Flowers a la Tim Holtz

I spent a lovely day last week with friends down in Geelong and we made 3D paper roses a la Tim Holtz (12 tags of Christmas, the last one). These are my efforts. A bit tricky to post people keep telling me but nice to give.

Inspired by Jennifer McGuire

I was blog surfing today and after a trip to Tim Holtz I followed his link to Jennifer McGuire's blog and was inspired to have a go at using pearlized water. Trouble is I don't own Perfect Pearls and I used Pearl-x to mix with water and ended up clogging my mini mister so badly I can't get it to work any more:( Think I used too much Pearl-x. I wondered what I had that would give me the pearlized look and remembered my bottle of Liquitex Pearlescent medium. Good-oh, now to put some Distress ink in a palette and mix in the Pearlescent medium. That worked so I spread it on my craft sheet and pushed the stamp into, then onto the paper. Voila pearlized background. Trouble is it does not show up in the scan..phooey. You will just have to imagine the green image is pearly.

Sponging and Masking Technique

I spent some time looking at the Art Journey Design Teams pages today and found cards from a workshop Liesbeth posted back on 31st January.
artjourneydesign-team.blogspot.com
I was inspired and this is the result. It is getting rather late so I will play with the technique some more tomorrow but just had to share my first efforts.

Happy Valentines Day to everyone.

Calender card...not

When I was at my monthly ATC group meeting on wednesday the lovely Lesley Bieniak showed me a calendar card she had designed. It seemed like an idea I could adapt easily. Here are my efforts. Where Lesley had attached a mini calendar with a small bulldog clip I put words or a stamped image. On the bottom of the card where I have a word Lesley had stamped 2010. This element is on double sided foam tape so it sits up slightly allowing the back to sit behind it. The card folds flat for posting.

Another one.

Here you are another card hot off the presses! Just love this colour combination:)

Bird House

Late last year my german stamping friend Ingeborg and I agreed on an ATC swap on the theme of birds. When I had made my ATC's I thought it would be fun to put them in a birdhouse to send them to her. So I designed and made a birdhouse and decorated it. The roof lifts off and the ATC's are tucked inside. Then I packed it very carefully and posted it off to Germany! I have just heard from Ingeborg that it arrived safely...woohoo.

Altered postcard

My friend Marion gave me some old postcards her mother had collected, she thought I may be able to use in my card making.
Well 0500 one morning recently I could not sleep so got up and needing to make a card for my aunt's 80th birthday I took a good look at the postcards I had been given.
After adding a bit of silk ribbon, some artifical leaves and flowers and mounting the image on suitable matching paper and cardstock this is the result.

Old technique

While looking through some folders I have that hold info on all the different techniques I have tried or plan to try at some stage I came across the instructions for a background technique that a friend Sue Thiel had used on a birthday card for me. The date of her answer to my query on how it was done was November 2000!

Well I read and re read the instructions and thought I understood but felt if I could just see the card again it would gel better in my mind. I am a very visual type person:) Now I am also a hoarder, yep I have every card ever sent to me by stampers from when I first started stamping! I am also a bit "obsessive" so everything is in boxes or folders pertaining to the year they were received! So after climbing up onto the table which has a large bookcase on it as well as my computer...to get at all these boxes of cards...yippee I found my birthday cards from 2000. Sure enough there was the card Sue had sent me. The instructions had been quite detailed but it was still nice to see the real thing.

Next was to have a go and this is the result.

The pink one is my version of Sue's card.

A DTP (direct to paper) and sponging technique. Make a mask for the whole card then tear a large corner off it. Sponge the torn border with white ink- move the mask over the white a smidgen and then start with the coloured inks. The small white border gives the whole layered effect. Then use the other piece of the mask to go back the other way with coloured ink. Now stamp some background images using your mask to avoid getting any colour on the white line. I used a script stamp and a spray splatter stamp. Your main image can then be stamped using the mask again so it does not show on the white line.