Aqua Moroccan border card

A couple of months ago, I bought the Stampin' Up Moroccan set - stamps, punch and embossing folder.  This is the first time I have used them, well the stamps and punch anyway, the embossing folder will have its day some other time :-)

I stamped and punched one of the tile designs onto aqua cardstock, arranged them on the card, then punched out tiny squares (X-cut) and placed them on point between the tiles.  The sentiment tag is also made with SU punches, I tucked some ribbon ends behind it.  Then I arranged the blue crystals and gold pearls to form the pattern.

Valentine and anniversary - 52CC week 5

Three prompts from the prompt jar for week 5 of the 52 cards challenge :-)  These were: pale, glitter, love.

 

Now you know I don't do glitter.... LOL.  But I have used the 'pale' and 'love' and added a bit of pearly bling instead of glitter!  I have to say, wasn't really inspired to make a Christmas card from this prompt, so did two everyday ones instead - Valentine and wedding anniversary, since it's our 29th coming up next month.  Good job DH doesn't read my blog........

 

For the anniversary card, I robo-cut two postage stamp mats (cut file from the Silhouette site, big thank you to Trish for pointing the way!)  The plum paper is a freebie from work and the pale background papers came with a magazine, which may have been Simply Homemade.  I punched out the two hearts and attached them to the base using foam pads, so I could tuck the pearl swirls underneath.  Then I stamped the sentiment (Stamping all day), it's little bit wonky, but I'm sure he won't notice LOL.  Then the pearls in the corners.  But it was missing something.... so I tucked some laser-cut gears under the heart too, and added pearls to the sides of those, supposedly to be like lines indicating motion ...... but actually to cover a smudge of ink near one of the gears, so I had to do the same 'fix' on all three!  I like the way they look, so that's OK :-)

 

The Valentine card was much simpler.  A while ago I bought some double-fold card blanks in a linen finish, by mistake - I hadn't read the description properly and thought they were ordinary single fold.  However this has turned out to be a good thing, as I can cut off one of the thirds and then trim it down to a mat to fit on the now single fold blank.  The same freebie plum paper is matted underneath this to give a very narrow border and I used a south-western corner punch for a bit of detail. Then I punched the two hearts in plum and pale paper as I had done on the anniversary card, but this time added a punched heart in a pink magazine paper (Making Cards).  This was stuck with red tape just down the centre so it could be 2D and I added a line of pearls on each heart, plus one in each corner.  No space to put a sentiment, but if you get a card on Valentine's day with hearts on it, I'm sure it's pretty clear what it is LOL.

 

I really like these two, and I must work out a way to put a sentiment on the second design, as I'm sure I could use it for several occasions.

Order and Chaos

A while ago, I cleared out my craft room.  Literally.  I took everything out of the room ... then tried to get it all back in!  I gave or threw away a lot of stuff.  I found all sorts of things I had forgotten about, including a large number of wooden items I had bought to "do something with".  These wooden tea light blocks came, I think from the Craft Barn and are made by Artemio.

I primed them, then painted them gold.  Then I applied Paperartsy crackle glaze, left to dry and over-painted with a burgundy acrylic paint.  They stayed like that for a while, I knew I wanted to use texture paste, but didn't have it quite straight in my head as to how I wanted to proceed.  Then I bought the random circles mask and realised that I could use it on one block, with the gridded squares mask on the other block.  And so Order and Chaos came to be ......
I used some Treasure Gold through the stencils once the texture paste had dried, then when that had cured for 24 hours, I used a matt varnish over the whole block - Americana Duraclear Matte varnish, again from the Craft Barn.  It is the best varnish I have found so far for a really matte finish, but it does need to be stirred thoroughly so that all the matting agents are well mixed rather than sunk to the bottom of the container!
I put some green sticky-back felt/baize on the base and they were done.  They are a little more burgundy than they appear in the photo, not quite so red :-)  One wooden item down, 999 to go......

BtCR January

Beat the Christmas Rush - I found this so helpful last year, so I have decided to do it again!

These are made with magazine papers, probably from Making Cards, they are at least a couple of years old.  Very simple - I made a background mat from some holly paper (Craft Creations) and some magazine bauble paper, used peel-off lines to frame the mats.  Then I cut out the images from the mag paper, matted them onto red cardstock and mounted to the base on 1mm foam tape.  The banners are die-cut  (Die-namics) and tucked under the image.  However, they did look as if they were just 'floating' ...... so I wrapped a band of gold ribbon around the base of the card to 'ground' them.  Job done :-)

Dolphin card

This card came together from various previously-prepped components from my "it will come in useful one day" box.  I had run some Bazzill Bling in Sparkles and Diamond through the Big Shot in an embossing folder (Embossalicious?), stamped/embossed and coloured the dolphin image, and die-cut the swirl (Memory Box) also from BB Sparkles.
I die-cut a mat from the embossed Diamond and fitted it to the Sparkles base mat.  Then I attached the image, raised up on 1mm foam tape, and tucked the swirl underneath.  All I had to do then was to die-cut the banners (Die-namics) for the sentiment, and add some pearls.

Photo prompt - white, colours, doily - 52 cards week 4

The prompt for week 4 is a Pinterest photo - a picture of beautifully decorated cookies on a lace doily.  I didn't even realise they were cookies until reading the post LOL.

 

The Christmas card uses white with bits of red and green, and a doily.  The doily is a die-cut (Cheery Lynn), the backing paper is from Craft Creations and the stamp is an old one from Elusive Images.  I coloured it with Kuretake pens, I have quite a collection now, so need to practise using them LOL.  I didn't add a separate sentiment as I don't think it needs one.

 

The birthday card... well, it does have a doily .... and white.... but it did kind of evolve from the starting point!  The stamp is from Indigo Blu (more colouring!) and I cut round the image to mount it onto the doily (Hero Arts?).  The background is embossed with a damask folder.  I put ribbons behind the poppies and the sentiment tag is done with Stampin' Up oval punches.