Medicine Cabinet

There has been some fun had in the Izzwizz household this week culminating in another book card for your delectation:

"Olde Curiosity Shoppe Medicine Cabinet Book Card"

The basic construction has 300gsm brown card for an outer cover, with 200gsm white card interleaved concertina-style to provide an inner frame resembling the pages of a book.

"Sideview Showing Closure"

The closure is provided by two short lengths of chain attached inside the card with Glossy Accents and joined via two jump rings with a jewellery closure. A diecut padlock and key are threaded onto the chain.

"Shop Front"

The brickwork for the shopfront is handpainted on watercolour paper using distress inks, water and paintbrushes. This was my first attempt at brickwork and I'm quite pleased with the results. The window is diecut from 300gsm brown card. The window panes are made from white card stained & stamped with distress ink, then diecut and adhered to the base window with PVA.

"Olde Curiosity Shoppe"

"Olde Curiosity Shoppe" is stamped twice on brown card and heat-embossed in gold. One of the stamped images is diecut into a circle, the other has the word "Curiosity" trimmed separately and attached on top of the circle using Pinflair for dimension.

"Flower"

The flowers are leaves are diecut from Graphic45 "Le Cirque" paper offcuts using Spellbinders Rose Creations, Carnation Creations & Foliage dies. The flowers edges are inked and shaped before assembling with brads and fixing to the card with Pinflair.

"Window Scene"

A square of paper showing the inside of a cabinet is cut from the paper pad and fixed to the inside front cover of the card with Pinflair.

Let's move onto the inside...

"Inside"

The back of the square used to make the window scene has a lovely harlequin pattern which makes an ideal background pattern to show off one of the frames from the paper pad. Some glitter glue is added to the boot's wings and distress stickles added to the frame for a little sparkle.The wings and boot are shaped before adhering with Pinflair.

"Medicine Cabinet"

It is hard to see the stamped background behind all the bottles, but it is made by stamping images in antique linen onto a background stained with the same colour, then overstamping more images with walnut stain. The book aperture is filled with bottles made by stamping bottles and labels onto white card in archival inks, colouring with distress inks, and glazing with a glaze pen. Each of the bottle is cut out and shaped before adhering with Pinflair dimensional glue. The raven & sign are stamped in black archival and heat-embossed in clear. The key is cut from patterned paper and some glossy accents used to highlight the watch face. Lots of lace is used to decorate the edge. Those little liver pills are something I could do with LOL!

Ingredients:

Graphic45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe Stamp Sets 1, 2 and 3

Graphic45 Old Curiosity Shoppe 8x8" paper pad

Spellbinders dies: Heartfelt Creations Chateau Gate, Carnation Creations, Rose Creations, Foliage

Sizzix Framelits: Circles

Cardstock: brown 300gsm, white 160gsm

Watercolour paper

Distress ink pads, markers, reinkers: Walnut Stain, Fired Brick, Antique Linen, Brushed Corduroy, Bundled Sage, Peeled Paint, Faded Jeans

Versamark clear ink pad

Archival inks: Jet Black, Olive, Crimson, Cobalt, Sepia

Embossing powder: Cosmic Shimmer Gold

Sakura Glaze Pens: Clear, Green

Clear Glitter Glue

Distress Stickles: Antique Bronze

Brads: pale pink

Lace

Adhesives: PVA, Glossy Accents, Pinflair Dimensional Glue

Entered for the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp and Show - Depth of Distress (loads of distress here with layers of ink & stamps, painting with distress inks, distressing edges, staining, etc., but also lots of depth with the dimensional card and extra dimension from the opening window & scene on the front.
Hotshot Crafts - distress inks
Allsorts - In Bloom
Try it on Tuesday - Anything Goes

Triple Stepper Card Tutorial

Well it's been a while since I wrote a tutorial, so I thought you might like the details for an oldie but goodie: the triple stepper card. This one is adapted from the Hougie technique to make a large centre panel.

"Scores and cut marks"

To start, take an A4 sheet of good cardstock, something like 300gsm, and cut it down to a nice even 28cm in length. Next on the wrong side, mark two pencil lines parallel to the longest side, at 5cm from each edge. Using the pencil marks, score crease marks from each edge to the line at the following measurements from the shortest edge: 3cm, 6cm, 10cm and 21cm. Then score the halfway fold at 14cm all the way across. It's easy to score crease marks using a scoring board, but this can also be done using a ruler and a blunt instrument like an embossing tool or short knitting needle. Finally, you need to cut along the two pencil lines with a craft knife between the 3cm and 21cm score marks.

"Folded card blank"

Making alternate mountain and valley folds along the crease lines, you should end up with a card blank like the one above.

"Card blank with patterned paper panels"

I like to add patterned paper to all the front-facing panels. Cut the paper leaving a 2mm border all the way around the edge.

Here are a couple of stepper cards I made using the Heartfelt Creations Chateau Gate die & matching stamps. We had some rare sunshine here in Northern Ireland when I was taking the photos. As you can see from the reflections, I am much more used to taking pictures in the rain :-)

"Banish those birthday blues"

The flowers for the birthday blues card are all handmade and coloured with distress inks to match. Most are paper, but the grey ones are fabric and were made following the instructions from one of craftyloops fabulous tutorials.

"An Englishwoman's home is her castle"

The flowers for this card are made from cream organza (a present from Lee - thank you sweetie :-), diecut and the edges singed with a heat tool before binding together with natural-coloured brads and fixing in place on the fence railings with pinflair.You can see a couple of feathers peeping out from behind the flowers. They were kindly left in the nestboxes for me by our Barnevelder hens!

"Window scene"

For both cards, the window scene is painted with distress inks and mounted behind the window with Pinflair to add some extra dimension. The legs for the iron gate are cut out with scissors after diecutting the decorative edge. Two fences are diecut and mounted each side of the iron gate using Pinflair. Extra embellishments are added to the side panels.

Ingredients:

Hougie Board & scoring tool

A4 300gsm cardstock & 160gsm smooth, white card

Heartfelt Creations Chateau Gate die & matching stamp sets: Grand Portal & Doorway Trimmings

Sizzix Tim Holtz On The Edge Die: Iron Gate

Sizzix Tim Holtz Bigz: Tattered Florals

Marianne die: fence

Spellbinders: Carnation Creations

Patterned paper: Tim Holtz Vintage Shabby pad

Sentiments: Papermania

Distress inks: Walnut Stain, Tumbled Glass, Chipped Sapphire

Perfect Pearls: biscotti, blue patina

Distress marker set, paint brush, water & non-stick craft sheet for watercolouring background scenes

Handmade flowers & feathers

Brads

Adhesives: PVA, glossy accents, pinflair dimensional glue

Entered for the following challenge:
Joanna Sheen - Summer Daze
Let's Ink it Up - Use your favourite embellsihments (handmade organza flowers!)
Stampin' For the Weekend - Show us your style (vintage)
Frosted Designs - Make Your Own Embellishment (handmade flowers)
Charisma Cardz - Summer
Crafts and Me - Anything Goes
Crafty Cardmakers - Make Your Own Flowers
Love to Create - Anything Goes

Let Your Soul and Spirit Fly

Goodness, doesn't time fly when you're having fun? Here's a card I made for this week's Simon Says Stamp and Show... challenge, which is "a bit of brown".

"Let Your Soul and Spirit Fly"

I love the IndigoBlu stamp sets; all the stamps on this card are from IndigoBlu. The wording comes from a fabulous sheet of sentiment stamps titled "Discover Your Passion". They are all so original and different. "Let Your Soul & Spirit Fly" is stamped in Tumbled Glass Distress ink and heat-embossed in clear, then overinked in Walnut Stain. This panel is matted and layered onto hammered gold and pearlised pale blue cardstock, before adhering to the background. The background panel is decorated with Tumbled Glass ink, and overstamped and edged with Walnut Stain.

The diecuts are all cut from pearlised blue cardstock.

Ingredients:

Marianne Creatables dies: Butterfly 3, Tree, Fence

IndigoBlu stamp sets: Discover Your Passion DYP, Nature I NI, Wild Meadow WM1

Distress Inks: Tumbled Glass, Walnut Stain

cardstock: white 300gsm, 160gsm, hammered gold 200gsm, pearlised blue 200gsm

ribbon

adhesives: PVA, glossy accents, Pinflair dimensional glue

Entered for the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp and Show - A Bit of Brown

Crafts and Me - Anything Goes

Divas by Design - to "Die" for

Stamping Scrapping Challenge Central - Don't Bug Me

Fashionable Stamping Challenge - Nature

Marks Finest Papers - Vintage

Hotshot Craft - Distress Inks

Nature

One of my favourite card themes is "Nature", and the gorgeous Indigo Blu stamp sets are perfect for a lovely nature card. That indigo blue is also my favourite colour is pure serendipity :-)

"Nature Card"

The stamping for the main panel is in different colours of distress inks over a blended, distress-inked background. Second and third stampings were used for extra depth.

"Butterfly with acetate wings"

Butterfly wings were stamped onto acetate using archival inks and cut out before adhering over the stamped images with a little glossy accents. Bending the acetate slightly on each side of the thorax lifts the wings and provides a narrow, flat area for the glue.

"Crackle butterfly"

The larger butterfly is stamped and coloured on thick watercolour paper before coating with rock candy crackle paint and rubbing some chipped sapphire into the cracks once dried for a lovely antique effect.

"Sentiment"

Distress markers were used to stamp the sentiment in different colours before heat embossing in clear.

"Flower stalk"

These dried sage flower stalks make a pretty embellishment with a short length of ribbon wrapped around the stems to hold them together and attach to the base card.

Ingredients:

Indigo Blu stamp sets: Nature I, Wild Meadow, Discover Your Passion

Distress Inks, various blue & green colours

Distress Markers, various colours

Archival ink, cobalt

Enbossing powder, clear

Dried sage flower stalks

cardstock: white 300gsm, white 160gsm, black 160gsm, blue pearlised & patterned 120gsm

dark blue lace (thanks Lee!)

adhesives: glossy accents, PVA

Entered for the following challenges:
Bunny Zoe's Crafts - Anything Goes