Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 251

As I said in my last DT post for Crafty Cardmakers, I recently did a session on rubber stamping for my crafts group. And this time, I've got another card that I made as a technique sample.

I wanted to show how you can combine watercolour with heat embossing. I embossed two sizes of the image (a very old mounted stamp from Hobby Art) in clear, then created a coloured background using Promarker water based pens. I used the same pens to give a bit more definition to the butterflies. The three foreground butterflies were stamped with Versafine ink and embossed in gold. I added colour to them, again, with Promarker water based pens.

The sentiment also uses a very old stamp. A long time ago - I'd estimate around 15 years - there was a craft show at Olympia which started out s a knitting and stitching show, but also covered papercrafts. And one time when I visited, someone was selling pre-inked stamps. They're a strange design. I call them stamps, but it's more as if there's a slit in a plastic layer in the shape of the wording. Anyway, they are filled with black ink, but it's slow enough to dry to be embossable. And that's what I did here.

And that's it. I do hope you can join us this time.

International Art and Soul Challenge 77

For this challenge, we want you to follow a sketch. You can make a card, layout, or anything else you can imagine, and you can turn it or change relative dimensions, so long as the original sketch is recognisable.

And I used it to make an anniversary card.

The central image was stamped using a stamp from Creative Expressions, and the papers are from Papermania. I embossed two pieces of card, one using a Sizzix folder, and the other, one from Design Objectives. I used some Memento ink for the image and for shading the embossing, and added a little colour to the image with coloured pencils.

To complete the card, I triple embossed a card heart. I had intended to give it some texture with a celtic knot work stamp, but didn't like the result, so I re-melted the embossing powder. That left a ghost image which I did rather like, so I let it stay!

I do home you can join us this time.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 250

250 challenges! Where has the time gone? My first challenge for this design team was challenge 25. That was way back in 2009. The amazing thing is that so many of my craft supplies date from then. (A lot are more recent, of course. But things do last!)

Right. on to the challenge. The theme is All You Need is Love. And I've made a Valentine card.

 I recently did a session for my crafts group on rubber stamping. Now, I definitely don't consider myself to be an expert, despite having been trying since well before 2009, but the group is very mixed in terms of experience, and none of them had tried stamping before and they were particularly interested in heat embossing. So, I put together some stamps, inks, and samples of different techniques and let them play. I made a point of looking out all my old mounted stamps as if you've got lots of people trying things out, it seemed like a simpler option than having to have a lot of acrylic blocks. This card was one of my samples - showing heat embossing on coloured card. The stamp I used here is very old, and, unusually for mounted stamps, doesn't have a manufacturer's label, so I don't know who to credit. Despite the rose, I've tried to keep it from being too 'girly' as it's for my husband who, as I've mentioned many times on this blog, prefers things uncluttered and plain.

The background paper is from a pad I bought second hand from someone who was getting out of cardmaking. It's a strange size, and the paper is a lot rougher than most commercial pads, but it's got some lovely patterns, and this is one of them.

I do hope you can join us this time.

International Art and Soul Challenge 76

The theme for this fortnight is that we want you to be inspired by a favourite song. So long as you share the name of the song, you can make whatever you want.

I struggled with this at first. I have a lot of favourite songs, but none of them seemed to work for a crafty project, and then I thought of good old Gilbert and Sullivan. I do love The Mikado, and one of the songs from that, The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring (Tra La) got me thinking about Easter, and this is the result.

The stamp is from Woodware. I've bought quite a few of their stamps recently, and I do love the uncomplicated style of many of them. I used Versafine Clair ink to stamp, and coloured with Derwent Inktense pencils. It's a much softer effect that I got when I last used this stamp (and Promarkers to colour) but the colours are still bright and clear. I used Distress Ink to shade around the image and sentiment. The sentiment is another Woodware stamp, and I stamped it using a Kaleidacolor ink pad in, aptly named, Blossom shades. I think stamping sentiments in variegated ink pads could become a favourite of mine!

I do hope you can join us this time.