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