International Art and Soul Challenge 59

The theme for this fortnight's challenge is Lace and Pearls.

I belong to a craft group that's made up of people who do a variety of crafts but mainly include pottery and knitting/crochet. Three times a year, we plan our sessions with one member agreeing to lead a session. As a papercrafter, I find that quite hard. It's not that I don't have ideas, but rather that I struggle to come up with ideas which translate to a hall where I don't have access to most of my craft room!

For the next meeting, I'm going to take this project as a suggestion. It's a basic pop up card, and obviously, people can decorate it any way they want - pre-printed images, decoupage, stamped images, things cut from magazines. Anyway, this is what I came up with.

The front of the card. I've used some paper I bought years ago. It was part of a lot which I suspect had been cut from much larger sheets. This one was always a favourite, but I'd never found the ideal project (until now.) I've added a strip of card and lace, as well as the butterfly which was cut using a very old Marianne die. I added lots of sticky pearls and some matting that's about it for the front.

The inside. As you can see, the 'pop up' mechanism is about as simple as possible! I've covered the inside with some Dovecraft paper, and used dies from Tattered Lace and Joanna Sheen to make the flowers and vase.

A close up of the vase.

And a slightly different angle on the front ... just because!

I do hope you can join us this time.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 234

The challenge for this fortnight is Birthdays and I'm hosting, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!

I fell in love with these Mackintoshesque stamps from Clarity when I first saw them, and finally succumbed when there was a sale just before Christmas. This is my first use of this stamp. I decided not to use the included sentiment (which in this case would have read Bed of Roses.) Instead, I used a rubber stamp I''ve had for a long time, and while it's from an Art Deco set, I can't remember the manufacturer. I coloured the image with Promarkers.

For the background, I've used stamps from two more manufacturers. The birthday text is from Woodware and the floral grid is from Creative Expressions. I added some background colour to the text image using Distress Ink and coloured the floral image using Promarkers. Both were matted to some red card and to complete the card, I added some sticky paper lace.

I hope you can join us this time.

International Art and Soul Challenge 58

The challenge for this fortnight is ecology/environment/conservation. That's quite a wide-ranging theme, and there are lots of possibilities.

I decided to go for a 'weather' theme; something close to my heart coming from the wettest part of the UK (by some measure for some time period.)

The girl and umbrella images are freebies from Creative Stamping magazine and the background was embossed using an Apple Blossom folder.

To add some further detail to the background, I added some Pan Pastel in white to the clouds, some shimmer to the wavy section using a Sakura Stardust pen and some glitter to the raindrops using a Quickie glue pen and some Glamour Dust.

The images took a bit of combining. I wanted the umbrella in the foreground, but I needed the handle to be behind the girl's hand. It took me a couple of goes to get it right, but I finally got something close to right. The only issue was that I had to use a dark colour when colouring the umbrella handle as the end of it wasn't properly masked!

I coloured the result with Promarkers and cut around the combined image.

I do hope you can join us this time!

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 233

Our challenge for this fortnight is 3 - 2 - 1! You need to use elements in those quantities, but what those elements are is up to you! To help those visiting your blog, it'd would be great if you could specify somewhere what your 3 - 2 - 1 are.

In this case, my three is flowers, my two is papers and my one is the sentiment.

The main background paper (and the flowers) use paper decorated using acrylic paint, stencils and a gelli plate. The gingham paper has been in my stash I'm not completely sure where it came from, but I suspect it was from Payper Box. (I used to see them at Olympia at a craft show, but that was many years ago. They might have visited Ally Pally but again, not recently.)

To cut the flowers, I used Crafter's Companion dies, and I finished them with some liquid pearl.

the sentiment is computer- generated. I cut and matted it using dies from Spellbinders.