DCM - Wool or Copper

It’s Tuesday, It’s 10am (well more like 6pm in my case) and it’s time for another mid week Little Extra from the Daring Cardmakers

In the coming weeks all the mid week dares are going to be based around the theme of traditional anniversary presents but don’t expect them to start at the 1st anniversary and run in sequence….oh no……the team are far more cunning than that!

We have decided that each mid week dare will be picked randomly and the first will be 'The 7th Anniversary'

We’d like you to make a card inspired by the Traditional or Modern gift themefor a 7th Anniversary, which is……'Wool or Copper'

My first instinct was to get the knitting needles out but I decided against that….I’ve not knitted for years. Then I had a vague recollection that I had some copper foil hidden away somewhere in my stash. I don’t think it’s seen the light of day since the Crafts By Carolyn meet up in Hitchin about three years ago so I guess it’s time I made use of some of it don’t you think?
It was at Hitchin that I gave a little demonstration to the girls on how to dry emboss on this thin metal foil using brass stencils but now it’s so much quicker with the help of my Cuttlebug and some embossing folders.

So, here’s what I came up with for the challenge.

I started off by covering an A5 card with two of the beautiful pearlized coordinating papers from the DCWV Luxury stack. Each corner was stamped with a flourish using my new set of Technique Tuesday, Whispy Gigs clear stamps..(Did I not tell you about these?) and a Brown Staz-On ink pad. I then made a smaller mat in the same papers but turned them around so that different papers would lie on top of one another.

Next the Copper Foil embellishments………I cut three squares of the foil and run them through one of my small embossing folders making sure that the pattern was centralized. Each of these was then mounted onto another piece of the patterned paper and embellished with layered flowers comprising of a selection of fabric blooms, Prima’s and some copper metal embossed flowers that have been cut with punches. They were all finally fastened together with brads, some of which I coloured with alcohol inks so they would match the colour scheme.

The card was finished off with Organza ribbons and a stamped greeting which was made using Blond Moments Sweet Celebrations unmounted stamps.

Hot 'n' Spicy

There’s a ‘Hot ‘n’ Spicy’ team challenge over at the Daring Cardmakers blog today and I had to make a card with that phrase in mind.

I thought the best starting point for this would be go through my ever growing stash of papers to find something that would fit with the theme.
Luckily I came across a sheet of stripy paper from Li’l Davis Designs that was a freebie at a crop I went to last summer and it fitted the ‘Hot ‘n’ Spicy’ theme to a tee.

My card is pretty basic…………..just layering the patterned paper and Burgundy card stock together and topped off with a stamped panel.

As I was putting my card together with the eyelets and ribbon it seemed to be lacking something, so I decided to run one of the panels through my Cuttlebug and emboss it with ‘Stylized Flowers’, which gave it the little lift it needed.

The rubber stamp is ‘Brush Tulips from Penny Black…..I love these water colour effect flower stamps and has a nice little collection of them now!

Lythan's Doodling!

There’s something a little different going on at the Daring Cardmakers for their mid week Little Extra this week. Lythan has written a great tutorial about doodling with patterned papers.

It's a technique that she uses a lot and her cards always look so fabby but I’m not sure that doodling is really my thing.

I'm not even sure that it would suite my card making style but I’ve given it a go.

Ummm……totally different from my usual creations but I’m quite pleased with the results.

I’m not sure who the papers were by because they were in a Self Addressed kit from many moons ago but I do know that the ‘Happy Birthday’ stamp is a Blonde Moments one from their Sweet Celebrations set.

Thanks for dropping by.

Sue
x x x

Butterfly, Flutterby

I was still playing with Parchment paper when I made my card for the Daring Cardmakers dare this week.

Butterfly, Flutterby

Hi everyone, Jo here with this week's dare....
I seem to like butterflies at the mo. This week therefore I would like you to put some butterflies on cards. Stitched, felt, shiny, bright, plain, paper pieced, stamped, drawn... you get the idea :) any theme of card but it must have a butterfly somewhere on the card!

I decided to go with a card design that I’ve made several times before, mainly because I love this particular stencil. It’s by a lady called Erica Fortgens and combines embossing and stitchinG

I started by dry embossing the panel onto some thick, good quality parchment paper. You can emboss brass stencils perfectly well with a lot of the die cutting machines out there but it doesn’t work on this stencil because it has butterflies in two of the corners and birds in the other two. I wanted the butterflies in all four corners so it meant that the embossing had to be done the conventional way.
Once all the embossing was finished I took a needle, pierced all the holes and stitched the edging of the oval and the butterflies with fine gold thread and added small pearls for the butterflies bodies.
The three tags were printed onto Parchment paper on my computer and then embossed with gold embossing powder but you have to be really quick to do. If your not, the ink dries and the embossing powder won’t stick to it. The two name tags were cut using a ‘Whale of a Punch’ and the other was cut by hand and then all three were mounted on a slightly larger tag cut from pearlescent card, also by hand.

Finally, the whole thing was assembled onto an ivory pearlescent card using tiny gold brads and ivory ribbons.

Sectret Cross Stitch Project

I've been working on that secret cross stitch project that I mentioned the other day.
I still can't tell you who it's for but here's a sneak peek.



My progress is being hindered ever so slightly because my beloved BoJangles, who likes to sit with me decided that my sewing basket looked like a comfortable place to rest his weary head. Needless to say, I couldn't get to my embroidery silks.



I'm just amazed that he managed to get completely in there!

DCM - We've Folded!

Once again the weekend has flown by and I’m pleased to say that I survived the family coming to dinner on Sunday. Not a big deal cooking for six you would think but when you’re only used to cooking for one it’s a bit different. I think it went well and everyone enjoyed the food…well all except the Pavlova that didn’t happen.
I followed Delia’s instructions to the letter, cooked it for 1 hour on gas mark one then turned it off and left it in the over overnight to cool but when I tried to put it on the serving plate the following morning the inside was just a gungy mess and not in the least edible. We ended up having just Strawberries and cream!


Anyway, with the cooking disaster out of the way it was time for me to make my card for this weeks Little Extra over at the Daring Cardmakers

This weeks mid week dare is inspired by Rachel and is called ‘Folded’!
This is not folds in the card blank itself, but rather folds ON the card- whether it be some kind of paper folding technique or folded embellishments or even just a folded over message of some type.

I decided on a square card covered with ‘dream’ paper and topped with a hand cut Lacé square which was folded back on it’s self to reveal the back of the double sided paper and the backing paper.
The next thing I needed to do was make the folded flower with the aid for my ‘Pretty Petals’ design template. I chose to make the Amaryllis from White parchment paper and to do that I needed to cut five of the petals and one centre.

I then decorated each petal with embossing and pricking, using Pergamano techniques and then folded and assembled the flower with a large Brown brad. I printed the two Happy Birthday tags, cut them with my Cuttlebug and attached them to the card with some Pink fibres.

The components were:-

Papers – My Mind’s Eye, Trés Jolie & HOTP Earth Tones Cardmakers Creative Pack
Parchment Paper - Canson
Cuttlebug Mini Tag Die
Dovecraft – Pretty Petals Design Template
Fibres and Brads from my stash

Shrink To Fit

Where on earth has the week gone again?
I can’t believe it’s Friday already and that means it’s time for another Daring Cardmakers challenge.

It was Kathy’s turn to set the dare this week and boy did she come up with one to stretch your imagination. She called it ‘Shrink to Fit’ and the idea is to have lots of unused space on your card and an embellishment that measures no more that 5 x 5 cm…have you any idea just how small that is!

This was real problem for me because most of the cards I make are A5 size and a 5 x 5 embellishment would look really silly on a card that size, so for this challenge I’ve scaled things down a bit and made my card 14.5cm square.

I started off by printing the computer generated greeting and then cut a 5cm square in the centre of the card. I edged around it with a silver metallic pen and then did a bit of weaving with some Lavender and Blue ‘Papillon’ Craft Yarn that I brought from Craft Creations.

So there you have it, a card with a small embellishment and lots of white space……just what Kathy ordered!

I've also been given an award this week.

The lovely Jackie has given me an Arte Y Pico award which is apparently given to people who share their creativity through their blogs. Other than the fact that it’s Spanish no one seems to know what Arte Yico actually means, so if anyone can shed any light I would be grateful. Anyway, I feel very honoured Jackie, so thank you so much for thinking of me. Now apparently I have to pass it on to five more people, so here goes…..

Juliet
Judy
Vanessa
Kathy
Lythan



All of these girlies have more talent in their little fingers that I can ever hope to achieve. I love reading their blogs because they give me so much inspiration and in Lythan’s case she more often that not brings a smile to my face.

Cross Stitch Friendship Quilt

You'll remember the other day when I was dropping hints about a secret project that I had been working on; well it’s reached its destination now so it’s safe for me to share it with you.

My good friend Nicki (who lives in Switzerland) and I have been working on a few stitching projects for charity over the last year or so. It’s a fun and very worth while thing to do but we decided it would be lovely to stitch something for someone we knew for a change and it didn’t take us long to decide that we wanted to do something for our very special friend Sharon who also helps stitch our charity projects.
So, it was back in December that I started going through all my cross stitch magazines looking for designs that I could stitch for this very special project. I eventually came across a set of Japanese inspired flowers in shades of Lavender and Pink and knew instantly that Sharon would love then.











When all nine squares were finally stitches I sent them over to Nicki so she could do her magic with her sewing machine. She did a fantastic job matching my little squares with some really beautiful fabrics and turned them into this amazing quilt.





Now, I know that Sharon occasionally reads my blog so I really hope she won’t mind me explaining the reasons we decided to make our special gift for her. You see, Sharon suffers from ME and that means that she needs lots of rest and often has to take naps during the day. Nicki and I thought that a quilt to snuggle up to would give her some comfort and remind her that she has some friends out there who are thinking about her and wishing her well.

Our next special project is already in the planning stage and all three of us will be working on it so keep an eye out on here for some piccies when it's finished.