Excited :-)

I have just spotted in the new release of Penny Black T is for Transparent sets that one of my all time favourite stamp deisgners "Elzybels" appears to be designing for them.

http://pennyblackinc.com/display_item.php?PID=6962&CAT=RStransparentsets

I have this set from when Elzybels had her shop and I DEARLY hope that this means we're going to see some new designs from her coming our way thanks to Penny Black as I was sooooo sad when she closed her shop.  That would make me a very happy bunny indeed!!!!

CAS Flashback Friday

At flashback Friday this week they want us to refeature our first clean and simple card - for me that was an easy find - it's the first LIM challenge I played in last year.   It was the first one layer week and it had to feature flowers - here's my card:

It was done my masking and stamping with two inks onto a DL card using my beloved Elzybels stamps - still miss that store!

And here's a link to the original post from last February http://craftilicious-yorkshire.blogspot.com/2011/02/simply-less-is-more.html

CAS Frosting and a Cute Baby

I've seen a few people doing this frosting technique online so thought I would give it a go to make another entry for this weeks LIM challenge - trying to help them get to 1000 entries.

I scored some lines but in retrospect this should have been a bit higher up for balance and stamped my sentiment inbetween.  I stamped the fern in rich cocoa, cleaned the stamp quickly and stamped over the top with frosted white and gently smudged with my finger to get the frosted effect.  I stamped the goldenrod over the top in black and did the same frosted white smudging technique.  I really like the effect but it doesn't show up well with the flash unfortunately.  I think this would make a great masculine card.  All stamps are by Elzybels (sadly no longer trading)

I'm also entering this into The Secret Crafters's One Layer Challenge

I'm also sharing another card which I made for a friend who's little boy arrived early last week - no CAS enough for a LIM entry but I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  Love this range of stamps (Fizzy Moon) and have just got the Christmas ones.  I coloured him on kraft and paper-pieced the star and ribbons and went very spotted with dp, ribbon and papers.  The mum got it today and is thrilled.

 I'm entering the baby card in Cute Card Thursday's Anything Goes Challenge and Crafty Ribbons Anything Goes Challenge

See you tomorrow :-)

CASual Embossing

This week's challenge at CASual Friday's is to use embossing, either dry or heat.  I made one card with purely dry embossing on Friday evening, but really wanted to play with my heat gun on Saturday and had planned a little series of mini cards to go to the craft sale for St Luke's this coming weekend.  However, one of my jobs on Saturday was to book tickets for our favourite comedian who is doing a few extra gigs at the National Theatre for a show we missed out on getting tickets for a few weeks ago - tickets went on sale at 9.30 am and I FINALLY secured mine at 4.17 pm precisely, after numerous screen refreshers on the laptop and frustrated redails on the phone.  Needless to say, this somewhat curtailed my crafting plans.....

I did manage one mini card, and will all the prep for the craft sale still left to do, it looks like he will be on his loansome so I thought I'd share him now and stop pretending I'll find time to make him any friends this week.

The plant and sentiment are both from an Elzybels set (sadly no longer trading) which were stamped with versamark and embossed with extra fine copper ep.  I then dry embossed a strip of kraft card using a border embossing folder and it isn't showing up too well on the photo but I added a copper rub-on cream to the raised areas to match the embossing powder.  I may make a set of these at a later date as I think they could make very useful little cards with a variety of sentiments.

Catch you later, Craftilicious x

Sprinkle Stardust

This card is for a friends birthday which is today - so Happy Birthday Linda!  It's the first time I've tried the masking technique to get a background image behind a character - I've used backgrounds before, but I've cut the character out and stuck them on.  My alignment was slightly out, so she's not quite sitting on the wall properly, but it's close enough for it not to have ended up in the scrap bin.

I love this image, with all the glitter, and the sprinkle stardust sentiment is just right. (sorry not sure where I got this stamp again - I must try harder to note down when I buy stuff!)  I coloured the image with copics and added definition, particularly to the grass which is a bit thin for copics, with my Faber & Castell Polychromos Artists Pencils (unfortunately I don't have this great big beautiful box, just a handful of individual ones)  These are great pencils which blend really well with sansoder.

The Happy Birthday sentiment and the bird on a branch are both Elzybels stamps, which are no longer available so no link - sorry.  It was quite refreshing to go straight onto a card without any background papers for a change.

As this is my favourite Magnolia image, in no small part due to the fact that it requires you to add lots of my favourite embellishment in the form of glitter for the stardust, I am entering this card into the My favourite things challenge on the Just Magnolia & Hanglar and Stanglar Challenge Blog

Antipodean Wedding Card

I made this card for a friend whose sister is getting married on December 1st on Hamilton Island in Australia (the one from Murial's Wedding).  I made a box card, with a picture of the love heart reef which is just off Hamilton Island as the background image, a Magnolia arbour stamped and cut out as the middle ground, and an Elzybels bride and groom stamped a cut out on the frame in the foreground.   I used my new copic sketch colours from the 0000 range - the more 0's the paler the colour - perfect for snow and wedding dresses!  I stamped extra flowers from the Magnolia arbour and stuck them over a MarianneD swirl.  The side view below shows the layers a little clearer.

Floral Fervour

Just a quick post tonight featuring my favourite floral stamps from Elzybels.  I really love these stamps as they are so versatile - here used for birthday, wedding acceptance and even a sympathy card.  In all these cards I've used a multi-coloured stamping technique - either stamping difference dew drop ink pads directly onto the stamp to give a patchwork coloured effect as on the daisy, or with a brayer and a big and juicy multicoloured ink pad on the dandelion clock.  I used Elzybels really useful word stamps, Martha Stewart punches and some simple matting and layering to finish the cards.

 

Lots of new stamps

I've been a bit carried away with rubber stamping recently, mainly due to following a great card makers blog from America - Paula Tracey - her cards are amazing and her colouring techniques from copic markers or prisma colour pencils and blending tools are hard to beat. I don't really have any of her artistic skills but I'm practicing hard.



The first card is a sugar nellie stamp coloured with copics, the background is pencil coloured and blended with sansoder with a star and swirl backgorund stamp.

My second card was a mothers's day card for my aunt and god mother. A cute magnolia girl coloured with copics and gently glittered with fairy dust, sitting on a nestabilities lable frame, with a martha stewart border punch and one of the gorgeous new flower stamps from elzybels a her circular happy mothers day sentiment.

New Elzybels Stamps

With mother's day approaching fast, my delivery of the new Elzybels "floral flourish" stamps could not arrive quick enough. It came yesterday and I didn't have much time to play last night but this is my first card made with them.
Can't wait for a bit of time this weekend to make some more - and if I concentrate, they might even not all turn out pink.........