My Craft Studio Samples for 6th Anniversary

Hello, I hope everyone is well and crafting away.

I am still on holiday while starting this post and the launch show for the My Craft Studio 6th Anniversary CD set hasn't happened yet.  As usual, my timing for going away meant that instead of having over two weeks to do the samples, I had one weekend and a couple of evenings!  I was just a bit rushed ... especially when Diane asked if we could do ten samples rather than the usual six. I did actually say that I wasn't sure I could fit in ten, but did a couple of quickies to make it up to ten. I'm sure you will be able to tell which they were!

Be warned ... this is a mega post with loads of pictures!

First up a gift bag which has been shown briefly with the card that goes with it both from the Woodland Wonders CD.  This is literally just the image with some wording placed over it, then in the software faux matting and layering on a nice bright background and printing it off on A4 paper.  Here's the front and back of the bag:

The card that went with it was one of the quick cards I did, it is a shrunk down (A5) version of the front of the bag with the wording changed and an extra couple of layers of faux matting done on MCS.  I added a bit of glitter and one of my home made little ladybirds (more about those later) and that was it:

The next sample was one that I thought of straight away when I saw the backing paper image from the Treasured Teddies CD.  I printed the whole sheet of backing paper as the card, folded it length ways and then cut two Classic Ovals (small) out of the blue colour and one Opulent Oval out of the cream.  I used a nestie shape font I have, made it large enough to cut the oval out of and then used the dropper tool to colour the blue (or cream) so it exactly matched the backing card.  Then I messed around with shapes until I got the Happy Birthday right and cut it out.

This next one you may have seen on Facebook or on the show.  I was quite shocked when I saw it on Facebook as the one that Stephanie had picked out of the sample box as when I made it the middles of the smaller flowers looked a bit rough, so I filled them with glitter and thought "as long as no one sees a close up it will be fine"!  That'll teach me!  

The large roses are from the CD, the small flowers are from the Tattered Lace Sentiment Florals die set, the large leaves are from the Bitty Blossoms set and the small leaves are also from the Tattered Lace Sentiment Florals set.  On the bright side everyone gets to see my little home made ladybirds that I made with black and red pearl pens.  I have put a picture below so you can see them 'in progress' so there's a couple of 'naked' ladybirds who haven't had their spots yet.  You are supposed to use an extra, extra fine nib for the black pen, but I can't get hold of one that fits the pen so that's why they all have only three spots, it's all I can fit on.

This next card was my favourite out of all the samples, it was taken from the All About Lace CD.  I used a piece of the backing paper and then used the dropper tool (in the text menu, the same as for the Happy Birthday card with the ovals) to make a large piece of card to match the backing paper colour.  Then I embossed the plain piece using Sue Wilson's Heart Lattice Embossing Folder and covered the join with a strip of card cut with the Classic Bracket Edgeabilities.  Then I measured the inside of the Floral Oval die and punched out an oval in the software so on the page there was just a printed oval in the middle of a plain white page.  Then I cut out the printed oval using the Floral Oval die and about eight Tattered Lace Elegant Flourishes.  I glued the Elegant Flourish pieces down first, then using the highest foam tape I had matted the Floral Oval on the top.  To finish off I printed off the Happy Birthday (actually it was on the bottom of the oval page so I didn't waste too much card) and then cut it out with the little tails.  Good job you can't see the back of that bit as it has all my measuring in pencil!

Five down ... five to go!

Next is another matching set, a gift bag and a card.  This is from the Music and Dreams CD and I had the idea of a card for someone leaving with a gift bag.  So first we have the gift bag, I have seen this on one of the shows today and it seemed to be in the way ... it kept getting moved from one end of the desk to the other!  This gift bag (like the top one) was bought from Hobbycraft and then I added a few real layers this time rather than doing it on the software.  Although you can't see very well from my pictures I have printed off a sheet of backing paper - one sheet did both sides then cut it down and used Flitter Glu and Flakes on the outside, the next layer is gold mirri card then the next layer is the topper which I added the wording to and also some extra notes from a music font.  I prettied the brown bag up a bit with some gold florists ribbon that I had from a couple of Christmases ago.

Here's the matching card to go with the bag.  The card is 8x8 and I used the same font and image, but just made the whole thing larger and matted it on gold mirri card.  This was one of the quick cards - so no Flittering on this one!

This next one was also made using the Music and Dreams CD ... bit of a different look though!  I had the idea for this early on but it just didn't quite work somehow - and I should have used a different coloured sentiment or at least printed it on the card using the software.  I used the Sizzix Paper Rosettes dies and used gilding flakes on the edges of the rosettes.  The rosettes are actually coloured to match the background, but I went a bit mad with the Flitter Glu so the gold covered up most of the background colour. 

Sample number nine was one of the quick cards again made from the Treasured Teddies CD.  It is an A5 card that I printed straight on to super smooth 300gsm, I added the sentiment in the software and used lots of glitter, a few gems and a sort of bow made out of that spidery web stuff (not quite sure what it's called).

And finally, as they say on the news, there was one last quick card to complete the set.  This one is another A5 card taken from the All About Lace CD.  Again I printed the image straight on to the card then added gems and pearls.  The rose was decoupaged and glittered to give a bit of dimension - but I actually really liked this one when it was done.

Phew ... all done!  I am back from holiday now so have come straight in, put the washing on and finished the blog!  Hopefully I will be able to watch a full show now.

Hope you like the samples, let me know what you think.  Thanks for reading.