Masked Wedding Cards

On the 4th July, Jo and I went up the A1 to Barnard Castle, the home of my favourite crafty people at Graphicus and Elusive Images. It was the 2nd of their two Open Days and the very first time I have managed to get to one of them. The atmosphere is lovely there because they are all very friendly and the demonstrations are second to none. Annette was demonstrating the die cutting machines like the Cricut but unfortunately I didn't get time to watch her (maybe next time). I did get to watch Judith making some lovely beads in the Melt Pot which was really interesting and made me want to get mine out for a play at something different.

The best for me personally though were Glenda, Lynn and Lesley, who were all stamping in one way or another and my absolute favourite of the day was Lynn demoing some fabulous Mega Masks from Heidi Swapp. If you visit Lynn's blog she has posted the samples she made during her demos and they are wonderful.

Anyway, I just had to buy these and couldn't wait to have a play with them when I got home. Over the first couple of weeks in August we have two family weddings. My niece gets married on the 1st August and my nephew gets married on the same day but away from home so they are having their celebratory reception on the 15th. I decided that I could use the Mega Heart Masks to make a couple of Wedding Cards.

Both the cards use the same format on A4 cards and the same materials, stamps and masks. I just changed the colours and altered the positioning slightly. Except for the two word definition stamps - Married and Marriage, which were from Stamp to Your Arts Content, everything else was from Graphicus. I used Milled Lavender and Weathered Wood DIs on the first card and Tattered Rose and Antique Linen on the second one. The flower masks I used are also Heidi Swapp and I bought them from Graphicus ages ago but have never got round to using them until now.

This was the first one I did in Milled Lavender and Weathered Wood.

and this was the second one in Tattered Rose and Antique Linen.

I thoroughly enjoyed making both these cards and I love blending backgrounds with DIs. I also bought the Mega Circles Masks as well as the Hearts and I have a couple of birthdays for some of my VIPs coming up over the next few weeks so I'm going to try using the circles with some stamping. Again you can see an example on Lynn's blog.

Workshop at The Stampman

Last Saturday my friend Jo and I travelled up to Skipton for a workshop at The Stampman shop with a lovely and talented lady called Jill Boulton.

In the morning we made a pretty little canvas using pretty paper, paint dabbers, sticky backed canvas, grungepaper and all manner of stamps. I didn't quite get mine finished at the workshop (I rarely do) but have done so at home and because of this I've used a couple of word stamps I had and a butterfly from the Elusive Images Butterfly Bliss themeplate, which I stamped onto acetate with Stazon and then added glitter to the back. I also highlighted the flowers stamped directly onto the canvas with my Inkssentials pen.

Some of the flowers and leaves were stamped onto Grungepaper and then spritzed with Moonshadow Inks and others were stamped onto sticky backed canvas which were then either spritzed with inks or painted with dabbers. We also stuck the canvas to metal sheets before cutting them out which enabled us to shape the leaves a bit. When I got home I decided to emboss my metal as well which gave even more shape to the flowers.

I really enjoyed doing this little canvas and I think I'm going to add a card to the back and give it to my Mum for her birthday later this month.

In the afternoon we played with the Melt Pot and tried out several different techniques, including placing molds over pictures chosen from magazines and pouring clear Utee (slightly tinted with ink). These would make nice brooches. We used the same technique pouring the Utee over a picture cut out and fitted into a slide mailer (this was my favourite). We marbled two colours together and poured it over a large textured stamp, poured another colour onto a craft mat and pressed a previously inked stamp into the puddle and finally dropped a square of cardboard into melted black, took it out of the Melt Pot and dusted patches of Moonshadow Mica Powders all over. We then melted the surface with a heat gun and then pressed an inked background stamp into it. All this was great fun, gave me lots of ideas and made me determined to get my Melt Pot out of the cupboard where it has been languishing for the past year.

All in all, I had a lovely day. I had good company whilst driving up to Skipton and because I chose not to take the motorways we saw some beautiful scenery. We shared the workshop with two other lovely ladies plus The Stamp'lady' herself Jill Tuck. Thankyou Jill for helping to make it a really good day out and thanks also to Ian (The Stampman) for fetching the bacon and sausage butties at lunchtime.

My last two cute cards (for now)

I had a really busy weekend going to a great workshop at The Stampman in Skipton with my friend Jo and having my favourite visitors over the weekend too. I was absolutely shattered by last night so didn't get to post the last two cute cards I made in the batch from a couple of weeks ago, so here they are now.

The format of this card was pretty much the same as the previous ones, just a different image from Whiff of Joy and different colour combination. I do think their images are so sweet and they stamp beautifully, even though I used textured watercolour paper.

And now for the last one

This time I used a semi gloss card to stamp my image onto but still used the DIs to colour it. The result was much more muted but I still like it. I decided to keep this one clean and simple except for the layered flower and the lovely stickers which have tiny gems on. I think I mentioned before that I found these on a stand at the NEC but it's the first time I've used them. I hope I can find some more when I've used them all because they are really dainty.

Although I think I like doing more 'arty' cards, with lots of inking and stamping, best I have enjoyed making this batch of cute cards which is a good job as I have two little granddaughters who I don't think will appreciate 'arty' for quite a few years yet.

I'm hoping to finish my makes from the workshop last Saturday tonight and post them in the next couple of days.

Hope you've all managed to stay comfortably cool today. It's been a bit on the warm side for me and going to get warmer over the next day or two by all accounts!

Two More of My Cuties

This is another of the cute cards I've made recently and again coloured using Distress Inks, this time the image is a Whiff of Joy stamp which I bought from The Hobby House stand when I went to the Harrogate Papercraft show earlier this year. The papers I have had in my stash for a long time along with the flowers and gems. The Nesties labels die and CB embossing folder were again from Once Upon a Stamp. Finally the paper lace ribbon was from Graphicus.

and here's another one using the same pretty image

The only things I used that were different from the first card are my Fiskars Threading Water border punch and some lovely little stickers I found at the NEC in March.

My daughter and little Granddaughter are coming tomorrow and staying for the weekend and I'm also going to a workshop at The Stampman with my friend Jo on Saturday, so my last two cute card makes might have to wait until Sunday evening.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

A Couple of Recent Cards

After you have read this post scroll down to find the link to some wonderful blog candy from Elusive Images!!!

First of all a big thankyou to any visitors who have checked back (some of you lovely people more than once) to see if I've managed to sort out my photo problems. Well, we did have a gremlin (now given the boot I hope) so things are a lot better but I still haven't sussed how to make my images clickable so that you can see an enlargement but I'll keep trying.

The two cards shown above were very quick and simple to make. I stamped the pretty flourish using Adirondack dye inkpads, dragged the colour a little with my waterbrush and added some glitter highlights. I cut out the butterflies from some Artylicious paper which was from my exclusive Graphicus Guild paper pack, added a few touches of glitter, curved the wings and attached them with silicone glue. I then stamped the sentiment with a Black Memories inkpad.

The flourish stamp (Dimension Fourth) and the sentiment stamp (Butterfly Kisses) were both bought from the NEC last March and the glitter, inkpad and Artylicious paper butterflies (which can also be found on the Artylicious Butterfly Bliss cd) can be had from Graphicus.

NOW FOR MY NEW CUTE CARD

I'm fairly new to the cute style of card but I'm getting better at them and this is the first of five I made a week or so ago. I decided to try using Distress Inks to clour my lovely images and I think my results were quite successful. Even my brother, who is a talented watercolour artist, was quite impressed by my first attempts. This cute little elf is called Alva from Magnolia Stamps and is another one I bought from the NEC from the lady who designs them. I love this little elf because .................. she has a mouth! I'm pretty sure she's supposed to be a Christmas elf because that's a poinsettia in her hand but I wanted to use her now so I used more summery colours.

The Nestability Label die, CB Swiss Dots folder, Core'dinations card and Distress Inks were all from Once Upon A Stamp. The flourish and fern leaf punches were from The Hobby House and everything else was from my stash and I can't remember where from.

AW, AIN'T SHE SWEET!

Don't forget to scroll down!

Father's Day Card

After you read this post don't forget to scroll down to find out about some fabulous blog candy from Elusive Images !!!!!!

This is a card I was asked to make by a friend and everything I used can be purchased from Graphicus, except for the base card and the brad which were already in my stash.

The background paper is from my Graphicus Guild paper pack (some fabulous papers in there) and I used a stamp from one of the exclusive Guild stamp plates to randomly stamp over it using Adirondack dye inks and I also blended inks over of the paper too. I also blended some inks over a smaller piece of the paper for the sentiment and a separate little tag that I cut from hammered card. I used Timber Brown Stazon to stamp the Happy Father's Day onto an acrylic tag, the fancy images onto some previously Glimmer Misted card and the sentiment.

I then cut out the swirly images, arranged them on my card and used 3D foam pads to attach them. I matted the sentiment and layered the card and acrylic tags together with the brad and attached them with different thicknesses of 3D foam pads.

SUPER DUPER BLOG CANDY ALERT !!!!

There will be some wonderful blog candy given away very soon over on the Elusive Images DT blog. The Elusive Images range of stamps are my absolute favourites for quality, design and style and the new ones that are to be released very soon are definite MUST-HAVES.

So click on over to the ELUSIVE IMAGES DT BLOG and check out how to enter. I wish you luck (but not too much 'cos I want to win some of it)!