I am an on-the-side and increasingly up front papercrafter who loves nothing more than getting inky and creating pretty things with paper and stamps!
I am also a wife to lovely hubby and mummy to a wonderful 14yr old princess.
My self inflicted challenge is to make one masculine card a month but until this month I had managed two each time – but this time I decided to just make the one!
It was actually fun to do a bit of a mixed media type card and get a bit grungy with my vintage theme and chose Paperartsy clock stamps I’ve had for ages and rarely used.
After stamping and inking the background I then played with the Seth Apter baked textures embossing powder both to add to stamping and then I did little puddles on the background to really play with the texture these fab powders give.
I then added twine and created a lovely little vintage cluster for the bottom section of the card using both stamped images and the vintage ephemera bits I have in a book.
I then added the die cut sentiment on the top.
Inside I added an inked panel of paper with a bit of stamping on it and then called it done!
What do you think? A fun but grungy vintage themed card for a male! I think I did well with this one. Five months done – seven to go!
Those who know me and have followed my crafting will know I try and use up as many scraps as I can when I’m crafting! And this card is using up scraps from a few scrapbook pages I made.
I layered up the scraps in the background, inking the layers with some Walnut Stain distress oxide and then grabbed my pouch of ready cut die cuts to see how I could finish it off.
I chose the Natures Prints die cut wreath, some sprigs and the label. I added foam adhesive behind the wreath to give it some dimension and then used the last bit of the camera paper to fussy cut a camera out – this was the last complete image I could cut out – I think I have used the paper well!
I then grabbed the sticker sentiment from Tim Holtz to finish off the outside of the card.
Inside I added some remaining scraps and called it done!
I love using up scraps and really like this vintage/ slightly grungy card I created. A little bit of a different feel to my more recent makes I think!
Final two cards made from the Kendra’s card challenge number 18 which I’ve made using papers, die cuts and embellishments from the Kingston Crafts pet collection kit.
I grouped these two together to make as for both of them I had the rainbow happy word which was cut from a sticker for the first card and a die cut for the second. I can’t remember what the whole sentiments said but I just wanted to use the word happy for form part of the birthday sentiment for each card so I chopped them apart!
Both of them I chose to add to Kraft card bases which gave them a fun look.
I did have to change up the sketch for the first one as the cat and the bed took up a lot of real estate on the card! Plus I loved the background so I cut the middle panel smaller so less of it was covered. I obviously also rotated the sketch somewhat as the paper was directional with the hearts and so couldn’t have it as a portrait card.
Once I started changing it up it became almost unrecognizable from the original sketch and so I also decided to bring in the twine too!
The second card looks a little more like the original although again I changed up the sketch a bit with the cluster moving further down to accommodate the big sentiment.
On this one I added in a My Favourite Things dog stamped image which I chose to colour with all the colours to match in with the rainbow feel of the sentiment and the joyful papers. A bit of fun and why the heck not?
For both these cards I added the twine from the kit but I had run out of the gems so instead I pulled in gems from my stash but I think the colours went well.
I also heat embossed a Paperartsy sentiment (I love this font) to finish off the cards.
So there you go that’s all 18 cards finished! I think it is quite an achievement for me to finish as I know that the last few KCC’s I tried I never quite got around to finishing them all. In fact I may have a few random envelopes with bits of cut apart cardstock still hanging around somewhere in my craft room – should really dig them out and get them finished!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this series of cards – as much as it’s been fun and I’ve enjoyed playing with the bright colours and patterns of this kit – I now am looking forward to not doing a cat or dog themed card for a while! 🤣
Think I might set to on playing more with the Rainbow kit soon – or getting more of that magazine kit used up – or maybe prepping for Christmas in July! Gosh so many things going on – I don’t think I will ever run out of crafting ideas and things to play with!
So I started with a page kit from Hey Little Magpie for this page and totally changed the season! But thank you Sarah for the inspiration and sketch!
The theme for the kit was a Christmas one so I still have a large amount of the Christmas themed chipboard for this page but only ended up using the jumper and coat and brought in all the 49th & Market spice bits and pieces to turn it into an autumnal page instead!
Love those amazing laser cut leaves and will have to put them at the bottom of the embellishment box or I will use them on every page!
I did record the process so please check out the YouTube video. Be warned I made this back in April when I was poorly so it is another bad voice over as I was full of the virus. And yes I am blogging things I made ages ago because I got on a run of scrapbooking and got myself very ahead on my blogging of Scrappin Saturday. I thought it would be good to do this as I know I sometimes need to do other things and scrapping gets left behind and didn’t want to not get a Scrappin Saturday post out there! Plus only got back from my holiday yesterday and not stepped into the craft room yet – still up to my eyeballs with laundry! 🤣
So any of the people who watched my haul video from a few weeks ago I asked which of the things you thought I would play with first … well it was definitely the gorgeous Pine Sprays glimmer plate … and of course I had to go rainbow for my first use because that rainbow foil makes me so happy – even if it is totally not traditional colours for Christmas!
I ended up with two cards from the one panel I foiled because I then turned it into some tags.
Both of these are created by using the Paperartsy stamp set to emboss in black and then cut out by hand – I think the sketchy lines worked with the fun background.
For both I then cut the tag hole with the Cropadile and threaded through some ribbon scraps.
I then went through the ready die cut sentiments I had to add those on the tags.
I decided they needed a panel of embossing for the background and pulled in some striped rainbow paper just add a little accent to the card.
It was difficult to capture the foiling on these photos but hopefully in the close ups you can see how gorgeous it is when the light hits it!
I added the black gems to finish off on both cards as the pink rainbow tags meant I didn’t really want to add any more colour!
I did foil about six other panels using the same plate but different foil colours and different bases so expect to see more using this plate in the future! I love it! ❤️
This is another ‘as seen on tv’ project from back in March when Martin was on Hobbymaker with Kingston Crafts – although it was only on screen briefly! I realised I hadn’t yet got around to blogging it so here we go!
I went for something a little different with this card and did some paper piecing for this birthday card.
I knew that the Gorjuss girl would look lovely in a rainbow outfit and so stamped her on the white card blank, some diagonal stripes, some wider stripes and the plain pink. I then used my promarkers to colour her face, neck, arms and then some striped tights. I then fussy cut the hair, the dress and the boots and glued them in place on the card.
I also stamped the image onto a post it note to mask off the image and added some subtle blue ink blending behind the image just to ground her a little.
I then chose to take a section off the front of the card blank so that the inside of the card was peeping out the side and added some of the patterned paper to that.
I also added the strip of the horizontal stripe to the left hand side.
I then went through the extra bits in the kit and I love the Happy Birthday sticker banner. I decided to add it to a piece of the blue card and cut it out so I could raise it up above the girl.
It is quite a simple looking card but those paper pieces for the image of the girl are so cute!
I did then end up doing a simple little extra edit after this … with some little doodles … to be fair it was because I noticed a little smudge and needed to disguise it!
I’m back with another design team project for Addicted to Stamps and More and this time I went for something very simple using some leftovers from the Kingston Crafts rainbow kit to make a lovely cheerful birthday card – birthday is the only rule over on our challenge so a nice easy one!
I started by making a cardblank from the blue card stock in the kit and then covered it with the laser cut cloud card.
Then I used one of the die cut tags and raised it up on foam adhesive – making sure to add the twine to the top – no naked tags here!
I also took one of the suns that was on a 12” strip and fussy cut it out and added it to the top of the tag.
I then added some of the cute enamel dots from the kit and added those … and called it done!
So simple but really effective especially with that cloud background!
So I had some scraps leftover from scrapbooking and wanted to get them use up and off the desk and I remembered I had these two floral elements I had created when playing with the betterpress and the glimmer machines – I am still experimenting with them and working out the techniques so haven’t shared much using them so far!
The first one I created the panel for the card and then this was a betterpress play where I had done it at an angle off the edge of cardstock. I cut it out and then added it to the card panel.
The panel included part of a die cut using my favourite Bumpy Borders from Hey Little Magpie.
I then added the sentiment that was already embossed and die cut and stacked in my stash.
Really like the mix of the papers and then the detailed image that has that slight texture to it with the betterpress.
Next I took the other panel of the patterned paper and again created my background. This time it was a foiled version of the same image but on the black.
I had foiled it using the gold foil onto the black cardstock.
Again I added the sentiment from the stash that were already die cut and stacked ready.
The shine from that foil is addictive and the detail for the image is unreal! I can see why people are raving about both the betterpress and the glimmer.
I used a bright pink cardstock for the card blank and then added some more scraps inside the card on the white insert to finish off.
Love how these turned out – and not bad using my experimental pieces and scraps!
I had another go in trying to foil on a gelliprint with a die and had even less success with a clean foiling than last time but again I decided it didn’t matter and I loved the result enough to make a card with it!
I used some old Spellbinders dies and purple foil and it was on quite an intense gelliprint. You can see some of the detail of the dies but also the over foiling on the right hand side in particular.
I added it to a mount of lilac card and then wrapped it with ribbon.
Next I took a white die cut oval and then die cut the sentiment three times to stack it up. A die like this cuts so well on my Platinum 6 machine – my old Big shot wouldn’t have had a chance cutting something so fine. I stacked it up so it was quite dimensional and then glued direct to the oval die cut.
I added that with foam adhesive for dimension over the ribbon and then die cut the purple dragonfly. I coated it with glitter glue and then added that to the top front of the card.
I love how fun this is. I distressed the edge of the panel and then added it to the card blank made from the same colour card.
Inside I added a tiny slither of the background plus a layer of white and lilac as the card wasn’t thick and needed a little strengthening.
I am falling in love with the foiling – still need to perfect my technique but love the shine and the intricate nature of the foiling you can get – I also love it against the mixed media grunge of the gelliprint – it makes a nice contrast.
So I feel like I am on the home run now with this challenge (so pleased I did this pre holiday!) and as always when doing one sheet wonders or using the same supplies over and over I get a little frustrated – so these I struggled with a little more! But still love the end results! Well except maybe one of them! But I will come to that!
What I have loved about this challenge has been the fact I parceled them up after the cutting element so I could just grab a few to work on at a time rather than trying to do too many at once – it has helped with the keeping the interest level up – but even so – I am coming to the end of that now as it’s been 16 cards made so far – and that’s a lot for the same theme and colour scheme! Fortunately for you I’ve kept the blogs separated out a bit with other projects between – but for me I made them over the course of a couple of weeks – I’ll be happy to put aside dogs and cats now for a while!
Anyways here are the four cards I made in this session!
This is one of the funniest layouts I think I’ve ever made with the cross cross patterned papers but I think it works! Not sure it would have worked with a softer type of pattern like a floral but you never know! It was fun to try regardless.
The actual sketch suggested another cross cross than I included but I like seeing more of the background navy so discarded two small strips of paper.
I added stamping and clear embossing to the green panel too to add an extra element as I felt it needed just some interest in the background.
This one I also altered the sketch because I had directional paper that didn’t work with the orientation of the sketch – but even switched around it worked ok.
I was undecided on whether to go with the bigger kennel paper or smaller kennel paper (Kingston crafts has double sided paper with the same design but smaller/bigger versions so you can choose which works best for your project)… and in the end decided on the bigger print as the design had a lot going on and the smaller print looked too busy!
But then I also added in the hearts I had fussy cut from the packaging of the kit – so this did end up very busy!
This one I added the embossing to the navy panel which is like a sun radiating out type design. It added some subtle detail.
I also amended the sketch for this too – changed the placement of the banners to accommodate the directional pattern and had it hang over the edge of the topper – this works because I was mounting all my card toppers onto 5×7 card blanks. I do this because the sketches are designed around US size cards and they are slightly different from UK ones (slightly wider and shorter than our A6). It does however give me the added advantage of being able to overhang elements which I like.
I also added in extra banner tabs with the sentiment and one other plain colour one to help balance it out in this different placement.
This final one – I do like – but this was the hardest for me! The sketch called for circles and I just didn’t love how this worked – so then I tried to bring in the doodles and I might have gone a tad overboard with the doodles and the white pen. So I do like the final card but I don’t love it!
Again I had slightly changed the sketch so it was reversed to work better with the way the poodle was walking and one of the patterned papers I cut into two smaller circles as I didn’t have a circle die of the right size. Plus added the sentiment as a banner strip.
You may have seen that all the cards I’ve made for this challenge have had bright coloured envelopes which coordinate with the cards – in most cases the yellow ones. I didn’t do anything for the insides of the cards but added fun coloured envelopes instead!
And so I have two more cards left to make and then I am going to pack up the remainder of the pet collection kit and pop it towards the bottom of a box for a while. I think there is still enough to make a good number of projects from albeit no full sheets of paper left and only a smaller number of die cut elements left – but after the last two cards it’s unlikely I will want to grab it again to play with for a while – I have so many other things in my craft room I want to play with!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this series over here on the blog though – it’s certainly been a change of pace from floral overload I normally go for!
Inkyfingeredcat 