Oriental Hinged Card using Graphic45 Birdsong Papers

As promised, here's my third oriental card using Jim the Gentleman Crafter's base design. You can find the first two on yesterday's blog post.

"Happiness"

The gorgeous metallic ribbon that you can just make out in the background was one of my finds at the Craft show in Belfast . The turquoise and gold is a great colour combination for oriental cards and makes a change from the more usual black, white & red.

"Inside"

I chose these images for my sister and made this into her birthday card. The oval frames were coloured with distress markers and sponged with antique linen distress ink to match the rest of the Graphic45 collection and provide an area for my message. I could have just written straight on to the tags, but wanted to draw the eye to them more.

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show - Passport to Fun (turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so :-))

Ingredients:

M-bossabilities Tweets and Twigs folder

Spellbinders Radiant Rectangles, Antique Frame

Graphic45 Birdsong 8" x 8" paper pad

Papermania Oriental A4 paper pad & diecut sentiments

recycled strong card from dog food packaging

cardstock: black 220gsm, gold mirri

bamboo skewers

black promarker

gold aquamarker

gold thread

metallic embroidered ribbon

adhesives: PVA, Pinflair

Oriental Card with Skewer Spine

I came across the design for this card on Jim The Gentleman Crafter's blog and fell in love with it so much that I have so far made three of them before playing about and extending the design. He calls it the "hinged card". Today I am sharing the first two cards I made, tomorrow I am going to show you the third, and on Monday you will get to see how to extend the design to use it as a cover for a book card or for a pad of post-it notes etc.

"Front Cover First Card"

The skewer on the left forms the spine of the card and hinges are made from patterned papers. The skewer on the right is pulled out the top to open the card.

Over the years I've collected quite a lot of oriental-themed images and papers and it's great to have an excuse to use some of them up! There is a mixture of Papermania patterned papers and tags with stickers and other images that I've received in swaps so have no idea where they came from! It's just a question of layering things up and playinmg with the layout until you're happy with it.

"Inside First Card"

The skewers are coloured with black promarker and gold card used to mat some of the images; others are edged with a gold aquamarker. The image in the left panel of this first design is a set of black peeloffs stuck onto white card and coloured with distress inks. After putting it all together, some black flower sequins are added to add interest without too much bulk.

"Front Cover Second Card"

The background for this card is made using a technique that I will be sharing with you in another post. I've made this as a birthday card for a man, so the colours are darker and the images less flowery than the first card.

"Inside Second Card"

These fab images have been in my stash for ages, but they were just perfect for the inside of this second card. The lettering for "terrific birthday" is from peel-offs, but the problem is I've run out of so many letters it took me a while to come up with a sentiment that would fit lol! The nice thing about "terrific" is that it has the same number of letters as "birthday". I find that lots of men really like symmetry and find it pleasing to the eye. Is your man like that?

Ingredients:

2 x 5" x 7" pieces of thick card (I used the packaging from a box of dog food nuts!)

Papermania Oriental patterned paper pad A4

Papermania Oriental tags

large bamboo skewers

black promarker

gold aquamarker

black sequins

black gems

adhesives: PVA, foam tape

gold thread or thin string

Entered for the following challenges:
Crafting Musketeers - Anything Goes (first challenge - congratulations!)
Oozak - Anything Goes with Earthtones
Moving Along with the Times - One for the Guys (the second card, not the first one!)

Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of 2013... April

This card started out as my take on Tim's April tag, but ended up A4 size and very different. I enjoyed the journey though :-)

"Enjoy the Journey Card"

The backgrounds for the aeroplane and hot air balloon are prepared by swooshing card through pools of distress paint and spritzing with water, then leaving to dry and adding some distress inks with cut 'n' dry foam. the main panel background is cut from an old book of maps, coloured with Pan Pastels, and stamped using the ghosting technique and the squares stamp from Sam Poole's Vintage Aviation stamp set. The cogs are stamped in archival using the second or third generation stamp (i.e. stamp onto scrap paper first, then use subsequent impressions to get a more subtle result).

"Enjoy The Journey Sentiment Panel"

"Enjoy the Journey" is stamped a few times onto scrap white card using black archival ink and heat-embossed in clear. Each sentiment has a piece diecut from it and the diecut layers are built up so that all the words can still be read. Look closely, and you can see separate layers for the bird, crown and wing all mounted onto a background rectangle. Each of the dies is inked through before removing the card, and the layers are mounted using Pinflair to give dimension.

An eyelet is set into the right hand side of the panel and a piece of seam binding (coloured with distress paint & stain) is threaded through the eyelet and tied. It reminds me of Biggle's scarf (remember Biggles? The mad aviator? What do you mean you're not that old!).

"Aeroplane Panel"

The aeroplane is stamped and embossed onto one of the painted panels, and again onto heat-resistant acetate. The back is colour-washed with diluted distress paint. Once dry, the acetate plane is cut out and mounted directly on top of the stamped plane using tiny dots of Pinflair.

"Hot Air Balloon Panel"

The hot air balloon is stamped and embossed onto the other painted panel and a second copy stamped and embossed onto watercolour paper. Just the balloon is cut out from the paper, coloured with distress markers and water, shaped, and finally mounted over the other balloon with a large dab of pinflair in the centre to make it look rounded.

"Tree Charms"

 The tree charms were originally silver (not the real stuff, I'm not that rich!!!). They are dabbed with distress paint, rubbed lightly with kitchen roll, then lightly dabbed with a contrasting colour of distress paint. Once dry, they are mounted with more Pinflair (I get through a LOT of Pinflair ;-)

Ingredients:

Creative Expressions stamp sets: Sam Poole's Vintage Aviation & Vintage Inventor sets

Spellbinders dies: Donna Salazar Mix'd Media Elements

Distress Paints: Salty Ocean, Victorian Velvet, Chipped Sapphire, Seedless Preserves

Distress Stain: Tarnished Brass

Distress Inks & Markers: Seedless Preserves, Chipped Sapphire

Ranger Archival Inks: Plum, Cobalt, Jet Black

Pan Pastels: Magenta

embossing powder: clear, detail

adhesives: PVA, Pinflair dimensional glue

cardstock: A3 white 300gsm, A4 purple 300gsm, white 160gsm, watercolour paper

page from book of old maps

seam binding

tree charms

Colourful Card and Tissue Paper Carnations Tutorial

Hey folks, this is a big post with loads of piccies, but I've made the photos small so it shouldn't take too long to download. Anyway, there's a tutorial so it's worth it - woohoo :-)

This week, Simon Says Stamp and Show...colour! Well, I finally bought some pan pastels at the Belfast Craft show last week (had a fabby time meeting up with Lee and spending way too much, but that's another story...). I spent the weekend having a play so thought I'd share my first Pan Pastel card:

"Believe all things are possible"

This has my standard acetate tunnel construction (see project 3 on this post for tutorial). The background has blended pan pastels with stamped flowers and grasses. The clouds are done with splats of picket fence distress stain over the pan pastels. I love the effects from the shadows with this type of construction.

"Tissue paper carnations"

The flowers are all handmade from tissue paper (see later for the tissue paper carnation tutorial). You can just make out some of the background stamping in this photo.

"More flowers"

The tissue paper for these flowers was coloured with pan pastels and a large sponge. The pastels are the best thing I've ever found for colouring tissue paper!!!

"Wire leaf"

I used wire to make all these flowers' stalks, turning the other end up to make a clip to attach all the flowers to the card. Some extra pieces of wire were curled to make leaves.

"Stamped on acetate"

I love this aeroplane and banner stamp from Sam Poole's "Vintage Aviation" set. It is stamped along with the sentiment onto heatproof acetate using black archival ink and embossed in clear, then picket fence distress paint is painted onto the back of the banner with a paintbrush to make the sentiment stand out. It looks as if the plane is really flying!

"View showing construction"

This view shows the construction and different layers better. There are flowers on the background, attached to the acetate, and finally fixed to the front. The cardstock is also decorated with pan pastel flower and grass stamping but it's hard to see in the photo.

Ingredients:

Creative Expressions Sam Poole stamp set: Vintage Aviation

Creative Expressions stamp set: The Village (flower & grass stamps - thanks to my good friend Kathy who so kindly sent me this stamp set!!)

tissue paper flowers with wire stalks

Pan Pastels: Ultramarine Blue Shade, Magenta Extra Dark, Magenta & sofft tools

Versamark ink pad

Archival ink pad: Jet Black

Embossing powder: Clear, detail

Distress paint: Picket Fence

Distress stain: Picket Fence

Distress markers: Spun Sugar, Dusty Concord

cardstock: purple 300gsm, white 160gsm

tissue paper

construction wire

adhesives: PVA, glossy accents

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show... Colour


...and here's the promised tutorial for the tissue paper carnations. For the smaller carnations, I make the stalk from wire, but the larger ones are just as good with cotton bud centres.

1. Everything you need - tissue paper, coloured marker, carnation creations dies & cotton bud

 

 2. Take a full sheet of tissue paper and fold in half

3. Fold in half again (thickness = 4 sheets)

4. Fold in half again (thickness = 8 sheets)

5. Fold in half again (thickness = 16 sheets)

6. Place on die cutting plate and arrange dies

7. Pass through roller-type die-cutting machine a few times, turning the sheet if necessary, until all the layers of tissue paper have cut through.

8. Separate the flowers, but keep the layers of tissue paper in the dies for now.

9. Take one of the flowers and carefully lift out one petal, lifting all the layers of tissue paper together.

10. Now colour the edge of the petal with the marker. You do not need to separate the layers, lifting it out of the die like this will allow all the edges to be coloured without separating them.

11. Work your way around the rest of the petals, replacing each into the die before moving onto the next one. Pop out the centre hole using a pokey tool or similar.

12. Remove the tissue paper from the die, holding all the layers together.

13. Thread a cotton bud through all the layers. You may need to wiggle it slightly to push it through. Be careful not to tear the paper. If it's too tight a squeeze, you can cut the bud from one end and thread it through that way.

14. Carefully separate the top layer of tissue paper and push to the top of the cotton bud.

15. Use the other hand to scrunch the petals up tight around the tip of the cotton bud.

16. Separate the next layer of tissue paper and push it up towards the top of the flower...

17. ...and scrunch it around the previous layer.

18. Continue separating each successive layer...

19...and scrunching the petals around the previous layer.

20. Take care with the layer separation, they can stick together,

21. but you don't need to worry about the scrunching.

22. The more uneven, the better.

23. Real flowers are never perfect!

24. And neither are mine :-)

25. Not quite finished yet, we need some glossy accents.

26. Add a drop to the base of the flower where the bottom petal touches the stalk. This will seal the petals in place and stop them falling down the stalk. Just leave it upside down to dry (I find a plastic glass useful for this). Once dry, you can fluff the flowers out a bit if you want.

I got carried away and made a whole bunch!

Inventor and Engineer

Did you know that in most of Europe, "Engineer" is a reserved title? You have to be properly qualified and a graduate to call yourself an Engineer. An engineer is the person who invents, designs and performs all the calculations to make sure what she has invented or designed doesn't fall apart. I love this stamp set from Sam Poole which has a fabby picture of a railway engineer.

"Railway Engineer"

The background is made by repeated stamping of the railway stamp onto black card using a suitable glue before applying gilding flakes. The card is wrapped with silver thread, then cogs are added with Pinflair.

"Background"

The cogs are made from recycled chipboard packaging, decorated with metallic distress stains, sanded and edged in Walnut Stain.

"Engineer"

The engineer and train are stamped in black archival ink onto watercolour paper and heat-embossed in clear. Distress inks and a water brush are used to add colour tints, with the edges masked using post-it notes, before matting onto black and silver card and fixing to the card with Pinflair for some extra dimension.

"Pocket Watch"

Well, the trains need to run on time don't they? The watch charm is attached to the "Engineer" topper via jump rings and a length of chain through a couple of eyelets. The eyelets are turned gold by dabbing with gold mixative ink.

"Gilding"

The faux engine plate and frame for the "Inventor" sentiment are made with gilding flakes on black card. The engine plate stamp is diecut and edged with more gilding flakes.

"Faux Rivets"

Faux rivets are added to a black mat, and the whole card matted onto more black cardstock using foam tape to make a frame.

Well, that's it for today. I hope the Sun is shining for all of you as it is here in Northern Ireland. Maddy xx

Ingredients:

Creative Expressions Sam Poole stamp set: Vintage Inventor

Spellbinders Radiant Rectangles, Petite Ovals

Sizzix Tim Holtz Gadget Gears

Ranger Metallic Distress Stains

Archival ink pad: Jet Black

Stampendous embossing powder: detail clear

Distress ink markers: Tumbled Glass, Bundled Sage, Pumice Stone

eyelets

Adirondack gold mixative

gilding flakes and glue

cardstock: smooth black 220gsm, watercolour, silver mirri

liquid pearls: pewter

watch charm, jump rings & chain

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show: Background