Gold Camp

So yes, I am Summer Card Camp 2 participant, and this card is inspired by Jennifer Rzasa's die cutting technique, and yes, that was back in week one and yes, it's now week 3 and the class is almost over - did I mention I'd been busy this month?!?!?   I've been watching the videos each evening whilst taking a bath to cool down in the heat (with my laptop perched on the toilet lol!) but I've not had time to try any of the cool stuff I'd learnt - until now - so I'm playing catch up this weekend hopefully!

This is also my entry for this week's CASology challenge where the cue word is gold - I thought making a golden wedding card would be the perfect opportunity to play with the double-die-cutting on my letters.  The dies are memory box are were a half price bargain at Summer Crafting at Doncaster the other weekend - cut from gold card stock, and then I cut a bit out of each letter with the next letter in the word at different heights to add interest.  I gold embossed the word wedding (PTI quilled elegance) and the edge of the kraft panel before mounting to a kraft base card. 

A 'touch' of gold

It's blog hop day today at PTI and the theme is a touch of gold - I may well have gone a bit OTT on the "touch" as I embossed in gold and then decided to colour in with gold stickles! 
http://nicholeheady.typepad.com/capture_the_moment/2013/06/june-2013-blog-hop-challenge.html

I covered 2/3 of my base card with a soft eau-de-nile green DP (has a subtle pattern that isn't showing up on the photo) and then stamped and embossed the double border stamp from quilled elegance in gold.  I rotated the stamp half way across to get the full width of my card letting the image fall off the edge on the right.  I stamped and embossed the sentiment from the same set to match.  

I probably should have stopped there - it was elegant, with just a hint of gold.  But no, not me, it seems I can't do "subtle" and gold together.   I decided to colour in the quills using gold stickles and my all time favourite stickles colour "patina" to match into the eau-de-nile.   Hope I didn't overdo the touch of gold too much - I have to say it is far prettier and less in your face in real life as the light has made it look super sparkly in the photo here.

Tilted!

This month's PTI Blog Hop required designs to be tilted, and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to play with Quilled Elegance as I fell in love with that set as soon as I saw it but haven't played with it nearly enough yet.  http://nicholeheady.typepad.com/capture_the_moment/2013/04/april-2013-blog-hop.html

I wanted to colour it with shimmer paints (luminarte) so started in the centres with a spiced red, then pumkin orange, and a bright yellow, with just a little hint of lime green - it ended up looking quite psychadelic (not my original intention but I really like the finished result!)   I used peart tart ink for the sentiment to bring the green in a little more.  I think I might add a few little green gems too to match the shimmer (honestly it shimmers lots but I just can't get it to photograph!) - or perhaps its better as a flat card for mailing.  What do you reckon?  Bling or no bling?  Yeah, Shakesapeare got it wrong - THAT really is the question ;-)

As this is a CAS one layer card - it's also my entry for this week's Paper Players Challenge http://thepaperplayers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/paper-players-challenge-142.html

Hi Ho Silver!

That's the challenge at CASual Friday's this week - to use silver on your project.   Well I was totally inspired by this awesome card by Clare Buswell - but I don't have her patience for such dedicated glue pen use - so I had an idea to use embossing for a similar effect and here's the results:

I dry embossed a 300 gsm sheet of white cardstock using the rose embossing folder (cart-us) and dusted it with powder tool.  Then I inked up my brayer with versamark and gentle ran the brayer all over the raised area taking care not to press too hard to preserve the white background.  I covered the whole sheet with WOW detail silver embossing powder and heat set it.

I decided to pair it with the new Quilled Elegance stamp set from PTI.  I stamped and embossed one of the stamps from it onto the same heavy card stock and added a sentiment from a Simon Says Stamp set in the gap.   I fussy cut the quill - mounted it onto a white card base and then filled in the quill with silver stickles for a different silver sparkle.  I finished with a few pearls in the rose centres and some corner rounding.

 I think it would make a gorgeous wedding or anniversary card and really like the double embossing technique so I'm going to try it on some other folders and see what happens....