Shabby Chic Birthday Card

Hi Again

I have a friend who has a special birthday next week and wanted to make something a little bit different to my usual cards. I looked on the Internet for inspiration and saw some amazing work. I loved a card that I saw which had painted papers and roses so thought I would give it a go. I got my Gesso white paint out and literally slapped some on, I did worry it had ruined the papers but when it was all assembled it looked fab. Well I was happy with it anyways, and this is how it turned out.

I used some Prima papers which were a freebie on a craft magazine I bought recently, how lovely to get something so gorgeous for free!! I also painted a KaiserCraft wooden birdcage with the Gesso. I sprayed some perfect pearls onto some brown craft card and stamped out the butterflies. I really like the effect this gives card, it over saturated (ok maybe I sprayed too much), but when you dab it off with paper kitchen towels it gives it the look of texture!

 

 

Lots of pearls, some gorgeous coffee coloured lace that only cost me 50p, and an organza bow to finish it all off. I decorated the inside to match, but minus the roses.

 

 

.

I also made a box for the card and decorated the lid to hint at whats inside.

I am really happy I tried something different , and will be trying for this look again in future. Thank you to all those talented people that inspire us by sharing there work.

Thanks for having a peep
Sharon xx

Butterfly Friends Birthday Card

Hello there

Just a quick post with a card I made at the weekend for a friends birthday. I made it very late on Saturday evening / Sunday morning so lets not look too closely at the obvious mistakes! lol (If your a crafter and a Virgo like me run away now!). I was tired, decorated the box lid before I glued the base sides together and realised the base was too big for the lid! And when I re made a smaller base the card wouldn't fit into it! Arrrrggghhh.

My friend loved it, so it was all good. Happy birthday Jeannette xx

The paper is by KaiserCraft and it's from their Timeless Collection, I only bought one sheet but will be going back for more. Loved it and it's double sided, so if you wanted to use the other side it has images of postcards on it, fab. I think it is different from what I usually do, I mean just look at all that white space around the sentiment! How I managed to resist swiping the distress inks all over it is beyond me. I was good and only gave the very edge of the circle a light coating, and the very edges of the gorgeous papers.

 

I also decororated the inside to match the front, but the sentiment inside says Happy Birthday. I have seen other people decorate the inside of the cards and loved how it turned out so I am sure I will be doing this again. And as I was on a roll, and getting carried away with myslef I made a box for the card. . . . .

. . . . .and decorated the lid to match the card!!! Well, 1.30 a.m in the morning is no excuse not to try!



Thank you for coming over for a peep.
Sharon xx

Pink ladies Card

Hi there

It’s been a while and mojo is still missing. However I did attempt to make a simple ladies card to enter into this month’s Crafty Individuals ‘Summer Ball’ themed blog challenge.  See link below:

http://craftyindividualsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/june-challenge-begins.html

I made the card grungy, pink and a bit more pink lol. So I think it really is one for the ladies!

 The stamp I used is a Crafty Individual’s stamp that I have had since I first started crafting about 5/6 years ago. It’s CI – 068 (It was a bargain too as I got it in a sale at a local craft shop for £2.60!)  Not sure that they still sell this one.

The pretty papers are from a collection called ‘Blush’ by Lost & Found. Looking at how pink I painted her face with Rangers distress inks I think it’s rather appropriate.

I painted the flourish with crackle paint, and then covered this with perfect pearls, and still not happy with the look I rubbed some dark brown ink.  The obligatory pearls, flowers and cotton lace finished it all off nicely.

Thanks for taking time to have a peep

Sharon xx

Quick post

Hello peeps

It's been a while since I have created anything as life has been a little hectic. Today I logged onto my blog so I could have a peep at what my fellow crafters have been creating and try and find some inspiration.

Paula over on http://ephemerasattic.blogspot.co.uk/ is running a blog candy post so I have to enter. I love Paula's work and part of the candy is one of her beautiful bag creations. These are stunning and I would love one, I think I have bag envy lol.

Pop over and take a look at her gorgeous work. Hope to be back soon

Take care
Sharon xx

Stamped Candle

This weekend saw me try something new with images created from stamping. I have seen candles that have stamped images set onto them on other people’s blogs and I have wanted to try it for ages. It looks fiddly, and to be honest it is a bit, but I think that effort is well worth it when you see the results you get. One of my closest friends sadly lost her sister to cancer last September and today would have been her sisters birthday. I know my friend is going to find today very difficult and I wanted to make her a small gift to let her know I was thinking of her and her family.

Jeannette loves her candles and also loves anything with sentiment behind it so I knew this would mean a lot to her. I gave her the gift yesterday and she said she would light it for a little while today.

I used a Crafty Individuals angel stamp, its CI-086. It is a beautiful image and on the pillar at the side of the angels is says ‘Hear the beating of their golden wings and the sound of music in your heart’. On the back the word stamp came from a set I have from Papermania. I embellished the candle with some flowers sprayed with perfect pearls mist and some gorgeous cotton cream lace. I use this lot in my projects I always think it makes them look so vintage.

You stamp your chosen image onto tissue paper, colour it if you wish (I used water colour pencils to keep it very pale), cut it out leaving a very small boarder around the image and then place that image onto your candle. Then you wrap this tightly with wax paper, (I didn’t have any of this so I used baking paper. It’s not ideal for this project as it’s a brown colour and difficult to see your image underneath it!! However it did work.) You then gently use your heat tool to go over where the image is underneath the paper and slowly the wax from the candle absorbs the tissue paper with the image on it!! It’s like magic.

Just a few things to note if you try this project out for yourself:

The tissue paper seemed to have a different texture on each side! I didn’t notice until I tried to stamp the image and on one side the ink went a little blotchy, I tried again on the other side and it was perfect.

My water colour pencils have never been used and tore the paper, so I re stamped the image to start again and softened the points of the pencils on some scrap card stock before using again.

You need to be very careful not to overheat the image on the candle or the candle melts!! Just be patient and keep checking and re-heating.

I would like to enter this project into the Stamp Man Challenge, this challenge is all about embelshing your projects. See the challenge here:

http://thestampmanchallenges.blogspot.com/2012/01/stamp-man-embellish-it-challenge.html

Thank you for coming over for a peep

Hugs

Sharon xx

Another napkin folded card xx

Hi there

Well get me, back to blog land again and within the same month! Over on Gingersnap Creations they are holding a challenge ‘glorious green’.

You can find the challenge here: http://gingersnapcreations.blogspot.com/2012/01/gc136-color-challenge-glorious-greens.html

A friend asked me to make her a card for her niece after seeing the last one I made. She loved the butterfly image on the square card so much I incorporated it into this napkin fold design card. This is only the second time I have used the stamp and in the space of a week lol. I used pale green papers on my card and before it was embellished I thought they looked too plain and dowdy!!

I then worried when I had finished it that I had gone over the top with all those pearls, flowers, lace and perfect pearls mist. However when she opened the tissue paper that I had wrapped it in I needn’t have worried she absolutely loved it, phew.

The pale green papers are from My Mind’s Eye ‘wild asparagus’ range.  All the edges were distressed with distress inks. I stamped the image twice and then cut out the butterfly on the second image. I used ‘bundled sage’ and ‘Victorian velvet’ distress inks to watercolour the image, let this dry, covered the coloured bits of wing with glossy accents  and then attached this on top of the original image.

I sprayed the flowers with perfect pearls mist, and the tiny butterflies were a happy accident. I had sprayed some beige card with the same pearls mist and it saturated the card!!! In my panic I grabbed some kitchen roll and blotted the mist . . . and hey presto it left an imprint into the card and made it looked textured. I was rather pleased with that one, and I have saved the bit of card left over. I am sure it will come in handy for something. Don’t you just love it when things like that happen? Hope you like it too.

Thank you for coming over and having a peep. Hope you manage to stay warm this weekend; it’s so cold here today.

Happy crafting

Sharon xxx



Butterfly Card

Hello there

Well it has been far too long since I have personally blogged,  but I have been keeping my eye on all the blogs I follow. Crafting mojo left my house for quite a while and I have missed making things and getting dirty fingers from all those inks and stuff. So I thought I would try and have a go at another craft challenge. My car had to go into the garage all day today, so perfect time to get all the bits and bobs out and make something.


The Fashionable Stamping challenge can be found if you click on the link bellow

http://fashionablestampingchallenges.cottagecrafts.ie/?p=2104

I first saw over the challenge over on Paula's blog at http://ephemerasattic.blogspot.com/  , she makes some stunning creations.

Challenge 13 is Butterflies or Bugs and the only rules as far as I can tell is you must use a stamp (no digis) in your creation. Its my first time entering fashionable stamping so here is my entry

I'm not sure what the stamp is, as I bought it when one of my crafting friends was selling off some of her huge stash.

I stamped it twice and then cut the butterfly out of one of the images. I coloured it with distress inks and then added glossy accents to the coloured bits. The background paper is from Making Memories and is 'Noir Floral Butterfly', you can see the reverse of the butterfly paper on the bottom of the card. It's a gorgeous paper and I used in in the project before last that I posted on here lol.

Some lace and maybe one too many flowers and there you have it, my butterfly or bugs challenge entry.

Thank you so much for coming over and having a peep, hopefully this has kick started the creative flow I have been missing

Sharon xxx