Garden Box Card

Gold embossing glows beautifully in warm light :)

Over the past couple of weeks or so it seems that EVERYBODY  is making this box! It's making it's way around the Inspirin' Inkees (Amanda Fowler's Team), and the Dazzling Dreamers (Liz Shannon's Team) teams.  This is a real 'WOW' card which goes from conveniently folding flat into a regular size envelope, to being an all singing all dancing box card and it's just incredibly versatile.  You can find a video with instructions on Very Victoria's Crafts on Youtube here and there are plenty of examples of other designs if you have a peruse online.

This is the watercolour paper and gold embossed butterfly in natural light

For a quick reference once you've looked at Victoria's video for the technique, the dimensions are A5 size cardstock, scored at 7.3cm along the short edge (i.e ~half way), and at 2,4,6 and 8 inches along the long side.  Don't forget to NOT fold down the back panel!

I based mine on a garden theme and guess what made another appearance...brushed gold cardstock and embossed gold powder, along with my favourite retired stamp set at the moment, elements of style.  I have used the very vintage wheel in crumb cake on the brushed gold cardstock to add a bit of texture.  The other card colour bases I used were pink pirhouette (also then with very vintage rolled onto it in blushing bride) and always artichoke for the leaves and grass - made out of little leaves sizzlits and a lot of snipping!

I gold embossed the apothecary art and the elements of style stamps onto watercolour paper, and I then watercoloured using blushing bride, strawberry slush, crisp canteloupe, pistachio pudding and always artichoke.

I've put it all together and added the finishing touches of Papillon Potpourri butterflies gold embossed onto velum, and coloured using blender pens and the same colour palette. I used a little flower wire for the larger butterfly to get is standing prouder.

I've left my greeting blank for now so that I can use it for a number of occasions......

I hope you like!x

Pretty Petals!

I came home from work the other day and my lovely husband had a surprise for me - he had found an old poetry book on our bookshelf full of pressed petals.  It's a lovely old book that I had picked up in a charity shop when I was in the throws of wedding planning two years ago - it didn't make it on to my wedding table plan - I used a more battered and stained book for that one (!)- but I did fill it with rose petals from our garden as a little experiment to see how they would come out.  I promptly (and helpfully) forgot anything about them.

Rediscovering them is a total treat - it worked brilliantly and I really wanted to get creative with them.  I had a little look online at pressed flowers/petal designs and couldn't find any inspiration - I didn't want to recreate a flower and that seems to be one of the only things I could find to do.  As you can see from my last card I'm loving the brushed gold card and the gold embossing powder at the mo so I wanted to use those again. The card base is brushed gold and them I layered up the petals using snail and tweezers onto a piece of scrap Very Vanilla measuring 5mm less than the card front in both directions. I used the browner petals at the edge first and then built in towards the middle with gradually more colourful flowers.  It needed glue dots for the final layer as snail would have ripped the petals.

It needed a little extra and I love the Papillon Potpourri butterflies.  I felt it needed to be translucent to compliment the flowers so I printed these on velum in embossed gold. I then used the blender pens with rose red and a little blushing bride/pink pirhouette to build up some colour before applying them with glue dots and here is the result.......voila! ;) I hope you like

I will definitely be pressing all my roses this year! :)

Thankyou butterflies

I really love the new butterfly punch and matching papillon potpourri stamp set. I used Island Indigo and Pool Party with Very Vanilla cardstock for this one, and added a little sparkle to my butterflies by heat embossing some iridescent ice powder on top whilst the ink was still wet. Completed with some rhinestone gems and a daubed piece of the brilliant new flower trim from the spring-summer catalogue

A quick Thankyou card....

This card is made using Cherry Cobbler, Chocolate Chip and Naturals Ivory cardstock, and the same colour inks. I used Papillon Potpourri stamp set for the butterflies, and immediately after stamping went over them with a blender pen to take some of the Chocolate Chip colour into the Naturals Ivory card, and I then used the Elegant Butterfly punch. The greeting is from the fantastic new
Sassy Salutations. My score board came in handy here for a bit of border and it wasn't complete without some bling from the Rhinestone Basic Jewels pack

Wedding scrapbook pages

These are two of the first pages I made for my wedding scrapbook. I have used Crumb Cake card, and the printing is all with Crumb Cake or VersaMark and then white Stampin Emboss Powder. The stamps I used are from 'Everything Eleanor', Papillon Potpourri, Papaya Collage and Viola's Lace. I have added a little foliage using the 'Little Leaves Sizzlets' die. I used the lovely new Elegant Butterfly' punch.