Mothers Day

Hi, I wanted to share the card I made for Mum this year for Mothers Day. I wanted to try something a bit different, and have had a couple of products sitting in my room that I havn't had a chance to play with since christmas, until now.

one of those was the cricut cartridge Art Nouveau, and also the Tim Holtz grunge paper. here you can see I have combined the two and created the dimensional swan.

If you don't know already, grunge paper is a grey flexible fibrous paper of a substantial thickness (2-3mm), but will very readily take any type of colour application, embossing, cutting, distressing etc.

The more I played with it, the more I wanted to do....so can't wait until my next project with it.

Card Recipe

6x6" card blank

Cricut Cartridge Art Nouveau - swan cut at 3"

Tim Holtz grunge paper

Tim Holtz Idealogy, lost & found paper pack

Distress Stains - chipped sapphire, dusty concord, victorian velvet, antique linen, picket fence

Tim Holtz tissue tape

Tim Holtz acrylic fragment 2" square

Stampers anonymous wallpaper cling stamp

Tim Holtz dusty concord distress embossing powder

Bo bunny metal slider

Scrappers Floss, Lace, gems, embossing folder, metallic rub-ons all from stash

Here you can see how I laced the scrappers floss to attach it to the lace and tie the bow. I doubled up the floss, to give a more substantial bow detail 

 

 You can see the dimension in the swan, with the wing being made up with four layers, before sitting on the body, providing the fifth layer. I have tried to capture from a couple of angles in the photos that the wing layers (feathers) are fanned. All layers reach across and sit under the small top layer (linen colour), and it was here that I glued each together, allowing the movement at the back of the swan.

 

This is the base of the card, taken from the ideology stack (6x6") section. Two strips of the tissue tape placed up the side and then run through the cuttlebug. it wasn't possible because of the size of the paper and cuttlebug aperture, to emboss the whole sheet, so the top third of the paper was stamped with the antique wallpaper stamp and then embossed with dusty concord embossing powder. The advantage being the special release particles within the powder allowing some of it to be rubbed away (without compromising the image), adding to the distress look. i was really pleased with the outcome. And the colours were gorgeous together.

  I was quite chuffed with how it turned out, and can't wait to use the grunge paper again, i think it can be put to use in many many ways.

Best go to bed now, its time to get some sleep.
Night night,

Some Christmas Cards & Tags

As usual I am behind in the making of my christmas cards this year, making my customary slow start. For some reason I have a complete mental block when it comes to festive makings. I have 2 boys that talk endlessly about christmas, I have the tree and decorations up, and even (dare I say it) presents all bought and wrapped. But i still need to hit on those one or two christmas designs that will get me going.

I did however make these. The first 4 panel decoration started out as a card but, I liked it so much that it landed on my mantelpiece, and there it is staying. It did inspire however the scaled down version, and I was also particularly pleased with the gift tags too - made with Tim Holtz distress stains and inks and my favourite christmas stamps.

Right, I feel better now having updated you all. Now its time to rustle up a dinner from the last of the freezer food (waiting to restock next week for christmas), the bath and bed for the boys and hopefully another round of christmas cards for me. I am on a roll today and feeling quite chuffed with myself, having wrapped presents this morning and even managed to book myself that long awaited hair appointment next week. This year it is all about planning as Anthony works away now for 2 weeks at a time, and now not due back until the 22nd - and its up to me to get all the preparations sorted. The deadline for me is also the 22nd/23rd (apart from the last bits of cleaning), then we are all officially on holiday!

Merry Christmas to you all if I don't make it back before then and many good wishes for the New Year. xxx

I have entered the gift tags into this weeks challenges on the Sugar Creek Hollow blog. A lovely blog that is concerned only with all things vintage in crafting, and a site that I will continue to visit many more times.