2018 Christmas Cards

So, it's been a while and I've not really had the inspiration to make cards for a while. We moved house in August and I've still been trying to find where I had hidden all my crafty bits and pieces. But I decided to root through all my old boxes and I think I also found my inspiration hiding in there

This year I made cards for close friends and family. One of the things I found was the Indigo Blu Flakes and Flitter glu and some of their lovely stamps. First up was this card I made for my boyfriend's mum. Now I can't tell you which of the flakes I used as I bought them over 4 years ago and tipped them into another container. The stamp is Festive Flurry from Stampin' up and is one of my Christmas faves

I used silver flakes for the large snowflake and gold flakes for the smaller snowflake. I then cut a medium snowflake from blue pearl card and used it to show off the colours in the other two images.
The sentiment is stamped and heat embossed with WOW! powder in Ruby Romance.

Now, I love heat embossing and I have far too many of the WOW! powders. And they certainly come out at Christmas. I love the fact you can add sparkle to a card without it going everywhere!

Another Stampin' Up favourite stamp of mine is Snow Day, where you can build a snowman. I made two of these cards this year and embossed them both in different WOW! powders. The first is Blue Blast which is one of my favourites and always comes out at Christmas in one form or another

The background was made using Indigo Blu's snowflakes stamp. It was stamped with Versamark and then I brushed over some blue pigment powder. In the right light it really shimmers

The next one was embossed using Sensational Sage - the pictures do not do this powder justice. It is a green and it has some amazing colours running through it that change colour depending on the light. I tried to capture it as best as I could but it just wasn't working

I did also make some other cards but I forgot to take pictures of them. I've asked the recipients if they can get pictures and then I will show you.

Claire

New Year and Christmas Crafting

I know, I am probably the last person to write their New Year's blog post, but it's been quite a busy few weeks getting back into the swing of things.

Over Christmas I was very busy making presents for people.

The main present was a recipe book for my Mum, which I forgot to take pictures of so I can't post anything. I will need to try and take some next time I see her to show you. It featured 10 recipes from my childhood which me and my sister dug out of her recipe box and compiled into a fancy, decorated recipe book. She loved it.

I also made my mum a small cross stitch featuring a country cottage. It was a kit that she bought me to make, but I framed it in one of my Grandma's old embroidery hoops with some co-ordinating ribbon:

I also had to make a special Christmas card for my crafty friend and had seen an idea using Clarity stamps and shrink plastic.

My previous experience with shrink plastic wasn't great but it actually worked first time for this card. I die-cut the shrink plastic before I stamped it and then added a bit of colour. Instead of putting it in the oven, I heated it with my heat tool in a baking tray. This didn't work brilliantly and I think putting it in the oven would have been better.

For the background I had a brainwave as I couldn't find any backing paper that would match.

I stamped my snowflake stamp with versamark and embossed it with tinsel embossing powder. I then coloured the card with purple distress stain, leaving the embossed areas clear and visible.

I then layed purple ribbon across the card, segmenting it into 4. I layered up each bit of plastic onto gold card and stuck one in each segment. On the fourth segment I put a sentiment onto the gold card.

I have also listed all my jewellery on my Etsy shop. None of it has sold so far but lots of people have looked so fingers crossed someone will buy it soon!

That's all for now, time to get on with my projects for January. More posts soon.

Brentwood Craft and Gift Show

The last few months have been working towards the weekend just gone - to make things in order to sell them at the Brentwood Craft and Gift show.

This was a 2 day show and comprised of several different stalls selling various different crafts, gifts and foods as well. It was advertised as being the biggest of its kind in Essex and even some reindeers popped in on Sunday.

We worked hard to get the stall set up on Saturday and although it started off slowly, we had quite a good day - mainly due to several family members and friends paying the stall a visit and parting with their money.

There were several different items for sale including patchwork cushions, magnets, handmade cards and decorated candles:

 

 On the second day the heavens opened - so the hall was very busy. The stall had a bit of a change around to make some items more visible (and us - there was no hiding behind the card stands on day two.....)

The fleece baby blankets proved a very popular item, probably due to the cute animals printed onto some of them as well as the very soft feel of the snuggle fleece.

Although none of them sold, the mice pin cushions were also a big talking point, with lots of comments that they were cute. However, they are still sat on my shelf until they can find an owner:

I now have time to do more work on the blog. so over the next few weeks there will be several 'How to' guides showing various different techniques - so why not follow the blog so you get regular updates on the information and news.

I will also be putting some of the unsold stock onto my Etsy page shortly, or if you would like anything please leave a comment on this post.

Claire

Black doesn't have to be boring

It was my Mum's birthday at the weekend and I always try and make her a special card using new techniques. The card this year was made trying out a new technique for the first time and luckily it went alright.

I purchased some angelina fibres, also known as fusible fibres, several months ago as part of the Clarity Stamping in the Classroom with Barbara Grey workshop. I made along with the project that she demonstrated but I never tried anything else after that.

One of the techniques that you can do with angelina fibres is the one I've used in the butterfly on the left hand side.

They work with heat and fuse together when heat is applied - normally by using an iron.

For the butterfly, I cut six pieces of the film and stamped the butterfly onto 3 of them using stayzon ink. I then sandwiched the fibres in between the two pieces of film - one stamped and one plain piece, covered it with baking parchment and ironed over the top using the coldest setting.

Once ironed, the harden as well and I cut out the whole butterfly from one piece, the top part of the butterfly (including the body) from another piece and from the last piece I cut the bottom part of the butterfly (including the body). I then stuck the two halves onto the main butterfly using double sided tape on the body only. This gives the butterfly the 3D look.

For the background, I again used the angelina fibres but without sandwiching them. I took a variety of colours and laid them over a sheet of baking paper. I muddled them up a bit so they were quite random and then laid another sheet of baking paper over the top and ironed. They fused together creating a sheet which I stuck to a black piece of card using pritt stick as the background to the card.

The third part of the pack that I bought were some different petal stamps. There are many different designs in the pack but I chose one which had an intricate flower design within the petal:

I used 2 different coloured heat embossing powders on black card to create the flower. I stuck them round in a flower shape and then stuck a piece of card candy as the centre of the flower.

For the sentiment I again used black card, cut out using a spellbinders die, but covered it with perfect pearls as I have tried before when I was experimenting with inchies. Find out how I created this by clicking here.

The card was finished with some pink gems and a peel off butterfly stuck to acetate and the wings bent up to give it dimension.

Although the majority of the card used black card, with the techniques outlines above, black certainly doesn't need to be boring and can be made to sparkle as well as white card. Don't dismiss using black card next time you go to make a card!

The distressed look, heat embossing & acrylic paints

This was a technique that I tried out a few months ago and thought I would share it with you. It involves heat embossing and acrylic paint to achieve an unusual distressed look.

Here is the first card I made:

Here is what you need:

Coloured card, co-ordinating coloured acrylic paint, clear embossing powder, versamark ink pad, stamps of your choice, heat gun, large paint brush, a tissue

1) Choose the coloured card - this will be the colour that shows through your design.

2) Stamp your chosen image with the versamark ink onto the card and emboss with the clear powder.

3) Paint over the image and the surrounding card with the acrylic paint and allow to dry

4) Once the paint has dried, take the tissue and dampen it with water. Lightly rub over the embossed image to remove the paint, revealing the coloured card underneath. Then leave it to dry.

And now you have your image. Here is a close up of the flower on the card:

I applied some turquoise ink to the edges of the flower. On the background, I highlighted some of the features of the stamp, such as the watch and some of the wording, with some gold perfect pearls.

I then had a go at another card, which didn't turn out quite as expected but it can always be worked on:

The background was made using black card. I didn't have any white paint at the time (I have now purchased some so might have to try it again), so I used some picket fence distress stain. It didn't work quite as well as the paint probably would have done, because the black still shows through quite a bit.

The picture in the middle was made using red card and a bronze paint. Again, it didn't stand out as much as I would have liked because the colours were too similar, but it was an experiment and now I know what I need to change next time.

It can be a bit messy and time consuming as you have to wait for it to dry each time, but it can be very effective.

Heat embossing and Fran-tage

I recently came across the Fran-tage embossing enamels from Stampendous, and being the avid heat embosser that I am, I had to try them out.

These powders are made up of different fragments or various different sizes, which melt into different shapes when heated. There is also glitter in each pot and the enamels come in a range of colours.

The card below was made using a large chipboard flower which is inked with versamark ink and sprinkled on the powder. (sorry the picture hasn't come out too well). The powder used was shabby pink.

You can just about make out the gold flecks in the flower which creates a slightly aged look, and a finish that would not be achieved with normal embossing powders.

Below is another card that I made in the same way.

Because the chipboard was covered with the versamark ink before sprinkling on the powder, you get a thin coverage over the flower and the gold flecks aren't as prominent. For the centre of this flower I used the shabby white powder and didn't use any versamark ink.

After cutting out the circle, I sprinkled the circle with the powder and laid over some shaved ice flakes. Using tweezers to hold it and being careful not to burn myself, I heated the circle from behind. You need to do this from behind otherwise the powder and flakes just fly off. Once the powder starts melting you can then move to the front if you wish. The flakes use the molten powder to adhere to the card. This gave a contrasting, shiny centre to the flower.

After attending a heat embossing workshop, I learnt about the sprinkling technique and had an idea about using the white powder as snow. The below card illustrates my idea!

For this card I first of all stamped and embossed the snowman in ordinary white powder. I then used my mica powders to add a bit of shimmery colour to him.

Then I swiped my versamark ink pad along the bottom of the card and sprinkled a generous layer of the shabby white frantage powder so it stuck to the powder. I added some of the shaved ice flakes on top of the powder and heated from behind. Because of the amount of powder added, this really goes molten when heated and the flakes adhere nicely.

I then took a pinch of the embossing enamel and scattered it randomly over the top of the picture to create falling snow.

I love the shaved ice flakes with the powders and decided to make a sparkly girly card for a friends birthday:

For this card, I first of all I used my spun sugar distress stain to colour the card and then sponged some tattered rose distress ink around the edges. Then I randomly added pools of the shabby pink embossing powder with shaved ice flakes in each pool to give a nice sparkly background.

The large butterfly was made with fusible fibre and the petals were embossed onto vellum. The two blue butterflies were embossed onto acetate and adhered with clear glue dots.

I am planning on getting more of the frantage powders. I had a play with the aged black powder in the workshop, combining it with some gold mica flakes and this looked very effective. So watch this space for more projects using frantage!