Snippet Sunday Card ... and in my garden today

Hello Everyone

Good morning to you all. I hope you are having a very happy weekend.

As you can see I've given my blog a bit of a makeover. The header, created using Serif Craft Artist, is a collage of some of my favourite things, including a photo of The Boss, and it's in shades of purple ... it's the colour associated with my zodiac sign so seemed a good choice. I see now I've forgotten to create shadows around the butterflies and title so more practice needed there! Do you like it? Do tell me what you think ... even if you hate it!

Today's share is yet another card I made earlier ... this time for a friend, Cass, whose favourite colours are pink and blue. This one gave me the opportunity to play with some recently acquired goodies and still use up a snippet or two ... this time it's the blue pearlescent card used for matting and layering.

The topper was created on white card using the Seed Head stencil, from Clarity Stamp, and Pinflair products that I brought back from the craft show in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago ... you can see a photo on this post here.

To make it I followed Pinflair's Antony's instructions for combining two shades of Buff-it paste, in this case Dark Green and Dark Blue, and sponged the mix through the stencil and then buffed it up - the resulting pattern has a lovely sheen. There's a series of demonstrations on how to use the paste on YouTube - click here for the first.

After applying the Buff-it the next step was to sponge on the Gentle Blends - colours used were Denim and Hot Magenta. Note: the pots of colour look quite a lot richer/darker than the actual soft shades once they are sponged on to card/paper! And they blend beautifully when using the sponge applicators.

That done, I trimmed the card down and matted it on to the pale blue pearlescent card and tied blue organza ribbon round it ready to attach it to the front of the card.

The front of the base card has been sponged with the same two shades of Gentle Blends too.

To finish the front I attached the topper, added a gem swirl cut from Merryweather Swirl Adhesive Gems from K & Company and some purple card candi ... from Craftworks Vintage Berries mix. This mix includes deep shades of blue, red, green, grey and the purple and has to be one of the most useful in my collection of card candi ... I'll be sad when it's done.

The trimmings from the topper were matted on to some strips of blue pearlescent card and used to finish off the inside and back of the card.

As it is Sunday, it's the start of a new week over at Pixie's Snippets Playground where, as usual, Di has posted a fabulous showcase of the snippeteers beautiful projects ... their ingenuity in finding ways of using up snippets and leftover scraps of paper and card never ceases to amaze and delight.

It's a bright and sunny day here with just a bit of a breeze keeping the temperature down and stopping me from doing too much in the garden. However, I recently nipped out with the camera and took this photo.

Not much to see you might think, just a lovely blue sky through bare branches! Not so!! This is one of the two flowering cherry trees (Prunus) that form an arch over our front gate. Ever since we moved in I've been looking forward to seeing them in bloom. So when I spotted the tiny flower buds appearing I just had to take a photo - just for the record.

The EM is very much better today and my shoulder is responding well to the anti-inflammatory medication so all-in-all we're doing just fine. Hope you are too :)

Take care and happy crafting,

Stamping with Marker Pens

Hi Everyone,

Like I said in my last post, I was off to test out my new Memento Dual Marker pens, by Tsukineko, and after a little practice this is what I've done!

The secret is in the 'huffing' ... another new term and technique for me to add to my crafting dictionary :) Here's how I made the card.

- Taking two pens, Bamboo Leaves (green) and Lady Bug (red), the first step was to ink up the holly corner flourish, from Anita's Magical Christmas stamp set, by 'painting' with the 'brush' tip, each pen has two tips, one a brush tip and the other a fine tip, carefully selecting green for the leaves and stems and red for the berries. 

- The next step was to 'huff' or breathe on the stamp to reactivate any ink which has dried during the process and then quickly stamp, first in one corner then, after re-inking, the second corner of the white card base. The process was again repeated for one corner on the inside of the card - and also the centre of the back.

- For the topper the sentiment, from Docrafts Penelope & Percy Christmas Greetings stamp set, was coloured and stamped onto a snippet of smooth white card in the same way. It was then run through the Cuttlebug cutting it with a Spellbinder Label Twenty-five die then sponged around the edges using Tim Holtz distress ink, Festive Berries. The red mat, made from yet another snippet, was created by tracing round the Spellbinder label die and cutting it out by hand. 

- The final touch was to add a bit of sparkle with Stickles - Xmas Red on the 'berries' in the corner flourish, and Crystal along the top of the word, Merry - and then a few of Anita's red gems to two of the corners. 

I'd like to submit this card to the following:

Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge 123 - let's get sentimental

Craftyhazelnut's Challenge Extra for May - which, as ever, is anything goes

Jingle Bells - Merry & Bright

and, of course, Pixie's Crafty Snippets - Week 71 - where there's always fun and games to be had just so long as we hand in our snippets homework on time :)

Now, who would have thought that at my age I would have so much fun playing with colouring pens ... just proves I'm just a big kid at heart :))

And, finally, a weather update for Ayr - today we've had just about everything the weatherman can throw at us - sun, wind, a temperature drop (more like a thud) and rain - no snow though, so that's a blessing. Right now, 7pm, the sun is shining and the birds are happily singing away ... I think they are relieved the rain has stopped too!

I'm off to do a bit of blog hopping for an hour or so before joining the EM to watch a new police drama that looks promising.

Hope you all have an enjoyable evening and a lovely weekend.

Happy crafting,

On The Dark Side ... Experimenting with Twinkling H2Os and Recycling

Hi Everyone,

This is a scheduled post because I'm playing hookie and going in search of a little literary culture today, I may be gone some time ... but I will be back :))

While I'm MIA, I thought you might like to see what I've been messing around with today. I finally broke open the set of Twinkling H2Os I treated myself to last month, the Summer Fun set ... I can't believe it has taken me this long! Anyway, here's how a piece of black card - recycled embossing folder packaging - looked after I brushed it with  some H2Os.

Not too impressive, huh! The black card has a shiny finish to it so after spritzing with water, as per the queen of H2Os, Sheena Douglas's, instructions, the paints just settled into bubbles and it looked pretty disastrous :( The colours applied are Sea Spray, Just Peachy, which looks nothing like what I would consider a peach shade, and Mango Freeze. However, after it had dried I went ahead and embossed it anyway ... what the heck, it was only a bit of secondhand card :) And, surprisingly, it looked much better but I still thought it needed a little something else so I dug out the Rub 'n Buffs, bought for a song some months ago, and applied Autumn Gold - how appropriate - and Patina and I think you can see what a vast improvement.

So from looking quite unpromising at the start, I think it now looks great. Not a bad first attempt and I'm pretty chuffed with the finished card. Here's a close up of the detail.

I think I'm in love with Twinkling H2Os - what do you think?

Materials used:
Cardstock: a square black card base - mine came from The Works some time last year, inexpensive and wasting away in my stash of stash; teal blue smooth cardstock for layering; the piece of black packaging card - also has a shiny finish
Twinkling H2Os from the Summer Fun set
Cuttlebug embossing folder, Kassie's Brocade
Rub 'n Buff, Autumn Gold and Patina
Embellishments: teal organza ribbon and turquoise gems from stash

I'm submitting this to the following challenges:

Scrap It With a Song - Dark Side by Kelly Clarkson
Alphabet Challenge Blog - R for Recycle, Repurpose

That's my lot for this post. I hope you have a great Saturday and I'll see you sometime on Sunday. I'm taking my camera so, be warned, I'll be snapping lots of bookshops and bookish folk enjoying chat with more bookish folk and admiring book displays ... I know how to live :))

In the meantime, happy crafting,