Pink and white

Today's project is 6x6in card which I cut myself using Tonic layering dies.  I then cut a frame from the same card to fit over the front of it.

I cut four corners from Centura Pearl, using the Molly Moo Cute Corner dies, placed these behind the frame and stuck it down.  I cut the Tattered Lace Antique Circles from Centura Pearl, only using one of the inner parts as a frame, and matted it onto circles cut from the pink card and the Centura Pearl.  I added a peel-off greeting and a small white flower and leaf from the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms. Hope you like it.

Bird Decoupage

Today's project is an A5 card.

I cut the Tattered Lace All Over Floral die from a pale green pearlescent paper and matted it onto a silver pearlescent card.  The bird decoupage is from the Papermania Botanicals Collection, and this is where I took the colours for the mats from.  When I make up decoupage I always give each layer a bit of shape, rather than leaving them flat, and use Pinflair glue gel to stick the layers together.  I personally think that, by adding shape to the layers, it gives a more realistic finish although, I'm sure, not everyone would agree.  It's all down to individual choice.  I sprayed the finished decoupage with Spray and Shine, from Crafter's Companion, to give it a glazed look.

I added small yellow gems to to the centre of the blossoms on the decoupage, and small clear gems to the centres of the roses on the All Over Floral diecut.  I finished the project by making roses from the Britannia Small Rose Die, colouring them with shades to match the central feature and adding them to the scallops down the sides of the card.

Lace and Roses

For today's card I folded a piece of A4 card and cut through both layers with a square Tonic layering die to use as the card base.  I took a second piece of the same card and cut a frame to overlay the front of the card base.

I cut two of the Tattered Lace Double Delights Adore and adhered them to the back of the frame, at the top and the bottom.  I cut off the excess that was overhanging the frame, and glued the frame to the card.  I cut a circle from the Tonic scalloped circle layering dies and coloured it with a peach Spectrum Noir Pen.  I cut a slightly smaller plain circle from the same card that I used as a card base.  I stuck the two together, added a greeting and placed it in the centre of the card.
I made six roses from the Britannia Small Rose dies and glued them along the join between the two Double Deligjts Adore.  I made two roses from the medium Britannia Rose dies and put them in two of the corners.  All of the roses were coloured with the same peach pen as the scalloped circle.

Golden Wedding

Today's offering is a joint effort between me and my mum.  We wanted a gate-fold effect, but a bit more decorative.  We started with a piece of card measuring 32x14.5cm, and scored it at 5, 10, 11, 21, 22 and 27cm.  The two end panels were cut with the Molly Moo Delicate Doily Edge and folded back.  The rest of the card was folded as a classic gate-fold, except that it had a 1cm gusset at each side as we wanted to add 3 dimensional flowers inside as well as out.

Once I had made all the roses, from the Britannia small and medium rose dies, and cut the leaves from the Britannia Rose Leaf die, Mum got to work on putting the card together.  She arranged some leaves and buds, in two shades of gold, on the front of the card and put some white decorated pearlized paper on the panels behind.  And then, when you open the card you see this!

Mum lined the inside with the same pearlized paper and arranged some leaves and roses onto it.  She added the greeting "On Your Anniversary", which was cut from the Tattered Lace All Occasion Sentiments, and coloured gold to match the roses.  We made a box for the card because of the depth, and gave it to my Aunt and Uncle for their Golden Wedding Anniversary.  A special card for special people for their special celebration.

Red and Gold Masu Box

I've made another Masu box.

This box was made from a beautiful red and gold oriental style, heavyweight paper (probably about 200gsm).  I found the instructions for this box at www.homemade-gifts-made-easy.com.  I found these instructions particularly good as they show you how to make the lid half the depth of the box.

Kingfisher

After yesterday's epic, I've opted to show a simple card today.  I think that the picture is beautiful and doesn't need much to showcase it.

I've chosen yet another image by Jayne Netley Mayhew, I just love her artwork, from a CD-Rom by Joanna Sheen.  I covered an A6 card with a blue paper, leaving a small white border around the edge and matted the kingfisher onto brown card.  I cut the greeting, using a Tattered Lace die, from the brown card and put it all together.

Pop-up box card

This was my first attempt at making a pop-up box card.

I saw these on TV where they were selling kits of die-cut boxes and flowers and I thought to myself "the box would be easy to construct and I make my own flowers, so....".  So I worked it out and made one.
I started with a sheet of card and scored it at 7, 14, 21 and 28cm. This left a tab at the end to glue the structure together.  I then scored across the tab and the next three panels at 10cm down.  I cut down the 10cm score line between each of the panels and the tab, folded the card at all the score lines and cut the top of the tab off, as you only need to glue the bottom.  Before construction, I embossed two A4 papers with two different X-Cut embossing folders.  From one paper I cut three panels of 10.5 x 6.5cm.  From the other I cut three panels of 9.5 x 6.5cm and one panel of 20.5 x 6.5cm.  I coloured all of these panels with Bundled Sage Distress Ink.  I laid the card down flat and glued the first three green panels to the bottom panels of the card.  I then folded the top panels down and stuck the next three green panels onto these.
The next stage was to construct the box.  I put wet glue, or you could use strong double-sided tape, onto the tab and stuck the box together so that the tab is on the inside.  I stuck the final green panel onto the inside back panel, thus covering the tab and giving a nicer finish.
The next step was decoration.  I used two borders that I cut from the Joy Crafts Butterfly Border die, coloured them with Shaded Lilac Distress Ink and put these around the base of the box.  The large butterfly is the Demure Butterfly from Tattered Lace, which I coloured to match the butterfly border around the base.  The other butterflies are the Cheery Lynn Small Exotic Butterflies with angel wings, which I coloured using Spectrum Noir alcohol pens.  I cut the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms and Beautiful Blooms several times, coloured them with Spectrum Noir pens to match with the other colours used, shaped them and layered them up to create dimension.  I finished off by adding pearls to the flowers which hadn't already got a centre.

Oops, have got to edit this as I missed a bit - as if it isn't long enough already.  When constructing the box I cut two additional pieces of card measuring 8x1.5cm, scored in from each end at 0.5cm and folded into a Z shape. I added a 6.5x1cm strip of the green embossed paper to each and glued these pieces horizontally into the box, lining the top each to the top of the box.  I cut three strips of 1cm card and coloured it green (you could also use acetate) and stuck one of the butterflies onto each.  These were then glued to the strips going across.

Blooming Roses

My favourite flowers are roses and so, when I found some dies for cutting rose petals and stamens, I was delighted.  Each die cuts four rose petals and two stamens with each pass through the machine.  As I use 160gsm paper I cut two sheets together of the three different sizes of rose and the leaves at the same time.
Today's card is one I made last year and the first one I made using the roses.  It was for my Mum's birthday and I certainly used a lot of them.

The dies used are the small and medium rose dies, the rose leaves and the medium lattice from Britannia.  The one with the greeting on is by Spellbinders. 

I started with two pieces of A5 card, cut the lattice into both ends of each and joined them together with an extra piece of card to form an easel card.  I made loads of roses and buds, and because I had cut them from white paper, I selected several of the paler colours from the Spectrum Noir pens.  I also coloured the leaves.  I laid out the leaves, roses and buds to form the initial C, coloured the square die to match some of the roses, added a greeting and put this into the empty space with more leaves and a rose.  I adhered three flowers and some leaves to the bottom card to form a ledge to rest the top card against to make the easel.

As I said earlier this card was for Mum's birthday last year and her birthday is nearly upon us again.  I've got absolutely no idea what to create for her this year. Whatever I do has got to be something pretty good as (1) I want it to be better than the card above and (2) Mum's a crafter too, so it's got to be pretty impressive.

Tiger, tiger burning bright

Today's project is a 5x5in card.

Once again I chose a picture by Jayne Netley Mayhew from a CD-Rom by Joanna Sheen.  The topper sheet had seven pictures of the same image in three different sizes, this being the largest.  The background paper came from the same CD-Rom, but was actually paired with one of the other tiger images.  However, I decided to mix and match.  I put a narrow black mat between the topper and the background to create a frame.  I also used a black mat to put the gold peel-off greeting on so that it didn't get lost on the background.

Butterflies and flowers

I made this project using an 8x8in card blank and two mats.  I used a punch to round all the corners.

I coloured the base mat with Shaded Lilac Distress Ink and, after embossing the top mat with a stencil from Clarity Stamps, I coloured it with Bundled Sage Distress Ink.  I cut four of the Tattered Lace Detailed Flourish and coloured them with DG3 from the Spectrum Noir Pens.  I cut the Tattered Lace Mini Blooms several times, coloured them with Spectrum Noirs and layered them up to create dimensional flowers.  I used the Cheery Lynn Small Exotic Butterflies set and coloured the 'Angel Wings' with the Shaded Lilac to match the base mat.  For those of you who don't know 'Angel Wings' are the solid bit behind the filigree wings.  I added two matted circles just off-centre and a sentiment that was cut from the Tattered Lace Elegant Alphabet dies.  These were coloured with shades already used.  To finish, I added small blobs of Cosmic Shimmer Pearl Glue to the centre of each flower.
Isn't it amazing what can be made from plain white card and paper, colouring mediums and a little bit of glue.

Decadence?

Decadence, as in self-indulgence and over-blown.  At least, that's the way I've interpreted it.  You may ask, what on earth is she on about?  Well the answer is simple, I've decided to enter today's project into the monthly challenge on the Tattered Lace website - the title of the challenge, Decadence.  You can find this at http://challenge.tatteredlace.co.uk

I used the large easel by Pinflair and covered the 'canvas' and the bottom support with a paper from the Papermania Wild Rose Capsule Collection.  I cut two sections from a contrasting paper from the same collection using a frame from the Tattered Lace Kensington die set.  I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment and then used Bundled Sage Distress Ink on the outer frame and on the edge of the inner frame.  I coloured the 'canvas' supports with Bundled Sage Distress Ink and stuck everything together.  The large flowers are from the Capsule Collection, layering two together, but all the roses are handmade.  These were cut from an iridescent shimmer paper using the small, medium and large Rose dies by Britannia.  The pink roses were coloured with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink.  The leaves were also cut using a Britannia die and coloured with Bundled Sage Distress Ink.  I made the pearl sprays too.

Pink and beige

This card was made from a My Craft Studio CD-Rom, unfortunately I can't remember which one.

I printed the topper and matching background paper.  I adhered these onto paper that was coloured to enhance the rose on the topper, otherwise the rose was lost amongst all the beige.  I used two  die-cuts from the Tattered Lace Florentine Flourishes and coloured these to match.  I added two pearls in the opposing corners.  

Badger

Today's project is a 6x6in card.

I printed a topper sheet from a Joanna Sheen cd-rom, with images by Jayne Netley Mayhew, and a matching background paper.  I cut the background paper down so that the small badger was in the bottom right-hand corner.  I cut one of the toppers with an X-Cut die and stuck it towards the top left-hand corner.  The greeting was cut using a Tattered Lace die and coloured to match the grass in the picture.

Ornate Frame and roses

Another 8x8in card using the Papermania Parisienne Blue Capsule Collection.

I covered the card with an 8x8in paper, then placed a co-ordinating 6x6in paper onto a mat that I coloured with a Spectrum Noir pen to separate the patterns.  I cut the three Tattered Lace Ornate Frames and coloured the outer and inner parts to match the blue mat.  I coloured the other frame in a contrasting colour, layered them up and added a gold mirri 50 which was cut using the Tattered Lace Elegant Alphabet.  I cut some gold mirri swirls from the Tonic Frond Finesse set of dies, and made some roses from the Britannia Large Rose dies.  I coloured the roses in the same contrasting red as the second frame.

Red, white and blue

Today's project is an 8x8in card.

I used a 6x6in paper from the Papermania Parisienne Blue Capsule Collection pack and placed this on a mat towards the top right of the card.  I cut the four Chantilly Petal corners, by Tattered Lace, from white Centura Pearl card and coloured them with a Spectrum Noir pen to match the blue on the paper.  I cut a central panel and again coloured it to match.  The sentiment is from the Tattered Lace All Occasions dies.  I cut two strips of a satin finish paper, coloured them to match and added them to left and bottom of the card to look like ribbon.  I cut and made the roses from the Britannia Rose dies and added these for embellishment.  

Decoupaged rose

Now for a 6x6in MDF picture frame.

I painted the frame white, added a ribbon loop to the back of the frame and covered this with a patterned paper to hide the workings.  Using the same paper, from the Papermania Botanicals collection, I cut a frame for the front.  I made up one of the decoupage images from the collection, shaping each of the layers with my fingers to give a more realistic look, and layered it up using 3d glue gel.  I matted this onto a piece of white paper and a piece of paper coloured with  Victorian Velvet Distress Ink which was cut to fit into the central piece of the frame.  I cut several small butterflies using Cheery Lynn dies, coloured them with the Victorian Velvet Distress Ink, and stuck them around the outer frame.  I added miniature pearls to the centre of each butterfly.  

I think this would make a beautiful picture to hang on the wall, hope you agree.  

Butterflies

Another card designed by the fabulously talented Sheena Douglass.

This card uses one of Sheena's embossing folders, distress inks and gilding wax.  That's it - simples.

Floral Panel

Back to a card.

This is  an A5 tent-style card.  I cut the mat from satin mirri card and attached a piece of peach ribbon around it.  I cut three panels with the Tattered Lace Floral Panel die.  I stuck the three panels together with tape on the back, turning the centre one upside down.  I put two narrow strips of ribbon across the front, added a bow and adhered the panel to the card.  The flowers were made from the Britannia Medium Rose die. The leaves were also cut from a Britannia die.  I added pearls to the centres of the flowers on the ribbon and also to each of the flowers on the panels.  There are seven miniature pearls in the centres of some of the flowers, fiddly to do but very effective.

Blue Masu Box

I've been making gift boxes.

This box is based on the origami Masu box.  I used two 12x12in pieces of card to make a 4x4x2in box with lid.  I found the instructions at www.homemade-gifts-made-easy.com/.  Easy is right, the instructions were simple to follow, although I did adapt them a bit, as I was using card, to make the folds easier.  In other words, I cheated.  Origami is all about folding, but I took the scissors to it.  Looks good though.

Bird in a frame

Now for something a little different.

Today's project is small frame made from hardboard.

First, I painted the whole unit white as I didn't think that the natural brown colour would work as well.  All the papers used, apart from the pink mat in the centre, are from Papermania's wonderful Botanicals Collection.  The pink mat was coloured using Spectrum Noir pens with a topper added.  I cut the green frame and, after attaching a ribbon loop, covered the back with the same paper to keep everything tidy.  The butterflies were cut using Cheery Lynn dies and the flowers and leaves from Tattered Lace Mini Blooms. The pink ones were coloured with the same colour Spectrum Noir pen as the mat.  The butterflies and flowers were then sprayed with Crafter's Companion Spray and Sparkle Pearl Diamond Glitter Varnish.  I added tiny gems to the flowers on the central image and to the flowers and butterflies on the frame.  I think that this would make a lovely small, but inexpensive gift.

Colourful

Had a fab, but very tiring and expensive, weekend at The Great British Craft Festival.  Loads of new ideas and goodies to play with once I've caught up on my sleep.
Today's project is one I made a while ago, or I should say two.

For each project I took a plain piece of card and coloured it using three Distress Inks.  These were then embossed using an embossing folder by Sheena Douglass, matted onto siver mirri card and a white card.  I die cut the butterfly using a Tattered Lace die from silver mirri card and added a greeting.  The  cards were both made in the same way, but by using a different colour palette on the embossed card I think that the cards look very different.

Two the same, but different

Two cards today made from images painted by Jayne Netley Mayhew.

  

These toppers were printed from a CD-Rom from Joanna Sheen onto a single A4 sheet and cut around the frame provided.   The mats were embossed using an embossing folder by Sheena Douglass and coloured using Bundled Sage distress ink.  A greeting was added, and once again you have cards which are lovely, simple and inexpensive to make.

Decoupaged Bird

Another image from Jayne Netley Mayhew.

I cut out the framed image and added a dark border with an alcohol pen.  I then cut the bird from the second image on the page, shaped it to give dimension and decoupaged it.  The backing paper is from the same CD-Rom.

Elephant 2

Today's card is made from the same sheet of Jayne Netley Mayhew images that I used for yesterday's card.

This time I cut the image right out, shaped it to give dimension and adhered it with 3d glue gel to a mat cut embossed with a Sheena Douglass embossing folder.  I added a greeting and have another simple, but inexpensive card.

Elephant 1

Today's card features an image by artist Jayne Netley Mayhew (available on CD-Rom from Joanna Sheen).

I printed an A4 sheet and diecut this image using an X-Cut die.  The mat was also cut from the same set of dies and embossed using an embossing folder by Sheena Douglass.  The sentiment was cut from the Tattered Lace All Occasion Sentiments set of dies.

Cherry Blossom

Continuing with the purple distress ink (I think it is Shaded Lilac) today's card uses an embossing folder and a stamp, both by Sheena Douglass.

The background mat was embossed and then coloured with distress ink so that the raised areas caught most of the ink and are therefore darker.  I rounded the corners of the card and mat with a punch.  I then cut two circles, on the smaller of which I stamped the cherry blossom branch several times with the same ink that I used on the background.  Using a damp paintbrush I dragged some of the ink from the outline to shade the inner image.  This was then matted onto the larger circle which was layered onto the card using 3d foam pads to add dimension.  Two smaller circles with 18 on were added to finish the card.

Flying Beauties

Another embossed card.

I used the Flying Beauties embossing folder by Sheena Douglass, then inking with distress ink over the whole image and gilding wax over the raised areas.  This is matted onto a card blank which has been inked with the darkest distress ink used.  I then cut three of the same design from the Tattered Lace Florentine Flourish dies, inked them with the lightest distress ink used and added them to the base of the card as a border.

Silhouette Grasses

Today, an embossed card.

I embossed a piece of card using the Silhouette Grasses embossing folder by Sheena Douglass.  I then coloured it using distress ink and went over the raised bits with gilding wax to give definition and shine.  Hope you like it.

A card for Mum

A final yellow card.  Again using the Tonic layering dies to make the card and frame.

I cut two of the Tattered Lace Chantilly Diamond dies and placed these behind the frame and cut four of the Doily Corners from gold mirri.  The two small flowers were made from Tattered Lace Mini Blooms and the larger flowers from Britannia small, medium and large multi rose dies.  Pearls in the centre of the flowers, a circular topper with wording and another pretty card.