Monthly Archives: November 2014

My first ever sequin for a technique Tuesday

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Last week I shared a card which had my first brad. Here’s one that I made on the same day with my first sequin! I got the idea for this one from Eimear Carvill, my sister’s upline. It uses the Stampin’ Up! Bright and Beautiful stamp set and a technique called emboss resist.

Stampin' Up! Bright and Beautiful emboss resist on navy

I rubbed some whisper white cardstock with the embossing buddy and then embossed it in white embossing powder. I got a sponge and my night of navy ink and, after dabbing some of the excess onto scrap paper, lightly sponged the ink onto the centre of the star. The water based inks will not colour the embossed part, hence emboss resist. Be cautious with this – you can always add more ink, you can’t remove it! As the ink was being used up, I sponged towards the points of the star so that I had a paler blue towards the points. I added more ink until I was happy with the result. Next I cut the image out with the matching star framelit and also cut the same size out of the silver glimmer paper which I then cut down the middle. Next I used the embossing buddy on my night of navy card stock and embossed the greeting, also from the Bright and Beautiful stamp set, in silver. I do appear to be hooked on embossing in metallics for Christmas cards; I’ll have to challenge myself to make one without any.

After this, it was a simple matter of construction. I pulled the silver glimmer star apart and placed the embossed star on top. I did have to fuss with it a bit and now that I look at it again, it’s not perfect. I’ll just have to make it again! I put a dab of the tombow glue on the back of a sequin and, using tweezers, positioned it in the centre of the star. You don’t recognise the sequins? They are the Frosted Sequins from the holiday catalogue.

Stampin’ Up! Swallowtail

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Last week I was creating a card for the Pals Paper Arts Challenge and I used the Stampin’ Up! Swallowtail stamp set. Whilst I was making it, I needed an insert for the inside of the card to hide where the blendabilities had bled through. I first tried stamping the butterfly in old olive but it was rather in your face on opening the card so I used crushed curry instead. But I saved the old olive version since I think it looks rather majestic. This stamp set is sold as one of the background stamps but personally I can’t see using it as a background, it deserves to be the focal point of the card. I took my butterfly and adhered it to an old olive base. I lined the envelope with the backgrounds DSP brights in old olive.

swallowtail old olive

Stamping this in just the one colour gives a totally different look from last week’s card. Whilst I was considering what to do last week, I looked up Swallowtail butterflies on wikipedia and was amazed by the enormous range of colours. I can see that I am going to play with this stamp quite a lot! I also really like the monochromatic look of this card and think that I’ll try this in a few other colours – even though these may not be true to life. I think that a number of these monochromatic cards in different colours would make a nice gift.

Happy Birthday with (surgical) spirit

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I went to a class at Jen My Upline’s house recently; it was one in her series of blendability classes – one colour each time. This was daffodil delight but the thing that I really loved was learning a new technique. You start by running your cardstock through the big shot in an embossing folder; I used the Stampin’ Up! beautifully baroque one. I love the texture but have previously struggled to incorporate it into a card because it’s quite loud. I think that this technique softens it although I know it’s not to everyone’s taste.

You start off by scribbling on some plastic (a cello bag is perfect) in your blendability markers. Interestingly I used the cherry cobbler ones here. Yes, really. And no, the photography isn’t way off! After you’ve scribbled in the three different tones of the markers, you spray the plastic with surgical spirit (aka rubbing alcohol) and then press the embossed piece of card onto the plastic. If you don’t get enough colour you can respray or even re-scribble and respray. You have to move quite quickly since the alcohol obviously evaporates. You can get different looks by spraying from high or close to or by smearing the bag on itself. Basically the colour gets onto the raised portions (unless you’ve been over generous with the surgical spirit) and you get a marvellous gradation of your colour.

Stampin' Up! Beautifully Baroque embossing folder card

I had my cherry cobbler base ready for this card but it didn’t work. It really needed the rose red instead. I have no idea how the reds morphed into pinks of such different tones from the reds. I stamped the sentiment in rose red on very vanilla – it comes from a set that my sister brought over which is now, sadly, retired. Then I cut it out using the smallest deco labels framelit (again borrowed from Caro – she had a whole carry on suitcase full of Stampin’ Up! supplies!) and cut out another in rose red. I cut if in half and trimmed it a little so that I could just pull it out and show the edges for a border. Finally I glued this to a rose red base. The envelope flap was embossed using the beautifully baroque folder to match.

My first brad!

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One of the things that my secret pal (now revealed to be Jill – thanks, Jill) gave me over the crop weekend was some antique brads. Brads, for those of you who don’t know (like me a few months ago) are embellishments that are attached to the card by making a hole and pushing the two prongs through and opening them out behind the card to hold them in place. The Stampin’ Up! antique brads are really pretty and I’ve admired them on my sister’s cards but haven’t quite mustered up the courage to use them. Once I had received them I set myself a challenge to make a card with them. I figured that the Stampin’ Up! Bright and Beautiful stamp set would be the perfect setting.

I may possibly have mentioned previously that I love heat embossing! I decided to emboss the second largest star from the Bright and Beautiful stamp set in silver on night of navy and then I cut it out with the matching star framelit. I then cut out the next biggest size star in the brushed silver cardstock. Adhering these together looked really good. Next I heat embossed the sentiment (also from Bright and Beautiful) in silver on the night of navy base. After I attached the star to the base I punched a hole in the stars using my piercing tool and attached a brad. Caro gave me advice here, I think I was going to add one that was a bit too big. I really liked how this came together and Jen My Upline was so happy to see that I’d progressed! I think there’s even a picture on facebook of me proudly holding my First Brad Card!

Stampin' Up! Bright and Beautiful star on night of navy

Since I had stars on this card, it made sense to decorate the envelope with stars also. I dry embossed the envelope flap with the Lucky Stars embossing folder.

Stampin' Up! Bright and Beautiful with Envelope dry embossed with Lucky Stars TIEF

The advice is to get a Stampin’ Up! piercing mat for paper piercing and attaching brads. I haven’t tried paper piercing but I’ve found another method for making the hole to attach the brads. Admittedly the piercing mat is only $4.95 so it’s not a big deal, but I bought the clear block caddy a while ago so that I could transport my blocks to the crop. The caddy came with the spaces for the blocks filled with foam which appeared very much like the piercing mat. So I used the insert for the largest block as my piercing mat. It worked very well.

 

Ruling the world through coffee

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I’ve mentioned a couple of times that my job was being outsourced and that I chose not to move to the outsourcing company. This meant saying farewell to a large number of people that I’ve been working with over the last ten years although I of course mean to keep in contact with a lot of them. I’ve worked with Matt on the global time and expense application for the past couple of years and have been awed by the amount of coffee that he can (and does) drink. When I saw Stampin’ Up!’s set Perfect Blend – and when my sister brought it over with her on her visit – I had to make this card to say farewell to Matt!

Stampin' Up! Perfect Blend in soft suede. Multiple cups.

I stamped the coffee cup on a piece of scrap and cut it out. Then I stamped the first cup at the bottom right hand corner of my very vanilla mat in soft suede. I drew a pencil line so that I could put the bottom left hand corner of the cup on it to keep things lined up (or more or less anyway). Using my mask that I’d just cut out, I covered the first cup and stamped a second cup, putting the left hand side corner of the cup on the pencil line. I did this again another eight times to get the long line of coffee cups! I stamped the sentiment in cajun craze and then adhered the very vanilla to a cajun craze base. I dry embossed the flap of the envelope to finish it off.