Layering Stencils - 2

 The second of my Nellie's Choice layering stencils is a floral one. I used DIs in evergreen bough, cracked pistachio and lucky clover for the 3 layers. These die cut flowers were sitting on my desk. I had coloured them with alcohol markers some time ago for a project which is only half-finished but they seemed to go well with the background. I added a silver embossed sentiment strip and mounted it on an A6 card blank.

Layering Stencils

 After over 2 years I finally made it to a Craft Show! How wonderful it was to see everything and be able to touch it instead of on a screen. Evidently there were many people who felt the same as I did because the show was packed. I had decided to leave it until the afternoon to visit when it tends to be quieter but it was very busy for the first half hour or so.

I was very mindful of what I bought - some white card from my usual supplier Lime Tree Crafts, some white and silver Nuvo Drops, a Woodware flower stamp that I've seen Natasha Foote use and 2 sets of background layering stencils. Of course I had to try out the stencils straight away and made a quick card with the Honeycomb set.

I used Distress Oxides in spiced marmalade, crackling campfire and candied apple and added some gold peel-off strips to the left and right. The sentiment is gold embossed from a sentiment stamp and die set and I mounted it on foam tape. That's it really!

Quadrilaterals

 This card uses a sketch I saw on Robin Armbrecht's YouTube channel here. She uses 6x6 patterned papers cut into quadrilaterals to make a set of cards. I used some patterned paper that I think was from a magazine freebie and some pink card that I embossed with a Cuttlebug folder.

It's a great idea for batch-making cards and using up odd sheets of 6x6 paper.

Monthly Tag - May

 

April was a busy month for me - not on the crafting front but life seems to be opening up again and we have had family from abroad to stay and friends for dinner (yay!). May is shaping up to be equally busy so I was relieved that inspiration for this month's tag came quickly.

I have been following a YouTube channel by Cori Dahmen called Creating with Scraps and at the start of the year she did a video on collages and clusters which you can see here . I collected some of the bits on my desk together and had a go at making some clusters. One of these is the focal piece for this month's tag, the theme of which is bits and bobs.

This is what I started with - it's a collection of bits that were remnants from other projects which I inked, embossed and stuck together onto some music manuscript. The flower is a TH wildflower die cut coloured with alcohol pens and with Glossy Accents on the flower head. I added some washi tape, gems and a scrap of stamped text.

The above is what I thought I might use for the tag (in the end I didn't use the leaf patterned paper). I think the sheet with the red splodges was protective wrapping in a parcel and I had used it to mop up some ink. The lacy trim was a leftover piece from a TH die cut that matched the green patterned paper on the cluster.

I stamped some flowers onto the sheet and a Crafty Individuals text stamp and glued it to my tag blank. My cluster went on top and I added the lacy trim at the bottom.

The completed tag:

Monthly Tag - April

I've managed to complete my tag in record time this month! The theme was Time and it had to be monochromatic so I decided to use various shades of grey.

I started with hickory smoke and weathered wood DIs on a plastic sheet which I spritzed with water and smooshed my tag blank through. I added a Dina Wakley stencil called little birdies with a blending brush and some hickory smoke DI and some text in the background with weathered wood. All the stamps are from an old Paper Artsy series called Ding & Dong. They are all mounted on foam so I went old-school and used my stamp positioner to get the best placement. I stamped the main image in Versafine smokey gray and stamped the clock face a second time on a scrap of card. The hands of the clock are separate stamps and I tried to stamp the time as 4.23.

I added a few extra swirls and squiggles and coloured some tiny pearls with a grey alcohol marker. 

Sunflower

 I'm not sure I've blogged this stamp before although I've had it for a while. The set has a very big sunflower image and some useful sentiments, one of which I used in my previous post below. I heat embossed the image in gold and then used mustard seed, wild honey and peeled paint DIs with foam blending pads. The sentiment is from a stamp and die set of sentiments which I raised on foam pads.

Monthly Tag Challenge - March

 

This month's theme for the tag challenge is 'Circles' and bright colours. I wanted to pay homage in a small way to the people of Ukraine and the terrible things that are happening in their country.

 I used the Crafter's Companion spots and dots rotation stamp with Impress lemon yellow and Versafine majestic blue. Although you normally use 4 colours with these stamps I used 2 but double-stamped the second blue and yellow for a slightly darker image. I know the blue is not quite the correct shade but it was as close as I could get.

Having cut out my tag shape (8x12cm) I wanted some sunflowers on the tag as they are the national flower of Ukraine. I don't have a sunflower die but I have a Sizzix Bigz daisy die that I cut 4 times and layered to create my sunflower. The die has 3 different sizes of daisy, this was the smallest but I used the centre of the largest die for the middle. I coloured these with a brown alcohol marker and then stamped a speckle stamp over that in black for the seeds.

The leaves are from a Lisa Horton variegated leaf die and I embossed the veins with an old Cuttlebug maple leaf embossing folder.

I didn't know what to put on as as wording for the tag - there really are no words to describe the plight of the Ukranians. I debated adding 'Slava Ukraini' which means glory to Ukraine but then remembered I had a stamp (coincidentally part of a sunflower stamp set) which I felt was appropriate. I stamped it in the same blue and yellow to give a shadow effect and mounted it on foam pads. Some yellow and blue ribbon finished the tag.