A single rose...

I am beginning to find this blogging lark quite addictive.  I used the ClarityStamp rose and stencil from the New Design Club for this birthday card.

Here is the gelli print background once I had added some extra colour.  Not again!  Can you see my inky paw print?  Oh dear...  I really didn't want to start again, so I'll need to hide that later.

 

 
Next step was to stamp out the roses onto some old book pages and colour them in.

 

The plan was to include a little keepsake with this card, and I thought this rose would look great decoupaged as a fridge magnet.  I glued the old book pages to some Grungepaper for this.  Here are all the layers.

 

 

Here I have added a Claritystamp sentiment, and glued the roses into place.  I put a little magnet under the rose at the bottom right to hold the fridge magnet in its place.

 

 

I painted the decoupaged rose with crackle glaze and added a tiny bit of glitter to highlight it.

 

 

 

Remember my inky paw print?  As I didn't want to trim the white border around the gelli print, I added the bow and charm instead to hide it.  Although it wasn't part of my original plan, I don't think it looks too bad.  What do you think?  Until next time.  Xxx 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happiness is...

The basis for this card was a simple gelli print using the Claritystamp Dotty Wave and Leafy Swirl stencils.  I then added some extra colour with Tumbled Glass and Dusty Concord Distress Inks.

 

 

I was keen to do something a bit different with this one, so I decided to cut it up into squares.  I have to say I did wonder if I was doing the right thing when I started chopping it up.  Here it is roughly laid out. 

 

 

I don't think it needed anything other than a Claritystamp sentiment, and a butterfly made from Angelina film and fibre.  And...  even though I love the effect of the tiling, I don't think I'll be rushing to repeat the exercise.  Its not that easy to mount everything to such a degree of accuracy.  Not for me anyway!  Until the next time.  Xxx

 

Love and Romance

For this month's Claritystamp challenge entry I decided to use the beautiful Garden Heart stamp.  I stamped the heart in Black archival and embossed the line art.  Then rather than colouring in the flowers, I coloured in the background with a red promarker.

 

Then I masked off a border, again stamping with black archival, but I didn't emboss this time.  And yes, I missed a bit!  Thank goodness I'll be covering that up in a minute.  This time I coloured in the flowers with the red promarker, being careful not to make the archival ink bleed, and finished the edges with a black micron pen. 

 

 

The finished card.  I wanted to keep this very simple and dramatic, so I mounted the heart onto red and black card, and just added a few red gems.  I hope you like it.  Good luck to everyone with your challenge entries this month.

 

 

 

 

Be the Change you wish to see in the world..

Well here goes.  I thought I would use my January ClarityStamp Challenge card for my first ever blog post.

I already had an idea about how I wanted the finished project to look before I did these gelli prints as the basis for this project.   

 

Here you can see my first attempt on the left.  Not what I wanted at all;  too much brown and too grungy I thought.  I made the colour scheme a lot softer and more feminine in the finished artwork, and used the leafy swirl to create interest and pattern without being too overwhelming.

 

The finished card.  Hope you like it.  The start of a new year is always a time when we think about change.  I love this sentiment;  it reminds me that any time can be the right time to accept and embrace changes in my life.  Thanks for reading, and for your inspiration, support and encouragement on this creative journey.  Until the next time.  Love  xxx