Captivated By Silence Goth Card

Ok, so I got an order for a goth birthday card the other day and this is my attempt at one. It's good because this month for the Purples at Eclectic Ellapu the focus is Lady's Birthday. After trawling through my stamps I found this Sweet Pea stamp by Anna Marine called Captivated By Silence, unfortunately I'm not sure they have it anymore . . . I coloured her with copics.

As I wanted some matching papers I had to hand create one to pick up the purple in the colouring, so I took a ruler and copics in 100 an V09 and alternated stripes. I also used a piece of paper from Kaisercrafts Violet Crush 6" stack. The doily behind the image is a die from Lifestyle Crafts, all other dies are from Spellbinders, including the D-lite sentiment which I cut from black cardstock and coated with Glossy Accents and adhered to another hand coloured piece of cardstock. The flowers are from I Am Roses and also coloured with copics. I also used plenty of foam tape between the layers for some dimension.
Happy to say my customer was very happy :) Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Copic Cardstcock Test For Aussies

 So I have been doing a little testing with my Copics on different cardstocks easily available in Australia. I did these when I first got my copics so my colouring is a smidge better now I hope lol. These are pretty messy though as I was more focused on blendability.

Quill White 200gsm

 Quill is my least favourite, sucking up a fair amount of ink and having the least smooth blend. I also found if you worked it too much it bled fairly easily.

Neenah Solar White

It's not perfect but Copics do blend on here fairly nicely and it can take a bit of ink. With all my samples I used a Marker Pad or Bleed Proof  Paper Pad underneath.

HP 200gsm

 This was surprising to me, I bought this to try some of the wet techniques from Tim Holtz' range of media. I wanted something other than manilla tags all the time. Anyway the copics blended fairly nicely on here with minimal bleeding. This cardstock is the whitest "white" that I tried as well(X-Press It also being very white), with neenaah being the creamiest.

I have also used Copic Xpress-it. I just don't have a comparison pic as I tend to hoard this for cards as it's the most expensive at $5.50 for 10 sheets($0.55 each).  I did buy the Neenah Solar white from the US, it was $5 for 25 sheets ( $0.20 each). Both Quill and HP can be found at Officeworks in Australia. HP Colour Laser Copy Paper was $25.50 for 250 sheets ( $0.10 each) and Quill was $12.72 for 100 sheets ($0.13 each).

As a side note I also have Promarkers and have used them on all these cs's. I have found surprisingly I like them best on the HP cardstock . . .
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Easter Magic With Lifestyle Crafts Bunny

This week at Eclectic Ellapu the challenges are Easter for Purples and One for the Boys for the Pink team :) I'll add in some more detail tomorrow. It's really late right now lol... So here's my Easter project . . .

I'll be back with all the details tomorrow :) Meanwhile there is a list of what I have used in the tags.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Sweet Pea Stamps Be My Valentine With More MME State Of The Heart Gatefold Card

Hi again, this is another card I made for Valentines Day. Again I coloured my image after selecting the papers I would use to make them gel together a bit better and to make life easier for myself! I started by stamping Sweet Pea Stamps Be My Valentine by Elisabeth Bell in memento black ink onto Neenah solar white cardstock. Then I selected the papers I would use from My Mind's Eye State of the Heart paper kit and colour matched as best I could.

This is definitely not a  usual colour palette for me so it was good to be outside my comfort zone. I coloured the image with a mix of Copic and Promarkers. The reds are Promarkers, browns and skin Copic. I then saw some prefolded gatefold cards I had bought and decided it would be the perfect time to try one out :)  I grabbed my first two pieces of pp and cut them the same size, then inked around the edges lightly in fired brick distress ink and around the edges of the card base with antique linen.

With the third pp I had chosen I used the largest spellbinders Heart Circles die to cut a matte for my image and inked around it with fired brick. I then used a Lifestyle Crafts Rounded Nesting Squares to cut out my image. I however decided to alter the size a bit with my paper trimmer and tidied uup the corners with a corner rounder . . .

Now is where the fun began. I decided I wanted to mount the heart circle onto some plain brown cs to break up the colour scheme a bit . . . After searching and trialling a few, I even cut quite a few different ones I hated them all. So I took some white cs and die cut it and added some antique linen around the edges. I used foam tape behind the heart circle and image layers to give dimension.

I got to this point and just thought . . . it doesn't look finished! So I had a think about what I could add to the card to finish it off and after playing about with some ideas I decided on Lifestyle Crafts It Kit Corners, the filigree heart one. All die cutting was done using my Ebosser. I swear if I didn't have a best friend already my Ebosser would become my bestie lol.

I then stamped a secret sentiment under the half of the circle that I hadn't adhered to the card using stamps by Our Craft Lounge called Love Notes with Archival Jet Black ink. Finally I stamped a sentiment from Cloud Nines Weddings stamp set.

So that's it another Valentines card posted :) I finished off a couple I had posted last year with some sentiments in the middle so I had a few to offer people. I managed to sell a couple and add some $$ to my new machine fund because my ecraft is out of warranty and doing the same thing all my others did :( cutting through everything on setting 1 like it was butter.
Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Scrapin'
Purple

Kissed By an Angel with KaiserCrafts Made With Love

It's the Purple teams turn over on Eclectic Ellapu and this weeks theme is use a die cut heart. Mine ended up getting very hidden so I added some extras lol. I used a whole bunch of die companies on here . . . Hope there is no rule against mixing them up! 

I started with KaiserCrafts Made With Love Collection (I snapped this up on clearance at a LSS), selecting the papers I wanted to use. I then did some colour matching with my Copics and Promarkers and stamped Connie Fongs Kissed By An Angel Sweet Pea stamp with Memento ink onto Neenah Solar White.

I then die cut the image and my first two layers using Spellbinders Ornate Artisan Tags and Accents. Now here is where I go into trouble as you will see in the pic. I hadn't actually crafted at home for a while and didn't realise my craft sheet wasn't totally clean :( As I edged my image with Squeezed Lemonade Distress Ink I swiped up some blue off my mat :( For the bottom layer I snipped off the long end pieces before I inked the edges as you can see in the pic. I used foam tape on under the image and double sided tape under the matting piece.

 Next I die cut Lifestyle Crafts Heart Insert surrounded by a Nesting Lace Heart die from red foil cs. I saved all the little hearts for other projects as well as adding some to this one. I had to use the metal shim in my Ebosser to get this die to cut through the thick card stock. I glued the heart down with Matte Accents.

Next I used a Sizzix Sizzlit die called Ribbon Insert. My cat loves Sizzlis, if she sees one around she thinks it's fair game and claws it! Good thing they still work with claw marks in them :)Very hard paper to take a pic of! I inked the edges of this piece with Milled Lavender. I used foam tape on this layer as well.

To hide my mess I grabbed some I Am Roses flowers and coloured them with distress stains in Milled Lavender, Wild Honey, Spun Sugar, Squeezed Lemonade and Barn door. I then spritzed them with homemade pearl mist (come on a girl's gotta have some sparkle, right?).

Next up I cut a piece of pp for the background and rounded the corners of the pp and the card base as well. I inked the edges of both with Milled Lavender and adhered the background with doublesided tape. I used matte accents to adhere my flowers and twizzles to the card as well as the cute lil hearts I saved from earlier.

Not totally sure how I feel about this one. I do know I think my colouring is coming along nicely :) Practice makes perfect right? Well till I kill it by swiping the wrong colours about the place! Flowers make everything better is becoming my motto I think . . .
Anyhow Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Sweet Peas Queen of Hearts with Spellbinders Timeless Rectangles

Queen of Hearts Taken with Phone

 I saw this stamp and immediately thought of my best friend! I really wanted to colour this for her birthday card. Can you guess what her fave colour is? ;) I stamped the Queen of Hearts by Rachel Anderson with Memento Tuxedo Black. I coloured the reds with promarkers as I couldn't work out how to make a blending set with that darkness with the copics I had at the time :( I really need to learn how to use greys in my coloured images lol. I added some Atyou Spica to the lines on the bodice of the gown and necklace for some sparkle.

Spellbinder Timeless Rectangles

Next I took a sheet of K & Co paper and a piece of red cs that matched my red card base and die cut them with various size dies from Spellbinders Timeless Rectangles in my Ebosser.

Copic Colured Sentiment Background

 For the sentiment layer I cut a square to fit inside my smallest die cut and then coloured it with the lightest shade of copic from my background. I then stamped my sentiment from Inkadinkado on top and added custom coloured pearls to the corners. I adhered this with foam tape behind each layer for some dimension.

Finished Card with Taken Camera

I am finding reds very hard to get a handle on. But I will persevere because don't they look stunning!Practice makes perfect hey :) Well pretty close to it at any rate ;)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Copic Coloured Sweet Pea Stamp Alassa By Elaine Cox

Just a quick image post for you today... I really wanted to pay with different coloured hair on an image and what better way to do that then with an image of a mermaid? So I grabbed my copics and set to work. I must say as I coloured the hair strand by strand it did take an awful long time! Excuse my colour swatching at the bottom lol.

The image is by Elaine Cox and she is called Alassa. As you can see I used my B/BGs. You can get this image in both digi and rubber formats at Sweet Pea Stamps. I aded some Atyou Spicas for the sparkle on the necklace chain and the fishies. I really love this image and for my first attempt I think she turned out pretty well as hair is something I struggle with.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Birthday Fun with Recollections and K & Co

Hiya everyone :) This weeks theme at Eclectic Ellapu is 1st Birthday. I had coloured a bunch of little kiddy images with my Copics as practice not long after I got them, I was going to use them for a cardmaking class but they decided they just wanted to make christmas cards. So I decided to use one for this card :) I used a Lifestyle Crafts die to cut my around my image using my ebosser.

 I then had fun trying to find some pp's to go with the image. It really does pay to choose papers first! lol but what can you do. My base layer is a piece I picked up cheap somewhere and it doesn't have a brand name on it. Before I adhered it to my white card base I went around the edges of the card base in Y000, the lighter colour around the lion. Then I also coloured a strip of paper with it to add across the top of the pp.

Next up I took a piece of K & Company pp from a stack I have and used a die from Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles and cut it in my ebosser. I also used the new metal plate to cut thing dies with. Worked great! I adhered this piece on and angle.

I then used Timeless Rectangles to cut a white piece of cs. I then took the same Copic and coloured the whole thing. I used Wild Honey Distress ink to stamp the sentiment.

I then used Y000 again to colour some pearls to match the rest of the card and stuck them at the four corners.

I used foam tape to raise both the image and sentiment off the card for a bit of dimension and called it done! :) lol
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Sketchy Fun with KaiserCraft Seaside Collection and Creative Stamping

This weeks challenge at Eclectic Ellapu is a sketch for the Purple team. Scroll down to the bottom to find out about our awesome birthday blog hop!

So recently I found a store selling out old Kaiser Collections and a lady was selling stamps from various magazines and things.  I bought 3 KaiserCraft pads one being the Seaside Collection. I love the colour combo in this pad but it's not one I would normally pick for myself.

I coloured the boy and girl image that came from a stamp set from Creative Stamping mag with a bunch of Copics and some Atyou Spicas as well (my new favourite toy!) on White Quill Cardstock from Officeworks;
Hat & Flowers: Y38, Y35
Skirt & Bow: R27, R24, Red Spica
Girls Shirt: B32, B34, Lemon Spica
Boys Shirt & Belt: B97, B95
Hat: Y38, Y35, Y28, Gold Spica, B97, B95
Boys Hair: E21, E23, E25, E29
Girls Hair: E57, E53,YR20, E51, E50,
Boy Skin: E13, E11, E00
Girls Skin: E00, E000, E0000, RV10
Boys Shirt & Ground: E33, E31,
Ground: C2, YG03
Sky: B00, B000

 

I then chose some co-ordinating ages from the KaiserCraft Seaside Collection 6" pad. I decided to use a square card base so cut my layers to fit this. No scientific measuring lol, I just went with what I thought looked good!

I then grabbed two die cuts from the back of the paper pad and used foam tape to give them dimension. I also used the red Atyou Spica pen by copic to add a little sparkle on the red bits.

I also added some bling to give the card a little bit of a lift! I meant to cut a hibiscus flower with my ecraft to add but I forgot! Naughty naughty lol... Here is a pic showing the dimension!

Now onto the important things! Don't forget the birthday bash blog hop TREASURE HUNT starts on the 1st of October!
Look at what you could win!

Prizes prizes galore! You don't want to miss it!.. Anyways I best get back to my crafty endeavors. I have a couple more posts to post but silly me has forgotten to add pics ;) I will get there in the end.
Have a great weekend!
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Little Ray of Sunshine with Letterpress Celebrations

Hi everyone :) This week at Eclectic Ellapu for the purples challenge we are using song titles as inspiration! I was going to do bridge over troubled water as a sympathy card but then I looked at something I got with a new toy and everything clicked into place... We have a craft chain in Australia called spotlight and I am lucky enough to have one in my town.
Anyways they were clearing out Letterpress's :O and accessories so I snapped one up! I also got some inks cards and envelopes for letterpressing. The letterpress papers expensive and hard to buy here so I am going to cannibalise the envelopes as card fronts :) Best of all my sis bought it for me for my birthday :)

I was looking through my craft stuff looking for stuff to take to my friends and the Celebrations plates jumped out at me and my mind just clicked . . . I absolutely adore this song and it is perfect for this challenge! The song is called Little Ray Of Sunshine by Axiom. I watched an interview with Brian Cadd recently and when asked about the song he replied that the song was about the little girl of some friends who were going through a bitter break up. You can read what he said here. The group have never revealed who she is and I think it takes a whole lot of integrity to keep that secret over 40 years! The words and pins are from the Baby Letterpress plates. I ran the letterpress through the cuttlebug, it didn't go all the way through I had too run it back the opposite way... Anyone else had this happen?

Next I chose an image from the Peter Rabbit stamp set made by Leisure. I chose the mother and babies image and coloured it with Copics. I then die cut the image with Nesting circles by Lifestyle Crafts.

I also cut a scalloped circle. I colour matched a copic (RV25)to the letterpress ink I used  and coloured around the diecut. I then layered the two together with foam tape under each layer.

I then used copics to colour  the edges of some I am Roses and some bead string to co-ordinate with the card. Oh and a butterfly I decided to leave off the card lol . . . I used some glue to adhere the embellies. Wasn't happy with my ribbon/flower placement  but the glue dried to fast for me to fix it haha!

FYI checkout the month long blog hope we will be having at Eclectic Ellapu during next month :) Loads of awesome prizes! Check it out here.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at using the Letterpress! Been a little under the weather the last few days :( I think I have the flu! Time for more sleep . . .
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

PS a quick tip! The gold letterpress ink takes quite a long time to dry....  I didn't realise this and wrecked quite a few by stacking them on top of each other after I thought they were dry enough. Lesson Learned! I imagine the silver would be the same.  But I will still use the  background. I will just add a raised image to the middle to cover up the words! lol

Journal Page with Gelato's, Quickutz and Copics

 So I finalllly did another page in my Journal lol. Our Dt Challenge for the Purple team this fortnight is make the sentiment/saying the main focus of your project. Being an Aussie (pronounced like Ozzie), I have always adored Dorothea McKellar's My Country (click the link to read full poem). So that is what inspired this page :)

 First up I took brown and green Faber-Castell Gelatos and scribbled them randomly on the bottom half of my Journal page. As you can see I only used a hint of Green. The area I am depicting is a very dry and harsh part of central Australia. I then used blues and whites to do the sky. I used a waterbrush to soften and bled the colours together. Adding more colour as needed and blending that in.

 

 Unfortunately my printer has decided to give up the ghost so I had to ask my friend to print this, my favourite verse out for me.  I then cut each line into its own section with my KaiserCraft Cutter.

"I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of rugged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains,

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror--

The wide brown land for me!"

 

 I used the Tim Holtz Core'dinations Distress CS pad to cut Uluru and some greenery using a Quickutz die from the Australia set. Love this set it also has Sydney Tower (I still call it Centrepoint in my head lol), a Koala and Kangaro, a slouch hat, a boomerang and the Aussie flag :) I love cutting with my ebosser :)

 After cutting the images I gave them a little sand and added some distress inks. Rusty Hinge for Uluru and Crushed Olive for the greenery.

I then decided I wanted to add some gradiated colour to the word strips with blue and green copics. I started with the darkest blue I wanted to use and worked to the lightest, then from he lightest green to the darkest. I am hoping the greens look a little better when they finish drying lol.

After adhering them to the page with tape ( I used a snail type and it wanted to rip the backs off the cs... That was fun lol ) I took a Distress Marker and added dashes around the word strips. I am thinking of adding some of those lil m shaped birds but am scared I will wreck it hehe. My handwriting and drawing is very bad lol.

Not only is my printer broken but so is my camera. At first the whole thing was wiggy but I reset it to factory defaults and most of it seems OK now except my HD video. It will take standard video but it's poor quality lol. Oh and I keep losing things. I have three rolls of tape on the go. . . Think I can find any?
Anyways Happy Scrappin'
Purple