Tips, Tricks and Techniques Tuesday - Botanical Beauty and Botanical Layers

 Hello and thank you for stopping by. Today's card is one that I had in my mind last week when it wasn't my turn for the blog but here it is. Another very easy card if you don't mind some fussy cutting! As many of you know...I LOVE it! I started by stamping the Botanical Beauty onto a white mat in lovely shed of green called Shaded Spruce. Then using my trimmer I gutted the centre out of the card and kept it to the side. I left 2cm all around the outer edge and then mounted the paper onto a piece of the gorgeous blueish green of Lost Lagoon which I had first embossed using the lovely Fern embossing folder. 

I stamped the Botanical Layers onto another piece of white card and fussy cut them out. Sadly there are no dies! They were added onto the Lost Lagoon mat over the stamped border. I then adhered all of them to the Shaded Spruce card base. 

Fun Fold Friday - Sale-a-bration - Sunny Days DSP

Hello again on another cold and wet Friday. My card today is a slight follow on from Cary's post last Friday. Cary's card last week was an easel card and mine is a twisted easel card. There are many different types of easel cards around so it's always just a case of chosing which design you like to make. My sale-a-bration today is the beautiful DSP Sunny Days. It has some really beautiful designs in the papers as well as the gorgeous colours too!

I started by making a basic white card base and cut a green mat 21cm x 10.5cm and scored at 14.85cm. I cut a Shaded Spruce mat 10.5cm x 14.85cm and put it aside for a few minutes. I laid the white card base face down on the trimmer and on the right hand side of the card, scored between the top right corner and the bottom centre. 

see the picture:  

 

 

The picture above shows the route of the adhesive with the score line directly above the diagonal tape. 

 
This image above shows the angle of the card base before the separate mat is adhered to it.

 

 

This image shows moments before the mat is to be adhered to the corners of the triangle on the right hand side of the card base. After adding adhesive around the edge of the triangle, place the seperate mat on top of the scored triangle, match up the outer corners and fix into position. That is the version of my card that I made today. Here it is for real.

I used the Countryside Corners Dies for the Blueberry Bunches stamps, the Double Oval Punch for the raised stand and my Stampin Blends for colouring the blueberries in Blueberry Bushell ink colour.

 

 

That's it from me for the week. Thank you once again for joining us this week, I do hope that you have found some thing to inspire you to make yourself some cards this week.  

Cary will of course return on Monday with more projects to inspire you. 

Until I return the following week please take care, stay well and as always....

 

 😍😍 xxx KEEP ON CRAFTING xxx 😍😍  

Watercolour Wednesday - Festive and Fun

 Welcome back and thank you for stopping by. Today I really had fun with the water colouring and Festive and Fun stamp set. On Fluid 100 watercolour paper, I stamped the giraffe to one side of a whole piece of paper and then had loads of fun watercolouring it. I cut a C6 card base and added a piece of the beautiful fun Designer Series Paper (DSP) and added it to the card base. I cut off the giraffe and then cut a mat 8cm by 11cm. Using the softest pale greenish blue of Pool Party, I added some ink to a block and added some water on top from my water brush and proceeded to wash it across the mat. Once dry, I embossed it with the Christmas Words embossing folder. I fussy cut the giraffe out and using Dimensionals, (foam Pads) adde it to the card base and placed everything together.

Fun Fold Friday - Children's Cards - Festive and Fun

Well, here we are and it's Friday already. Doesn't time fly when you are having fun? Today's card is one that I fully intend to use for all of my grand-children. It is called Festive and Fun  and I have used this lovely set in full. 

Using an A4 sheet of Shaded Spruce I cut it in half lengthwise that is 10.5cm by 29.7cm long. I then scored it at 14.85cm and 7.4cm on one side only on both of the pieces. I folded the 2 scored panels on each piece to face outwards. I slid the 2, C6 panels together and glued them in position. When I folded the sides into the middle, the centres met and it gave me a shallow and wide, Gatefold card base.  I then cut another piece of Shaded Spruce at 14.85cm by 10.5cm ( a standard C6 mat). This was then attached to the left front on the gatefold card base.

 

I cut white mats to size for each of the green ones starting with the front panel which I obviously embossed first then added fussy cut images and the sentiment onto. 

 

Above is the inside left panel. I added 4 small panels on the insides of the card with DSP from the Merry Bold and Bright range of papers. Aren't they cute?

 

 

the right hand inside panel ....

 

 

The centre panel with all of the images stamped and fussy cut ('cos I love to fussy cut). I added Dimensionals on the sides of the card and using Tombow, I adhered the Rhino to the centre mat.

The finished card complete and from above so that you can see the whole of the layout.

That is it from me for another week. Cary is back from Las Vegas now and will be sharing her creations with you next week so please do pop by and see what amazing things she will be making. 

Thank you as always for joining me this week, I so hope that you have been inspired in some ways to make your own cards. Have a good week and I will be back the following week. Until then ....

STAY SAFE, STAY WELL but as always.......

KEEP ON CRAFTING!

Thank you once again, 

 😍😍 xxx Gill xxx 😍😍

 

Watercolour Wednesday - Decorative Borders

 Hello again, Today's card is another green one I'm afraid! Sorry if you don't like green but just imagine what it would look like in lots of other colours! I took a white mat and covered most of it with Low Tack tape except the 2 rectangles. I took Pool Party ink from the ink pad and stamped it onto the block. Adding a little water and mixed up all of the ink and washed it across the rectangle on the mat. I repeated the same process using Coastal Cabana ink and washed the ink over the top rectangle. It had to be left for quite a while to dry as it was very wet with all of the ink and water on. Once it was dry, using the Decorative Borders stamp set.

 I stamped 1 single flower on the left hand side only using the stronger green of Shaded Spruce. I decided that I would emboss the whole mat using the Twigs and Sprigs embossing folder before stamping a sentiment onto a punched piece. The mat was then mounted onto a piece of Shaded Spruce card stock and mounted onto the card base using Dimensionals. Another sentiment and one image which was stamped 3 times to use up all of the ink. 

Technique Tuesday - Christmas Lights

 Happy Tuesday everyone. Today's card is similar to one that I have made before. This time I used the Christmas Lights, mainly the 2 strings of lights across the card mat in yellow and soft purple then I chopped the panel into 3 and reconstructed it by adding another colour, the gorgeous green of Shaded Spruce behind it. Each of the panels was added to the lower one using Dimensionals to add height. I cut the tree twice, once in the green and the other, just the whole tree in yellow and popped it directly behind it to accentuate the 'lights' on the tree. Looking at it now, I think it needs a yellow gem on the top of the tree to complete it, so I will be adding that very shortly. Once again, I used the Brightest Glow stamps for the sentiments. It is a very simple card to replicate and use for all sorts of occasion.

 

Fun Fold Friday - Santa's delivery

 Fun Fold Friday is back already! For today's post I have made a much simpler fold card. It's an easy gate-fold card. I used a piece of Shaded Spruce for the card base and some more of the Designer Series Paper called Santa's Express. I really do like the range of papers in this set. I cut a sheet of A4 in half at 14.85cm by 21cm and scored it at 5.25cm from each of the 2 sides. Before I burnish the edges, I make the 2 outer edges meet in the centre and then burnished them on both sides. Doing that,  you don't have any gaps in the middle or any of them overlapping either. I decided that I wanted a little sparkle on the card so added 2 mats measuring 4.9cm by 14.7cm using some of my retired Supple Shimmer papers. It's almost gone now sadly but it's really pretty. 2 more DSP mats on top of that measuring 4.5cm by 14.4cm. I die cut a Shaded Spruce circle from the Layering Circles dies and another in Real Red and matted them together. I die cut 2 wreaths from Shaded Spruce and glued them together then added a few little red spots and the die-cut bow on the centre. I didn't add a sentiment on the front as I liked it as it is. A simple mat on the inside and then the card and I am finished for this week. 

 

That's it from me for another week, Cary will be back on Monday posting her creations from Vienna!

Thank you once again for popping in to see what's going on. 

Until we return from Vienna, 

Take care, 

Stay safe and 

KEEP ON CRAFTING.  

xx Gill xx

Throwback Thursday - Awesome Otters

Hello again on this Thursday's post. My card today with the Awesome Otters has taken me back to my simpler days of card making. Using the standing Otter this time, I used a gorgeous green mat in Shaded Spruce and taken a piece of the beautiful papers from the Expressions in Ink range of DSP. These papers are stunning. They look like wet paint which have gold paint thrown into them. Before glueing the paper to the green mat, I added a piece of the white ribbon from the Flowers from Every Season combo pack. I used my Shaded Spruce marker pen to colour the ribbon. Then made a bow and added it to the centre. I love the fact that Stampin' Up! ribbon can be coloured as a general rule to match any card you have. 

I used the Hippo and Friends dies to cut the image out and the additional mats for the sentiments. The dies are also brilliant because not only do they have the dies for the Hippo and Friends images, there are a few different shaded label sets in it too.

    

Watercolour Wednesday - Seasons of Fun

 Today's watercolour card and all of this week's projects are being made using a pair of stamp sets that are Host items. When you hold a party, class or workshop and orders are placed to the value of £150 in the UK, the hostess will get to spend 10% of the order value on anything within the Stampin' Up! catalogues. FOR FREE!! WOO HOO!! More info later. So using the Seasons of Fun stamps today I made this lovely little pumpkin girl card. I had so much fun colouring her in. Once I used each colour, I used a water brush to wash the colour all over the area. It was great! I could just imagine this for a fancy dress party of even Halloween. This image will make a brilliant card for lots of occasions. I stamped this using a Black Stazon Ink pad and then several of the watercolour pencils. It could be done using collection 1 or 2. It's really a personal choice. I then die cut the white mat and an orange mat (Pumpkin Pie) using the Hippo and Friends dies. I used the gorgeous green of Shaded Spruce as the mat behind the orange but embossed it with the Bark embossing folder first. I love the texture that it gives. 

That was it. A very simple watercolouring card for today that hasn't taken lots of time to make either. Brilliant. I love it when that happens, not too technical. 

For more information on the stamp set or any of the products that I have used today or this week, please click HERE It will open up in a new window for you.

 The 10% minimum is earned at £150 and 10% of that  is £15.

This stamp set, Seasons of Fun is only £11 when you use the hostess pounds that are earned on a party of workshop. So that would leave still a further £4 plus to spend for FREE! The In Your Words stamp set is FREE to the hostess when they hold a party, class or workshop with sales of £275. Not bad at all eh?