Giant Distress Label Cards

I'm posting some more cards from the Brisbane Craft Expo in June this year. 

This lot of cards were also from a class run by Rachel Greig from Darkroom Door. These cards used huge black tags and then for the backgrounds I used a variety of techniques, including using Distress Sprays, stamping with a wet stamp pad to create a resist appearance, and smooshing with distress sprays on a craft mat.

Photo stamps were then used to add interest. The "Happy Birthday" card was just too dark in colour for the stamp to show up, so I used one of Rachel's photo chips on top instead. The ribbon was coloured to match each background.

The black tags were stamped with Picket Fence Distress Spray and then spritzed with metallic Distress Spray.

I had so much fun making these cards and totally ended up with multi-coloured fingers for the next couple of days.  :)

Anyway, bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

Well I'll be......

I never thought that my card making theory/skills would ever come in handy with my cooking, but for a recent Grandparents Day at my son's school, we had to take along a plate of food suitable for a morning tea. I made my favourite Chicken and Asparagus Rolls. (recipe below)

I was packing them up ready to go but they didn't look attractively presented. "Ah ha! Chevrons!" I said to myself, quickly changing the arrangement. I think they look quite attractively presented, because of the parallelogram shape of the rolls, the chevron placement just adds some interest. They must have been good anyway, because they all went in about the first 10 minutes.  :)

Here's the recipe. (I'm afraid it's in metric - I don't have the imperial equivalents.)

Chicken and Asparagus Rolls

1 large chicken breast

3 teaspoons mayonnaise

2 tablespoons bread crumbs

2 sheets ready rolled puff pastry

340g can asparagus spears

1 egg

salt & pepper for seasoning

2 tablespoons sesame or poppy seeds 

1. Process chopped chicken with mayonnaise, salt & pepper and breadcrumbs in a food processor until smooth.
2. Place mixture into a piping bag. Cut the pastry sheets in half lengthwise, making four long strips.
3. Drain juice from canned asparagus spears.
4. Pipe chicken mixture along the edge of each strip of pastry. Place the asparagus spears in a single row alongside the chicken.
5. Brush pastry with beaten egg. Roll pastry over filling to enclose filling completely. Place on a greased baking sheet with the seam of the pastry facing down onto the tray. Cut rolls diagonally into 3.5cm pieces, brush tops with egg and then sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds.
6. Bake in a hot oven for 10 minutes, reduce heat to moderate; bake a further 10 minutes or until golden brown.

P.S. To make it easier, I just place teaspoonfuls of the chicken mixture onto the pastry instead of piping it out. You can still achieve a tube-like appearance with it. Also, if you don't have a food processor, you can always buy chicken mince instead and then just mix it really well in a bowl.

Makes about 20

I hope you enjoy them.

Bye for now.

Love,

Janelle

Cards from Craft Expo 2015

I'm posting some cards today that I made during the Craft Expo back in June this year. I did a number of classes with the gorgeous, talented and funny Rachel Greig from Darkroom Door. She's been a favourite of mine for a long time and I look forward to learning from her each year.

 

(Sorry Rachel that it is such a bad photo. But at least we can't see my wrinkles!)  :)

The three cards above are from a class I did with Rachel that dealt with painted Backgrounds. We used Dylusion Paints, Dina Wakley Media Paints and Perfect Pearl mists to create multi-layered cards. You may not be able to see it in the photos, but the backgrounds have been sprayed with Perfect Pearls Mists and are just gorgeous in their sheen. The Dylusion Paints are also tremendous with the vibrancy of their colours and the amazing coverage, A little goes a long way and you don;t have to worry about recoating as one layer has plenty of depth to it.

I loved the layering with brayers, stencils, background stamps etc that makes these cards look so amazing.

The card I gave to my husband for our anniversary was also from this class.

I'll be back tomorrow with some more cards from the Expo.

Bye for now,

Love,

Janelle

Happy Father's Day

Sunday in Australia was Father's Day and I have to show you the card I made for my dad.

Sorry it's not a good photo at all. The background for the card was a sheet of patterned paper from Kaisercraft Base Coat Collection and looks like pieces of corrugated iron all riveted together. On top of this I added a panel of white CS that I stencilled with some Steel Viva Ferro paste; and then on top of that I added a panel that I stamped and then coloured using my new Zig CLEAN COLOR Real Brush markers. Yeay!!! I used my birthday money this year to buy myself a 24 pack. I haven't used much of them as yet, but will certainly do so in the future. I will admit that my first effort wasn't that great, so I can only hope to improve.  :)

Anyway, bye for now.

Love,

Janelle 

Back at last!

So many times over the past months, I've made up blog entries in my head, only to have something come up before I was able to get it typed up. From sickness, family issues, computer failure, magazine commissions, lack of inspiration - you name it - I've had it!

I have so much to tell you about, but to start off, I'll tell my Aussie readers about a little shop in Brisbane where you can get your sequins at an amazing price. The shop is called Bead Trimming and Craft Company and is found at Stones Corner. They have a wide range of colours, sizes and shapes of sequins.

About a month ago they had a fire in their upstairs section that housed the Doll and Teddy Bear Hospital, but apparently all is fine and they are back in business.

The selection of sequins you can see in the photo show a few that I picked up when I was there. I bought 2g of each colour and that's probably heaps to last a long time. Check them out.

I also took advantage of the Scrapbook Expo that was in Brisbane (June 6-8). This year I went the entire three days and did heaps of classes (concentrating on cardmaking techniques (of course) but also doing a couple of scrapbooking classes with a girlfriend on the Monday.) Next year, can someone please remind me not to go the whole three days - it almost killed me! I could hardly move on the Tuesday and it took over a week to fully recover from it. My CFS just isn't up to such abuse!  :)

It was worth it with some fantastic classes and heaps of ideas. I'll be including some photos of projects I did over the next couple of days, but I'm going to show you this card I made during the Expo. As soon as I saw the stamp used on this card, I just knew I had to give it to my husband for our anniversary this year. It was part of a set I made with Rachel Greig from Darkroom Door and used some of Dina Wakley Media Paints. These are great for multi-layering with stencils, brayering and stamps.

(The colours aren't quite right - they are much more vibrant IRL.)

Bye for now,
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.

My Poor Mum

A month ago, my Mum tripped while walking along the street in her retirement complex. She face-planted the bitumen and ended up being taken to hospital. This is what I saw when I finally got there (I had to phone a number of hospitals in the area before I found out which one she was in). (It's not a flattering photo, at all!)

She severely bruised her right eye socket and cheek, as well as her chin, left knee and hip. She also cut her lip and broke two teeth. Miraculously, she did not break any bones or require any stitches etc. Considering she is 79 years old, I reckon that's incredible. She stayed in hospital for four days and then came home with me for another four days, as she had a really severe concussion. I'm pleased to say that she's now mostly recovered, except for her teeth (She did have a dentist's appointment that she didn't keep, but that's another story) and her damaged glasses.

The reason I'm sharing this is because I disappear off the blog landscape for long periods of time, and I often feel guilty about not spending more time of my blog and cards (though I did also have two commissions for the magazines during this same time). ~O~ (That's me with my hands in the air, shrugging) But with me, family always comes first.

But I'm able to share this birthday card, today, that I made using a "make and take" from Craft Giraffe a couple of weeks's ago during their Silly Weekend Sale. I made it with help of Tracey Cooley from Couture Creations. (She's such a scream. I'm looking forward to catching up with her again in June at the Papercraft Expo here in Brisbane.) I love the layering we put on the paper (which started off plain white). 

Anyway, this card is for my niece who's 11 today, so "Happy Birthday, Sarah!"

I'll be back soon with some cards I've made from practice pieces while I was researching for a series of cards I made using watercoloured backgrounds. Wait and see!

Bye for now.
Love,
Janelle