together. I did try just drawing round the die and cutting out a flat shape but it didn’t look anywhere near as good as the embossed piece. Note to Marianne, you are missing a trick there, you could have included an embossing die to go behind the filigree shape!

I am thoroughly enjoying my new positions with both ABC and Dream Valley and, of course, Crafty Cardmakers, but there is a drawback. You can’t win the lovely prizes they have on offer!

So I shall try my luck with these ones instead

Tuesday Throwdown – Use up your scraps (my flower see above)

Incy Wincy Designs– Pastel Colours

Card Cupids – Anything Goes

Bugaboo Stamps – Anything Goes

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge #41 Fabric

Hey here I am with Crafty Cardmakers Challenge this fortnight which is to use fabric on your creations. This was my choice of challenge and personally I would prefer to see a real use of fabric like my teamies have done with whole backgrounds etc. made of fabric, or truly being the focal point of your design, but in order to qualify we will of course accept ribbons, fabric flowers, backgrounds, printed fabric, paper pieced (or should that be fabric pieced). I am sure you get my drift.

We are sponsored once again by One Stop Card Crafts who are offering a £10 voucher to their store!

Please go on over and check out the fabulous DT cards as there are some absolute stunners there, the girls have done my challenge proud, thank you girls!

So to business. I have done a small pictorial tutorial as to how I created my card. It’s a bit basic because I kept forgetting to take a picture before moving onto the next stage……. dearie me old age, and ME have all but put paid to my brain.

1 -  I cut a piece of silk to larger than I wanted the end product to be, which in this case was going to be 7.75” square, because that is how large it needed to be in order to fit on the frame I would be using. So I cut about 9” of silk to leave room for tidying up and to prevent fraying.

2 – Dampen down the silk with a wet paintbrush, this helps the paint to flow better and mix

3 – Using a pipette drop your colours onto the silk using Pebeo Setacolour Soleil which are light reactive paints for fabric

  

4 – This is where I got stupid and forgot to take a pic, but continue adding colour until you are happy with the pattern. Just small drops at a time as it spreads quite well. You can also spritz it at this stage to help the colours to mix again, but not too much because you need it to dry for the colour to set.

5 – Place your chosen design to mask out some areas. In this case I had already made a frame using an EK Success Punch – you will see that it barely covers the fabric, that is because I actually took this picture after it was stuck down, because I forgot to take one before I removed the mask, ooooops, but your piece of fabric will obviously be larger than your frame, or chosen design.

6 – Place the whole thing to dry, preferably in sunshine as that helps the colours and masking to be more marked. Sadly there was no sunshine the day I did this so I just let it dry in the window

7 – This is what it looks like when you have removed the masks

Again dumbo here forgot to take a pic of it immediately I removed the masks, so this has been taken after I have ironed the silk to set the colours even further and stuck them down over my square piece of card, and also pricked some of the pattern out ready for embroidering.

8 – Now you could just leave it here and maybe just use gems, or even leave as is, but I chose to prick through the pattern which was actually intended for stitching on the original Marianne stencil, so that I could embroider it

9 – Embroider it and embellish how you like.  If you look in the top right hand corner you will see that the frame didn’t stick down properly when I placed it to dry and the light got underneath it, and there you can see there is no frame pattern, so maybe try and weigh your’s down if it’s light like my frame was. I managed to cover up this boo boo in the final card with a sentiment

10 – Having embroidered and added gems, which I had first coloured with promarkers to match the background,  I finished off with a sentiment I made on the pc, and a flower embellishment, plus some toning ribbon around the edge of the piece and to make sure it was neatly finished and to cover up the joins in the ribbon I used some gorgeous filigree metal corners.

My Sister loves to call me the ‘Old Boot’ so I couldn’t resist the sentiment here. I hope she is in a good mood when she gets it.

This last picture is to show the dimension on the stitching. This is a touchy feely card, the silk feels lovely and I hope has made a card my Sister will truly enjoy.

 

I’m entering this into the following challenges:-

Craft Your Passion – Anything Goes

House of Gilli – Use Something Green

Kaboodle Doodles – Go Green

Karen’s Doodles – Go Green

The Shabby Tea Room – Luck of the Irish (Green)

Squigglefly – Grateful for Green

Simon Says Stamp and Show – Some Metal (the corners)

There’s a lot of green out there at the moment folks! Can’t think why, lol

Don’t forget from next Monday the new Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight Challenge blog will open, so see you there too.

Dream Valley Challenge #2 – New Beginnings

Here is my DT card for our second challenge over at Dream Valley Challenges. Our theme this fortnight is New Beginnings.

We want to see your creations featuring a a New Beginning like a New Home, Baby, Wedding etc! This can be a card, scrapbook page, altered item, 3D item, anything you like as long as it follows our theme! We have 2 fab sponsors this time One Stop Card Crafts and Crafty Ribbons and the prizes are

Bev’s Bag

The timing for this was perfect as my best friend is moving house on Wednesday of this week. I am hoping she is too busy to see my blog before the gets the card in the door of her new house. I hope her ‘new beginning’ will prove to be a very happy one for her.

I have used a digi stamp from Make It Crafty. They have such cute and quirky stamps and the lovely range of house stamps they do, I think, are perfect for someone moving house. I do hope Pam’s new pad doesn’t look quite as dilapidated as this lovely old boot does.

I printed the digi onto watercolour card and I coloured it with my Inktense watercolour pencils. Both flowers are prima, although I dyed the smaller one to match the boot’s colouring. The key charm was in my stash and the other embellishment is a Marianne Die. I added the sentiment with safmat.

My friend subscribes to the ‘less is more’ policy, so I didn’t want to add any more to this.

I am entering this into:-

The Corrosive Challenge Blog – Going Green

Creative Inspirations Paint – Gone Green

One Stitch At A Time – Use a Charm

Easy Craft Project Challenges - Green

Card Makin’ Mamas – Something Green

Digis With Attitude – Anything Goes

Bugaboo Stamps – Anything Goes

Stamp Something – March Digi Day Challenge

Don’t forget to pop on over to Dream Valley and join in the fun, and please stop by my fellow teamies’ blogs too.