Two for the men.

Out here in Spain, we have recently lost reception of most of the British television that we used to watch. It's a long story, but some techno folk are looking for alternative methods to view it. In the meantime I can honestly say I am not missing it much, and it has given me more time to spend in my craft room. So this week I decided to replenish my box of 'spare' cards, so that I have some ready when I need one in a hurry, and I started with a couple for men.

This first one was made using images from Joanna Sheen's "Times gone by" CD. I have used this photo taken at a slight angle to show how it was made. The front of the card is cut away along the top of the corn field, and around the horse's body and head.  The complete head, and then the face, are decoupaged so I could feather the mane and forelock a little. The inside layer is the same image as the front, printed paler, and complete with the sky. There is an unprinted oval behind the horse's body for writing on. It was quite quick and easy to do, and made a nice card.

For the second card I revisited a technique that I haven't used for ages. I found an off-cut of card from the Chocolate Box ColorCore Cardstock block, where every sheet is a shade of brown with a different colour core - in this case, very pale green. I embossed it with a previously unused Cuttlebug embossing folder, and sanded it to reveal the owl and frame.

I hunted through my green snippets box for some patterned paper that would go with it, and covered a white base card with it. I salvaged a piece from the centre just big enough to make the tag which was cut with the inner and outer edges of a wonky square die. The centre of it is made from another tiny snippet of plain green paper, stamped with a Crafty Individuals sentiment, and some Tapestry Stamp leaves. I hung the tag from  a strip of green ribbon glued across the top of the card, and added a matching bow. I decided that there was no reason why the men shouldn't have a bit of bling too, so I added tiny green gems to the owl's eyes, and a larger one beneath the bow.

Seeing as I used so many snippets to make the second card, I shall link that to Pixie's Snippets Playground. I am trying so hard to use up snippets before cutting into a new sheet of paper or card, but all my boxes are still bursting with bits and pieces!

Dashing through the snow on Rudolph Day

My two cards this month are ideal for the Rudolph Day Challenge as they feature Rudolph himself, 'Dashing through the snow! I used a set of clear stamps by Woodware that I bought two Christmases ago, and then didn't use, so I thought it was time they saw some ink.

For both of them I stamped the Rudolph, sleigh and gifts, and masked them off while I used ink dusters to add some DI Tumbled glass, to the sky. I also cut two strips of snowflakes using a recently bought Memory box die, Frostyville border, and added some sparkle to them with Stickles silver ice.. I used a Momento Teal zeal ink pad to  stamp the sentiment in the top,  right corner, and the smallest snowflakes from the Woodware set, randomly over the backgrounds.

For the first card I coloured all the images with shades of blue felt pens, and added a white sparkle peel-off border. I also dotted a little stickles on the snowflakes.

I finished the other one  in the same way, but I used a wider range of coloured pens on the images, and added a blue sparkle peel-off border. I am not sure which version I prefer. 

I glued the Frostyville borders across the base of each card.

For a final touch I glued tiny blue gems to the curl of the antlers on the first card, and for the brown one, I used gold flat-backed pearls.

I told Sarn that I was ready for her challenge this month, which I was, several days ago, but I almost forgot to do the post today! But now I am off to link these at  Stamping for Pleasure.

Celebrating with the family

My blog is beginning to look like a Christmas only place, so it is time I posted something different! I have been absent for a few weeks now as I spent a fortnight in UK helping my son with his final preparations for emigrating to Denmark, and then attending a family funeral. I did return home (to Spain) bringing my sister with me for a week, but a few days after that I went back to UK for the wedding of my grand-daughter. We had a wonderful family day, and now all the excitement has died down, I feel I can share the card I made for them.

The colour scheme for the day was shades of purple and white so that 

is what I wanted to use for the card. I have very few wedding images in my stash so I was trawling through pinterest for some inspiration, and I came across this which I thought was just perfect for a modern young couple. I wanted to cut it using my Silhouette Cameo, but it is not a very clear picture and I was having difficulty in making a cutting file. I then saw it again on Facebook, so a big 'Thank You' to Belinda Savage from the All Things Silhouette Facebook page, who helped me to trace it. 

The next thing was to chose the paper to use. I knew it would cut well with vinyl, but all my vinyl is high gloss and I didn't think that would look right. So in the end I used my pearlised -all the way through - paper in white, as this is non-fibrous so works better for detailed cuts than ordinary paper does.

When I had cut it, I trimmed it down and edged the right hand side with a Marianne lace border die. I then matted this onto dark purple pearlised card and again used the die along the right hand edge. Next I mounted this onto a lilac pearlised base card, and added some purple pearls to the top left corner. 

There was space underneath for a greeting which I printed on the computer and framed with some dies from the Spellbinders resplendent rectangles set.

The lower left corner was filled with some tiny purple flowers rescued from a card I received a while ago. I was very pleased with the end result.

As it happens my sister also had a family wedding, the day before ours, so I shall follow her to enter this in a couple of challenges that are featuring weddings this week.

Crafting with Dragonflies Challenge 26:

Celebrations

Paperminutes Challenge 322: Weddings

While I was in the right frame of mind to work on fancy cutting files, I also made this for them. This time it is made from dark purple vinyl, adhered to a piece of lilac scrapbook paper and mounted into a narrow, silver frame. I made the image using a monogram font called Regal for the main letter 'B', and the font Black Chancery for the rest of the words. It does of course show both their names, their now-joint surname, and the date of their wedding.

I am hoping to make a similar one for Chris and I, (35 years late!) but it may not work. The initial 'P' will not split as naturally as the 'B' did, so I may have to change it a bit. That is a project for when I manage to find some spare time?...

Right it's back to Christmas cards now as it is Rudolph Day coming up on Sunday!

Rudolf Day Recycled

I have just returned from two weeks in UK, and having had a lovely week with my sister who came back with me, I now have a list of 'must do' projects to complete before I fly back to UK in ten days time for our grand-daughter's wedding. So I made a start today with two recycled Christmas cards for Rudolph Day tomorrow. (That's the 25th of each month when Sarn encourages to make and show two Christmas cards). I needed something quick to do, so I rifled through the pile of old Christmas card bits that I have saved, and chose a few items to play around with.

For the first card I have used a red and gold background from one card, a post-box image from another, and a red mirri-card poinsettia from a third. (It is much more red than it looks in the photo).I made a white A6 base card, and used a snippet of red card and a gold peel-off border to mat the image, and another tiny snippet of the card to hold a gold peel-off greeting. Some gold-ice stickles on the snow gave it a bit of sparkle, and that was one done. As is the nature of shiny card, the gold background is marred by my own reflection as I took the photo, but I won't worry about that too much.

For my second card I used a bright robin from one card, a holly wreath from another, a snippet of robin paper and a green sheet from a Papermania 6"x6" pad. I fussy cut the robin and fixed him behind the holly wreath which was already cut out. For the background I used a Martha Stweart cut-around-the -page punch set, and matted it onto some green holly paper. Then I attached this to a white square base card. The white background paper has tiny robins dotted all over it, but when it was assembled I noticed that the top left hand corner was completely bare, so I added a small red peel-off greeting there.

So that is my two cards for this month, and I have to say that I am very pleased to have used up some more of my salvaged oddments, which I always keep but rarely use! Tomorrow I am off to the hospital early for laser surgery on my poor left eye, and as I have no idea whether I will be able to use it to do anything on the computer when I get home, I shall try to link this up before I go.

As well as the Rudolph Day challenge on Sarn's blog, Stamping for Pleasure, I will also link up in Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Recycled circles

I didn't really intend to post any more before my trip to UK tomorrow, but having finished the frame I was making for my son earlier than I expected, (see previous post), I found myself with an evening to spare, so I gave myself the feel-good factor by putting inserts in the set of ten Christmas cards I made for the last Rudolph Day, and then I had a look in my box of bits to recycle from cards we received. One of them had this lovely image in a circle, with the word Christmas written across it, and Blessings on a separate banner below it. Because the wording was an integral part of the image, I had to keep it as it was, but I cut around the top of the circle, and then loosely around the word. I didn't like it much, so in a mad moment I decided to fussy-cut the letters, which took me quite a while, but was worth it. I cut the banner for Blessings as it was, and then I put it away in my WIP folder and forgot it.

On having a second look I thought it had some potential, so I made a background from my lovely Cover-a-page holly stamp from Impression Obsession, stamped with versamark and embossed with Cosmic shimmer bright gold powder. I made a base card for the image and then found my holly was not quite wide enough, so I trimmed it down a bit and made a border for each side using one of my sizzix border dies, and a matching infil die, and some red card from my snippet box.  I assembled the card and noticed one or two berries in the top left corner had not stamped very well, so I used the little red circles from the border die cut, to cover the berries. 

Having just seen Di's entry for Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge, which this week is 'Going round in circles', I realised that my card fitted the bill too, so I shall link it up, and also link it in Pixie's Snippets Playground, week 118,  then I had better  think about packing my case!

I will try to drop in now and again while I am away, but I am not sure what internet access I will have, nor whether I will manage to do much using my tablet instead of the computer.

A Leaving Gift

Anyone who follows me on my 'other blog' will know that I am flying over to UK on Thursday of this week, primarily to attend the funeral of my sister. But before that, I am spending a week with my middle son who is leaving for a new life in Denmark, the following weekend. I will be helping him to leave his current flat in a clean and tidy state, so that, with a bit of luck, he will get his deposit back! On Sunday his brothers have organised a family lunch for him, which I will now be able to go to. I love it when we all get together. I wanted to make a little gift for Tom to let him know he is not forgotten, so I put together this frame.

I started off with a digital scrapbook kit called Timeless Romance from Alexis Design Studio at Digichick, and opened up a background paper. I made it several degrees lighter. (I made all of this except the script in Adobe Photoshop).The main images of Tom himself, us as his parents and the full family group at the base, are all added full colour, and then each of his brothers, some with their partners, are added down the sides as lighter images. I clipped each photo to an artistic photo mask, to take away any strong edges and make them blend together better. The masks come from a variety of digital scrap sites, bought over the passed couple of years and stored on my computer. I then had two empty corners which I filled with flower embellishments from the same digi scrapbook kit as the paper. When it was done, I flattened all the layers and saved it as a jpeg file.

Next I opened publisher and imported the image, resizing it to exactly fit into a basic clip frame. I am not a great fan of these, but it was the best on offer in my local shops here.

I then opened the script in my silhouette cameo soft ware. I bought it as a ready-made cutting file from the silhouette store. I sized it to fit the centre of my picture and cut it from black vinyl. I weeded out the unwanted pieces and used transfer tape to position it onto the page. I was wary of lifting the print with the transfer tape so I de-stickied it (?) by pressing it onto my arms first, and it worked fine. I had to re-cut the word 'WHERE' because I tore it first time around, but other than that, it all worked just fine.

I hope he likes it as a little reminder of the family while he is away. I am sure we will still see him out here in Spain for holidays, and back in UK for work sometimes. He has spent almost a year commuting between offices here and in Denmark, so I am sure he will occasionally have to do the same in reverse. And of course, I feel a holiday in Denmark coming on, once he is nicely settled there!

Batch Baking for Rudolf Day

It is Rudolph Day again already - the 25th of the month, when Sarn over at Stamping for Pleasure, challenges us to create at least two Christmas cards.

We had some sad family news this week so I wanted something to take my mind off it and keep me busy, and I immediately thought  - colouring. I love my copic markers and I find colouring very theraputic, so I hunted through my files for a couple of Christmas digi stamps I bought from Mo Manning's site a while ago. This time I even had the foresight to decide which dies I would be cutting them with, so I sized them correctly and spaced them on the page with enough gaps to cut them properly. (I nearly always forget to do that). I printed each design five times, and spent a couple of peaceful evenings with soft music in the background, and just my fluff-ball Arwen to keep me company, while I coloured them all.

My first design was a little drummer boy, and I coloured the five images in a variety of colour combinations. 

Then it was time to turn them into cards. I sorted through my snippets and picked five pieces to cut the mats with a nestie die, (I am not sure what number it is). The images were cut with an original rectangular nestie. Then I went to my Christmas snippets box and chose backing papers to go with them. Some of them have joins in them, but I managed to hide most of the seams with embellishments. (Actually I messed up the colouring on one image too, and could only salvage it by fussy-cutting it and gluing it onto a plain rectangular background, but I bet you can't see which one it was in the photos).

Last year, our choir sang the song 'Little drummer boy' at our Christmas concerts, so I took one line from the song, printed it on the computer, and mounted it to match the main image, using the smallest die from the same set. By the time all five were done, I had used up some papers and elements that had been in my boxes for at least ten years!

For the second image, three carollers, I used the same colours each time. This time I chose a new Nellie Snellen die for the mats, again cutting it from oddments of card. I made base cards to match the mats, and for the backing I embossed some white paper from my always overflowing white off-cuts box. I particularly like the siwrly snow corner folder which came in a starter pack when I bought my eBosser machine. It is by Crafters Companions, and is part of their 'The Snowman' collection. 

I also used some embosscilicious folders. I made some of the cards square and some rectangular,  and on some I added a lamp-post cut with a Marianne die. On each card I highlighted the embossed snowflakes or stars in the background with a little stickles glitter glue. The word stamp is from a See-D's set, and the banners are from a big bagful I was given a few years ago. So now I have a second set of five, different but similar cards, a useful addition to my growing collection.

I shall link this up to Rudolph Day over at Stamping for Pleasure, and as the children are all swathes in hats and scarves, I will also link the to Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 169; All wrapped up, and to Pixie's Snippets Playground.

How to tattoo a mirror, or my Silhouette Cameo comes of age!

Some of you will be aware that I ordered a fairly large amount of vinyl from UK recently, enough to last me for quite some time, but I wanted to just pay postage the once. Well it has been lying in glossy splendor on the spare bed ever since it arrived, and I have been trying to think of a project to use it on. Spurred on by some examples published in the 'All things silhouette' Facebook page, I decided to tackle some henna tattoo designs. I used to employ a lovely Sudanese lady in my nursery, and when the holiday club were in, she sometimes painted these designs on the older children's hands, and they fascinated me then. I downloaded a couple of designs from Google, and my first task was to make a cutting file from them, using the Sil. software. There is always a little area that doesn't work at first, so you have to fiddle around with it, but on the whole, this wasn't too difficult.

My other half had agreed for me to put a design in the corner of a large mirror in the sitting room, so I chose black vinyl so it would stand out. I resized the design to fit on a 12" square and set the machine up to cut it. I was surprised to find it took 40 minutes to cut, and when I took it out of the machine I could hardly see the cut lines.

The next task was the weeding - the removing of any areas that I did not

want. I had to sit under a very bright light, and keep referring back to a picture on my computer screen, to see what I was doing. I use my pricking tool to remove the tiny pieces, and I keep a piece of scrap paper beside me to put them on, but sometimes they ping away and you have to search for them, because if they stick back on to the main image, it is very difficult to prise them off again. They are also very 'static' and fly onto my clothes so I end up speckled with black pieces too. Here is the work in progress. The little circular thing at the top is my very strong magnifying glass that I had to use to see whether I had missed anything. It took me three and a half hours to finish the weeding. As this was my first attempt at such a large, and intricate design, I was pretty chuffed with the result.

Then I used a large sheet of transfer paper to position it on the top, right hand corner of the mirror. I didn't get it quite as far into the corner as I had intended, but it is impossible to move it again. 

Chris said I should do another one to go in the lower, opposite corner, so I decided to try my second design. This was finer lines, but a slightly more open design, and after some more designing, another forty minutes of cutting, and three more hours of weeding, this second design was positioned

on the mirror too.

It caused me more problems than the first design because one area was too static, and it clung to the mirror in the wrong place, and when I tried to lift it, it just stretched out of shape. Fortunately I could rescue most of the design by quickly cutting the transfer sheet above the error, and getting the rest stuck down. Then I scrapped off the ruined part, and cut it again. No-one would notice the join, and even I, knowing exactly where it is, have difficulty finding it.

So here is my finished mirror, which, incidentally, was extremely difficult to photograph without too much information in the background. In the end, I kind of angled it at the ceiling, and I still got the camera lens in the corner. You also get a double image of the pattern because it reflects off the back of the mirror. It is quite an interesting effect, but it makes the photo look a bit blurred.

But is it really finished? We both looked at it, and looked at one another, and we agreed that it wasn't right. The top design was too heavy for the lower one. The lines were thicker and the whole thing looked too dark. So what did I do? Yup! I took the top one off. By now it had been on there for a day, and in 48 hours the vinyl is considered fully cured, and almost permanent, so it wasn't about to come off easily. I had to resort to an old credit card, and craft knife blade to chip it off one tiny bit at a time. It left a lot of sticky residue which had to be cleaned off with my special glue solvent, and then I used detergent followed by rubbing alcohol, to ensure the surface was really clean. Then of course I had to cut the file again, and weed it again, but finally my mirror was finished, and I must admit, I am quite proud of it.

I don't ever do anything the easy way do I? But next time I want to try something a bit different, remind me that we usually walk before we run, and it is a good idea to try a simple design before tackling something like this!!

I think I can now say my silhouette cameo has really come of age.