Feeling Sketchy #64

Hard to believe that it's been a month since I've been here but then I do remember a very BUSY three weeks.

Finally today has been  my own and so I decided that the first card was going to be something I could relax and enjoy doing. I've been looking at the Feeling Sketchy Challenges a few times - and entered once so here's my take on #64. The cameo is a cutout RAK

I have no girlie (daughter) influences in my sphere so my cards tend to be on the less flowery/ribbon side of things.

julie

Feeling Sketch Challenge #61

A friend challenged me to have a go at this - thanks Denise ... I think. Anyway this is the first ever challenge I've entered. However I'm not really sure that the vision and reality ended up the same. The cardstock is Cor'ordinations, the glitter is a Christmas glitter, the large snowflake from my stash.

... and here is the sketch

new idea for strip scraps

I was looking at a link that a card making friend had sent - when I had a K'Ching moment. We all have scraps - and some of us have LOTS of scraps. The link I was looking at was to do with adhering serviettes http://littlebirdiesecrets.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-make-napkin-card-and-be-hit-of.html but the example shown had me diving to my craft table. Many of the ideas for strip scraps need long scraps but my idea meant I could use up those very pretty - but SHORT papers in my collection.

As a teaser here is the first card I made.

So what did I do? Very embarrassing but this is my strips stash. First I divided some of them into colour groups - and came up with the colours for the first card. 

 

I took my widest DS tape 1" (2.5cm), adhered it to cardstock and trimmed that to size. After that I had fun laying them down. Don't worry if the strips go crooked. Just re-lay the next one straight and keep going. Any sticky gaps can be covered by glitter. This is what I ended up with before I trimmed the excess strips off. OK so I kept a couple of the longer scraps.  

Basically you then trim the covered strip and adhere to your card base. And you start reducing your scraps stash. After this I was on such a roll I made two more cards. The With Gratitude card was a 2.5" scrap that I put through the Xyron but I think both widths have their place on cards.  And yes I've made my first Christmas card

 




Thanks for looking

Julie

Easter card

I don't normally make Easter cards, but there is one young man I like to send too. He's probably too old for that sort of thing by now, but hey isn't our job to embarrass them  just a little bit?

I got the idea from Pinterest and stored it away for the right person. I adapted a little - the embossing folder is Cuttlebug Forest Branches, while the rabbit itself is from the spellbinders circle set and the bunny tail from Build a flower.

The legs were a bit more interesting to do - two small ovals from the coluzzle template and DH came to the rescue cutting the pink foot pads for me. The Easter greeting was too big for the front so is glued inside. 

Enjoy and have a safe and happy Easter

Julie

a fun afternoon

Just where does the time vanish to? March already. I've been busy (and making cards) but that's no excuse.

Ok where I live (in an apartment complex) we do door mail on our floor. That is we happily stick notes under each other's doors with reminders, requests for help that sort of thing. Any issues we knock on each other's doors - but that hasn't happened yet. This morning I woke up to some door mail from our immediate neighbour. After I'd read it, I turned it over to put on the bench - and immediately saw a card on the back of what she had written on.

So this is what I've done with it this afternoon - the stickers are all from my stash. Sadly I bought this Asian sheet BEFORE I'd taken to writing on the back where I bought it from However I do know that it is starform 920. Hold your horses I bought it from   http://www.creativecrafts.com.au/ - must have been at one of our craft shows.

So now I'm about to return her paper to her - hope she likes it.

Thanks for stopping by

Julie

Christmas cards!!!

It's with a sense of shock that I realise that Christmas will be well and truly over in just four months. To that end I'm trying to NOT have that last minute rush making my cards - and have made an early start. With a bit of luck this will reduce my panic sessions at the end ....maybe.

A card making friend of mine does wonderful things with the commercial Christmas cards that she receives - and of course that got this paper scrooge thinking this year. For some commercial cards it's almost criminal to throw them out. So to that end here are my first offerings from my commercial card stash.

  

I fell in love with the summer Santa image - well that's what we have here in Australia in December. The sand is a 'sand glitter', the ocean is a torn up calendar page and the sky chalked. The thong (flip flop) is in the wrong place and I only put in one because (a) I only had one left and (b) these things never get lost together! The seagull is the negative from a punch

The three Wise Men are cut, and embossed with a stylus then raised with pop dots. The three Christmas trees were just cut out and raised.

Thanks for stopping by

my latest card

Well it's been a while since I last posted ... but I do have a good excuse - two months in France! I have to admit I had an absolutely wonderful time and while there we met up with two sets of friends in Aix En Provence for a week. One lady had a birthday a couple of days after we returned to Oz and I was too jetlagged to be able to do anything for her in time. If you haven't had jetlag it's a bit like having the flu - SO not good.

Anyway today I've finished off a never ending card and put it in the mail for her. If you haven't heard of this it is simple as and has lots of sections for you to be able to decorate - really good for those milestone birthdays .. or if you want to surprise a friend.  Dawn gives the easiest explanation of the how to make this clever card.

Page one - stamping and rub ons.
Page two - the blank green is where my message went - although I didn't sign my name - secret squirrel! The wine glass is from the eyelet outlet ... a wonderful website that delivers very quickly anywhere in the 
world.

  Page three - memories of our travels and France

Page four - have to admit I was struggling to come with another idea. 

I've made one of these for a friend's 60th and this seems to work if you dedicate one 'page' to a part of each person's life. With a little preliminary planning these are very easy cards to make.

thanks for stopping by.

ps I've been playing with getting my image placements small enough to show them side by side so am currently on a learning curve - probably something that you shouldn't do in the middle of the night! Thanks to Na for your hint

Farewell cards

I've been meaning to post these but, as always, life gets busy. I do volunteer work at a military museum and we've had two lovely Canadian interns working with us for four months. Sadly their time came to an end and I was asked to make two different farewell cards that all the volunteers and staff could sign. Bit of a panic as I only had a day and a bit - and no inspiring thoughts for quite a while but here they are.

I coloured a scrap of mylar (sort of like OHT) with alcohol inks and overlaid it on a masked collage - problem was the white edges stood out a bit so I found some chalk and coloured the edges - if nothing else to beat them into submission (I think it worked). The butterfly and farewell are both cuttlebug dies while the oval is a spellbinders.

I hadn't worked with this intern quite as much so had to have a bit of a guess as to what she might like. The flower is a spellbinders rose and the background paper was a RAK from a friend. 

Thanks for looking  

backgrounds

I had a brain wave today - well you have to do something to take your mind off your very close visit to the dentist's chair! I was reading a magazine in the waiting room and in one article the 'subject' was saying that she loves her sewing and will sew/embroider anything using her sewing machine.... having just spent quite a few days at my machine - and ending up with an agonised back my first thought was no Jose!


But then I had one of those K-ching moments. Having survived my dental chair time it was back home and dragging out my green 'I'll do something with it one day' pile of scraps. And this is the result. Where it looks grey and green - it's actually shades of moss green. The dark green triangle is where the white background showed through. Maybe next time I'll make the X's smaller (I used a template here) 

Went to throw out all my scrap cutoffs and went nope - just keep going. I dug out a scrap of Jac paper and just started splotching scraps down where it 'looked' like they should be, and poured over ultrafine copper glitter. And bingo there you have it

ATC swap

Well after quite a few years I have finally bitten the 'bullet' and joined in my group's ATC swap this year.  Rather than two identical ATCs going to two different partners it is a series of two ATCs going to the one person. And while it does have me scratching my head I am enjoying the challenge. I still have a long way to go to catch up to some of the girls who do amazing work.


Here is my take on a stamped/collaged theme that recently arrived at my partner's letterbox.

The back ground is Asian themed and all the stamped components were RAK'd to me some years ago - sadly I don't use them often enough. The men are stamped onto the background, then onto lighter coloured Asian paper (I got a gorgeous stack from Fox Collection). I then heat embossed the red stamp and the coins are simply stickers. I had originally intended the two men to face each other but think this works better. I call them the judge and the thief.

My next ATC challenge is a shaped one. Scary!

using scraps

I have just finished my colour combo for my March swap. It gave me some grief at first being orange, green and brown - but I have just joined TechniqueJunkies and promptly went on technique overload after checking out their site. In the end I must have seen a picture ...somewhere - and came up with the end product - and I can't show it until my partner has it - sorry. I had pulled out my cuttlebug funky circle frame 37-1155 that rarely sees the light of day and simply went to town. My end product looks a bit different to these but if you have scraps or the funky circle frame it's an idea. I ended up with bits and pieces and decided that while I was surrounded by lots of sticky bits of orange and green of various hues it would be a good time to make up a couple of backgrounds. 

 I think the bottom one is still a WIP but the top one is ready to go onto a card that might suit it

fund raising cards

I support a couple of charities by making cards and sending to them to use however suits them best. One uses it as a fund raiser, while the other gives it to farmers in drought - guess when things are tough going buying greeting cards goes down in terms of importance.

Anyway my yoga instructor is hoping to get a raffle together to support Shave_for_a_Cure_Day and was looking for donations. I have offered a packet of hand made greeting cards and am  happily getting some together. I thought I would share this baby card that I've just finished making two of. It's quick to make - and I have another four 'babies' in reserve. The baby is a Cuttlebug die 37-1160 - must admit the flower bit gets a heavy work out for all those really small bits of leftover cardstock. The blue backing is a spellbinders Fleur_De-Lis that I don't use often enough, while the green paper has been sitting in my stash for some time. He looks like he's got food smeared over his chine but that's not in reality.

Hope this give you ideas for cards - not just baby cards

Julie

Backgrounds

I have been playing with stamped/collage backgrounds - not really my thing but I have a couple of swaps coming up. One site I looked at said just get your old bits and glue them on whichever way you feel like. Did that but wasn't overly impressed with my results. 

Showed the scan to a stamping friend and she went oh wow - use your image manipulation program and showed me a couple she had played with (NICE is all I say). So I used my image program  - in my case GIMP - it's free BTW. and here are my varied plays on the above scan.

Lightened - with shadows removed

Blurred

Smudged - fun! I got in touch with the 'inner child'

Pixelated - had a great time with this one - LOTS of different ways to play

And of course Sepia with edges feathered

Next to see what this looks like if I print one of them on canvas paper - question is which one should I print?

Try this - it definitely is fun!

tag 12 - final one!

Well I made it this year! The entire twelve tags. It seemed that this tag I had most of the stuff that Tim used - although I fudged on the tissue paper background and flower bit - and decided to go with a ballet shape rather than a fragments - like Tim says use what you have.


Probably the BEST thing I've used this year are my cuttlebug alphabet dies - curls and swirls, and fancy pants. And I do love Tim's Glossy Accents over Dimensional Magic.  


Almost a bit sad packing up my Christmas box - but hey now I can get back to other exciting projects.

Tag 11

I'm not sure about this one - suspect I used the wrong image - simply too small - and leaving way too much blank space. The tag itself was deceptively easy to make - whether that was for the flagging global crafters - or whether Tim was running out of energy - who knows


I'd have another go - but use up more space 

tag 10

Nearly there! This is the one I made by mistake earlier in the week - and did I enjoy doing this one. It's the first time I'd used the tiny postage stamp - why I don't know as it says North Pole Dec 25. I didn't have any of Tim's fragments but the copper frame has been rolling around my drawer for a couple of years and seemed to do the job perfectly. I used tissue tape that I bought months ago in preparation for this - and all i can say is thank goodness for my Cuttlebug alphabet dies. They have had more use in the last 10 days than for ages. And I finally found my tulle! 

Tag 9

I have had to hold off uploading as I was behind in making this one - and it's barely dry ATM. didn't quite come out like Tim's but the el cheapo blue cardstock now looks more like leather! The star has Crystallina Glitter over it. The leaves are the alcohol ink ones that Tim showed in tag 7 and just seemed to be perfect for this tag   

Tag #8

I am slowly getting there. And I have to say I'm enjoying this year's tags (I'm better prepared which helps. I was lucky with this one as I just seemed to have everything on hand to help - and I really can't live without my Glossy Accents - much better than DM I have to say. The tiny dove is actually a dark green, while the nib is actually a sticker from a sheet that I'd used for a friend's 60th. The hand I'm not overly impressed with (operator erroe) and it looks like they've been out gardening!

Tag #7

Things got busy there for a bit - but I'm back on track with these wonderful tags. I thought I'd made tag 7 yesterday - only to discover that I'd got ahead of myself and made number 10.

I did enjoy making this one - and took a fellow crafter's advice to make sure the leaves were dark enough to stand out. No glassine but heavy vellum worked just as well

Tag #5

I might have to try this one again one day - not sure I'm with the metallic paper concept - I used alfoil glued to cardstock. And the EP was called Bridal Tinsel - a friend gave it to me,