Christmas Swirl

Hi,

Last week I was lucky enough to win the draw on Sue Wilson's blog. I hardly ever win anything so image how I felt when I was at Ally Pally on Sunday and Sue asked me why I hadn't been in touch to claim my prize! It was great -I got to choose 2 stamp sets from the Particraft Stand. I chose the stamp sets below. The first one is called Falling Leaves and the second is Christmas Swirl.

I just love the trees on both of these sets. If you pop over to the Particraft blog you will find a stunning card that Sue has made with the Falling Leaves stamp set.

I've only had time for a little play this week and would like to share this card with you that I made from the Christmas Swirl stamp set.

For this card I used a really cool technique which the lovely Karen Lines showed me on Sunday. This technique was used to make the diagonal stripe background. I ran a Perfect Medium Ink pad over the raised areas of one side of the Cuttlebug Candy Cane embossing folder. I then placed a piece of white card in the folder and ran it through the Cuttlebug. I added metallic silver embossing powder to the side of the card which had been on the side that received the ink - the debossed lines held the powder. I then heat set the powder and covered the whole area with Faded Jeans Distress ink using cut & dry foam. I then added Cosmic Shimmer Aurora Crystal embossing powder which stuck to the distress ink. I then heat set it. BEWARE - the glitter from the embossing powder flies everywhere! Anyway, what you're left with is a textured glitter card. Really cool, eh? Give it a go. Some embossing folders work better than others. It's fun trying them all out (you'll be covered in glitter by the end of it!).

Here's a bit more of a close-up.

The background for the fancy tree was made using Eco Green acrylic paints. Many of you may have see Julia Andrus on Create & Craft last year demonstrating the range of Eco Green Crafts but here's a re-cap of this technique.

I used a piece of packing material board 3" x 4". I painted a based layer with the Blueberry paint. When dry (it dries really quickly), I covered the area with a slightly watered down layer of Eco Green Glue. I left this for a few minutes to dry a little but remain tacky and then I painted over it with a layer of Eco Green white paint. I then dried it with a heat gun and it crackled! Be careful not to be too close or for too long or the paint may bubble (this is a different effect which you may not want on this piece). I then buffed the area up with a piece of kitchen roll. I added some Chipped Sapphire distress ink using cut & dry foam to tone down the white.

I made sure the Distress Ink was dry and then I wiped the surface with an anti-static pad. I stamped the tree from the Christmas Swirl stamp set using Perfect Medium, added Cosmic Shimmer Black Sparkle embossing powder and heat set. To do the edges, I swiped each edge along the Perfect Medium Ink Pad and added Metallic Silver embossing powder and heat set. It's a good idea to do one side at a time.

The greeting is from the Christmas Swirl stamp set and is on the second size up of Spellbinders Labels 20. I made a faux nestie by drawing around the outside of the same die and cutting out.

I layered all the pieces up, added ribbon and 3 blue Eco-Green glass glintz (yeh, I know they look black in the photo but they are blue in the flesh!).

Hope you've enjoyed reading - do have a play with the techniques.
Julia

Vintage Inventor Christmas

Hi.

Have I mentioned that my favourite stamp set at the moment is the Vintage Inventor Stamp set deisigned by Sam Poole?

Well, if you didn't know that, have a look at the past few posts and you will see 3 other posts using this set.

I set myself a challenge to use the set for a Christmas card. And here it is :

The background has been made using the lemon juice technique (seee earlier post) and crushed olive, forest moss and barn door distress ink pads. The foliage stamp is from the Creative Expressions Christmas Designs 3 stamp set but I think there is also a similar stamp on the Christmas Post stamp set.

The Vintage Inventor was stamped onto some card which was coloured with the forest moss distress ink and then cut out.

The sentiment has been stamped onto a piece of American Seam Binding which was inked with forest moss.

I'm not sure where the holly stamp is from but they're fairly easy to find especially at this time of year. The holly has been stamped with black archival and then quickly embossed with clear powder. It was then coloured in with Evergreen, Scarlet Blush and Rich Gold Cosmic Shimmer drawing inks.

A bit of paper piercing round the edges of a piece of maroon card and then mounted onto green and the card is finished.

What do you think? I think it works, don't you? What about adding a poinsettia bloom to his hat instead or replacing the whole hat with a santa hat, party hat or a crown? Great fun!

Julia

Tissues

Hi,

I spotted a technique in the August edition of Craft Stamper Magazine which involved stamping onto a tissue. Thought I'd give it a go and this is what I came up with :

It doesn't matter if you use 2 ply or 3 ply tissues as you only use the top layer on your card. I stamped some images from the Creative Expressions stamp set Wine Label onto my tissue using a Black Archival ink pad. I tore around each image and then removed the extra layers - just keeping the stamped layer. I painted some Eco-Green paint in Lake, Lilac and Periwinkle onto a square piece of white card.

Once the pain was dry I covered the surface with some watered down school PVA. I then placed the tissue images where I wanted them. I covered these with another layer of watered down PVA and put aside to dry.

I stamped the script text from the stamp set all over the two blue pieces of card I was using as a matt and cut 4 purple borders using the Spellbinders Parisian Accents die set.

Once dry, I trimmed off any overhanging pieces of tissue from my topper and highlighted the creases with some silver metallic rub on. I edged the whole thing with Black Soot Distress Ink.

The layers were then assembled onto a Craftwork Cards 8 x 8 card blank and some Creative Expressions Screw brads added to each corner.

It's a fun technique - why not give it a try?

Thanks for stopping by.
Julia

Lemon Juice

Hiya,

Sorry I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks - I've been bogged down with accounts (hate them!) and I've been on a couple of University visits with my daughter (great fun).

Today I want to share another card made with Sam Poole's fab Vintage Inventor stamp set. Here it is :

I found a technique in a recent issue of Craft Stamper that used lemon juice and I used it on this card.

The base card was coloured with Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky Distress Ink. As you can see, one of the sides is torn and highlighted with the ink. Some water was used to make some splatters. I put some lemon juice in a mini mister and randomly misted. I took the end off the mister to splatter some bigger drops. I then dried it with a heat gun. It takes a while to dry. At first it doesn't look like it's done anything - be patient, the longer you heat it the darker the lemon juice becomes. Oh, and be warned - it's a bit smelly!

I also used lemon juice on the red and blue card layers to grunge them up a bit.

I stamped some images directly onto the background using Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky and Barn Door. The light bulb is stamped on to red card. I coloured some scrap card with Stormy Sky and stamped the Inventor chappy and the sentiment and then cut them out. I split the sentiment up into 4 separate lines. I think it looks good like that.

Hope you've enjoyed your visit.

That's all for now.
Julia