Baby Card

I've made two more baby cards for the box and this is the boy version in blue.  Is it just me or does anyone else have problems trying to source - and match up - what I call true blue papers and card.  I find that such a lot of the card around seems to be more of a pale turquoise rather than baby blue.  This in itself would be OK but patterned papers seem to come in quite different shades of blue and are so difficult to put with the card.  I've just found that pinks can be just as difficult to match papers to card - lots of card seems to be peachy rather than pink - sigh!!

Anyway after much trawling through my stash I've managed to find enough card and paper which goes together to produce this card.  The background papers are actually from a free book of  double sided papers which came with a Christmas magazine and the blue card was a small card blank which has been lurking in a box for more years than I care to admit.  The rocking horse was a lucky find in The Works - well worth taking an occasional look at their selection of dies at very reasonable prices and they do cut well. The little teddy was punched out of the final scrap of the blue card using a punch I'd quite forgotten was in the drawer - does anyone still use punches nowadays I wonder??? I added a sentiment which was a free download from the generous Annette who has lots to offer on her blog.   Do pop along and visit her blog to see some of her so lovely and beautifully coloured cards - she is a dab hand with Distress Re-inkers for colouring!!

 Having been card making for some years it is interesting to look at my stash and see just how things have moved on from the early days when it was 'punches and peel-offs', no such thing as all the wonderful dies and machines which we have available these days.

Rocking Horse - die from The Works
White panel - free embossing folder from magazine on Centura Pearl card
Sentiment - free download from Netty's Cards
Background papers - free from magazine

Monochrome

My little collection of inky backgrounds was still on my desk so before tidying them away I selected one to use for a card and would you believe I actually had to cut into a whole new sheet of toning card for the die cuts - this of course has resulted in more snippets for the oddments boxes!!  I had thought that the dies would fit nicely onto a 5 x 7 card but they are just too wide so I juggled them a bit to fit my  favoured 6" square card  blank instead.  The inky background was a bit pale in places so I added a touch of darker ink so that there was more contrast between the layers and I managed to find a fairly large scrap of a darker tone to frame everything.  The flowers were cut from the left overs of the background and they have a dot of Stickles in the centres.  The card looks a lot brighter on my screen but in fact it is more subtle in real life.

The weather has been fine and sunny (also quite warm too) for a couple of days despite the forecast saying that we were in for rain and thunder storms all over the Bank Holiday - I hope you've all been lucky with the weather too and enjoyed the break.

Die - With Love Die Set from Tonic - a good 5" wide
Card Used - sheet of Pool Party from Stampin' Up
Inky Background - mix of Pixie Powders and Distress Oxide inks (I think)

Two Challenges Covered

I have a card to share today which covers two challenges - Pixie Snippets challenge #327  and the Butterfly Challenge which has reached # 100.

Firstly this card for the Playground uses quite a lot of snippets, some very small if you look at the multi-layered flowers.  The dies used came as a set with a recent Die-cutting magazine and my card is based on one of the ideas within the magazine, so not entirely original!  The die set contained a circular die (I've just used part of it to form the 'sun' in the top corner) and a selection of butterflies, tiny flowers and leaves.  I used another snippet of green along the bottom so that the flowers had somewhere to be 'planted'.  The sentiment was stamped using a freebie stamp from a set I've had for quite a while  The only thing which isn't a snippet is the base card.  I'm writing this post on Saturday so I've not yet seen what the lovely Di has to share with us this week but rest assured her blog will be well worth a look and whatever was used to create her card will be offered as a prize to a lucky entrant.

Now onto the Butterfly Challenge where of course the card must have at least one butterfly and there is a wheel from which to choose from three colours and three themes starting with the letter 'H' and you can select one or all of them - there are also prizes on offer here as well if you check out the blog (just follow the link).  I've selected the three colours of hot pink, harvest gold and hunter's green.  Some of the layers in the tiny flowers are hot pink, the sun is harvest gold; the strip across the bottom is green but not too sure if it is dark enough to class as 'hunter's green' but at least I have three butterflies fluttering over the scene.

Flowers, Leaves, Butterflies and Sun - free dies from Die-cutting Magazine
Ground - Stitched scallop basic edges from My Favourite Things
White square - Sue Wilson Noble pierced squares die

PS - I was right there is a great prize on offer in the Playground, in fact a bumper one this time and of course a selection of prizes from the Butterfly Challenge dependent on how many sections of the 'wheel' are used in your creation.

Mainly Diecutting

This is another card which I made quite a while ago but haven't shared. As a couple of the more recent makes are being kept for challenges here it is - hopefully I can remember what I used here.  I started with a piece of black card, die cutting corners at the top and a fancy border at the bottom, rubbing the lacy areas with copper gilding wax.  This was layered onto a piece of text backing paper and onto a card blank.  The words were die cut from scraps of black and popped onto a plaque made using some of the text paper and the frame cut from copper pearl card.  A matching flower  was die cut and a swirl which was just lying around on my desk were added. 

Thankfully we are back to more nice sunny weather after a fierce thunder storm with torrential rain on Monday evening - a bit of rain and the grass grows like mad though!!

Corners and Border - Crafter's Companion dies
Words - Crafter's Companion dies
Plaque - Sue Wilson dies
Flower - also a Sue Wilson die
Swirl - Marianne die (I think)

Today's Card

A quick visit to the blog this morning to share another of my cards which was actually made a little while ago but not shown.  The image was coloured to tie in with the colours of the floral background and I used up odd bits and pieces of card for the oval, border strip and the daisies.  We are still enjoying some wonderful sunshine and I hope most of you are having the same lovely weather where you are.

Image - Beautiful stamp set Stampin' Up -(no idea if it will be in the new catalogue due out soon)
Papers and card - from my stash
Oval die - Sue Wilson
Daisies - border punch

A New Technique (to me anyway)

Today's card is the result of my first foray into the technique of 'eclipse' cards and if, like me, you'd not heard of them there are several YouTube videos to show how it is done.  I decided to go fairly simple to start with and the patterned square was taken from my box of 'inky play' backgrounds made a while ago using Distress Oxide inks and acrylic paint for the random white lines - applied using the edge of an old credit card.  The large letter dies were lined up on the card and taped together so that hopefully I could keep them together to cut a second word from another piece of card to give the letters a bit of depth.  Once cut the patterned square with the 'letter-shaped) holes was stuck to a piece of purple card, leaving a border and  the birthday sentiment was stamped.  The two sets of letters were then stuck together carefully before popping them back into the gaps using foam pads.  Fortunately I had some die cut flowers in one of my pots which matched the background and a scrap of purple was used to die cut the leaves.

I will certainly be trying out some of the other ideas gleaned from YouTube but the only drawback is that the recipients need to have fairly short names otherwise the resulting cards would be so long that they wouldn't fit into the post box!!  My original intention was to make cards for two granddaughters with birthdays this week and guess what - their names both have way too many letters!!

Pixie Snippets Playground

Time to visit the Pixie Snippets Playground again and of course another opportunity to use up some of my snippets of card and paper along with a few bits and pieces such as odd die-cuts or the 'waste' from border punching which are left over from other projects and which I keep in little pots and boxes on my desk (sad or what??).  Quite often they aren't the right colour when I come to use them but fortunately this time I was lucky.

I acquired a little bee die recently and decided to build this card around that.  I coloured a snippet of card using Distress Oxide inks and then die cut a tag;  a scrap of orange card was cut in the same shape but slightly larger (no die for this piece);  the next move was to use a hexagon mixed  media die on a corner of the tag;  some different coloured snippets were used for flowers, leaves and the all important bee; a Distress ink marker was used for the stripes on the bee body and clear Wink of Stella applied to the wings;  most of the flowers and leaves were cut for this particular project from scraps but I've also used a few odd leaves and the tiny flower centres which were in the pots on my desk.  I had a scrabble through my huge pile of partially used paper pads and found an odd sheet suitable for the background layer and this was stamped with the sentiment - using the Misti for positioning.

I do look forward to this particular challenge each fortnight but, as I've said previously, the mountain of snippets doesn't seem to diminish!  I'm sure many of you will have lots of bits and pieces to use up so why not have a go at the challenge?  There is always a tempting prize on offer.  I wrote this yesterday but have now spotted what the prize is this time around - a super set of succulent stamps with matching dies.

Sizzix Dies - Tag and mixed media hexagon cut out
Stampin' Up - Botanical Builder Framelits die set
Sentiment - Apple Blossom Honeybee Heaven stamp set
Bee - dinky die from X-cut