July Card Swap cards

The theme for this month's Card Swap was Christmas in July. Now I must confess that I was pretty unexcited about this theme because I find it hard enough to make up a design when I need to for Christmas let alone when I have to make another lot as well! I actually did have a good idea but it really didn't happen for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that I wanted to use one of my sister's stamps and she wasn't sure if she was going to end up using it for the workshop that she was designing. The second, and probably major reason, was that the only weekend I had to make all my card swap cards was the weekend that I ended up going away for, so needless to say last week I was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to get them made in time for Friday night!

In the end I ended up using a design that I already had four cards made of, so instead of having to make 11 in almost no time, I only had to make 7! The strange thing is that as soon as I was worried about making them all identical I kept on making errors, but I guess that is part of the good thing about hand made - everything is unique.



The workshop for this month was really good. My sister designed it herself and the idea was to give some out of the ordinary ideas for Christmas, so we made a gift box, the lid, and the bow to go on top, a gift card holder, a Christmas tag and a card. I am not sure if she is going to submit it to the company she works for or not, so I will see if she is happy for me to post them here or not. I will definitely be making the gift card holder again, because is such a good idea for those times when you get a gift card. It's made using an envelope so it is a very easy way to make something a bit mundane a little more special.

Some what unusually for me, I also made a card that wasn't for card swap this month! Shocking I know. Actually, originally I was just messing around trying a couple of new techniques that I learnt when we went to Paperific craft show last month. I bought a few different things to try and hadn't had time to play before now, but I really like the results of this one when I put it together.

The first technique is creating backgrounds using Twinkling H2Os, which are a watercolour type base that has a bit of a metallic sheen to it when it dries. You can also use these to colour images or like I have to create a background. The lady who we saw demonstrating it at the show has obviously had a lot of practice as she was able to just swish the brush over the paper using a couple of different colours and voila, fabulous even graduation of colour as a background. I have used three colours on this one, but I need to practice blending a little but I am relatively happy with it given that it was the first time I tried it!

Even though I am not that good a photographer, I am really happy that you can see a little bit of the shimmer, especially if you click on the image so that it enlarges, although if you do that you will also see a few bits of glitter that weren't heat set that I didn't rub off yet!

The second technique was using a new to me product called Heat Set Glue. It comes in a white powder form, almost like embossing powder, but instead of becoming solid when it is heated, the glue powder melts, which then enables you to sprinkle glitter over the glue. You then heat it again and the glue sets with the glitter inside it, so your glitter is stuck fast to the card and will not just brush off. So now I have the option of either embossing to get texture, or using the heat set glue to get a really glittery image!

I have used these dragon fly stamps before because I just love them, and I am sure that you will see them again at some point, maybe even in a similar fashion to these.


I am very excited about a new stamp set that I just received yesterday, but I am going to play with those a little before I unveil those!

My big challenge this month is to make a cool and groovy 40th birthday card for a friend. I have an idea but a lot of times I have trouble translating the idea into actuality! I will also need to make a male card for the next card swap so I will be off trawling the net looking for some inspiration. It is so much easier to make girls cards!

June card swap

A couple of weeks ago I posted about how excited I was about this month's card swap card that I had decided to produce, and I posted a couple of images of my template card. Tonight is the card making workshop and it is time to send my creations out into the world.

It hasn't actually changed that much. The main changes are that I have coloured in the skater boy (or should that be sk8r boi) and used much brighter colours, oh and added some coordinating ribbon. I have to say that I am pretty impressed with this card. The one thing that card swap is making me do is to try and challenge myself and to actually make something instead of just thinking about it!

Having said all that, it was probably a good thing that I did have some extra time on my hands this month because making ten of these was a little time consuming with all the cutting and scoring, embossing and water colouring, more embossing and then putting it all together. I think it was worth it though. The great thing about this card is that even though it looks as though it would be difficult to do so, it fits inside a standard envelope for posting - no need to buy additional stationary or anything like that. So here it is first lying down flat and then standing up.




Looking at it now, I probably should have made the effort to come up with some kind of skin colour for his face and arms using the water colour crayons I was using, but it's a bit late now.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that while my photo taking skills are still completely rubbish, the camera is better. The sad thing is that the photos were taken using my new mobile phone camera as opposed to my digital camera. When I first bought my digital camera it was top of the range, but it is a bit aged now really. One of these days I will go and look at getting a new one, but at the moment my next big new purchase is most likely going to be a flat screen TV. The big question is whether it will go out here where I sit or in the main lounge area, but I suspect that I am really a soft touch and therefore it will go where my son spends most of his time watching TV.

May Card Swap

For the second month running I have managed to get all my card swap cards made with time to spare - very unusual! This month's theme was circles.

My original idea was to try and create a photo frame effect with a silhouette of an old fashioned woman inside the circles, sort of inspired by a cameo brooch. The idea was to have several circles of expanding diameter building up around the sides of the silhouette to give it dimension. It very quickly became obvious that there were several issues with this idea. It was incredibly difficult to locate a suitable silhouette that was either free to use from the internet or that was a stamp that I could use. The second issue was creating the circular frames themselves in such a way that they would all align when the card was created.

So, I had a rethink, and instead of having a silhouette, I decided to use half of a stamp that I bought a little while ago of a Victorian lady and go the opposite way, so that one circle is smaller than the other, and they are built up with Magic Mount, give three levels of dimension. Originally I bought this stamp to use for bookmarks for Historical Tapestry, and while I still may use it for that purpose, I haven't figured out the rest of the components yet. This is an image of what the lady looks like normally:


The next issue I had was getting hold of papers to use. What I wanted was so blue and cream type colours. I had a look through the papers that I had, and I had one sheet each of a couple of designs which would have been perfect, including those pictured below. Unfortunately, when I went to the scrap booking shop there was nothing that was really similar, so had to rethink that was well.



So what I ended up with instead was this finished card which is more brown and light blue than dark blue and cream, but never mind. The embossing is really getting caught in the flash and kind of hides the fact that there is a small pearl stuck just at the collar of the dress to try and bring the idea back to the cameo idea.


I did have a bit of an issue with the ribbon that I used because when I wanted to buy 2 metres, there wasn't that much on the roll, but I just had enough allowing for a test card and also for one screw up. There is a certain irony with the screw up because before I had finished making all the cards, I had to clear the table for dinner. When I came back to it I happily started working away, not realising that I was working on a scrap piece of paper that wasn't the same width as the actual card until far too late in the process. I thought I would try to rescue that card for my own use and not as part of the card swap (because you needed 11 identical cards) and so I put a strip of brown down the side to cover the fact that this one was narrower. Only problem is that I think that my rescued card looks better than the 11 actual cards! Whoops! Too late now though.


The other thing that I did over the last couple of days is play with a sheet of images that I bought a while ago when I went to the Stitches and Craft show. The idea is very similar to decoupage with the idea that you build up different levels of a picture, but this time with a twist. I love the image that is on this sheet. I kind of wish I had of bought a couple more of this type because with the fact that the shapes are all rectangles it was really quite easy to assemble. I also bought some Japanese ladies to do, but the cutting out on those ones is much more intricate so I will save them for a bit later. Below are two images of the same card. The first is from above, and the second is from the side so hopefully it will be clearer to see how the layering works.

April Card Swap

I haven't been mentioning much about card making recently, simply because I really haven't been making anything. I think this year I have only made some bookmarks if you don't count the two classes I've been to. In a couple of days I will hopefully post some images of the cards that we have made in the classes we have had this year so far. Of course, I have still been buying stuff for card making!

Today though I sat down and used some of the things that I bought recently. That is quite unusual in itself. Normally I have to have something NOW, and find it months later and wonder what it was that I was intending to make.

The reason for suddenly getting busy is that at our last class, I volunteered myself into the April card swap, which meant that I really needed to hurry up and make the 8 identical cards that I needed to produce in time for next Friday! I am not finished yet, but I just need to finish cutting out the dragonflies and sticking them onto the cards and then I will be done, and there is every chance that will be no Thursday night rush this time!

The theme for the card swap this month was Autumn. I suspect that a lot of people are going to do lots of leave type things, but as soon as I heard the theme I knew that I wanted to use the diamond paper that I had recently bought because I thought that the colours were very autumnal.

Normally when I start making something, I have a fair idea in my mind, but I am never quite happy with the way the finished product turns out. There's always just something that is not quite right. With today's cards I knew what I wanted the feature to be but I didn't know how I was going to implement it. I have to say that for a change I am really very happy with the finished result.


I am not sure that you can really see it from the photos, but the wings on the dragonfly have been folded upwards so that this is very much a card with extra definition.




Originally I bought the diamond paper so that when I try and make more bookmarks I don't have to sit there and measure out the diamonds and cut them out by hand, but now I will have to buy more because I have used it all on this card. That is because the yellow colour you can see is on the reverse of the diamonds! Never mind.