Stretch Your Stamps 2 Stamping On Dark Cardstock

Hiya onwards and upwards to day 9 of Stretch Your Stamps 2 at Online Card Classes. As I don't really have any suitable floral builder stamp sets I had to hunt for a bunch of random stamps I could use for this technique. I used Printworks' Elegant Patterns, Clearly Wordsworths Comfort Collection, Heidi Graces Family Traditions and The Paper Studios XOXOXO. I also used Archival inks in Magenta Hue, Aquamarine, Deep Purple, Vermillion, Plum, Manganese Blue and Chrome Yellow as well as Studio G in white, Versamark, Hero Arts White embossing powder, an embossing buddy and a Zig Emboss pen.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Large Flower Background And Flutter Trees

Hiya, long time no talk . . . My cat really did it this time :( She knocked a pretty big cup full of water all over my laptop and while it still works not all the keys work properly lol. So I have to use a combination of laptop and tablet to do a post and well most days it's just too much work lol. Anyways the challenge at Eclectic Ellapu for the Purples this time is Birthdays with Butterflies. If You didn't guess I picked that one ;) Not many pics this week as that's just too much work switching constantly between pad n lappy lol.

So because I just got my Inktense pencils and some new spellbinders dies I thought I would combine the two. The dies I used are In'spire Celebration and Flutter Tree D'lites. For a full list of suplies look in the labels. The copious amounts of cutting were done in my Ebosser.

1. Cut 6 sets of trees, butterflies and sentiments from plain cs
2. Stamp background and then position tree and sentiment, die cut
3. Colour the background with a watercolour medium ( I used my new inktense set squeal), I hadnt kept my middle tree pieces but I decided the finished card needed them and went a hunting lol. Next time I will make sure to colour these at the same time too.
4. Glue the 6 trees together plus the stamped tree, glue 3 sentiments plus the stamped one together.
5. Once you have trimmed your background cut a card base to measure and then go over the edges of the base and background with white Adirondack Paint Dabber
6. Adhere background to base and then add the tree and sentiment.
7. The butterfly dies join two together at a time so what I did for these was turn my stamp stamp side up and work out roughly where I wanted the butterflies and pressed them onto the stamp then matched up the lines on the background.

The inspiration for this card came from one Jennifer McGuire posted on her blog a few months ago. She only used a sentiment but I thought this is so cool it could work with anything :)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 6

Ok so here we are at the finish of the first half of the 12 cards for me. I will say right now I am not a fan of the ornament on this card so will be changing it at some point! lol. But firstly I want to finish the next 6 cards. cannot believe I am half way or that tonight is the last tag! Anyways, here is the inspiration behind this card, T!ms tag 6.

I had a few different ideas on how to do the background but nothing was working so with a lot of playing i think I ended up with something pretty cool :).

Card 6


I cut a coke can to give me a sheet of metal as I don't have any sticky back metal sheets or anything like that. If you are going to use a drink can be very careful as the edges are very sharp!

I grabbed my Ornaments Sizzix texture plate. I made my sandwich with a couple of extra shims for a deep emboss. To get a deeper emboss I have found it best to layer in this way. Texture plate, Silicon Shim, cardstock shim/s then top plate from sizzix start kit.

I grabbed paint dabbers in a vast array of colours. I started by adding a different colour on and slightly around each ornament. I was going to try and use cotton tips to remove the excess paint from around the ornaments. This was an epic fail because of how the die was designed. So I ended up covering the whole thing in colour. just blobs of the different colours from the ornaments til there was no silver showing through. Basically I made the colours of the ornaments reach out and touch.

After letting the paint dry I grabbed alcohol inks in Snow Cap, Cranberry and Bottle and covered the entire thing. I didn't use the gold... Not sure why I put it in the picture lol.

I grabbed my heidi swapp sand paper and got to work! I sanded over the ornaments to bring them to life and show the lovely colours underneath. I also sanded the paint and ink away to show the metal around the edges. Don't add too much pressure when sanding when you only want to take the top layer off, took me a few mins to get a nice pressure but better to start too soft than rip all the paint off on your first swipe!

I grabbed some dark purple cardstock and trimmed it to card matting size. I distress the edges with my distress tool.

Now if you are like me you rush ahead wwithout thinking what elements you are going to add to your card. So I used glossy accents to stick my metal sheet to my card matt then double sided tape to stick to my white card base, which I coloured the edges of with Purple Twilight paint dabber.

Now i decided to add a dangling ornament... Haha I already stuck everything down. I had to carefully peel up a little of the top edge of the metal and pierce it with my piercing tool.

I used my ecraft to cut another ornament out and my Sizzix Teturz Candy Cane plate and ran the ornament through the cuttlebug.

I grabbed a zig glue pen and followed the lines to fill every second line with purple glitter, I did the same again (rather impatiently oops!) and used blue glitter. If you are going to do this don't be like me! Wait til the first lot of glitter dries first lol.

I used two silver jump rings and some chain to add the ornament to the front of the card.

Another finished card. As I said though not happy with the finish of this one so I will make a new ornament in the dark purple of the matt and just add glitter to one set of stripes or maybe even Stickles to make life a little less messy. In less that 24 hours I spilt water, dropped a pot of Multi-Medium Matte and knocked over a tall tube of blue glitter! Stickles seem the way to go! lol Will update this blog when I re-finish the card :).

Hope you like the background technique as that's the star of the show!
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 1

Hi Everyone. I am starting a bit late and this is my first go at using T!m's 12 Tags of Christmas techniques for myself. Not the first year I have followed his blog though lol. As I was looking at the tags I was thinking what could I use them for? Scrap pages, sure, but I wanted a more immediate use for my hopefully lovely creations. So I thought why not cards. I get to make some pretty things and then gift them on to my friends and family :)

Here begins my 12 Cards of Christmas! My Muse

Card 1
The first step as always is deciding what direction to take. I started with the background and made it up as I went. I really had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't have a lot of the things used on the first tag so I started by going through my embossing folders and texture plates. I chose the Sizzix Snowflakes texture plate.

I then choose some pale blue cardstock from my DCWV White Core stack thinking I would be sanding a little later to reveal the core...

 I then used versamark dazzle straight onto the side of the texture plate I was going to be using

and ran it through my trusty bug ( I had to do this twice as the first time I forgot the versamark! lol), I added a couple of extra pieces of heavy paper to give a deeper emboss.

Then I sprinkled Hero Arts White Embossing powder over my cardstock and used a paintbrush to remove it from areas I wanted no embossing powder. I lightly ran my finger over some places in the background to remove a little bit more embossing powder.

 I heat embossed, then used Pearl-Ex Macropearl all over the cardstock and re-heated. I thought this would add a lovely sparkle effect to the white "snow". After that I very lightly ran my Tumbled Glass Distress Ink pad over the raised areas of the card and used my Ranger Distressing Tool along all its edges.
I then used Sure Cuts a Lot and some free poinsettia svg's I found online to create some flowers.

I cut the flowers and some leaves from Fundamentals 1 using my ecraft. My flowers and leaves are roughly 2" and 1.5". I used three of each size for the flowers and three 2" and two 1.5" leaves.

At this point I have to say WOOOOHOOOOO, my first proper project using my newest ecraft. And it works!!! lol... I will not tell you what number ecraft this is for me. But thank goodness I didn't give up :)

I again used Tumbled Glass Distress ink and my Ink Distressing Tool to lightly colour around the outside edges of my flowers.

I wanted a deeper cut around my petals so took a small pair of scissors and cut in between each one. I recently bought some tools off ebay that I found in the nail art section. Nail art dotting pen or marbelising tool. I got a packet of 5 for less than $2au. I used these to add lines and definition to my flowers and leaves.

I pinched each petal of my flowers and did the same for the leaves.

After defining my flowers and leaves i spritzed them with home made pearl glimmer mist. My mist consists of water, gum arabic and Pearl-Ex in Macropearl, Miccropearl and Pearl White to give them the same wintery shine as my background.

I used the Adirondack Paint Dabber in Snow Cap around the outside of my petals and leaves to give another snow like look. After the paint dried I went over the edges on both the flowers and leaves with a Zig Embossing Pen with a brush tip. I used a paintbrush to add extra Macropearl Pearl-Ex over the embossing liquid.

I used Glossy Accents to layer a small and large poinsettia together. I used more in the centre of the small flower and added some very small yellow seed beeds. I got these in a pack of 12 small different colour pots from a shop called Go-Lo in Australia.

I used the piece of cardstock I ran through the bug the first time sans versamark to stamp and emboss Merry Christmas onto, again in white. I cut around the embossed words and used my snow cap paint dabber around the edge and added even more Macropearl Pearl-Ex. What can I say, I love sparkles. I also thought it gave a lovely twinkly snow like effect :)

I worked out my placement of leves and flowers and adhered them with more glossy accents. I decided i wanted merry christmas to be raised and used foam squares to raise it off my background.

I mounted the background on another piece of the same colour DCWV cardstock using double sided tape.
I then used double sided tape to adhere it to my plain white card base :)

And there we have it. My take on Tim's first 12 Tags of Christmas Tag in card format. I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and like the card. Thanks for looking.
Happy Scrappin'
Purple