less is more: christmas card- use a bird

The theme at Less is more this week is to use a bird on a Christmas card.
For the Christmas cards that I make for my book group each year I try to incorporate book pages somewhere on the card. So, that was what I had in mind while making this.
Also every time I see this leaf die from the grunge flower #1 set from PaperArtsy, it reminds me of a bird, so I thought it was time to try it out in that way.
I have used PaperArtsy paints too. The blood orange (for the red breast) and spiced paprika (for the body) are both translucent so show the words through well. The cinnamon (main body) is semi-opaque, so gives a bit more coverage but not too much. I only applied a tiny amount of the paints, anyway, for a subtle hint of colour.

I drew on the eye and feet with a fine tipped marker.

The words are from PaperArtsy's squiggly ink range.

p.s. sorry, I know it's tuesday, but I have no new chutney recipes this week!

My PaperArsty Guest designer week and the less is more challenge

Have you checked out my week as guest designer on the PaperArsty blog this week. I've ben using dies in a variety of ways.There's a challenge you can take party in to win stamps, by making something inspired by my pieces. the challenge is here, and you can see below a sneak peak of my samples. Check out the full projects
here, here and here

You have until noon tomorrow to enter, and as most of my projects are very quick amd simple, you have plenty of time!

I decided to use one of the techniques from my GD week to make this card for the Less is More Challenge this week. The theme is Trees. Now I don't have any tree dies so I decided to handcut the aperture of this card (just draw it on the back, no one will even see the pencil lines). This card only took about 10 minutes, so there really is still plenty of time to enter the PaperArsty Challenge.

The paints I used are Tinned Peas, Hey Pesto and Guacamole, from PaperArsty's range of fresco paints. And the words are from a JoFy christmas plate, the splatter is of course the well used Mini 72

I'd love you to come and take part in my challenge at PaperArtsy, It's such a thrill looking at all the artwork.

less is more: fabric

The theme at less is more is fabric. I went the easy route and made a fabric flower.
 I have decided to do a quick tutorial for this flower.

 first use PaperArtsy's grunge flower #1 to cut a flower and leaf from felt. These dies cut so easily through felt.

 then trim as shown

 roll up, not too tightly.

 glue last bit in place and then glue to leaf

 squish, to open up the flower

Stamp a background, and attach flower.
The stamps I used are a splatter, script and sentiment, all from PaperArsty

less is more: rust and dark green

I wasn't sure that I would take part in this week's less is more challenge. The inspiration colours are beautiful, but I didn't know what I would do with them.
This is the photo from which the colours have been taken,

Bu then Laura took part and bascically challenged me to do so....

....so then I had to.

I've been enjoying playing with PaperArtsy's fresco paints recently, but I didn't have the quite the right colours, so I decided to have a play at mixing colours.
Cinnamon and smoked paprika made a nice dark rust, Tinned peas and little black dress made a good dark green.

Now these colours made me think of the change of summer to autumn, so I decided to play with paperartsy's small oak leaf die. I painted the die cut with the green paint and then overstamped it with the rust using the splatter mini, repeatedly.

To finish I stamped onto the card with a script stamp and the rust paint. I attached the leaf and a tiny knot of string.

less is more: use beads

It's less is more time. This week the challenge is to use beads. My original idea was to use beads in the centre of flowers, but then I made these roses using PaperArtsy dies. (I didn't use them exactly how they are designed, I'll explain another time how I did them)

The beads didnt work in the centre of these flowers so instead I just used them as decoration around the flowers.
The message is a docrafts embossing folder which I used on the same tye of card as the base card, trimmed and lightly inked with tea dye distress ink.

Charming!

The theme at Less is More is to use a charm on your clean and simple card. This is a baby card I made with a Lili of the valley stamp, with a cute "made with love" charm.

It's hard to see from the picture but I have dotted glitter glue around the image for extra interest.


the image is coloured with pencils.

mothers' day card (not my usual style)

Are you all ready for Mothers' day tomorrow? Here's the card I made for my fantastic Mother-in-Law.
This Card is totally different yo my normal style, but is a style I admire in others and didn't think I could do myself.

don't you just adore the polka dot ribbon. the leaf die is memory box meadow leaf die.

I am entering this for moving along with the times, papertake weekly and forever friends.

Nestability card

On the Frantic Stamper Blog today I have this quick card featured.

I made this circle card with a Nestabilities scallop die and a humorous birthday stamp by inkadinkado, and finished it with a piece of green apple grid ribbon.

I used the largest die in the scallop Nestabilities set to cut a circle card by overlapping it over the fold of the card.

I used the same die to cut from patterned paper and attached it to the card.

I used the 3rd smallest die to cut a white circle, then stamped and coloured the image. I stamped it again on scrap, coloured and cut out just the head and neck, and attached them to the card with dimensional adhesive.

I attached the white circle to the card. Lastly, I decorated the card with ribbon tied around the fold of the card.

I finished the card by cutting a flat edge on the back of the card to allow it to stand.

less is more : white on white

I Love the look of white on white. So I couldn't wait to play along with this week's challenge at Less is more
First thing to notice about this card.... no stamping!!


I'd forgotten that it was possible to make a card with no stamping. This is all done with my big shot, using dies and embossing folders, to create the front piece, which I then mounted using my floating front technique, which I did in Craft stamper magazine a couple of months back.
I shall be demoing the floating front technique (but not this card, I will be stamping), next weekend at the Happy Stampers Show at Port sunlight. If you are coming please come and say Hi!!

forever friends guest appearance.

Although I have given up my place on the forever friends DT (I was just a little over-committed!) I have still taken part in the current challenge as I was sent some lovely images from DRS designs to play with. The challenge is a colour bingo challenge. Choose 3 colours from the bingo card, in either a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line (or you can use all of the colours)

I chose the bottom left to top right diagonal and used the make a wish candles and words to make a cake box.

I thought this would be a nice thing to give someone on their birthday, the candle on the front of the box can be removed and used on the cake.

one layer wednesday - shimmer

I can't believe that I let it get to Tuesday without doing the one layer Wednesday challenge. For some reason the "shimmer" challenge had me a little bit stumped, so I sat myself down and had a stern talk with myself and sent myself off to my craft room.... 5 minutes later and wondering what I'd been fussing about, I left with this!
I used a die cut aperture to apply worn lipstick ink and edged with vintage photo, with the mask still in place I stamped the splatters from PaperArtsy hotpicks with versamark and brushed with gold perfect pearls. I then removed the mask and stamped the hotpicks flowers. I finished with a small ribbon (another "embellishment opportunity")

can't see the shimmer?
this should help..

I can fly

I have made this for two purposes.
1) Scrolls Work stamps are currently running a competition on facebook where you can win $50 worth of stamps. you have to upload a card made only with Scrolls Work stamps to their wall today and tomorrow and then the cards will be voted on.
2 ) Wednesday Stamper has a "I can Fly" theme

I hadn't used Erica for a while and she's still my favourite, so I decided it was time she came out to play. The wings and words are also from Scrolls Work. And I have used my "paper sculpture" technique again

I am also going to enter this into less is more's spring theme, butterfly wings and blossom, very spring and lots of white space to satisfy the less is more principle.

Paper Sculpture Sympathy card

on the frantic stamper blog today, I have this card with instructions. I love the look of paper sculpture, and I wanted to recreate the effect using die cuts. This is such a simple card, but i think it's really effective.

Sketch challenge sponsored by Stampotique

The challenge at Card Positioning Systems is to follow this sketch

I turned it upside down and made a very clean and simple card using Jo's "mwah" stamp (with the kiss on the side)
Jo's stamp is from Stampotique and also available from Happy Daze in the UK.

make sure you pop over and take part, you could win some Stampotique stamps!!

sympathy card

It's always sad when you have to make a sympathy card, but it always means such a lot to the recipient, so it's always worth doing.
I used my new dies again to make this really quick card, but this time used one of the smaller ones as well. Moon girl just seemed to fit perfectly. I have glittered her wings with spray and sparkle.
Moon girl is by Stampotique and available from Happy Daze in the UK

(I apologise for the poor quality photograph. The light had gone so I had to use the flash, which makes the picture look really flat)

a little play with some christmas goodies

I got a few crafting goodies for Christmas, including some stamps from Jo Capper-Sandon's range of stamps from Stampotique (available from Happy Daze), and some spellbinders dies.

I used the largest of a set of rectangle nestabilities to make this card, folding the resultant die cut in half. Then I used two of the stamps from Jo's heart cube, plus "mwah" and the kiss stamp that comes with it. I attached the ribbon using the immovable knot technique. perfect for this card as I can make sure it stays in place at the top of the hanging heart.

I have taken some extra pictures of this technique so you can really see how it works.

I am entering this for the stampotique die cuts challenge, which I am hoping is still open. (the challenge is actually a diecut and a punch - I used a die cut for the card, and a hole punch to make the hole for the immovable knot)

PaperArtsy hair accessory

I keep seeing people with lovely flower hair accessories, and thinking, surely I could make one of those..
And then I was looking at the PaperArtsy Grungeflower dies and some white felt that I had bought for an unrelated project, and this hair accessory just sort of happened.
The dies cut the felt really neatly, although I did have to add a shim.
The middle layer is ribbon gathered along one edge, and all the layers are sewn together then attached to the clip using hot glue.

quick gift wrapping

You know how it is, you don't want to spend forever (or a fortune) wrapping a present (for someone who won't appreciate it) but you absolutely cannot just leave it just wrapped in paper.
Flowers are the perfect solution, and die cutting your flowers from your cheap supermarket wrapping paper (Morrison's) is even better. I used the two smaller grunge flower dies from PaperArtsy.

PaperArtsy Grungeflower #1 die and the x-cut impress

When I ordered the largest of the grunge flower dies, I had my doubts that it would fit through my little x-cut impress, but I went ahead an ordered it on the principle that one day I will have to order a bigger machine.

but today is not that day!!!

when I tried the die in the machine it was actually physically too big to even fit in the opening....darn!

but then I decided that I would not be beaten, it was so close to fitting that there must be a way.

so.... I found my trusty tin snips (why do I own tin snips? well, put it this way, it's not the first time I bought a die that wouldn't fit)

so now it was slimmer it fit through the opening, but was still fractionally too large for the plates.

I did consider try to make bigger plates, but then I hit on a much simpler idea, just run it through twice.

place the die with the edge up to one edge of the plate, run it through,

then slide it across to the other edge and run it through again.

and Voila! it works perfectly.

Now I have to decide what I'm going to create with it!!