Wahoo! It's here at last!

At long last I've managed to produce my very first video tutorial! (Though there is a doozy of a wrinkle in what I've produced - more later.)

My video(s) demonstrates stencilling using BoBunny's Glitter Paste. I made a card using a sketch from Freshly Made Sketches (even though I was too late to enter my card in the challenge).

The Copic marker colouring I did in my video took so long that the video ran to almost 30 minutes. Needless to say, YouTube has a beginning rate of less than 15 minutes. What do you do??? Make three videos instead. If you can wade through them, I'm sure you'll find something of interest. 

DISCLAIMER: At no time during the making of this video was I drunk or under the influence of other recreational drugs. (Just in case you're wondering by the time you get to the third part.)

Seriously, by the time I got to filming the last part of the video, I was starting to get tired and my brain stopped working, everything slowed down and I was forgetting the names of things. It was funny, even though it was actually happening to me. Anyway, the card is literally completed and I forgot the name of a material used - too late to reshoot - so I've gone with the bloopers and all. You really have to watch to understand. (I'm trying to whet your sense of curiosity so you have to watch it! Ha ha ha ha!!!)

I recommend watching all 3 parts (of course), but if you know how to colour using Copic markers, skip Part 2 and just go onto Part 3.

Anyway, here are the links for all three parts. I hope you enjoy watching.

Part 1 (stencilling)

Part 2 (colouring)

Part 3 (assembly)

Bye for now,

Love,

Janelle

P.S. If you have any thoughts about what you would like to see me do in future videos (acrobatics is not possible) drop me a comment with your suggestions. :)

Welcome from the city of the G20

Hi to all!

Just wanted to say "Hi," and to let you know that all is reasonably fine in the crafting world of A Dash of Flash.

I've been trying, lately, to create my first video tutorial. It's slowly coming along, but I am hoping to get it to you by the end of this week. What it's about - you'll have to wait and see. It's quite difficult to get everything working together to get the various bits filmed and then edited, but I'm liking the results so far. What I could have done with is an enormous cage with a camera spot right over the table, so I could just climb in and everything would be in place (No shadows from the tripod legs) - unfortunately, no-one's going to be building me a cage any time soon. :)

Things are really different in my city at the moment with the G20 conference taking place. Too bad we're having a heat wave this weekend with the expected temperature to reach 40 degrees Celsius tomorrow. It's so hot! You know that song that goes "you'll always find me in the kitchen at parties", well I'm making my theme song "you'll always find me in my bedroom on hot days". Ha! 

My husband went into the city the other night and took photos of some of the buildings that had been lit up for the G20. I'm also hoping to get a photo to share, once he gets around to downloading it from his phone.

It's also pretty busy with end of year school activities, as my son gets ready to finish his primary schooling. There's the end of year school concert, puberty talks, the high school induction program, as well as his graduation night dance. Over the past fortnight we went shopping for an outfit for him to wear and he is going to look so cool ! We got him a dark grey pair of trousers, long sleeved white shirt with a light blue striped tie and a grey vest to go with it. He'll be wearing black shoes, belt and a grey hat (I think it's called a trilby) with it.

Anyway, that's all from me for now.

Love,

Janelle

Some bloopers for you to see

Bonjour, mes amis. (Don't know why I did that, just felt like a little French flourish.)

I don't believe in waste (if I can help it), so when I recently tried out some new techniques (and failed) I turned them around to add to my stash of cards to offload onto my friends and family.  :)

This first card was supposed to look like Therese Calvird's beautiful die embossed and stamped card (pictured here), but I couldn't get the tension right on my die cutting machine and it kept on cutting out the butterfly and not embossing the frame. Rather than throw out the lot I fell back on a favourite technique with colour sponging and foam tape to lift the coloured layer off the stamped image. I then sprinkled over some water drops to watermark the colours and when dry, drenched it in Glimmer Mist. It'll do! :)

The second card was a test run for a commission using Distress Markers and I was trying out a background colouring technique. 

The image was stamped with Archival Ink and then masked with some Molotow Grafx Art Masking Liquid. (I only discovered it the other day and it was exactly what I wanted for what I had in mind - and I love using it already!) Only problem was that my background ending up a muddy grey colour - not a good look! After splashing on some more green and blue colours, I got it fairly reasonable. Once I splattered over some Glimmer Mist in a number of colours, it started looking even better. So here is the finished product. 

Alex, my son, said it looked like a sympathy card, but maybe it could be a masculine card or a birthday card for some-one over 50 (they don't need a lot of colour!) ;?) Only joking - I'm in that group as well.

Anyway, I'm going back to try it out again (this time with another type of paper). Hopefully I'll get lucky this time.

Bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

Another card set from Heartfelt Creations

In case you're wondering, I've been doing a little tidy up and catching up on all of the cards that I haven't made yet (including my card sets I bought, as well as projects I'd started and not completed yet.) Hopefully by the end of my clean-up, I'll have a pile of cards I can use without having to make one up on-the-spot, because I've forgotten someone's birthday etc.

The set of cards I'm posting today use the Heartfelt Creations "Raindrops on Roses" Collection.  I love the images used and the colours. The die cut fences and frames are also delightful.

Rose buds are my favourite flower to make, so this set of cards was super easy. It hasn't shown up really well, but the clumps of reddish stuff on the cards is actually the prettiest coloured glitter. INL the cards look so much nicer.

Next time I'll be back with something completely new.

Bye for now.

Love,

Janelle

Some more from Heartfelt Creations

Happy World Card Making Day! Yeah I'm late! That's nothing new. :)

I'm bringing you some more cards I've made using card kits from Heartfelt Creations. Have I said before how much I love these card kits (and the papers and stamps and die cutting sets)? They are so easy to use and the cards and layouts you can create with them almost make themselves.

This set of cards uses the Cut Mat Create Collection which is basically a series of shapes and their co-ordinating mats that have been designed to fit neatly into 12 x 12 paper layouts or cards. It's really a no-brainer way of matting photos and creating layouts to maximise your space. Ingenious!

I love how the cards were designed using the cut-away technique so you cut along some of the designed flowers etc and slot the matted image under it. The filigree die cut is also awesome - so pretty.

Anyway, bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

A gift bag using Heartfelt Creations "Cut Mat and Create Collection"

It's taken me a long time to get this completed - mainly because I kept putting it away to do something else!

As soon as I saw this "Cut Mat and Create" paper collection I knew I wanted to do something a little different with it - then when I saw a video tutorial by Pootles Papercraft about a flat topped gift box - I thought I'd do something similar. I love how the paper has a decorative dado rail design on the full sheets of paper and this works perfectly with this design of gift bag.

I designed a diagram showing how to cut out the gift bag. If you want a copy, Please email me and I'll send it to you. There's a part underneath the bow, where I folded over some of the paper to make a double layer - making it stronger where the ribbon comes out.

I decorated it with some panels and flourishes cut using the Cut Mat Create Die sets. as well as some Majestic Blooms flowers stamped in Delicata gold ink and frosted with some clear Wink of Stella. The round stamped image comes from the "Celebrate The Journey" stamp and die collection.

You can see on the side how the side panel folds in to fit the top flap.


It's the first time I've created something like this, but I think I'll have to do some more in the future.


I've also been doing some cards kits from Heartfelt Creations that I'll show in a couple of days. :)


Don't forget, if you want a copy of the plan, just drop me a comment and I can send you a copy.



Bye for now.
Love,

Janelle

A Little Something using Heartfelt Creations

Hello again! I'm back!

Today I'm offering a thank-you card I made for my son's choir teacher, who's going on leave for the rest of the year, travelling around the world. Mrs Mechielson has done such a great job with the kids and my son has had a fantastic time in choir over the last few years. Anyway, I made the card for her using some of the "Celebrate The Journey" Collection from Heartfelt Creations. 

The card I made was CASEd from one created by Emma Lou Beechy.

I used a similar layout with the suitcase, flourish die cuts and the tag; but because my card was so large (it was 15 x 21cm finished), I had to add more embellishments to fill the space. This card was not a CAS card at all!

Looking at my card it's also more colourful than Emma Lou's. I'm glad that the flowers turned out nicely. I used the Majestic Blooms stamp and die sets. After I stamped, die cut them and sponged them with colour, I then spritzed them with water and screwed the petals up and let it dry. It's amazing how they turn out.

Hopefully, Mrs Mechielsen will love her present that the kids got her, and it's a shame I won't be there to see it as my son has been sick since Saturday afternoon and still wasn't able to go to school today, so will miss presenting the present and card this afternoon on parade. Thankfully there is someone there to fill in for him.

I'm going to be doing some more items featuring Heartfelt Creations over the next couple of days. They had their Design Team call out recently and I would have loved to participate, but couldn't due to some of my health problems at the moment. I'm still in the mood the play with their fabulous products and my favourite design style. My next project is a gift bag/box. You'll see what I mean in a couple of days.

Bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

Time for something new

I'm back with a card I just made for my brother-in-law's birthday. 

Ever since I got this die, I've been planning how to use it and I finally got around to using it. The die is called Birthday Cloud from Memory Box. As you can see, the cloud is stuck to the card using foam pads (those little bits were a touch fiddly to apply - I left the loops in the top of the b and h off - they were just too small.)

I adhered some glittered alphas onto acetate, fussy cut around them, stuck it on the top of the cloud and finished with the wooden hot-air balloon.

I think the balloon really makes the cloud really look like a cloud and the white dotted background is just fun.

Bye for now.
Love, 
         Janelle 

Time for more cards

I'm posting another collection of cards I made during the last year. This lot were published in Issue 58 of Australian Simply Cards by Practical Publishing. 

They featured the technique called OMBRE. I was looking for easily translated cards that showed the basic versions of this technique; so I included: using layers of varying coloured cardstock, watercolouring backgrounds, sponging different colours over heat embossed stamping, heat embossing with different coloured embossing powders and die-cutting different coloured cardstock.

My favourite cards were the Hello card as well as the heat embossed multi-coloured card. There was another card I made for the commission, but I don't like it, so I'm self-editing it out.

Bye for now. Have a lovely weekend.

Love,
         Janelle 

Triple Stamping

I'm posting today some cards made for Issue 56 of Australian Simply Cards, published by Practical Publishing. These cards featured triple stamping which is a simple technique to do, but looks really difficult to the uninitiated.

All of the cards used the same technique, just used a variety of different background shapes and tags and arrangement of pieces.

     

 

This card was my favourite. I love the positioning of the background shapes and the butterflies. 

This card is slightly different to the others as the background was sponged as well as stamped (and heat embossed) before matting and assembling. It doesn't look real nice in the photo, (because of the shine) but IRL the colours are lovely and the heat embossing really shows up nicely.















As you can see, each card shows a different variation of the technique. It really stretches my brain to show what can be done using each technique. 

This was an easy collection to show you as I had fun with this technique and have used it a few times since.

See you again tomorrow.

Bye for now.
Love,
         Janelle

Metal Shim

Back again with another selection of cards that have been published by Practical Publishing. This lot of cards was published in Australian Papercraft Essentials 31. These cards featured a variety of uses for metal shim in cardmaking. I wanted to keep the techniques fairly basic, while still being interesting.




This card used a number of embossing folders, including some embossing in brass in the Vintag tags and folder. I also stencilled with some  Viva Décor Copper 3D Stamp-Paint, used a metal butterfly and metallic mesh to increase the metallic look.




















I die cut Ranger Inkssentials Foil tape sheets for this card and then created a metal foil rose using outline stickers that I placed on the mesh and cut around, before shaping and then adhering together to form the rose. The leaves were made in the same manner, but using silver outline stickers on the foil. I love the mixture of gold and silver.

      







On this card I did dry embossing with an embossing folder, then sanded the surface before playing with alcohol inks to give an aged look.

       To make the foil stronger and more resilient to dry embossing I stuck it to some cardstock before embossing.

To be honest, there are parts of this card I like (flowers and the painted doily behind) but I wish I'd done something else with the foil. Not sure???

      









For this card after I embossed with an embossing folder, I then painted the foil with some Viva Décor 3D Stamp-Paints to give it a totally different texture. I sanded the banner before adding the sticker alphas.

The foil on this card was die cut before being recoloured using alcohol ink. 
 










This final card was created by hand embossing the house that had been stamped in thicker foil and then shaped with tools to create the shaped image. To keep the shaping, I filled the back of the image with foam tape, before attaching to the card. 

The letters were heat embossed with Stampendous Frontage Embossing set, adding mica to give it a more tactile appearance.







Anyway, that's it for this lot of cards. Be back soon with more.

Bye for now,
Love,
         Janelle

Watercolored Cards

Here are some more cards that were published by Practical Publishing over the past year. They were published in Australian Papercraft Essentials 30 and featured quick tricks with distress markers.

Whenever I do a "technique" collection, I try to do a different technique on each card, so this first card features a background where I scribbled over a craft sheet with a few distress markers, spritzed with water and then smooshed the cardstock over it.

This second card was stamped and then coloured with the distress markers. Only a little water was brushed over to blend the colouring.

 This card was stamped with a stamp that had been coloured with the distress markers and then spritzed with water before stamping. That's why you get the watercoloured effect and less distinct lines from the stamp.

This card was the most complicated to do. The cardstock was dry embossed with an embossing folder, then brayered with VersaMark, before being heat embossed with white embossing powder. The impressions in the cardstock were then coloured with the distress markers and a waterbrush.

This final card has a background that was coloured with distress markers on a background stamp, then without spritzing, stamped onto the cardstock. The collage stamp was then stamped over the top and coloured with the distress markers. 

 I think that this last card is my favourite of this lot. It was also the hardest to do perfectly as the background had to be stamped just right to work out without too many light patches. This is the tricky bit when just relying on a "huff" to keep the ink moist enough to stamp evenly. I then had the second layer of stamping to worry about as well. I think I had six or seven attempts before I got this sample to use.

Anyway, more next time.

Bye for now,
Love,
         Janelle

P.S. Reason I didn't post yesterday was that I couldn't get my son off the computer - that's what you get with school holidays.

A Retrospective Look Back Over The Past Year

Over the next week I'm will be presenting cards that I made during the past year and published by Practical Publishing. With all of my commissioned cards, I must wait three months after they have been published, before I can post them on my website. Consequently there is an avalanche of cards that has piled up. : ) I'll also be putting all of these cards onto my Pinterest board. ( http://www.pinterest.com/ellenajg/cards-ive-made/ )

This first lot of cards were published in Australian Papercraft Essentials (Edition 29). They featured trinkets and embellishments. The papers and most of the trinkets were from Prima, with clock faces, cogs and metal flowers also. The flowers were a mixture of Bo Bunny, Prima and Kaisercraft; with the leaves from Manor House.

I loved making these cards as they turned out so pretty and I just love the combo of pastel colours, lace, flowers, metal and rhinestone swirls - thoroughly feminine!

I'll be back tomorrow with some more.

Bye for now,
love, Janelle

P.S. Did you know that Google does a special "Google" icon for your birthday? How super!

A Baby Card

Today I'm presenting a baby card I've made for my niece, who's just had a baby boy who she's called Hudson.

We're all so happy for her and her husband and we're sure that he'll grow into a wonderful person as part of their loving and caring family.

This card is CASEd from one created by Therese Calvird.

I wanted my top layer to look more like clouds so cut the white using a scalloped oval die and made some air-foam moulded characters instead of the stamped image she used.

I'm going to use an acronym created by Darnell Knauss. My scalloped oval die, the moulds and the Hello die are all NBUS. (Never-Before-Used-Schtuff) I'm making it my mission over the next couple of months to use more NBUS. (Darnelle has inspired me!  ; )  )

They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, so I hope Therese likes what I did to her card.

Bye for now,

Janelle