Author: Catherine

Well I survived the shorter week at work but will admit I finished early today as was really flagging! But definitely a lot better than I was and hoping next week I will be back to full strength and energy levels!

Having said that I’ve had zero energy to craft or do anything after work each night so been pretty much going straight to bed after tea – so glad I had some projects still to blog that meant I wasn’t worrying about missing my challenges – talking of which – it’s time for Festive Friday!

I wanted to play with the shimmer spray onto black cardstock as the mica still adds shine and a tiny amount of colour even on the black cardstock – so of course I chose to go with one of my favourite Christmas themed stamps! I didn’t end up including this in the samples I did for the DT though as I made too many and decided this time of year most people aren’t doing Christmas even though I do it all year round!

I heat embossed in white the Snow Crystal stamp and the gorgeous grunge splatter over the black cardstock. Then I sprayed it with lots of the lilac coloured rainbow shimmer spray.

I added the stamped and die cut sentiment and the pink gems and then added it to a pink card base – this helps to bring out the colour in the shimmer.

I know the colour and shine never looks as impressive in the photos but I love how special this makes a piece of black cardstock.

I am off to a crop tomorrow so hopefully will get a few projects done so I have blog posts prepped ahead of time again as running out of them now after so long of not being my usual self – onwards and upwards now though! That’s the plan!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Todays design team project is this super fun card I made using the rainbow kit

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I started with the pink solid cardstock and created both a card blank and a panel for topping it. I used my distress tool on the top panel and then added the diagonal panel – which I had cut along the diagonal so it covered the panel at an angle.

I then took one of the die cut pieces that is a rosette shape and added a pink die cut circle from the foiled cardstock and added that to the top.

I also added a bow from the twine.

I raised this up on foam adhesive – and the same for the whole topper panel onto the cardstock so lots of dimension to the card.

I then took another of the die cut pieces with the word Horray! and added it to the rosette but then decided I wanted to also add something else so stamped and mat the little strip sentiment too.

Then added the gems from the kit for finishing embellishments! A cute and very bright celebration card!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Hi

Back with another design team project – this time for Addicted to Stamps and more.

I decided for this to go super shiny!

I started by embossing in white the Swallowtail stamp onto white cardstock.

Then I took the lilac coloured rainbow shimmer spray from Kingston Crafts and sprayed a heavy amount over the cardstock.

This created a beautiful and super shiny effect.

I wiped the spray off the stamping so it stayed white for the finish – but in some light it is very subtle and the shimmer has created its own texture to the cardstock too!

I mounted the panel on pink cardstock and then added the stamped and die cut sentiment and some black gems to add contrast.

Love this shiny shiny shiny card! Such fun!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

I knew when I saw the pink and purple colour of the foil cardstock that was in the Rainbow foil cardstock pack from Kingston Crafts I wanted to die cut it with the sewing dies and make a pretty but packed full of interest card.

I started with the purple for the base panel and added sewing with white thread and lilac for the small flowers.

Then I cut the big flower from the pink but decided against the sewing central section as I knew I wanted to add a focal die cut sentiment.

I chose white thread for the flower petals and raised it up on foam adhesive to give dimension.

Next I took a die cut sentiment from a magazine kit I bought a few weeks ago and chopped it apart a little as it actually says sending love and hugs but it was too big for this card – but easy to alter.

I cut this from Kingston Crafts Everyday cardstock as I felt it needed to be matt finish against the super shiny foil cardstock!

I cut the sentiment out twice and stacked it and again used foam adhesive to raise it up so it is a super dimensional card and … well I think so pretty!

Loved making this card and it has reminded me how much I love those sewing dies – must make more use of them! especially now I have all the gorgeous colours of foil cardstock to try them with too!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Let’s start this post with some good news – I’m definitely on the mend and managed a bit of crafting! Fingers crossed I’ll be well enough to work tomorrow and life can return to some normality! It’s been a rubbish few weeks and I don’t wish this for anyone else so really hope I didn’t infect anyone in the first few days when I was out and about – luckily except a few coughs the rest of the family didn’t get poorly! Now with that update done let’s get on with what I made.

I had another session experimenting with the Betterpress and this time I wanted to try some softer colours and played with the distress inks on a ready smooshed background.

So the background was already made – just waiting to be used and I decided to use the press plate that came with the machine to add the image direct onto the background.

I used Tattered Rose first and then as that wasn’t very visible I then did a second press using Shaded Lilac.

This created a lovely soft image.

I think there was still a little of the black on the plate from a previous use despite cleaning it so the right hand side got a little darker but more grey than black.

I added a little thread bow and a sentiment from a different press plate where I had foiled and die cut it previously.

Then I added the gems. I mounted the panel on black cardstock and then onto a 5×7 card blank.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Happy Easter to those who celebrate! Hope you have a lovely day!

I thought I would go for something totally fun for my Easter cards this year and use the Kingston Crafts Pet Collection kit which had some rabbit die cuts in the ephemera pack. It was unlikely I would ever use these for something else so why not make them Easter bunnies?

I only ever make Easter cards for my two aunties and my parents so I only make three in a year – and the three bunnies were perfect!

Kept each of the cards simple with the same background paper and card base colour and then the elements from the kit. Simple crafting!

I used lots of dimension for the elements I added. I pulled in twine and the gems from the kit and the second two also had banner stickers which I used by adding them to the orange card and cutting them out for a different texture.

I love that the kits contain everything you might need to make some fun cards.

Including the solid colour cardstock.

So the only non kit elements I used was adhesive and the stamp for the Happy Easter that I embossed on the first card and stamped on the insert for the other two.

Simple and fun cards – I did video the process of putting these together so please do go see that over on YouTube. Apologies about the voice over but this is one of the few projects I managed to do when I was ill in the first week before the exhaustion totally took over – so apologies for the poorly voice. The good news is I am on the mend and hoping that by Tuesday I will be back in the office and able to function for a full day (I managed a full day up and about on Friday! 😀) and then after that may get some crafting done in the next week too as I’ve missed being creative.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

I’m back with another project using the Kingston Crafts shimmer spray which was one of my design team projects – but this time I pretty much ignored the spray element and instead did some painting with them.

I wanted to create a fun background for the scrapbook page where I was using a black and white photo of my friends dog Barney.

So I painted five of the colours of the spray across the page. I was quite generous with the painting so you can see there are some spots where the shimmer is quite concentrated. I love this because it adds to the texture too.

Once it was dry I then decided to use the Pet Collection kit to add some fun elements cut out from the paper and some scraps of yellow and orange card to mat the photo.

Apologies that the colour looks a little dull here – no sun for taking the picture!

I decided that the page needed something else to go across so grabbed a die which cuts the bumpy border from Hey Little magpie and cut some brown cardstock. I then used the magnolia spray to add shimmer to all the brown strips so they became shiny too!

I then layered up the page with a few little elements from the Pet Collection kit and added the name and date to the side of the photo.

In the light the shimmer spray does a great job of shimmering fabulously – of course it doesn’t show as well on photos as real life – but I hope you liked this different way to use the sprays – not as sprays!

I was absolutely delighted that my lovely Barney page got shown on tv – and hopefully my friend got to see it too! Here is a pic of Martin explaining about the painting of the spray inks on the show!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

I can’t believe we are already at Good Friday – especially as I’ve missed most of April with having been so poorly. I have a few Festive Friday projects already made in advance and this is one of them – although actually I made this when I thought I only had a cold so it was before I totally succumbed to bed rest! It was a simple card really as I was in tidy up mode when I made this card and grabbed the Festive Poinsettia which I had made a few weeks ago but never ended up using at the time.

I decided to play with the embossing folder with the words and added some dark red ink before embossing the red cardstock – this helps the words to stand out – but then I also added some clear embossing to the panel which gave it a cool texture too!

I added the sentiment to a white die cut circle that was already on the desk from another project.

I kept the card quite flat and layered the items only just double sided tape rather than foam tabs!

I added some pale red gems to decorate around the sentiment and then a simple bow using some floss.

Quite a simple but I think dramatic card – I really love the poinsettia stamp – it looks so cool with the messy watercolouring and the emerald green embossing powder.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Back to the design team projects I made … As soon as I saw the laser cut piece of cardstock with clouds I knew I needed to use the lawnfawn plane stamps in some way!

And so I made a Father’s Day card! This isn’t a card for my Dad – it was a sample for Martin to use – although I am pretty sure my Dad would appreciate this card too!

I used the cloud panel and covered the card blank which I made out of the blue card stock in the kit (which I have to say is a gorgeous colour and I wish I had a stack of that colour cardstock to play with forever!)

I then added a panel of the rainbow cardstock and cut it into a banner and raised it up on foam adhesive above the cloud layer.

I then added one of the stickers (the sun) onto the banner panel and then added the plane and banner image which I had stamped, coloured and cut out.

I then added another sentiment from the same set adding it with a mat of the blue cardstock.

Just love how this worked out – such a fun card with that cloud background which makes such a special touch!

You can probably guess what I’m about to tell you about this card too … yes it is an ‘as seen on tv’ project! Here you go …. This is it on my actual tv! 🤣

Happy crafting!

Catherine

When my Betterpress arrived a few weeks ago I decided to have a little play with the Betterpress and some gelliprints I had in my stash and created two cute notecards. I am still learning how to use the system and what works best so these were part of my trial and error sessions.

Both gelliprints were ones I pulled where I had torn edges to create just a central panel of print on a piece of white cardstock. I remember many years ago watching Barbara Gray doing this on Create and Craft when gelli plates first came out and I love the effect this gives.

I decided to use the floral plate that came with the betterpress and the betterpress ink. I did the same plate in either corner so I could flip the panel and then ended up cutting down the panels into these small squares.

The red one I did do a tiny shift on the plate when I inked it so the image isn’t super clear on the top print but the bottom one is very clear and detailed.

The second one I only inked and ran it through the once so the black isn’t as dark.

For both cards I then took the glimmer plate that was in with the glimmer machine and foiled just the word hello and added that as the sentiment.

I then added just one gold gem to finish off the outside. I added a panel of white on the inside with one of the off cuts from the front panel to finish off the inside.

Simple cute little notecards. I love the mix of the gelliprint background and the detail of that press plate image. It was also fun to play with the gelliprints again – I have been watching a few mixed media videos recently so it’s making me want to play with mediums again!

Of course it’s now been a few weeks since I made these and I’ve watched so many YouTube videos since then so I am desperate for the energy to have a real play with my supplies but at the moment it just isn’t possible. Fingers crossed soon though as my energy levels were a little better yesterday and this morning so think I am slowly getting better. 🤞

Happy crafting!

Catherine