Hi everyone
Hope you all had a great week. I went to the Great British Craft Festival last weekend and had a really good time. What I particularly liked was that it was nearly all paper crafts rather than painting or sewing. I saw lots of lovely demonstrations and (as usual) spent too much money! The shuttle bus was a bit of a saga though, the hosts asked us to get on the bus on the way there but almost everyone around said they would rather walk the ten or so minutes to the show, the lady next to me called over that it would be a different matter when we were on the way back with all our goodies and we all laughed. So I went round my first Stoneleigh Craft show and had a good time, came out and hopped on a bus almost immediately which was great as I was taking my mum to lunch. The bus just said 'shuttle bus' on the front and when about 9 or so people were on board we set off on what should have been a two minute journey ... except the driver left the Stoneleigh site! A lady called to the driver and asked where he was going and he replied 'to the station' .... what!?!?! which station?!?! how far away was it?!??! were just some of the questions asked. It turns out that we had to go to Coventry Station which was 20 or so minutes away, wait at the station for 20 minutes and then drive back 20 minutes, what a faff. I felt very sorry for the lady whose son was upset and waiting with her husband in the car park and she couldn't get back to him. That will teach me to take the lazy way and not walk back to the car park!
Anyway on with the cards; these are for a My Paper Stash show that should be on Create and Craft today, I hope you like them.
First up was a nice simple card where I chose one of the pop out sentiments then went to the Papercraft Library - Paper Words CD and faded out two papers so they would match the sentiment. I printed them back to back and then cut down the centre so I could fold back the paper and pop the sentiment in. I did mess up a little bit in that I stuck down the paper near the fold back which meant I almost couldn't tuck the sentiment in, but managed to wiggle it in just enough. To finish off I added some Card Candi and a button with some bakers twine knotted in it.
I loved making this card which actually started off with the paper, rather than the sentiment. I found the paper on the 6th Anniversary All About Words CD and just had to use it. This card is really quite big, so I had to make the card out of two pieces of A4 card, it's like a pumped up DL! I inked round the sentiment and the main image and stuck the main image on to some lovely card from Pink Frog Crafts (can't remember what it's called as I bought it quite a while ago). I made the flower buds out of the smallest Delicate Aster flower, inked then cut in half an rolled and stuck it under one of the leaf flourishes from the Cut Matt Create die sets. I made up two of the next sized up Asters, again inked and added a pearl, then arranged the leaves and flowers over the image, and not a hint of glitz or glitter in either of the first two cards.
Now this card had LOADS of glitter! The main image comes from the Papercraft Library - Paper Words CD again and as soon as I saw the snowflake image I knew I had to use it. I matted and layered using the same colour as the snowflake and then used come Cosmic Shimmer PVA glue dots in silver glitter round the outside of the white layer (even though they look dirty grey in my pictures). I went round one of the pale teal layers with the edge of a chisel tip glue pen and added some glitter and carefully used a Quickie Glue Pen on the centre element and added silver glitter to the writing already on the image. I used one of the sentiments from the pad and cut it into a circle first of all, but that looked a bit boring, so changed it to the scallop shape using a Little B die. To make the snowflake rosette I printed off an A4 sheet in the same pale teal colour and stamped it all over in silver glitter using a Chloe Snowflake background stamp and then cut out four pieces from the Brenda Walton Snowflake Medallion die. I think I should actually have cut out less, so the medallion wasn't quite so folded, so you could see the stamping a bit more. To finish it off I used some Chloe Sparklicious Glitter on the edges for a bit more bling. Finally I punched out some snowflakes, some from silver glitter paper and some from the waste from the pale teal matting and layering that I covered in glitter, a couple of gems and it was done.
This card came from the Wonderful Wordbooks CD and I had forgotten how much fun wordbooks are. I love the way that these print off and fold over giving you both sides of the letter. All I added to the whole wordbook were some pop out sentiments (cut in a Labels 4 shape and on a Labels 4 matt) and some keys from the Spellbinders Lacy Hearts set. The waste from the middle of the keys I used as hearts on the Home is Where the Heart is page. To finish it off I inked round the letters and the sentiments a bit to give them some definition and then stuck it all together.
This is another really sparkly card but there's no glitter! The image is taken from the Simply Sentiments CD and then chopped down so you just have the three hearts made out of roses (the pictures make the images look much brighter than they really are, in real life they look a much softer colour). I cut a frame out with Jus-Cutz Rectangle dies and matted it on some soft pink card. I covered the main image in a sticky sheet and then put Cosmic Shimmer (I think it's Iced Snow) on top of the whole image then rubbed it in with my fingers until there wasn't a shower of bits coming off each time. Then I added the sentiment on top of a tulle knot (so I didn't have to do a bow) and finally added some gems that I bought from Joanna Sheen absolutely ages ago.
Last up is a really bright happy card made from the Simply Sentiments CD. I actually did this one in Craft Artist rather than MCS as I wanted to change the colour of the big pink balloon to a yellow one, so it wasn't quite so obvious that I had chopped down the image then flipped it and stuck it together. I used Die-Namics Pierced Fishtail Flags dies to cut out the sentiment and the bottom shapes that I had printed out in colours that matched the balloons in the main image. To finish it off I added some confetti balloon shapes that I have had in my stash for years.
Although I used Craft Artist on the last card, looking at all the CDs to do these cards, it did remind me how good the images are on MCS CDs, some of them are really beautiful and I have earmarked some of them for up and coming cards I need to make.
Only one blooper this time; I wanted a snowflake shaped sentiment so found a die big enough and cut it out, completely forgetting that snowflakes are lacy and the die laced right through the sentiment leaving me with just a couple of black lines that you couldn't read ... doh!
Have a great week everyone and thanks for reading.
