Little Acorns

The saying goes "Big oaks from little acorns grow". Can you believe that this little lot can turn into 60 Christmas cards?
White A4 base card, squares of watercolour paper, white card, red card and recycled craft card. Three, sorry! four stamps and two ink pads. Black marker pen and red raffia.


I've nearly finished them all now, should be done by tomorrow. So much tactile crafting lately!

Mixed Media Monday

This is the first time entry for me here although I look every week at the blog. It is the time you see, only yesterday it was last Christmas!!

I was inspired by the theme and made the time to do a bit of tactile (as opposed to digital) art.

The background is from The Graphics Fairy (thank you), there are some great images here to enjoy. I printed off the image and duplicated two more smaller ones at the bottom - spookily it looks as if there is someone looking up, and aged the edges with walnut stain Distress Inks.

I coloured the main eye image iris with stream Adirondack Ink and clear embossed over it. Not sure it shows up too well on this scan. The Gothic arch windows was a picture on the net from who knows where, who knows when now - sorry. I printed it out and cut out the insides of the frame using a craft knife. I inked the frame with scattered straw Distress Inks and printed off the words and coloured with lettuce and cranberry Adirondack Inks - the inside of the O in the word window was coloured with stream Acrylic by Ranger.

Art Creations Friday

When I saw the image that is the starting point for this new challenge web site one word leapt into my brain, "Beautiful", pretty much says it all! I just had to make something with it so here is my all digital card. Can't wait to see what else happens on Art Creations Friday in the future.

It uses designs by Anne Langpap which were in a free package for Two Peas in a Pod in June 2007. You can still download it here. The only part not by Anne is the distressed antique paper used as a layer behind the image and for the main card layer which was a digital freebie by "Daisy D" on a CD from Scrapbook Magazine a while ago.

To paraphrase good old Brucie on Strictly Come Dancing "Keeeeep Crafting!" and I hope your week is inspirationally arty.

By the way I don't think John should have left the programme. I can understand why he felt he aught to but if the public had voted for him that is all part of the show, isn't it? And now only two people get the chance to dance in the final!!!

Reject Mystery Card

There were parts of the card that were good and parts that were bad and, seeing as it was for a competition, if there was any bad it had to go.

I liked the cranberry french dots on the yellow card which were applied with Adirondack Acrylics straight from the bottle. I will certainly use this again on a different project. I liked the disco black embossing on black card on the reverse of the card (using an Anna Griffin background stamp) and I was fairly pleased with the white embossing on black card filled in with Twinkling H2O's. After a couple of failed attempts I was happy with the template I had made to produce the design.

Have you guessed what it is yet?

This was my attempt at a Russian Doll! So why was I not happy? Well, the gold embossing had sunk into the red card in places, the black embossing on the bow was a bit dodgy, I wasn't happy with the sentiment part on the reverse and the worst part was that the base black card was proving to be too flimsy with the doll parts attached so I decided to use and extra layer on the reverse and use P.V.A. glue to make sure they were sandwiched together and would not come apart. Unfortunately the two different cards must have reacted with the glue and bent at different rates and no matter what I did (I had them under about 7 editions of an encyclopedia for 5 days) they would not stay straight and I had lost the will by then to make the effort to make another!!

All in all the end result just did not feel quite right so i scrapped it.

Hope you have a successful Arty week.

On Being Quiet

I know I have been quiet, but have been busy beavering away on my entries for the 2008 Card Designer of the Year competition that's running at SimplyCards & Papercraft. Have just finished taking photo's of them today and got them in the post. Only just in time as the closing date is Thursday 13th Nov!

I wanted all three cards to be just right and was really frustrated when my first idea did not turn out as well as I had hoped. Hence the glimpse of the H20 flowers in October did not make it to the final three. I'll post that card when the light is better to take a picture tomorrow. In the end I am pleased with my cards and can only hope, like everyone else who has entered, that they will catch the judges eye. Can you guess what my reject card might be of from this?