La Blackboard Francais

Ok, so I don't know the French for Blackboard, but if you say it with a French accent just like allo allo, then obviously you'll be understood but you must say it only wunz!   So enough with the 80s TV references and back to the card making.  The blackboard references all came about from this little challenge that the Head Mouse herself set over on the Waltzingmouse blog yesterday http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/monday-morning-make-technique-challenge.html to try out the blackboard technique that is popping up all over the internet.

I'd seen it before, but wasn't really sure it was for me - I was blackboard monitor at school and hated when I found a blackboard that hadn't been properly cleaned so the idea of deliberately smearing the pristinely stamped black card was a little difficult for me to get my head around.  However, I do love all things from the House of Mouse so I decided to jump in feet first, swim the channel to Paris and this is what I created:

I used the Eiffel Tower and the bracket swirl from Paris Nouveau and a couple of appropriately French sentiments from Compact Sentiments - stamped and embossed in detail white and then shadow stamped again using brilliance moonlight white ink.  I die cut using a large nestie and emphasised the embossed edge with a white pencil.  I added a few pink highlights around the images with a bright pink pencil and then very tentatively rubbed around the edges and under the words with a tissue and the white ink.  I mounted onto some love heart paper and mounted that onto black using a reverse corner rounder on both and added some contrasting dotted paper and ribbon in the middle.

The whole process was actually a lot less painful and much more enjoyable than I'd feared so thanks for forcing me into scary territory Claire!

Hydrangeas

It was my Mother's Birthday yesterday and I was really inspired by a scrapbook layout from the fabulously talented Gabriella Polaco a while back where she showed a great technique for making hydrangeas  http://gabriellepollacco.blogspot.ca/2012/03/welcome-spring-with-pretty-bloom.html  My mum loves flowers of any kind so I knew an interpretation of her scrapbook layout would make a great card for her and this is what I came up with (sorry the colours are really off - the base card is much more pink than the red it seems here so does go much nicer with the blooms - but as the grey skys refuse to move we're back to fake light photos!)

Here is a close up of the pot (cut from a cricut cartridge, as was the branch) which does show the flowers in more realistic colours - they were cut with a MS punch from dotty bazil card and glued on with pinflair glue with a liquid pearl centre.

The frame for the sentiment is waltzingmouse and the sentiment is computer generated using the new scriptina front which I much prefer as they've fixed the kerning issues.  The little bird was fussy cut from some freebie papers with one of the magazines this month.

I can report that it went down very well and has pride of place on the mantelpiece :-)

I am entering the following challenges:

Moving along with the times - Flowers or Garden
Little Darlings - Flowers
Prairie Fairy Fridays - Anything with flowers
Aud Sentiments - Anything Goes
Simon Says - Anything Goes

4th Birthday

It's my local craft shop's 4th Birthday this week - the very fabulous Craft Den - and today they are celebrating with a demo day- Lynne the owner is demonstrating the Grand Calibur (on sale at a very special birthday price, better than any I can find on the internet if you fancy one) and she has Kay from Indigo Blu stamps doing lots of lovely demonstrations until about 4pm today.

Naturally a card was required and as I just picked up the spellbinders labels from the Den a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd use them and the tropical leaf cheery lyn dies as the basis for the card.

I used my favourite of the new Waltzingmouse release stamps which co-ordinate with the label die and the matching border to create the background for the large 8x8 card.  The colours were from last weeks Colour Throwdown but I wasn't quick enough getting it done to join the challenge.  The sentiment is from Imagine That.  I made the felt flower by cutting out 3 flowers using a marianne flower die and folding them into 3rds and sticking together for dimension.  The 4 is a chipboard letter covered in the same felt as the flower.

I am entering this into this weeks Annabelle stamps challenge which is to create your own background with stamps and not to use DP.  http://annabellestamps.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/say-it-witha-stamped-background.html

LIM Masking

This week's challenge at LIM is masking  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/week-59-theme.html

I'm still feeling really dizzy and have been off work all week and am signed off for another while we try to get my high blood pressure under control.  The dizzyness is caused by the meds and HOPEFULLY will lessen as I get used to them but they doubled the dose on Friday and I feel like I'm back to square one!  Back again on Tuesday so we'll see what they say then....   Am getting pretty cheesed off as I haven't managed more than about an hour in my craft room in the last 8 days and can only manage 10 minutes here and there online before I feel dizzy again, so I'm sorry I've not been reciprocating your visits this week.

I was determined to try this weeks challenge and managed a quick card this morning before the meds kicked in.

I used my new Paris themed stamps from Waltzingmouse, stamped the Eiffel tower in black, masked it and stamped the border strip twice in green (I think it's a design from the metro).  Added a simple sentiment and a couple of floral gems to finish.

Thanks for visiting and sorry if I don't get back round again this week.  I'm really missing visiting my blogging buddies :-(