Circles and Squares

Hello again - well I've had so little time for card making this month, as I've been crocheting a blanket for a friend who is adopting a little girl. I will blog about it once I've handed over the gift, as I think she should be the first one to see it!

This card is for the new mum though, so I used the circles and squares theme, and a monochrome palette to produce a subtle, but hopefully not too babyish card to celebrate her adoption. To produce the card I used the following items:

Clarity circles stencil
Clarity stencil brush
Wee folk stamps set #2
Small allium stamp
Flower punch
Sticky gems
Clarity With Love line stamp
Clarity NDC blocks of fun stamp
Clarity alphabet word chains stamp set
Distress ink (Milled Lavendar)
Archival Black ink
Black sharpie pen
Black fineliner pen
Lavendar promarker

 

No time for a step-by-step this month, but I've added some extra photos, as the card photo doesn't really show all the subtle details. Would love to hear your comments, and hope my pal loves her card as much as her new daughter!

Susan x

Calendar Challenge #9 September 2016

"In the light of the silvery moon"

Here's my attempt at the Claritystamp calendar challenge for September 2016. I find it really difficult to copy someone else's artwork, so for me, the calendar challenges are far more challenging than the monthly themed challenge!

However, I loved the composition of Barbara Gray's artwork, had the Toadstool and Hares stampset, and I improvised a bit, using Clarity coated cardstock and Promarkers for the colouring. Still, I was quite pleased with the final result, although it didn't get finished until today as both my white gelpens had dried up, so I had to nip to the craft shop and buy a new free-flowing one!

Thanks for visiting,
Susan

A little bird told me...

My offer for this month's Claritystamp Challenge is a little MDF birdhouse, decorated for the theme "in the garden". I honestly can't recall where I got the shape from, but it's really happy to be liberated from the rest of the stash in my cupboard!

I started by giving the MDF shape a base coat of Snowflake Fresco Finish  Acrylic Paint by PaperArtsy, then when that was dry, I went over the shape again in Beach Hut Fresco Finish Paint and dried it thoroughly using a heatgun.

Using the Flower Stencil (NDSC #24) from Claritystamp, with some areas masked off with tape, I applied Blood Orange Fresco Finish Paint to the flowers using a piece of cut and dry foam, a little Cadmium Yellow Daler Rowney System 3 acrylic paint to the flower centres, and a mixture of Sage Fresco finish paint and Emerald Daler Rowney System 3 acrylic paint to the leaves, then left it all to dry. The design looked a little soft around the edges, so I went around the flowers and leaves with a black fine-liner pen, and added some details to the flower petals. I also added some yellow dots with Pebeo Gloss Touch in Bright Yellow to give a bit more dimension to the flower heads.

I decided to add some stamped detail to the roof of the birdhouse, and randomly stamped with Claritystamp small ocean swirl stamp from the Galleon set using Ranger Stormy Skies Distress Ink, and again drew freehand around the stamping to add a bit more definition to the design.

Finally, I found a bit of inky, blotchy scrap card, and drew one of the birds from Claritystamp Bird Frame stencil (NDSC #1) using a fine liner pen, extending the branch it was standing on, so that it would wrap around the edges of the bird house. I felt it needed to stand out a bit more against the bright background, so I added a few black boxes, zentagle style, and made my little bird into a zebra finch! Admittedly, you don't see many of those in my garden in Inverness, but I call it artistic license!!!

Hope you enjoy my little birdhouse, and I'm going to hang it from the shelf in my craftroom to keep me company when I'm crafting on my own.

Thanks for visiting, Susan x

Floats like a butterfly...

Hello there

Well, August has flown by and we've been really busy in the guest house this month. We did have a few days away at the Edinburgh Fringe, which was lovely, but not exactly a restful and relaxing break!

The Clarity challenge this month was fussy cutting so I thought I would create a card using some of the "failed" inky splodge prints left over from my calendar challenge attempt from last month, and the NDC butterfly stamp that has been sitting on my desk for many weeks just waiting for it's chance to shine. I also remembered to take my camera into the craft room, so there are a few more photos with the blog this month - not exactly a step by step because I kept forgetting to take a snap, but we all have to start somewhere!!!

First I stamped the Clarity NDC butterfly stamp, and Clarity butterfly verse onto one of the scraps of splodgy background scraps using black archival ink and left it to dry.

Next I stamped the butterfly stamp again onto another, brighter piece of scrap, and fussy cut 3 of the butterflies to use on my main project.

I trimmed down the background piece using a paper trimmer and framed it using a ruler and black sharpie pen.

 Before I stuck down the butterflies, I tried different positions on the background to see which composition worked best, and then I decided to have one hovering over the card, to illustrate the sentiment in the verse.

I cut a small strip of acetate, and made a small hinge at one end, and a larger hinge at the other end. I fixed the small hinge with double sided tape behind my backgroun piece, and attached one of the butterflies to the long strip. The second hinge part helps keep the butterfly "floating", but will flatten down to allow for postage.

It was a bit tricky to get a photo showing how the butterfly floats, and please don't look too closely at the mess on the top of my craft desk!!!

Finally I mounted the background piece onto an 8X8 white card blank, added a sentiment inside the card, and my signature personlised stamp on the back of the card.

Hope you like my interpretation of the fussy cutting theme, and I'd love to read any comments that you have - thanks, Susan x

Clarity Calendar Challenge - July 2016

Well I never, two blog posts in two days! Nothing like a deadline to make you get your skates on is there?

Here is my attempt at the Clarity Calendar challenge for July 2016 - couldn't let this one pass by, as the Boy with the Birds is one of my all time favourite stamps.

Hope you like my attempt, and please forgive the little additions - I can't even follow a recipe without tweaking it, and I thought my splodges were more like a map of the world, so that's what I went with! It reminded me of that game Risk that my brothers used to play when we were small - Happy memories.

Susan x