L is for layers & cream / pink & green

Its ironic that when I usually enter Mrs A's Butterfly challenge I usually do so either the day or a few hours before the challenge ends.... now that the latest challenge is on for a whole month, I end up making a card one day after the challenge started. It wasn't planned, I was doing a card for the Pink & Green colours challenge over on the Gecko Galz facebook page and decided that a nice snippet of cream card would look nice under the doily, then I came across the lime green glitter card (sounds horrible but it is lovely) and stick, cut, glue - a card with layers and cream! Added two little pink butterflies and die cut a sentiment to match.

Gecko Galz image from 'Colourful Cuties' sheet one

Spellbinder sentiment die

Tattered Lace mini butterflies die

DoCraftd doily

entering in: Butterfly Challenge = Layers and/or colour cream

                   Gecko Galz Papercrafting Challenge facebook group = pink & green

colour challenge

Hey I did a Christmas card!

Yep, that's my shout out for today, that and I took the dog for a walk to fetch my prescription and ended up doing 5.28 mile.......some detour!

but, hey I did a Christmas card!

I have had some Christmas papers in my stash for years, which were free with a magazine. I had a quick look through the snippet sleeve (one sleeve for loose untouched papers and one for the offcuts)  and came up with the challenge colours, just so happened they all had a snowflake pattern, which in turn got me to use my snowflake punch and the snowflake stamp.

You'd have thought this was all planned.....

It wasn't!!

Cut the paper into little strips and glued on to the card, punched snowflakes out of  the same paper then stuck on the end of the strips, finally popped a gem, matching the strip of paper, in the middle of the flake.

paper off cuts

The Hobby House gems - Lilac, Sea Blue & Aqua

Nitwit sentiment stamp & Vibrant Violet stazon ink

snowflake punch

With hindsight I should have made the middle strip slightly smaller so the strips went up as a proper diagonal but *shrugs* gonna go with it.

entering in: merry monday christmas = colour challenge
                   -snippets playground = challenge 281/282

D is for Decoupage & Gold

Killed two birds with one with this card, sat and made it Thursday as I needed to send a card to Carole from the card group as it was her birthday Friday... in my defense I thought it was the 14th not the 12th.
I hunted high and low for a piece of acetate with a gold pattern on, which I knew was going to be perfect for the Butterfly challenge but I couldn't find it..... it IS there somewhere! Though I did find the piece of vellum which I used so all in all, not a bad search.

It was a A5 sized vellum sheet with gold butterflies on, so rather than die cutting which I was originally going to do, I simply cut out four of the butterflies, one I folded and creased in the middle to make it stick up when I decoupaged it on top of one of the other butterflies - I used silicon glue to make it stay raised up when stuck on.

Using memento glam gold ink I stamped the greeting on then stuck the butterflies around it, finishing the card off with three little white pearls for the butterfly antennae.

entering in: Butterfly challenge - D is for decoupage/colour gold

I had three canvas's I bought from a charity shop which I hung in the kitchen for a few months, then decided I didn't like them so I put them in the spare room thinking I would 'do' something with them crafty wise. This was probably 2 or 3 years ago.
The start of last year i got the urge to 'do' something so out came one canvas and I white gessoed it, left it to dry then mixed black with white acrylic paint and dabbed that on the canvas.

After a few months I fished it out again and sorted out some embellishments and stuff what I wanted to put on it.

Last week whilst clearing my craftroom I found it again, sat down and finished it!

The other 2 canvas's are in the charity bag..... do I get them out to 'do' or leave them in? Mmmmm.

So here's the Wedding frame I did for my lovely Department Manager and his wife.

I got the box frame from The Range 8x8. The die is a DoCrafts/X cut one, I didn't mind spending £11 on it as I was thinking of doing some and putting them up for sale..... since I made this and it was such an utter @X@X@X@ of a thing to get right I may have changed my mind. The cutting was great, cut through 180gsm white card no problems, placed the coloured paper behind  - looked great. Getting in the frame - not so great. After plenty of fiddling, snipping (on the back it said that the insert would be 7x7..... well they @X@X@X lied!!!!) and fiddling some more I FINALLY got it in, The came the backing board.... I  managed to push it back on, secure it and turn it face up - little tiny shavings of the board had rubbed off and landed in the frame.... so off it came, design out, shake the frame, place design back, put board back and repeat at least seven times.. around the 3rd repeat a bottle of wine mysteriously appeared on my craft desk.....finally managed it with no shavings. 

YAY!!!!

Turned it round..... perfect..... then noticed a slight crease in the paper near the frame.

"oh well, no one will notice"

I did. 

Every time I walked past it.

I resisted it a whole day.

Then I gave in and had to do something about it.

So out it all came, paper was unstuck, I didn't want to waste another lovely coloured sheet so I ended up using the die's border and cutting it out from the white card and using it as a topper. And this time everything went back in without a hitch.

The end.

May partner card

On the ball this month, made this earlier on  using another stamp I got gifted.

Penny Black wooden stamp

watercolour pencil

Dovecraft fibres

large white pearl

patterened grey card from stash

Little bit different from what I normally do, I do like stamping but don't get to do it much plus I don't buy a lot of stamps, mostly get them free with magazines so taking full advantage of the Carrier Bag.

Wanted to keep it clean and simple with no colour so opted for black flowers. Used a black watercolour pencil... but couldn't find a small brush, ended up using an ear bud to swirl the colour round!

F is for Faux and/or Jasmine

Taking advantage of Andrew going to bed extra early as he's made up with the flu I had last week, yes I kindly donated it too him *lol* I decided to do a quick tag for Mrs A's butterfly challenge which ends tomorrow night.

(I watched some You Tube vid's last night on 'faux craft techniques' and came upon Faux Enameling. the lady in question used punched paper circles, to which she 'stamped' with an embossing ink pad then dipped the circles in clear embossing powder, then used the heat gun to dry. She then repeated the process to make it more glossy. Once done they really looked like she had used an enamel on them.)

I already had some butterflies which I had punched out for another project previously so I decided to have a go at enameling those. I pressed them into the embossing pad then dipped into the clear embossing powder pot, knocked the loose powder off then used the heat gun to dry - note to self Get longer tweezers - ouch. Then repeated the process. Not only does it look like enamel, it also makes the embellishments quite stiff.

Flicking through my snippet box, I really must get colour coded envelopes sorted, I found this pale yellow/cream card stock which fitted the description of the colour Jasmine 'creamy yellow' so I decided to use that.
The stamp came from a HUGE carrier bag full which I was gifted by a friend at work, I've sorted out the ones I want to keep (see what I did there - I didn't say I'd actually use them) and the other half I am going to take to the PDSA charity shop I visit.
Used black pigment ink for the design as I wanted a dreamy look and Stazon is to precise and clear for that.

thin cardstock

wooden block stamp

sentiment from Fairy Belle by Jodie Lee

butterfly punch

gems

Dovecraft fibres

Inkadinkado Glam gold pigment ink smudged round edges

X cut corner rounder

X cut hole punch 

entering in: butterfly challenge = F for faux and/or Jasmine
                  pixies snippets playground = 279 & 280

Missed a few challenges over the last couple of weeks, and not crafted much AGAIN. Last week we were on hols, stayed at home but did plenty of things. Two days of walking 4 and 7 miles repesctively, dug a patch of garden ready for the 144 plug plants Andrew bought.. *cough* .... spent a morning with Dad & Delia, went to the docs, had a day in Bakewell - Farmers market in the morning and Food Festival in the afternoon and watched all the coverage of Tour du Yorkshire cycling.
Blimey, need to get back too work to have a rest.

I did make a Wedding box frame but I won't be posting a photo till after the Wedding. To call it my nemesis would be an understatement, although it was more the board at the back of the frame causing me problems.

I received the pea pod gift and it is SO sweet!

crafting will resume shortly.