My inky travels along life's rocky road

Sunday 31 May 2015

LIM - 226


It's been a while since I have been able to enter a challenge on the Less Is More blog but the pink glitter embossing powder was part of a prize for this card I made for the 4th birthday challenge and so it seemed appropriate that I should make a card for the LIM challenge the first time I used it. This week's challenge is 2 or 4 legs.
I've never used WOW embossing powders before and given my previous attempts with glitter embossing powders I wasn't expecting much but these are amazing. The colour I used was pink sorbet and I was surprised at how much of the detail it picked up. The stamp is from a Hero Arts stamp and die set and the pink elephant in question is perched on a ball, circus elephant style, which carries the sentiment.
The background is something I read about on Kristina Werners blog. I have used the Distress Ink smooshing technique but I've never done it with acetate before. I find you have more control over the placing of the colour this way. I used picked raspberry, squeezed lemonade and peacock feathers. So a big thank you to the ladies at LIM for my prize and also thanks to WOW for giving me the opportunity to try out their embossing powders.

Tuesday 19 May 2015

Crafty Individuals Challenge - May


The theme for this month's challenge on the Crafty Individuals blog is music. I wasn't sure what to do for this theme as I had no Crafty Individual stamps that were directly connected to music. As I was making these ATCs the phrase I used gave me a music-themed idea.
I started with a Brusho background on which I stamped and embossed CI 230 after masking off everything but the main image. This was cut to size with a deckle-edged nestie. The patterned paper with the music score is from a Crafty Individuals background paper pad and all the other scraps are leftovers from a Basic Grey kit (Stella Ruby I think). They were all edged with brushed corduroy DI.  The punched flowers match the green of the Brusho IRL but because the paper is pearlescent it has scanned differently. I added the photo anchors because they remind me of the pieces that hold the score in place on a music stand. I added some hand drawn notes and some pearls to complete the card.

Friday 15 May 2015

A Dose of the Sweet Stuff!


It's not very often I succumb to making a cute card but I couldn't resist this one. As part of my haul from Simon Says Stamp I bought a Hero Arts elephant die and stamp set. I figured it would be useful for new baby cards or even very small kid's birthday cards. It comes with 2 stamps to give the elephant 2 different patterns - a newsprint and the gingham that you see above in pink. I wanted an anniversary card for some friends and wondered whether I could make a mirror image elephant so that their trunks would appear to be touching. The die is easy enough - you just turn the die cut over but I couldn't do that to the stamp so I used an old Elusive Images texture stamp to create the elephant in blue. The background is made of some stitched landscape dies and DIs. I used punches for the flowers and tiny hearts (I have some corner punches that punch out very small motifs that are perfect for this).

Tuesday 12 May 2015

UK Stampers ATC Swap - May


This month's song for the ATC swap on UK Stampers is Ebony & Ivory. It took me ages to figure out what to do and I finally went for an abstract interpretation using some lyrics from the song.
I used a poppy die by Memory Box over a grid stamp by Kaisercraft. A candi dot, a photo corner and some computer text finished the ATC.

Sunday 10 May 2015

Craft Barn Weekly Challenge - Words


This week's challenge on the Craft Barn blog is on the theme of words. I wanted to use lots of different words but highlight just one so I stamped a text stamp and die cut the word hello. I layered this onto various coloured papers including a white piece that I stamped with another text stamp. I used a script embossing folder on the card blank.

Friday 8 May 2015

Katzelkraft Challenge - May


This month's challenge on the Katzelkraft blog is to use a stamp 3 times. My first thought was of those Andy Warhol images repeated in different colours so this is my very pared down version of that. I used a stamp from the contes et merveilles set and stamped it with 3 different inks on 3 different coloured papers. I matted these onto  some card stamped with the clock image from KTZ118. This was put onto a pearlescent lilac long card blank and finished with a sentiment from contes et merveilles.


Wednesday 6 May 2015

UK Stampers Postcard Swap - May


For this month's postcard swap on the UK Stampers forum, Sam has decided to allow us to choose our own theme. This is always a tough choice for me because I can never decide what to do but this postcard came about through a combination of recent events and things on my desk. As these go through the post naked ie with no envelope, the embellishments have to be firmly stuck on and flat.
Firstly the stamp, which is not a rubber one but a hand-carved wooden one. Many years ago I was lucky enough to visit Jaipur in India for a wedding. Whilst there, I had a chance to visit a workshop where they hand printed fabric. I saw this elephant wood block and asked if I could buy it as it reminded me of the elephants who took part in the wedding festivities. This has been sitting on my desk recently as I found it while sorting through some things. As it is wooden, you cannot get as clean an impression as you would from a rubber stamp but it printed fairly well. I've been wanting to try some zentangling for a while and thought this would be a good place to start. My conclusion was I don't have the patience or the attention to detail for zentangling and did not feel at all 'zen' by the time I'd finished!
The background involved a stencil, some punched and die cut shapes, gesso, gold gelato and DIs. I then stamped a paisley pattern with Brilliance platinum planet which only shows when it catches the light. Finally I used a splatter stamp with gold embossing powder. This was inspired by a recent trip to India and a trip to St Petersburg where I saw so many ornate rooms sumptuously decorated with gold.
I matted onto a black base card to provide a frame for the image. I shall have to figure out how to put the recipient's address on the back so that the postman can read it!
Edited to add: I felt the card lacked something so I decided to add a few punched flowers to the postcard and this is the final result:

Monday 4 May 2015

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge - May


Another month and another page for my calendar for next year. This month's recipe asks for magenta and flowers so I decided to make my flower magenta.
The flower in question is Chloe by Woodware which I heat embossed and painted with Twinkling H2Os on some scrap card. The background card was meant to have an ombré effect but it got lost in the subsequent layers. I used a stencil and some Ferro paste over the bottom third and brushed dusty concord DI through a stencil over the top two thirds. I stamped the flower image again onto the card and laid the cut out, painted flower over it. To finish I added black enamel accents to the stamens.

Friday 1 May 2015

Craft Barn Weekly Challenge - Night & Day


This week's challenge on the Craft Barn blog is called night and day. The idea is to take a stamp and colour it 2 ways - 1 to represent day and 1 night - not as easy as I first thought it would be. The first problem was deciding which stamp to use - I chose a Stampendous one called mum spray. The card above shows the 'night' version. It was stamped in black, clear embossed and painted with Twinkling H2Os. I used a pearlescent grey card base and some scraps of pearlescent paper.
The 'day' version was stamped in grey, clear embossed and coloured in with coloursoft pencils.



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