Paperartsy

Some Flowers and a Tree

Good morning everyone. I have been a little remiss in my blog postings. I posted a couple of cards at the beginning of the week – Christmas cards – for a couple of challenges I am now Design Team for – ABC Christmas Challenge and The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge.

This means I will have a significant stash of Christmas cards by the end of the year, so I hope you will join us there.

I managed to get time in my craft room yesterday, and made three cards for separate challenges, so I hope you will bear with me for the bunch of photos, and as the lighting currently is quite poor – despite a light box – I did struggle with them, but I hope you can enough for what I was trying to achieve.

As Christmas has been on my mind for the above challenges, I decided to add just one more for the CASology Challenge , using the colours from CAS Colours and Sketches, and adding into the Christmas at Sweet Stampin’ Challenge:

Here is a little close-up:

I used a stamp from Paper Artsy, and coloured with Copics. The sentiment is on two separate blocks to add to the ‘funky’ feel of the card, and the two outer strips are coloured with Copics, and cut to add as you see. I left quite a bit of the image white, so try to maintain a clean and simple look, as the image is quite a large one at six a a half inches tall.

This second card was inspired by The Color Throwdown Challenge, to use Grey, Purple, Lavender, and Kraft:

I turned to me Altenew 3D flowers for this, die-cutting them and then colouring with Copics. I did put the uppermost level as white initially, but then coloured it grey, which I prefer, but leaving the middle stamen white. Those leaves – my goodness – loving those leaves, I must say.

My third and final card for today:

The colours were inspired by the photo inspiration at Pinspirational – the greys and whites, along with the stripes. An Altenew stamp and die set, and Altenew inks, and also dry embossing the Gradient Stripes Cover Die into the white background:

Once again, the lighting not brilliant, but I hope you see the stripes.

This card will also be entered into:

Watercooler Challenges – anything feminine goes

Clean and Simple on Friday – CAS dry or heat embossing

The Flower Challenge – anything goes with flowers

Green Flowers

For today I have gone completely mad and opposite to my clean and simple card yesterday. You could say I have gone embossing and die cutting crazy. Embellishment crazy even.

I was inspired by several challenges to create this card, and it all seemed to work well by combining them. This is the sort of card I started to make back in the day. I loved die-cutting and embossing with a passion, and added everything to every card. I tend to do these kinds of cards for Christmas, adding loads of layers, loads of different die-cutting elements like deer, or trees, or angels. Love it.

For this card I was going very floral, and very monochrome! I used a 7 inch square base and put an embossed green and white layer on top. They are both embossed with a Crafters Companion Die’sire Embossalicious folder called ‘Floral Vine’, cut with a Sue Wilson Noble Frame die – as always.

The roses are, again, Sue Wilson – Finishing Touches Wild Rose – cut three times, and embossing after cutting. Such lovely detail on the rose, don’t you think? Sue Wilson’s ‘Trailing Ivy’ was also cut and embossed.

The main sentiment is from Paperartsy ‘Eclectica 3’, and stamped in black versamark, using my Misti. I tried to find an ink which matched the green, but decided on black as I wanted a bold statement and sentiment which would stand out from all the floral happenings on the card.

I used yet another Sue Wilson die set – Frames and Tags ‘Grace’ – for the sentiment, using the main scalloped outside layer and detailed inner layer, adding a green layer behind to highlight the design.

For the final added embellishment, I turned to my Tonic Nuvo drops, added them to the four corners, then added around the sentiment. I told you I was harnessing my inner multi-layering personality!

The challenges I will be entering are:

Aud Sentiments challenge – flowers and a sentiment

The House that Stamps Built – tic tac toe – (flowers, pearls, frames)

Brown Sugar challenge – embossing

Craft for the Craic – anything goes

Allsorts challenge – ring a ring o’ roses

Crazy for Challenges – use green

Crafting with Dragonflies – lots of flowers

 

 

 

 

Flowers and colour throwdown

I have quite a bit of time to play this weekend, and I am enjoying every minute of it. There are a few challenges about to close, so I thought I would combine two challenges with this card. The ‘Colour Throwdown’ and ‘Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge’.

The first challenge is to use the colours green, black and gold, and the second challenge was to use hand-made flowers. When I want to use gold, I see cards as being quite decadent, and sumptuous, and then thought how I could incorporate flowers and decadence.

I returned to my roots, by using quite a few of my Sue Wilson dies. I have a few of her flower sets, and wanted a solid flower for this card. I also spied my Corner Garden from Stampin Up – I haven’t used that for a while.

I started with a brown Kraft base card of 8” square, used my Sue Wilson stitched squares for the layers of black, green, then black again. I used my embossing buddy over the smallest square, and stamped the ‘Corner Garden’ stamp with my Ranger Perfect Medium, using a Cosmic Shimmer ‘Detail Gold’ and heat embossed the image. The image didn’t come all the way across the bottom of that square, so I decided to use my flowers to cover the blank area to the bottom left. I usually put my flowers on the bottom right corner, so this is a little change for me.

To get the flowers to match the gold of the embossing powder, I covered a piece of black card with ‘Be Creative’ double sided sticky tape, added the same gold embossing powder, and heat set it. I then cut out several sizes of the flowers from ‘Perfect Peony complete Petals’, so I could put several layers on the flowers. I curled the edges of the petals slightly, and layered them together to create three flowers. I like the way the embossing with this tape isn’t completely smooth, I think the added texture gives some more interesting detail to the flowers. I didn’t put anything in the middle of the flowers as I couldn’t think of anything which would work, so left them as is.

I then used the remainder of the gold embossed black card to cut out the leaves from the matching set ‘Perfect Peony Open Petals’. I didn’t want the leaves solid, as I felt it would cover too much of the base card, so only used the outline dies.

I added the flowers and the leaves to the card with Pinflair Glue gel, so I could manipulate their position, and insert the leaves where I wanted them. I did move them around that corner a few times until I was happy with the placement of them.

The sentiment is from ‘Paperartsy’ and is part of a guest designer collection. The set has a number not a name – ELB05 – is has 6 sentiments relating to flowers, some of the quotes from William Blake, and Henri Matisse. I chose the one I used as it fit the open space perfectly. I used my Perfect Medium again, and the same gold embossing powder.

I was nervous to stamp it, but I stamped it using my Misti, before I added the flowers – just in case. I find the Misti has made me use stamps more than I ever have as I can just go over the image again and again if it hasn’t stamped well.

I was tempted to use some dew drops, some other embellishments – but I restrained myself, and am overall liking what it came out like. I liked the clean lines of the card base and the layers, leaving the eye to be drawn to the flowers, stamp and sentiment.

It felt good to get back to my die-cutting roots with the Sue Wilson dies, and also incorporating some newer stamp sets from Stampin Up and Paperartsy. As always – loving embossing!