muted tones floral card

I've been trying to make some newer style floral cards as that's something I've been lacking in my stash recently. I've made a selection of 'modern' floral cards over the last few days.

This card starts with a simple 8x8 scalloped card that I inked with my 'dusty concord' distress ink. The backing paper comes from a DCWV 'latte' stack and I chose it because of the muted green shade. The flowers are an acrylic stamp from 'Little Claire designs'. I stamped the flower 3 times onto cardstock from the DCWV stack so that I had 3 different colours (brown, blue & purple) but all in muted shades again. The flowers were given a hint of extra colour by using my water brush to drag out some of the distress ink from the centre detail and the edge of each flower. After cutting out each flower, I used my embossing tool to create a bit of depth by embossing over the lines seperating the petals of each flower. I then rubbed over each flower with my gold 'memento' ink pad so they shimmer in the light. After attaching the flowers to the corner of the card, some flat & some with 3-d foam, I finished them by placing a new gold stripe 'card candi' in the centre of each flower.

'Gorjuss Girls' calendar cards

Went back to my roots with these cards.

I started my card making nearly 10 years ago with an old calendar and the idea of making cheap birthday cards for my family (as a student I needed to save my money for beer!). It's still an idea I sometimes use although my recent makes are much better that the originals!

May seem odd, but now is a great time to pick up cheap calendars (if you can still find them). I managed to get a large 'Gorjuss girls' calendar for only 50p from a local department store (well 4 actually). So far, I've made 10 cards using 2 of the calendars, some A3 card & some stickles glitter glue. They are all simply decoupaged cards with a hint of embellishment.

 

 

 

'Mimic' cards

The one serious bargain picked up at the NEC this year was a great cd-rom made by 'The Card Hut' who are a company I've never bought from before but this cd is ace! It contains a wide selection of backgrounds, toppers & phrases, all of which can be used to create your own base card, backgrounds, inserts, envelopes, decoupage, invertage, pyramage & toppers. There is a wide selection of characters on the cd such as doctor who, lady gaga, james bond & the a-team. You can also import your own pictures to create all of the things listed above from your own photos- plenty of fun to be had with Take That pics me thinks!

Anyway, here's a few cards that I've made so far- I've printed out characters only and also printed the twilight card background from the cd.

 

 

Hobbycrafts, Birmingham 2012- disappointing...

Went to the NEC over the weekend for the Hobbycrafts show, which is always a highlight of my year but, I must admit that, this year, I was a bit disappointed with what I saw.

As anyone who has visited the show will know, the stands are set out in rows with an aisle down the centre and each stand has a letter and number code. When I have been to previous shows, there have been enough stands to have them coded up to the letter 'j', yesterday the letters only went up to 'g' and that was only from about G1 to G3. Considering there are an average of 48 stands in each aisle, there were around 150 less stands than at previous shows. We had managed to walk round every stand writing down what we wanted to look at again by around 11.30am, when it would usually be closer to 1pm. It was, however, also very obvious that less people were visiting too- lots of stands had plenty of stock left towards the end of the day and there wasn't the usual squash to actually look at some stands (although the amount of people with motorized scooters or pushchairs(!) did still manage to make looking at some things difficult).

Lot's of big name brands were not there such as create & craft and polka doodles. It is obviously an expensive time for the retailer as I'm sure a stand is not cheap and the internet makes it possible for people to get the products without leaving home, but I hope this is not a sign of things to come as I much prefer being able to see a product in the flesh before I buy it.

That said, there were a small number of exciting new products to be had which I will post about in more detail later- nowhere near as many as in other years though- I actually came home with some money left for once!

Harry Potter 'Hedwig' card

Here is one of the cards that I made, what is now, weeks ago! Finally used the Harry Potter themed acrylic stamps bought from the NEC last November (just in time before the next visit!)

It is quite a simple card, started with a craftwork cards A5 scalloped white card blank. I used my favourite 'stormy sky' distress ink to colour the background, carefully trying to blend the ink to make sure there wasn't any lines. I then used my 'chipped sapphire' distress ink, alongside the 'indigo blu' stamps to create the design at the bottom of the card using the 'friend' message & the 'arch window' stamp. I also added the dark blue organza ribbon for the bow down the spine of the card.

The main topper needed a bit more work, but was definitely worth it (I think so anyway...)

I wanted to stamp the main owl image onto acetate so that I could use gilding flakes behind it but my black stazon ink pad was short of ink. To solve this problem, I used my versamark ink and then embossed it with a black embossing powder from 'Heat It Up!' that I've had for years. I then used a double sided adhesive sheet to prepare the acetate for the gilding flakes. I then cut the image out, leaving a small border, and attached it to my card using foam pads.

All in all, I think it's a beautiful card, that was fairly simple to create with a beautiful set of stamps!

new cards???

Seems like an eternity since I blogged anything new but hopefully that will change soon. Week off work so i've had time to make a couple of cards but seemed to spend most of the week at the garage! Will post the new stuff soon- they are fabulous and definitely worth the wait (even if I do say so myself!).

Create & Craft...update 2

I clearly never should have praised create & craft for that credit note as I now stand by my first moaning post even more and can add a bit of extra moaning to go with it!

Lovely Kanban time machine stamps have not yet arrived and after contacting customer services, I have been told that they are not going to because STOCK LEVEL ISSUES- which in English means...

THEY SOLD ME A PRODUCT THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE!!!

and took 4 days to even think about giving me the refund. Pissed off would be a gross understatement.

My, strongly worded, letter of complaint will be on its way to them tomorrow and I have lodged a complaint with 'Consumer Direct' too. Never known service like it.