One for the Box

This is another card to go into the box for some future occasion.  I thought I'd get in a bit more practise by working a pierced and cutwork edge onto a piece of parchment before adding a design in the centre.  I decided to work in that order so that if the edge went totally wrong I wouldn't waste any work done on a design as it seems to be really easy to pierce holes in the wrong place (for me anyway!!).  However it appears to have worked reasonably well so I built up a design using a selection of Groovi plates and  simply layered it onto some coloured background with a darker layer underneath to frame the whole thing.  I'm finding that parchment work is, for me, the new 'colouring in' as a mindful and relaxing exercise and of course involves a bit of thought when it comes to building up a 'picture' or design.

Butterfly Challenge #85

The mix this time on the Butterfly Challenge is S for Silhouette and/or the colour Indigo and I've covered both with this CAS card.  I started by adding some colour to a piece of watercolour card using Distress Oxide inks using a technique shown in this video by Loll who has quite a few on YouTube which are well worth checking out.  Once this was dry I added a little texture by sponging ink through a stencil on half of the piece. I then die cut a flower in indigo card and punched three butterflies from the scraps.  A simple stamped greeting and here we have a CAS card which meets the challenge and is nice and flat for posting which is what some folks seem to want rather than the more elaborate cards.  Unfortunately my watermark rather spoils the effect here but I'm sure you can imagine the layout without the extra words under the sentiment.

Butterflies - a years old punch from X-Cut
Flower - Wildflowers from Sizzix
Sentiment - from a set of free sentiment stamps given with a magazine
DOX - faded jeans and wild violet

Parchment Butterflies

I've made a DL card for a change using kraft card and parchment along with a piece of patterned paper.  I've never really done much in the way of cutting out using a two needle tool and scissors so today I 'bit the bullet' and tried the technique hoping I wouldn't ruin the embossing and colouring I'd already completed.  I have to admit they are very small sections but it is a start!!  Fortunately I have a light box which I found made it much easier to see where the needles were going into the design than trying to do it under normal daylight conditions which is what I've tried previously with little success.

Background Paper - printed from Artylicious Essence of Nature CD
Groovi plates - butterflies, flowers/leaves and small circles
Colouring - Distress markers
Corner Punch - from EK Success

Snippets Playground #296/297

It is time to visit the Snippets Playground again even though it is a horrible grey and rainy morning so I guess it will be macs and brollies all round.  I've used up a few more of my snippets making another Christmas card starting with the last remaining snippet of a piece of watercolour paper which had been coloured with Pixie Powder and salt.  I then found a reasonably sized piece of white to emboss the igloo, followed by some smaller pieces of black, orange and white for the die cut penguins. Rather than cut tiny pieces in red I used a pen to colour the bow tie and tiny hat.  I'm not entirely sure whether penguins live where there would be igloos but I'm claiming artistic licence here!!  A final piece of black card was used to die cut the Santa and sleigh flying across the sky and because this is so obviously a Christmas card I've not added any words to the front although they will be on the insert.

As usual there is a great prize to be won by a lucky entrant and if you visit the Playground later there should be pictures of two cards for inspiration (one from a guest designer isn't showing up at the moment but should be there later).  I'm sure there will also be a link to Megan's blog so that you can visit  to see more of her work.

Santa - die from Joanna sheen
Penguins - dies from Tonic
Igloo - embossing folder given away free last year with a magazine

All White

I've been trying to hone my skills with a bit of parchment grid work lace with white work and I'd forgotten just how long this takes.  My original intention was to have a much wider lace section around this card but settled on less laciness (not sure that's a word) when I realised how much time it was taking.  The result is far from perfect and doesn't bear close inspection  - I'm not sure how people get them identical.  For anyone who doesn't know, each little cross is cut out with scissors after piercing four little holes - quite therapeutic but requires some patience and reasonable eyesight.

Apologies for yet another parchment card but rest assured I've not abandoned any of my other crafty techniques.

Butterfly Challenge 84

I think there is still time for another entry into the butterfly challenge which this time is 'You Choose and/or Wedgewood Blue'.  I've chosen this time to make another parchment card - loving the Groovi system and particularly the way you can select elements from various 'plates' and combine them into an entirely different composition.  The only problem as I see it is that I might NEED a few more plates ... LOL.  Parchment really speaks for itself and I won't go into descriptions of how this was achieved and apart from the parchment, backing card and some brads there is no list of items used.  I apologise for putting up another parchment card but I need plenty of practise to get back into it.  I've incorporated a bit of white work as well as some colouring

Various plates from the Clarity Groovi system were used
Polychromos pencils for colouring

Anniversary Card

I was happy to be asked again to fill the Guest Designer spot over in the Playground and this is what I came up with.

Searching through some seriously old stash to find a snowman die which I'd remembered I had years ago when die cutting was in its infancy I came across this cute teddy die which I'd completely forgotten I had so decided to make a card for the Snippets Challenge.  Apart from the base card the whole thing is made up from odd pieces of card left from other projects.

I started by cutting out the bear and all its 'extras' twice so that I could have a Mr and Mrs.  As this die was an early type with all the cutting parts on a single square of metal backed with a layer of foam it wasn't entirely straightforward to cut the different coloured pieces.  Once I'd gathered them all together I made up the two bears which were then layered onto a framed circle.  A decorative strip has been popped behind the circle and two die cut hearts added.  These hearts were cut twice, one gold and one cream before popping the opposite colours back into the spaces - I drew around the 'waste' of the hearts to cut out  a slightly smaller backing layer with scissors.  A simple sentiment stamped onto a banner was the finishing touch.  Backing paper was a larger snippet tucked away in the back of a paper pad.

Bears - die from Cuddly Buddly, probably no longer available
Decorative Strip - Sue Wilson Gemini die Carina
Circles - stitched circles from Sizzix
Hearts - Marianne die which I've had for a really long time
Banner - Sue Wilson die
Sentiment - from a free set given with a magazine
Card - gold and cream Centura Pearl