oh la la

Think I may have blogged about this card already but I haven't crossed it off my list so here it is again....... lady from a Gecko Galz design sheet.

A digital Christmas card

Back to working 13hrs - just two days at work, sudden drop from working 28/34 hrs for last 2 months or so.....eek! The first few days at home are fine but then I start to miss going out to work and then that's when my moods start to nosedive and I get really low. Trying to stay positive though - plenty of cards to make between now and next Thursday.....

Here's a 100% digital Christmas card I did this morning.

Using a Gecko Galz image, I resized it and then using the colour pipette, I matched the 'backing paper' to the background of the image, slightly altering its transparency to fit better. The smoky border came from a digi kit I have, again just played around till it looked like the edges were smudged with age. I bevelled the edges of the newly created topper and then made another 'backing paper' of the same colour to put the the topper on, so you can see the beveled edge more clearly. Drew 2 little circles and colour matched the red from the image, agin using the bevel tool - which made then look like shiny gems. Last but not least I found a bow from another kit and matched the red, adding a deep shadow to it. This sounds quite quick too do but it wasn't as I kept changing my mind on colours, placement.....

entering in:  digitally sweet = a digital christmas card

Anything Goes

This card took me hours!!!! And all because I wasn't happy with the right hand side....so I decided to add a flower...... dropped the bead box and lost the last matching flower for the middle....made a sentiment and stuck that on flower, looked naff so pulled it off......then chopped it up and stuck that on, looked naffer.......did another flower & sentiment, ditto.....did another flower......back in the bead box - found another white flower so then pulled middle off of one of the flowers, stuck the white on that and then stuck the original onto the new flower.  Phew!

And for the love of all things Craft, why is it when you want a gem to stick exactly where you put it, it keeps dropping off but when you accidently drop it on your work in the completely worse place possible it sticks like you've used the strongest superglue EVER???

 

patterned velum by Laurence Llewelyn Bowen

white flowers coloured by Almond & Pastel Blue promarkerx

Dovecraft 'Floral Muse' doily

image from Lunagirl 'Butterfly Cards'

gems, flowery middles, lace and pins from stash

 

Entered in: lunagirl = Anyhting goes for August

 

All that Glitters

This card made itself.

Yes, it did.

Because I had no idea what I was going to do for this challenge, apart from using this very beautiful lady from the Breathtaking Beauties image sheet.

I used CAP2 to resize her, and printed her out.

And that was it.

So, somehow - the velum was found, then the right colour paper was found to go underneath so you could see the pretty swirls better on said vellum, and the colour tone matched the vintage look.

I admit to using the doily.


Strip of lace, feather off of a Fairy Angel light, ribbon, flower embellishments, gems and the die cuts just happened.

The little flowers on the feather were white, so they coloured themselves Cool Grey to match up.

Do I need to call Mulder & Scully........well, maybe just Mulder?

purple blue paper

Laurence Llewelyn Bowen (yes, I had to google how to spell it) Vellum

doily

Gecko Galz 'Breathtaking Beauties'

Crafty Blitz small white flowers

Ribbon

Hobby House 'champagne' gems

Do Crafts stamp.

Do Crafts corner die

snippets of brown design paper from The Works.

obligatory Laurence pic

 

Entering in: Gecko Galzs = All that glitters
                    Snippets Playground = -week 213

mermaid tag

 

image form Wings of Whimsy

Gecko Galz backing paper from High Tea

blue mulberry paper

organza ribbon

quote from internet

stick on gems pale blue & white

entered into: lunagirl = fairries of mermaids

yee haa!

another challenge entry this afternoon, this time an atc with the challenge cowboy/cowgirl

 

Gecko Galz cowgirl design sheet

dictionary page

blue promarker

stick on stars

 

entering in: wicked wednesday atc = cowgirl/cowboy

blue, blue sea

As said before...many, many times, I find it hard to do male cards - I get really stuck on the embellishments, can't really stick a doily on them.
But this lovely image speaks for itself, so there was no need to embellish much.

 

Gecko Galz august email freebie

blue embroidery thread

blue buttons

blue card

 

In CAP2, I picked out my chosen image, resized it to be my topper and then copied and pasted it, so I had a second image to use if needed. After trying various digi kit materials to use as the backing paper and not getting anything looking right re the colour tone, I had the idea of enlarging the second copy of the image and using that, after settling on the right placement, I used the transparency tool and lightened the picture.

With the topper, I drew a square, resized it to fit as a frame then colour matched it to the sea, same with the sentiment.

 

Printed everything out and played around with the placement of everything & stuck everything down.

 

(Used a DoCrafts corner punch to round off the corners of the frame, makes it 'pop' out more from the background. I wanted to use some blue/white cotton twine on the card somewhere, so I punched holes round the edges of the background - following a stitched design on the card, but I didn't have a big enough needle to take the twine, so substituted with embroidery thread  instead. Stuck two buttons over the ends to make a 'full stop'.)

entering in: cheerful stamp pad - happy birthday
                    digitally sweet challenges - celebrations
                   the crafty addicts - anything goes
                    Gecko Galz Closed Papercrafting Group on Facebook

fly me

On bit of a downer today, just one of them days. So forgive my attempt at trying to brighten my day, over at cheerful stamp pad, the theme for the challenge is 'travel to faraway places'. Whilst looking through my bits and pieces I came across this pretty little lady from the Gecko Galz.

 

image from 'Summer Cheesecake' Gecko Galz

map from 'old maps' Gecko Galz

DC10 plane from Google search

other moon from Google search

 

I cropped a map image out of the design sheet and put it as my background, changing the translucence of it to make it fade away. Used the cutout studio on the girl till I was happy with the image, then placed her onto the page.

Once I'd picked a suitable plane, did exactly the same to that image, then Copied and pasted it, and turned one of the images around and made it smaller.

Ditto for the moon, but I also colour matched it to the ladies moon, faded it away and changed size twice.

 

entering in: cheerful stamp pad - travel to faraway places.

 

if digital isn't allowed, please accept my apologies and delete my entry - but hopefully I've made you smile x

 

flower power

image from Gecko Galz 'Marie's garden' sheet 1

Hobbycraft pink & green pearls

blue paper from stash

Do Crafts 'Simply Floral' backing paper

Doilie

Fuchsia Pink, Almond, Pastel Blue promakers

blank flowers

cap2 generated sentiment

 

entered into: gecko galz - in the garden

one of those

cards that are so hard to make yet sadly have to be.

I chose to do a nice, simple yet different design for my sympathy card, looking through my Gecko Galz images, I found this one from the February email freebie (sign up to the newsletter and you will receive the monthly freebie sheet)

 

image from Gecko Galz newsletter freebie

backing paper from the Coquette papers (no 3) Gecko Galz

almond promarker

Hobbycraft white pearls

lace doilie

white organdie ribbon from Celebrate

 

Using Cap2,a 6x6 work page. I cut out the image I wanted, and resized it - cropping the image to get clean edges. I picked the backing paper and changed the colour of it, using the colour pipette to pick the colour out of the background to the image, so it matched, making the background paper a tad darker.

 

For the sentiment - this original said Jardin Botanique, so I drew a square to fit over that, again matched the colour of the background of the image and then added my own sentiment, changing the font to match the original words, then simply overlaid it. 

I grouped everything together so if I needed to resize, everything would move together as I checked how the finished card would look.

 

I then ungrouped everything so I had the backing paper and topper separate ready to print off.

 

I opened up another work page. this time A4 to match my printing paper, and copied & paste both images into it, this kept the images the same size as I had originally done them. (if you change the 6x6 page into a A4 page, the images increase in size so you have to resize them again!)

Printed them off and then started to assemble the card.

 

To edge the topper and also the backing paper, I used Almond promarker (wide tip), this just takes the whiteness off and gives an 'edge' to whatever you are using.

 

Its a beautiful image, and I love how it turned out.

 

entering into: lunagirl moonbeams challenge - fruit & flowers

        Gecko Galz Papercrafting Challenge Group on Facebook - birds & bees

red is Red

Gecko Galz 'monochromatic' design sheet 2

white 6x6 card blank

stick on lace

gems

coloured flowers

button

 

 

The stick-on lace is actually of a Christmas design, if you look at the top of the card you can see that's its actually stockings, and its a right pain to piggle the backing off to get it to stick.....cropped and resized the image, layered it on to a piece of red mirror card and stuck onto the card, for the bow I made two holes about an inch apart in the 'seam' of the card and pushed ribbon through.

 

entering into: lunagirl moonbeams - Vintage Red

box of delights

This months challenge over at fripperies and butterflies was to use the this absolutely gorgeous digital image, in your design

As soon as I saw it I thought chocolate bar.......or rather a lovely label for a gift box for a choccy bar!

 

(I'd just read the January issue of DoCrafts Creativity and there was a piece/recipe on how to make a small box suitable for chocolate bar sized gifts)

 

So I measured, scored and cut, stuck, coloured and glittered (didn't eat any chocolate, had a handful of peanuts & raisins).

 

 

Hot off the Press "Soft Nostalgia" turquoise & pink paper

doily

image

Papermania "Simply floral" paper & pastel ribbon

vintage buttons

cord from a necklace

butterfly

gold glitter 

Glam Gold pigment ink

 

Followed the instructions on constructing the box, (used thin card so it would be pliable) I then stuck the turquoise backing paper round it NB this would have been much easier if I'd stuck the backing paper to the sheet of card before I started!

Using the pigment ink I patted the pad round the edges and on top of the box, to give it an aged look.

I then cut a smaller pink backing paper up and stuck it to the top.

Had already resized and printed off the image, so I positioned half a doily underneath (coloured with pastel beige promarker to make it look more creamier) the image, then layered both onto the pink paper.

I fussy cut the roses out of the Simply Floral paper, in fact I cut two bits, its decoupaged but you can't see it in the photo., then I added a little gold glitter to the tops, just for a bit of shiny. Stuck those to the corner of the box, slightly hanging over the edge.

To balance the left side out I foraged in my BIG tin of vinatage buttons (this will be shown on a later post... my goodness its button heaven!). found 3 I liked, tied a bow using a piece of pink cord cut from a necklace I no longer wear... and I no longer speak to the 'friend' who gave it me  - karma. Stuck them on.

Used another pink butterfly (see earlier atc post) - these are actually cake toppers but I chopped the cocktail stick off, and stuck that to the other corner, because it looked empty.

 

Finally (phew - my fingers are aching) I punched a hole and added ribbon.

 

now it just needs the little gift (NOT chocolate) I bought for part of Pay It Forward 2014..... little late with that, and a quick note and I can then post it to a lovely lady I know. Hope she will like it.

 

entering into: fripperies and butterflies - use image

                      digitally sweet challenges - not a card or a layout