Smile! Kristina's 50th CIC!!

Wow! 50 colour challenges!!! That's some serious dedication to the blogging world, and we all love and appreciate Kristina's inspirational designs. She dedicates a serious amount of time to her blogging and YouTube folllowers and I can only live in awe...I'm lucky if I get to post once a week, and I've only managed to take part in one of Kristina's colour challenges before (see this post).

I decided to do another circular card and add some big scallops around the edge.  I added some doodling - in brown ink - so no rules broken!! ;0) just to give the edge a little more more interest. 

I also loved Kristina's idea of stapling and folding ribbon as she beautifully demonstrates on her card here.  It was a bit fiddly at first, but I soon got used to it and I loved the effect! I will definitely be using this technique again!

I jazzed up a bit of plain vellum by staining it with the same yellow colour as the yellow base card. I love the way this gives off a yellow 'shadow' when the light shines through it.

Below is the video tutorial of me making this card. It is best viewed in high quality, so press play, then click on the HQ button in the bottom right of the video. If you enjoy it, please go over to my YouTube page and rate & subscribe. Thanks for watching ;0)

Thanks!! In bloom...

This card was inspired by the cards me and my Mom made together last weekend. I used the flower dies to create a flower border surrounding the card.
I did this card in a really girly pink - not my usual colour choice, but I can't use kraft coloured cardstock for everything (much as I love it!).

The video is double speed, because this card wasn't the quickest card in the world. Sometimes it's nice to do labour intensive cards, because they are so worthwhile at the end, but I wouldn't recommend this for creating large batches of cards - it's definitely a one-off card, for a special occasion. Enjoy the video, and as always, click on the HQ button on the video to watch this in its highest quality.

A crafty weekend with Mom...

 

Mom and I got together this weekend for a few days just us girls. Mom is very new to cardmaking, so she asked me to give her a  few tips and show her some techniques...so we went to my local craft shop, spent far too much on some lovely craft goodies, and then between us we came up with these designs.....my wonderful talented Mom picks things up quick, don't you think?!?

The 'congrats' was using chipboard stickers, then inked them up with some red ink, poured clear embossing powder over the wet ink, heated it, then stuck the stickers onto the card. Beware when using this technique - the combination of the embossing powder and the heating, usually ends up that the stickiness of the stickers is lost, but that's quickly solved with some glue!

This card is simply demonstrating how you can use a few basic colours, lifted with some patterned paper, to create a really quick and effective card. Mom enjoyed making this - she LOVES those chipboard stickers ;o)

This is a close up of the card below. Mom wanted to have a play with my Cuttlebug, so we took some patterned paper and a really expensive (not!) cereal box and die cut this flower shape then adhered it to the card using a matching brad. If you cut the paper and the cardboard at the same time, you get a really crisp die cut, that you just glue together, giving your patterned paper the strength it needs to be a stand-alone topper. I'm still convinced that the best 'chipboard' you can use in the Cuttlebug is cut up cereal boxes - and it's far cheaper than buying the proper stuff by the sheet! 

The stamped image is done by inking up the stamp, stamping it once on a bit of scrap paper, then stamping it onto the card. This gives a more subtle stamp effect - great for building a background with.

I intend on using some of the techniques we used here and doing a couple of videos, but I couldn't do any over at the weekend, cos we had to use my dining room to do our crafting - my craft area is too small for two people.

Well I hope you've enjoyed seeing what me and my mom got up to over the weekend, check back later this week for a video tutorial - I filmed a couple tonight, but I need to edit and publish them to YouTube and that takes a while....

DIY photo corners

This is just a short tutorial on how to make your own photo corners. I was shopping about for some for my wedding albums, and I was shocked at how expensive they were for something so simple.

So I had a play about and came up with this method of making them using just a 2" square punch....

These were just some I knocked up really quickly, but they look like the shop bought ones. You can even play about with the size - use a bigger initial square or cut a deeper notch - or not even cut out a  notch at all - just have a diagonal photo corner.

Don't forget to click on the HQ button in the right hand corner of the video - this improves the quality no end.

Please head over to YouTube to rate and subscribe ;0)

Swirly flower card - one for the girls!! (for once!)

I know I probably shouldn't blow my own trumpet, but I really love this card, even if I do say so myself! And it was a fairly quick card to think up and make. I think it took about half an hour all told.
I just love the patterned paper I used in it, really diggin the swirls. And it had been a while since I got my Tim Holtz design ruler out to paper pierce some faux stitching, I really made up for it on this one by creating a whole frame with this effect.
Below is the video tutorial for this project. I tried to make it a little shorter than usual, by speeding up some of the slower scenes. I hope it adds rather than takes away from the overall tutorial.

Thanks for watching - please rate & subscribe over at YouTube!

PS: If you follow this link over to YouTube, and click on the little 'HQ' icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video, you can watch this in higher quality (recommended).