Swallowtails

After a long hiatus, I'm back to running a hostess club.  Though I haven't been doing much stamping over the past year, I've still been doing a monthly get together with a small group of friends.  For the summer, we decided we would each bring a card and enough supplies for everyone to make a card.  It's been a nice break for me since I actually get to make cards that night!

For our final club of this set up we've decided we'd try and wrangle in a few more ladies to  become junkies join us.  So the challenge was for each of us to use Swallowtail to make a card.  Since I'm trying to grow our group, I decided I'd demo three cards that you can do with just this stamp (pretty much).  I want them to get the picture that you don't need 800 sets until you're addicted and then you NEED them to make beautiful cards.

The first card is a simple mask and then some sponging with Strawberry Slush and Melon Mambo.  To give it a little more depth I added in some Blackberry Bliss, just around the edges.  The picture doesn't do the colours justice sadly, but feel free to make one yourself to see how luscious it truly is.

This set is stunning on its own, but also almost always pairs itself with En Francais.  I had it in my mind to stamp this on vellum and am super happy with the result.  It's a lovely any occasion card but I think it could easily serve as a wedding card as well.

Though I liked last year's In Colours, I am in LOVE with this year's (except the orange.  Sorry Tangelo Twist, orange isn't my cup of tea, never has been, likely never will be).  Lost Lagoon is a stunning colour, which I can foresee making its way into the regular line up in a few catalogues from now.  It's another masking card, and again, En Francais features.  And not that I had it in mind for a wedding, but it's screaming, "Make me a gift!"

Yay for stamping again.

Adventures in Collaging

 

After dinner tonight I sneaked out to the craft room again for one more card.  One of my favourite things to do whilst sipping my morning coffee is blog surf.  Yesterday morning I was poking around on Heather Telford's site Bits & Pieces and saw her series of collage cards.  Her creations are stunning and I pinned one with this colour scheme to make for later.  I didn't think I'd get to it until at least tomorrow, but I just couldn't wait.

 

The colours I've used for this card are Summer Starfruit, Lucky Limeade, and Old Olive.  I started by inking up En Francais with SS, then stamped it off once before daubing a little OO and LL on there as well.  The rest of the images are from Papaya Collage.  Oh, that's not entirely true.  That swirly guy up the right is a the Baroque Borders wheel (now retired).  I hate the wheels, but love the images so I rip the rubber off the wheel and make it into a long skinny stamp instead.  This way I can get full coverage, and blend the colours if I want to.

A La Card Monkey #99

Buttons.  Hmm.  I have mixed feelings about these little embellishments.  My style doesn't usually include buttons; however, last summer I ran a couple of button shares so that I could get large quantities of a few colours.  I ended up with more colours left over than I wanted, so into the embellishment drawer they went.

When I saw this sketch this morning it was the perfect time to pull those suckers out and dust them off.  Their turn in the spotlight.  It took me a bit of playing around to get this card exactly how I wanted it, but I'm happy with the end result.

Daring Cardmakers 01

Again, I was surfing around the good old internet, and I found a fun challenge site.  This one's by some lovely UK ladies.  I mashed it up with an old Mojo Monday sketch and am pretty pleased with the outcome.

I got this set a number of months ago, but haven't been inspired to use it.  As soon as I saw this combo though set practically jumped right off my shelf and into my lap!  Pool Party and Island Indigo aren't exactly these shades, but they're close enough, and they look great with Crumb Cake and Soft Suede, so it all came together nicely anyways.

Yes, I am the worst blogger ever.  As soon as real life starts, blogging gets dumped.  Spring break?  Great time for blogging.  Long weekends?  Also great.  Summer holidays?  When could be a better time to devote myself to regular posts.  Back to work in September? .....  Is that the sound of crickets I hear?  Might as well be.

In between going back to work, teaching a new course, prepping for craft fairs, and putting on workshops, I have had very little time for blogging.  My apologies to anyone in cyberspace that actually gives a you-know-what.  But, here I am, cramming in a post when I really want to be cramming baked goods into my mouth while sitting in front of the fireplace watching The Borgias.

Last weekend I had an awesome workshop with all new ladies, and had a blast.  We were quite the bunch.  Lots of giggles and some beautiful cards were the result of our morning.  These are 2 of the cards we created.

The first one was really the first time I'd attempted emboss reveal on such a large scale.  I love how the white medallion stands out against the Island Indigo.  It's a little hard to see the background image that lies beneath the medallion, but it's lovely French script, courteousy of En Francais.  I inked EF in Daffodil Delight and stamped the image.  Then I inked the heck of of the Medallion with Versamark (wonder-ink extraordinaire).  After that it took a little plunge into come clear embossing powder and ran over it with my heat tool.  I used a brayer to ink the rest of the card, and wiped off the Medallion when I was satisfied with my coverage.

This card was a snap to put together.  I don't think it really needs any explanation, but I guess you could do some stamping on the Crumb Cake if you really wanted to.  I didn't.  Obviously.

Stamps:  Medallion, En Francais
Ink:  Daffodil Delight, Island Indigo
Paper:  Daffodil Delight, Island Indigo, Whisper White, Crumb Cake, Wiseria Wonder, Elegant Eggplant, First Edition DSP
Extras:  Clear embossing powder, heat tool, Fun Flowers die, Crumb Cake buttons, Wisteria Wonder ruffled ribbon, hemp twine

Strength and Hope

Strength and Hope is one of the sets in the Summer Mini, and this was the first time I pulled it out to use.   A good friend of mine is getting married this weekend, so of course I had to make a card for him and his lovely wife-to-be.  This set seemed perfect for the occasion.  I'm not sure what their colours are, so I figured you can't go wrong with ivory and gold.

I'm sure he won't even take a look at the card, but I sure hope she does.  I hate cutting out stamped images, so this was a step out of my comfort zone!

Stamps:  Strength & Hope, En Francais
Ink:  Crumb Cake
Paper:  Very Vanilla, Cromb Cake
Extras: CC Seam binding ribbon, 2 3/8 scallop punch, basic pearls

Build a Blossom

As soon as I saw the spring mini catalogue, I knew I had to have this.  The stamp set and punch give you limitless combinations of gorgeous flowers to make.  This is the first time I've played with this set and I am absolutely in love.  Today's task was to make some elegant cards, but next time I think I'll give it a try again with a more playful colour scheme and see what comes out!


Stamps:  Build a Blossom (121994), Simple Friendship (113397), En Francais (109521)
Ink: Perfect Plum (101437), Pear Pizazz (119784)
Paper: Crumb Cake (120963), Perfect Plum (101899), Pear Pizazz (119795)
Extras:  Clear Embossing Powder (109130)

Stamps:  Build a Blossom (121994), Baroque Border wheel (109675)
Ink: Poppy Parade (119782), Pear Pizazz (119784)
Paper: Night of Navy (100867), Poppy Parade (119793), Crumb Cake (120963)