I Forgot........Sorry!!!

It seems at the moment that if I don't do something when I first think of it, I'll forget to do it. It sounds like the onset of dementia; but my GP tells me it's because of the meds I'm on for my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and peripheral neuropathy. The reason I'm admitting this is because I forgot to post my card from my last challenge for Simply Create Too. It's now time for the new challenge to start, so head on over and see the creations on show and join in to win a great badge to put on your blog site. The theme is to use green.

Getting back to my card, I had to use my favourite colour combo; which, if you were to look in my wardrobe, is a combination of blue, green and purple (and all of the variations in between).

I used some Couture Creations Anna Griffin Mix & Match Pigment Powders and smooshed, and layered the background and then hand-painted the sentiment onto a heat embossed image. If you haven't tired these powders, you really should. They have a glorious sheen and the colours are vibrant and so pretty. Very similar to Tim Holtz Perfect Pearls, but the colours are much more vibrant and you only have to use a smidge to get great depth. They can also be used mixed with any liquid media, such as embossing paste, liquid glue, white gesso, etc to get it coloured to match perfectly the colours of your layouts or cards.

Anyway, a simple card, but, oh, so pretty!  (Big smile)

Don't forget to check out the latest Challenge at Simply Create Too.

Bye for now.

Love,

Get Creative Challenges #38 - Pink and one other colour.

Welcome back for another challenge from Get Creative Challenges.

  This challenge is sponsored by Sami Stamps.

My card today uses a gorgeous digistamp from Sami Stamps and I thought since the theme is "pink and one other colour", I'd choose yellow. Could have gone for blue, But where on earth do you find blue grass? I also wanted to use a technique for attaching vellum I learned during my Online Card Class "Clear and Sheer". 

I simply watercoloured the background and images. I then die cut the panel using MFT Inside/out stitched rectangles and the vellum with the MFT Stitched Fishtail Flags STAX. The sentiment from Reverse Confetti's Posted Note Sentiments stamp set was heat embossed in gold EP and machine stitched onto the card front. 

I like how the vellum doesn't obscure the flowers on the hat, yet tones down the colour of the background at the same time. I really like how machine stitching the vellum in place gives it a secure finish but adds just a little extra interest to the overall impact of the design.Thanks Nichol for such a handy idea. 

Join us over at Get Creative Challenges Blog and you'll be "pink" with excitement in no time! (I know, it's bad, isn't it???) 

See you soon,

Love,

Janelle

Twinkling H2O's

A while ago I did a commission for Australian Simply Cards (Issue 91) using Twinkling H2O's. I made some cards out of my experimentation pieces, not wanting to throw anything out that could be useful. (That's the hoarder's creed, isn't it?) (Hand up) I thought you'd like to see them.

The first card used the H2Os as a background smoosh/dribble/splat. I love the really hard edges and the layering of colours. To get it just right, I let it dry between adding more layers of the H2Os. I then painted the stamped image and fussy cut her out so that she really stood out against the background. The thin strip down the middle was from another commission where I glittered over some patterned paper, using double sided adhesive sheet to hold the glitter in place. I used the  Penny Black Ooh La La stamp set and  My Favorite Things Whimsical Wishes stamp set.

                                    

The second card was much more simple. The image was stamped using the Penny Black Fashion Tweet stamp set. She was then just painted, as you would do with normal watercolours, varying the intensity of colour by adjusting the levels of water used. The image was cut into a strip with a little fussy cutting where the image lay outside the edge lines. This strip technique is really useful if you stuff-up the background, but you can still use the best section. (BTW, I didn't mess up the background - just wanted it to fit with the layout.)  :)

Anyway, bye for now.

Love,

Janelle

Watercoloured Backgrounds

Here are a selection of cards I created for Practical Publishing a while ago that demonstrated techniques that could be used to watercolour backgrounds for cards. I used salt, over white heat embossing, wet-on-wet technique, using embossing folders, with stencils (lifting colour) and over the top of texture paste.

 The green one that was done using an embossing folder is actually ombre in effect (very subtle) but accomplished by laying progressively darker shades of green down the embossing folder before closing it to run through the diecutting machine.

I think my fave is the one at the top where I added salt to the multicoloured panel while the paint was still wet. Lovely effect.

Hope you enjoy these.

Bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! With love and best wishes to all.

I must share the card I made for my husband for today.

Last week I received in the mail an SEI Monsterville kit that has a number of diecut monster shapes and appendages, as well as a sheet of stickers for eyes, mouths, noses etc. As soon as I saw it, I knew what this year's card was going to look like.

I watercoloured and Glimmer Misted the heck out of a piece of watercolour paper, before attaching the monster shapes using foam squares. I die cut a vellum speech bubble, as well as the sentiments and hearts. (The silver holographic was made using my brand new Mini Minc and some Heidi Swapp Holographic Reactive Foil, along with a piece of toner sheet.) The cutting dies were from Kaisercraft, Lawn Fawn, HOTP and My Favorite Things. 

To finish the card I draw some faux stitching around the speech bubble with my white Sigma pen and applied some Glossy Accents to the "U".

As soon as I saw this kit I saw endless opportunities for boy birthday cards, so be prepared to see some more of these throughout the year. I have numerous nephews and great nephews to create for. I should be having a monster of a time this year. Haw haw haw!  : )

I'm going to enter this card into the following challenges.

Time Out Challenge #49

Simply Create Too (CH. #102- Love or Valentine's)

The 30 Day Coloring Challenge

The Friday Mashup

Anyway, have a lovely day and see you soon,

Love,
Janelle

A Card with Strings Attached and my 100th blog post!

The title of today's blog entry comes from my husband, who on seeing the card said, "Ah! This card comes with strings attached?" ???

These two cards are using some watercoloured backgrounds I made while playing around for a commission I was recently doing. 

The first one was just a smooshed colour thing where I smooched colours onto a wet panel of watercolour paper and waited to see what happened. While it wasn't suitable for my commission, I liked the combination of colours, so thought I'd play with the My Favorite Things Weekly Sketch Challenge No. 219.


I basically took all of the elements of this sketch and threw them in a pile. I used  the Lawn Fawn Cuts Stitched Hillside Borders dies to cut the slight wave of gold glittered cardstock and also a Lawn Fawn stamp for the sentiment.


I tried to make the card more dynamic by switching the direction of the large strip and having the sentiment strip crossing over the top. To tie it all together, I added some lime green twine. I really like how the twine looks because it almost looks like the My Favorite Things Die-namics LJD Scribbles flower die cut. Almost???! I'd love to get my hands on those die and coordinating stamp sets.

This is the first time I've done a MFT Sketch Challenge. I hope they don't block my site for totally destroying their sketch. :)

My second card is for my dad's birthday in two weeks time. It also uses a watercoloured background that was created with some embossing paste, a stencil and then watercolouring in the blanks. I wiped the paint off the embossed circles so they showed up brightly. Loved this effect, but once again wasn't suitable for the commission I had been working on - this was a little too masculine. The sequins really set off this card design. I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Anyway, bye for now. I'll be back in another couple of days with some more watercoloured backgrounds I have still left over.

Love,

Janelle

P.S. It was only after I had posted this entry that I realised it was my 100th blog post. Wow! I've enjoyed my time over the past 3 years and am looking forward to many more years and posts to come.

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

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 

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.