Autumn is Here

Hi all.  I think that now we are nearly into October we have to except that summer is over and the trees will soon be changing colour, and the mushrooms and toadstools will be popping up, and so this card which I found in my 'drafts' which I hadn't got around to showing is quite appropriate. We have had our son staying with us over from Australia so cardmaking has been suspended for a while as we have obviously been doing other things.  He has less than a week left now before he goes home and we will miss him a lot, but we have been lucky as this is his second visit this year which has been great!  

This features a freebie digital paper which I downloaded from one of the magazines, and I added some toadstools from a Chocolate Baroque set call Autumn Poppy.  I scaled it to fit on my white 6" square card and added the toadstools embossed with Wow Metallic Brass Embossing Powder and coloured them using my Inktense Pencils without any water.  I finished by adding a sentiment with Versafine Vintage Sepia and heat embossed with WOW Clear Gloss EP.  I like the mix of colours in the paper, but not sure there would be a bird's nest with eggs in at this time of year..lol, but apart from that I think it works well.

Thank you for taking a look at my blog today and I'll see you again soon.

I am entering the following challenges:

Allsorts Challenge - Week 747 Four Legged Friends/Anything Goes.
Stamping Sensations September Challenge -  Garden Delights/Anything Goes.
We Love Stamping September Challenge - Trees and Leaves/Anything Goes.

Heart and Flowers Anniversary

Hi all.  Here is a recent anniversary make featuring a gelli print and a Sizzix Tim Holtz Mixed Media No. 5 set of three cut into the card dies which I have had for quite a few years.  I also used a Nellie Snellen Multi Frame Heart die set which I have had forever..lol, and also an old Cuttlebug Embossing Folder called Kimmy-Luvs.

I found the gelli plate print in my stash and I think this was one I made when I was using some foliage I picked on a walk several weeks ago, and I used a couple of pieces of fern, and as far as I remember the colours were Lucky Clover and Twisted Citron Distress Inks, and maybe a bit of Pine Needles DI, but didn't make a note of it so a bit of a guess.   The fern print was not very strong and I  decided to add some more inks and a spray or two of water, before I pulled the print for a second time, so it was well covered with the ink, and ended up really as a watercolour background.

Using a piece of white card I cut the floral die twice and then stuck it to the gelli plate background so it showed off the most pleasingly coloured areas in the gelli print through the flower cut out shapes.   I then cut the heart from another piece of white card, using the smaller picot edge heart die, and then ran it through the Kimmy-Luvs EF and layered it onto the centre of the background layer using some Pinflair Glue Gel to give it some shape.  Finally I added the sentiment using Versafine Deep Lagoon Ink and heat embossed with WOW Clear Gloss Embossing Powder, and then added this onto a 6" square card.  It does look rather dark and much darker than the colour looks on the outside of the cube, but I thought that it went OK with the background. 

Thank you for joining me here today and I'll be back soon.   x 

I am entering the following challenges:

Happy Little Stampers September Anything Goes with Dies Challenge.
Happy Little Stampers September Watercolour Challenge - Anything Goes.
The Flower Challenge - No. 84 Use a Die.
Triple B September Challenge - Anything Goes with Birds, Blooms and Butterflies ( any one or all three).
Beautifiul Blossoms Challenge - Anything Goes Flowers/Optional Mood Board No. 9.

Lacy Border With Stripes

Hi everybody.  I have a lot of coloured card which actually I don't use very often and so I was looking of ways of using it on cards and I visit Hannelie who has a blog called Desert Diva, and I saw she had made a very pretty card with different width strips and a pretty border design on the outer white layer which you can see here, so I got my thinking cap on and looked through the border dies I have and this one seemed the best.  It is one I have had for a long time but haven't used much and is by Sue Wilson at Creative Expressions, and it is called Pictor with six dies for different styles of fancy edges.

I decided to use just three colours and found some snippets of yellow, blue and green which went together well for a nice bright look.  I started with the fancy border using a piece of card to fit onto a 7" x 5" white card but left it a little wider and longer to give a bit of leeway in the final cutting.  I then got a piece of thin card to build up the pattern of strips and covered that with enough length and width for the top half of the card.  The border die is more suitable for a square card, and with hindsight it would have been better to let it go edge to edge instead of having a margin and I fiddled for quite a while to fit it on and eventually I ended up cutting a piece of the outside edges of the border off, and I decided to fit the layers together and cut it as one piece but it was not easy to cut, but anyway the look is bright and I have managed to use up a few snippets too.  I decided to add a white die cut butterfly and then finished it with a sentiment stamped using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink and heat embossed with WOW Clear Gloss Embossing Powder. 

Thank you for visiting my blog today and I'll see you again soon.

I am entering the following challenges:

Snippets Playgrounds Challenge - No. 462 Where we use our snippets of card and paper etc.
AAA Birthday Challenge - No. 53 Animals ( I wasn't sure whether a butterfly could be called an animal and apparently it can as it belongs to the group called Arthropods).
Happy Little Stampers September Anything Goes with Dies Challenge .
Happy Little Stampers September Birthday Challenge - Anything Goes.
Triple B September Challenge - Anything Goes with Birds, Blooms and Butterflies (any one, two or all three).
Allsorts Challenge - Week 745 Anything Goes/Use Die Cuts.
Simply Clean and Simple September Challenge - Anything Goes/Use A Stencil.

Leaf Wreath Anniversary

Hi there everyone.  I have an anniversary card to show today using a Claritycrafts stencil called Leaf Wreath and I also used a set of heart dies by Sweet Dixie which I bought at The Range a long time ago.  

I decided to use the stencil with my gelli plate, and started by covering it with some Brushos in Sea Green and Violet and sprayed them with some water.  I then laid the stencil on the gelli plate which dispersed the colour around it and lifted it quickly taking a print using a piece of Clarity Stencil card.  It did to a certain degree leave the print on it and I left it to dry, not sure whether I would use it or not.   I looked at it again later and thought that if I added some extra ink through the stencil to highlight the leaves more and then filled in the white gaps with some Distress Inks it would work, so I used Dusty Concord through the stencil and some Broken China and Dusty Concord around the edges and in the gaps in and around the wreath.  I then went round the edges of the leaves with a Sakura Starlight Silver Pen and when rummaging through my bits and pieces I came across a heart frame which I had left over from making another anniversary card and decided to give it an embossed silver finish using WOW Metallic Silver EP and then I used the smaller inner die as a template, marking around it with a pencil onto a piece of scrap card, and with a little extra so the heart frame would sit over it.  I added a sentiment on this again heat embossing it with the Silver EP and then softly blended some Broken China DI around the edges to take the whiteness off, and added the wreath background and the heart onto the white 6" square card.

Thank you for visiting me here today and I'll see you again soon.

I am entering the following challenges:

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.
My Time to Craft Challenge -No. 515 Use Die Cuts.