Oldie but Goodie

It's great to learn new techniques, and I am always on the lookout for new things to try, but sometimes it's good to revisit the old ones. I quite often go back to shaving foam marbling, simply because the results are good, and it's such fun to do. I like shaving foam particularly as a marbling medium because it is possible to have some control over your finished pattern. What you see in the tray is what you will get on your paper.

Thus, in the easel card shown here, I was able to make a landscape effect with more blue at the top and more brown at the bottom. The larger trees are from Clarity Stamp, and the deer and tiny trees in the background are by Stampscapes. The greeting is Inkadinkado. On the angel card I used a panel of marbled paper as a feature, stamped with  a Stampington stamp. The sentiment is also by Stampington. The angel is from the "Christmas" miniatures book by Crafty Individuals.

For the holly card, I revisited not only an old technique, but also an old stamp! It's from The Stamp Man. Having stamped it on the marbled paper, I embossed it with sparkle embossing powder & then coloured the leaves and berries with Promarkers to make them stand out more. I mounted it at an angle over a piece of printed paper. The message button is from Craftwork Cards.

The final card is very simple, just four squares of card, three stamped with a snowflake (Stampington), the other holding a Craftwork Cards message button, and strips of silver ribbon to finish it off.


Well, it was fun to go back to the marbling, but tomorrow Sally and I are off to the Open Day at Sir Stampalot, looking forward to seeing what's new, & also meeting Brenda. Can't wait....

Butterflies 2

As I said in my previous post, the dearth of butterflies in our garden has prompted me to put some on my cards instead.


A fairly simple one to begin with. I didn't want too much to detract from the main image, which is an old Penny Black stamp from 1999, but still one of my favourites. I coloured it with Promarkers (my first attempt with them!)


This one uses an Inkadinkadoo stamp. The butterfly is diecut & mounted with the Cuttlebug, with my Martha Stewart punch for the borders.


Next a set of four Hero Arts patterned butterflies, stamped over My Mind's Eye papers.



Another criss-cross card, using papers from the Butterfly Bliss CD from Graphicus. The stamps are Elusive Images, also from Graphicus, except for the sentiment which is by Rubber Stamp Tapestry. The white butterfly, which appears when the insert is removed, is punched.


Finally, a mini landscape card. I cut a square mask, along with a few butterflies, and then sponged over them with pigment inks to make a background, adding the stamped images (Elusive Images) after removing the butterflies but before removing the square. The result was then cut out and embossed on the Cuttlebug, before being mounted on to a card stamped with more Elusive Images (from the Wild Meadow set). Of the five, I think this is my favourite. I may not have many butterflies in my garden these days, but they'll never be far away from my cards!

Quilts

A while ago I bought some of the Inkadinkadoo Inchies stamps, but hadn't got round to doing much with them. Small stamps are often difficult to know how to make the most of. Since these are all uniform in size and shape, the obvious thing seemed to be to make a "patchwork quilt" style card.

It was very simple to do. For the pink card, I coloured three pieces of paper by sponging with different pigment inks & stamped three pictures on to each one. Next I cut out the squares and framed them with scalloped squares cut with the Cuttlebug from patterned papers. I matted them on to co-ordinating colours and stuck them on to a base card, finally adding a Prima flower and the sticky-pad-mounted word.



To make the yellow one a bit different, I stamped the base card with stamps from the Stampendous Butterfly Beauties set, along with a word from one of the Inchie sets. This time I stamped the pictures straight on to patterned paper and left out the scalloped frames, before matting as with the pink card.



My next challenge is to think of a way to use the stamps that isn't so obvious!