Flying Iris Folds

Evenin' All.

It's nice to be back in Blogland after the Christmas break, hope you all had a lovely time.

We had another go at Iris Folding at club this month, using a lovely bird template from Papercraft Inspirations magazine. This is the version I did up as an example (it's similar to the one featured in the magazine, but they probably didn't spend an hour deciding which papers to use :D ).

 He's very Robin shaped isn't he? 

Let's try him in Christmas colours.

Very festive. 

Sorry, I know it's way too early to start thinking about it.

It's just that my Christmas stuff is still spread all over the spare bed. Ho hum.

Mr Robin then got me thinking about this month's Claritystamp Challenge. 

The theme for January is 'Things with Wings'.

So I had a trawl through my collection of Clarity stencils, and lo-and-behold 

I found the very lovely Filigraphy Butterfly stencil.

 I think this will lend itself very well to Iris Folding, so let's have a go...

First draw around the 'outy' bit with a pencil onto some white card.

 

Then use the top of the wings to draw in the body

and cut out the wings with a craft knife

(I kept the bits I cut out, they'll come in handy later)

Next I traced through the apertures onto copy paper

 and started putting in the pattern for the Iris Folding

I'll skip past the 'how to do the Iris Folding' explanation because

1. Other sites explain it much better, and

2. I forgot to take pictures during this bit

I'll just have a little segue into how I made the papers.
 

For the top half I stamped a couple of designs from the Claritystamp 'Journaling' set

onto white paper with Versamark ink and then heat-embossed with clear powder.

Then I brushed some pink Distress Inks over the top and rubbed the ink off the embossed parts with kitchen towel.

For the papers on the bottom half I decided to use the filigree part of the butterfly.

First I laid down a light base coat of Distress Ink with a blending tool.

then laid the stencil on top

 and dabbed the same colour ink through

Cut into strips and repeat this for each colour.

So.

Here we are with the 'Iris Folding' part just about done.

Hmmm. At this point it's seeming like a bad idea and I'm considering binning it.

But as the lovely Barbara says, keep going.

So I cover up my work with the 'outy' bit of the stencil and the wings I cut out earlier

then put the 'inny' bit of the stencil on top 

and dab some Frayed Burlap ink through for the body

It's looking a bit more like a butterfly now.

Let's add a border.

Cover up the butterfly with a 6" square piece of paper
(I made it tacky on the back by letting some Zig glue dry until it was repositionable).
Then use some masking tape around the edges, leaving a half inch border.

 

Lay the filigree part of the stencil over the border and start sponging through
 some more Distress Ink, blending one colour into the next as you go

Carefully remove the masking tape and the please-don't-be-too-sticky square of paper.

 Crop the white edges off, go around the inside of the border with a fine black pen

and then add a bit of detail to the body

Finish off with the Claritystamp Word Chains and stick to a 7"x7" card.

Blimey.
That turned out a lot better than I thought it would.

Wish me luck in the Claritystamp Challenge.

See you soon x

Christmas Surprise

Morning Peeps.

Just a quickie to show you the card I made for the Lili of the Valley Challenge Blog, which has a Christmas theme this month.  Sadly it's the last challenge they're running.

I've used their Patchwork Present stamp, which has a very cute bear poking his head out of a box.

He's been stamped twice onto white card and coloured in with promarkers (the second one was so I could decoupage his paws and have his ear poking out of the middle box). 

I also stamped him onto three different colours of card with versamark ink, sprinkled with silver embossing powder and heat set.

The papers are from the Woodland Wishes pad, also from Lili of the Valley.

 I'm off now to enjoy this beautiful Sunday.

Whatever you're doing, hope you have a good day.

Yum Yum

Afternoon Peeps.

 

 

Thought I'd share a Christmas card with you.

These great Christmas Pudding stamps are by Woodware.

 

I stamped them onto circles of card and coloured them in with Promarkers.

 

Christmas Pudding...

 

 Going once ...

 

Going twice ...

 

Gone! 

 

 

Images that tell a 'story' like this are ideal for waterfall cards.

 

Because they're on circles rather than squares you can see part of the mechanism, so I made that out of the same card that I made the background from.

  

 

 

Staying with the pudding theme, I went the whole hog and made a pudding shaped card.

I started by cutting a circle shape from an 8"x8" card.

 

I covered the bottom half with Kraft card. It has been coloured with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink and the 'fruit' is different sized circles drawn with red and brown Promarkers.

 

The top half is covered with white card which has been run through a snowflake embossing folder, which I then cut to look like dripping icing.

 

 

It's finished off with red buttons and some holly

(made with green core-dinations card and a sizzix die).

 



 

And now I'm hungry...

 

Die cuts in 3D - no glasses required

Evenin' All, hope you are well.

 

Our Cardmaking Club theme for Thursday 9th is going to be 3D embellishments (made from die-cuts). This first one is a card I sent to a friend's son for his 16th Birthday.

 

 

('Happy' and 'Birthday' are from the Claritystamp word chain sets)

 

I die cut six stars from a Prima paper pad, scored them down the centre and glued three of them back to back for each 3D star (I used Collall Photoglue on these - you need something that you can move about a bit before it dries so can make sure your shapes are lined up properly).

 

I then covered the front and inside of an A5 card with patterned paper and die-cut a circle in the front of the card. The dark paper on the front is from the Robot Rust digi-kit and I have over-stamped it with a compass in black ink. I was going to put a third star on the inside so you could see it through the circle, but it covered up too much of the lovely background paper so I left it off.

 

 

The second card I made is with hearts, but I'll bring that one to club (don't want to risk my Mum seeing it before her birthday!)

 

 

This last one is using a Sizzix Movers and Shapers bat die (I've definitely been going a bit batty lately).

 

 

I die-cut nine bat shapes from a lovely leather effect black paper and used the same method as above to make three 3D bats. These were a bit more fiddly so took quite a bit longer to put together and I used Tacky PVA glue for a stronger hold.

 

The arch aperture was die-cut from the front of the card using a large Sizzix Tag die, and then I stamped all over the card with an Inkylicious brick wall stamp and Pumice Stone Distress Ink. The 'just to say' line sentiment is from Clarity.

 

 

So ladies, for Thursday you'll need to bring:-

 card blanks

paper or thin card for the shapes

scoring board if you have one

 repositionable glue

any ribbon/embellishments etc. you might want to add on.

 

And if anyone has a simple butterfly- or flower-shape die, can they please bring it along as I don't seem to have these in my stash (my die collection is not in the same league as my massive collection of stamps) 

 

Oh, and I almost forgot, we'll be doing the squeeze boxes as well, so bring along some thin card for the boxes (patterned would be nice), card or paper to cut the numbers out of, and ribbon/cord for hanging them. Plus red ultra-strong tape if you have it.

 

Ta-ra for now,

Karina x

Pretty Papers

Morning Peeps.

Thought I'd share a couple of cards I've made for some 'big' birthdays. I wanted to do something with Lili of the Valley papers for their September 'Pretty Papers' challenge

This first one is for a 50th Birthday

I die-cut lots of butterflies from two of the lilac papers in the 'Timeless Victorian' paper pad, creased each one in the centre and dipped them in PVA glue before placing them on the background paper in the shape of the number 50 (the background paper is from the same pad).

I've finished off with some Prima flowers with pearls glued into the centres and some lilac organza ribbon

My second one is for a male 21st birthday and uses papers from Lili of the Valley's 'Father Knows Best' pad. Not 'pretty' as such, but lovely papers nonetheless.

I started with a landscape A5 card and folded the front in half.  I embossed some of the light brown paper with the 'A Stitch in Time' folder from Crafters Companion and glued it to the front panel.

The letters are die-cut from the black dotty paper in the pad, which I've also used to cover the back panel.

I've used the Happy Birthday from LOTV's 'Handwritten Phrases' clear stamp set to decorate some chipboard letters from my stash

 

The man putting up the letters is  LOTV's 'Lick of Paint' stamp but I've cut off the paintbrush and paint pot. He's coloured in with Promarkers (mostly Umber, Khaki and Pastel Beige)

I might add some buttons to it yet, but being a firm follower of the 'less is more' camp, I'm fairly happy with it. And who knows, maybe I'll get picked out of the hat (fingers crossed).

'Bye for now and have a great day.

Under the Sea

Evenin' All !

It occurs to me that my blog posts are like buses, nothing for ages then 3 come along at once :)
Now that our cardmaking club has restarted after the summer break I hope to update this more regularly (but I wouldn't hold your breath).

Here's the card I'm entering for the current Clarity Challenge Blog. 

The theme this month is 'Nature' so I was spoilt for choice in which stamps to use (I'd say about half of my MAHOOSIVE collection of stamps are trees, flowers or animals). But since I borrowed the large seahorse from my Mum way back in May I figured I'd better get on and use it!
 

We had a play with shaving foam at cardmaking club last time and I was pretty pleased with one of the blue pieces I made, it's just right for an underwater scene.  I stamped Clarity's 'Neptune' stamp along the bottom a few times with Honeydew metallic ink and then sprinkled with Enchanted Gold embossing powder before heat-setting.

Then I coloured in the strands with a green pencil

Next I stamped the large Clarity Seahorse stamp with Versamark and dusted him with yellow, green and blue mica powders.

I love the extra 'wings' he has coming out of his back (even more so because it was a complete accident!)  

I did the same with the smaller seahorse on the left-hand side of the paper. This was when I realised that I had put my hand right in the mica from the first one. Oops. I dabbed some more mica powder on in the (not very great) hope that it would repair the damage, and amazingly it still stuck to the Versamark. Phew.

(Note to self:- next time, work from left to right)

To make the bubbles 'pop' I filled them with Cosmic Shimmer pearl PVA

 then waited overnight for it to dry (an agonising wait but I wasn't taking any chances after the 'hand in mica' incident)

It needed something along the top to balance it out, so I spent half an hour trying out rows of different colour buttons (I've got to start using them up, I'm sure they're breeding).

But they're not doing it for me, so back in the box they go. Instead I dig out some mulberry paper and a leaf die (this one's part of a 3-set from Cuttlebug). I've dabbed a bit of Icicle Stickles on them with my finger. I wasn't sure what to stick them down with as they're so see-through, but Collall photo glue seems to have done the trick.

Well, that's about it for now, I hope to catch up with you soon.

Dabbling with shaving foam

Morning Peeps, hope you're all having a good weekend. 

 

We had a play with shaving foam at club last time - messy but fun!

The cleaner's mind must have boggled on finding the bin chock full of foamy kitchen towel.

 

 

This first background is using yellow, pink and green alcohol inks on white linen card.

 (Alium and sentiment stamps from Inkylicious)

 

 

This one was made with blue and green Distress Ink reinkers onto smooth white card. I've added icicles and snowflakes die-cut from thin white card then mounted it all onto a blue card blank.

 

(Christmas sentiment from Clarity Stamps)

 

 

The tag and background here were made with green, blue and purple inkydinks from Imagination Crafts.  My first attempt at stamping the thistle didn't come out very well as the shaving foam makes the card less absorbent. This second attempt was stamped with black archival, which came out much better.

 I've finished it off with blue and purple gems and organza ribbon.

 

 

 

Watch this space for what we're doing on the 25th ...