Nature's Beauty - an ATC swap

One of the blogs that I really enjoy following is that of Diana over at The Velvet Moth. Diana makes the most exquisite pieces of art, often incorporating textiles and beads and of course often velvet!!! A while back Diana put out a call for anyone interested in doing an ATC swap. I was rather behind everyone else by the time I replied, but Diana and I did make contact and agreed we would do a one to one swap.

I have had a very busy time over the last few months with family commitments taking up a lot of time and although I have been doing various knitting and crochet projects, plus had a much needed and special holiday, apart from some essential card making, I have not been keeping up with my papercrafting and mixed media projects. So making contact with Diana and agreeing to do this swap, gave me a much needed incentive to get myself organised and plan something a bit more creative and demanding on my creativity.

Diana was ahead of me and her beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, decorated box and tag arrived while my project was still pretty much in the planning stages!  Diana's project incorporates die cuts, lace, velvet, beads, gold embossing and script. For more information about Diana's design pop over to her blog where she has also posted about our swap.

Not surprisingly, I had also planned a nature themed project as the natural world provides a great deal of inspiration to both of us. The title for my project - Nature's Beauty only came when I was nearing completion of the project.

My first step was to take a sheet of A4 white card and cover it with my leafy background technique (see my labels on the right for other posts about how I do this), using Distress Inks. I cut out the ATC panel and I then added stamping with the little ferns with first and second generation stamping and a little stencilling, before adding the heat embossed tree die cuts and the little ferny butterfly which must be one of my most used stamps. I shaded the edge of the panel to give a glowing light to the centre, as I wanted it to look like a woodland glade. The final touch was the word "Beauty".

Diana had made a lovely little box to hold her ATC so I thought about what I could do as an alternative.

I used the beautiful Crealie labels dies that I had a feeling Diana would like and cut two out of the leafy backgrounds and two out of toning green card for the insides. I stuck them together back to back and joined them at the bottom.

These are decorated again with die cuts decorated with Treasure Gold gilding wax, some tiny micro beads on the hollyhock flowers and butterflies stamped with the script stamp in the beautiful Delicata Gold ink which I had never heard of until another of my special crafty friends gifted it to me. The insides are stamped with dye inks. I made a matching small tag and finished that off with some leafy ribbon that has been in my stash almost since I started crafting, so it was nice to find a use for it.

To hold the ATC, I wanted something to hold it in place vertically so had a play with some scrap card and managed a little paper engineering to invent what I needed!

I absolutely loved doing this swap with someone so talented who likes the same sorts of motifs and themes as I do. I have been struggling to get inspired and motivated and working on this little miniature gift has got me kickstarted again I think, so thank you Diana and for the beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, box and tag you sent to me!

My project used the following supplies:
Dies - Impression Obsession - Hollyhock; Craft Emotions Hogweed; Tim Holtz - Wildflowers; Memory Box - Darla Butterfly; Sizzix Framelits Tags Rounded; Taylored Expressions - Birch Trees; Crealies Extreme Labels; Stampin Up butterfly punches; Tim Holtz Bigz tag die

Stamps - Inkadinkado - Meadow; Darkroom Door - Artist; Crafty Individuals - CI207/231/021; Woodware script; Chocolate Baroque - Poppy Meadow

Inks and sundries - Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Peeled Paint, Squeezed Lemonade & Twisted Citron; Stampin Up dye inks - Crumb Cake & Chocolate Chip; Ranger Archival Olive; Delicata Gold & Versamark. Treasure Gold in Florentine Gold, Oxynite and Green Amber. Embossing Powder in Copper and Gold. Dark Green micro beads.

Another leafy card!

This is another of the cards I made with some of my leafy prints from the other day.

 

 

This time I printed with a smaller leaf, a hardy geranium if I remember rightly. Then I overstamped with a leaf stamp made of pinky purple rubber, I think it is a See Ds stamp that someone rehomed with me! I finished with overspraying with a vibrant Cosmic Shimmer mica spray in a lovely golden green colour.

 

The sentiment came from a bargain bin wood backed stamp at a craft show in Newbury I think. The die cut butterflies are from the Tim Holtz Butterfly Frenzy die.

 

This next  card uses the lovely Stampin Up Hardwood stamp and one of their sentiments from the Wetlands set. I added some die cut leaves using an Impression Obsession die coloured with Pan Pastels, mounted onto branches cut using a Memory Box die. 

 

 

Hope you are all having a good weekend. I am just waiting for a loaf to finish baking so I can pack a picnic as we are going out for a walk before I plan to sit down to watch the Wimbledon final.

 

 

Elaine 

Leafy prints

If you follow my work on here, you will know from time to time that I get very inspired by the lovely leaves of the macleaya cordata plants in our garden. I was sitting in the garden on Monday and the leaves in the sunshine looked like they had been dusted with fine gold mica powder, they had a gorgeous delicate sheen. I felt it was time for a creative leafy session. So on Monday I picked some leaves and inked the reverse sides with dye inks for some delicate leaf prints, using my Speedball brayer to gently press the detail into the paper. I used the plume poppy leaves, geraniums, hop leaves and ferns so ended up with some quite varied results. I sprayed some of the prints with walnut ink, my old glimmer mists and some Cosmic Shimmer sprays and I was really pleased with the way it made the ink bleed gently. I also added some leaf stamping on some of the pages. This was results of a couple of hours leaf printing.

I was really delighted with one of the prints that I will be keeping to make into a project just for me as it reminds me of that golden sheen on the leaves that inspired me in the first place.

I loved the way the gold spray collected in the veins of the leaf. If you click on the picture you can get a better look.

Here are a couple of the designs of card I made with the sheets of printing. The first uses a similar print to the one above. I lost the top of the print, so had to crop it a little. I added a DoCrafts sentiment and some Impression Obesssion die cuts in chocolate brown card.

These next two use one of the sheets like a masterboard and I used 3 x 3 inch squares to make the prints go as far as possible.

This panel used fern prints which I overstamped with the fern from the Chocolate Baroque Wild meadow set, using shades of Versafine ink. I added another DoCrafts sentiment and more of the IO leaf die cuts.

The second card uses the same sentiment and an Impression Obsession Gingko leaf die. I love Gingko leaves and I am hoping we can find space to plant a Gingko tree in our garden before too long. I added a little Vintage Photo DI to the edges of my leafy squares.

I was very pleased with how quickly these cards came together in the course of one evening once I had made the leafy prints and I still have plenty of material to make more cards and projects with.

Elaine

A card for a special friend

I recently needed to make a birthday card for my special crafty friend Lesley. You know how it is when you want to make a special card for a talented crafter, the pressure is on and it took me four attempts before I got a design I was really happy with. This was the result.

My card started making a wrinkle free distress background using Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, Shaded Lilac and Evergreen Bough inks. When I had made it I wanted more texture in my background so I flicked lots of water over it with a paintbrush which gave me some nice blotches which I felt fitted with my hollyhock design well. My main stamp is a Unity Stamp Hollyhock Design by Donna Downey - this is a whoppa of a stamp at 8 inches high and I had to use my quilters square as a mount. The stamp is quite elusive in the UK and I managed to get hold of it through a special order. I stamped in Blue Violet archival ink.

I knew I wanted to add the sentiment on a torn vellum strip. The sentiment from the Darkroom Door Friendship Flowers set is stamped in Cobalt Blue archival ink. Once the strip was stuck into place, I added Hollyhock die cuts using an Impression Obsession die (which also has a matching stamp which I nearly also used) cut out of a wedgewood blue card highlighting the blooms with blue and purple Pan Pastels, added with a small sponge applicator.

To finish, I die cut small butterflies using the Tim Holtz Butterfly Frenzy strip die, I embossed these, placing them carefully into an embossing folder to pick out the best parts of the pattern which I then highlighted in Lilac Treasure Gold. Small brad like stickers completed the design which was mounted on a black 8 x 8 card.

Thanks to my faffing about, I am embarrassed to say my card was over a week late arriving with Lesley. At least it has now arrived and I have a clearer conscience!

The other news is that Lesley has posted the first project on our relaunched shared Craft Stamping Quartet blog here today. Do pop over and have a look at her brilliant project.

Have a great, sunny and warm weekend.

Elaine x

Happy Christmas!

Here I am with my last Christmas card post for this year, timed to wish you a very Happy Christmas.

This is another card made for a special crafty friend. I love making these wreaths of die cut leaves, they take quite a bit of time, but the end result is so satisfying.

I started with my DP which is from a 12 x 12 Christmas pad. I then stamped the sentiment which is a gorgeous Quietfire stamp and embossed it with clear EP before die cutting the circle. My many die cut leaves included Doo Hickey mistletoe and fir branches, Impression Obsession mixed leaves and pine branches, punched ivy and holly leaves using different colours of green card. The Marianne poinsettias are cut and embossed using burgundy velvet paper which shows up nicely in this pic.

The pearls on the mistletoe are finished off with a little pale gold Treasure Gold wax to soften the impact of the white against the darker colours.

Whatever you are doing today, I hope you have a really wonderful day. Thank you for your visits to my blog and for taking the time to comment on my work, your encouragement means a lot.

Elaine x