Lilac A6 House Mouse Card

There appears to be a growing trend for the larger format cards, A4 and 8x8 and although I am also a lover of the larger format cards for special occassions and just when the fancy takes me.  I felt it necessary to go back somewhat to my cardmaking roots and start to reintroduce the smaller format cards A6 as this appears to be a much overlooked card size at the moment, so although I am not mocking the current trends I didnt think it would hurt to downsize and see where it took me.

This is my first endeavour and contains a lovely pale lilac card stock used in a landscape format.  This was stamped over using a small peg floral stamp and mouse foot print before distressed using milled lavender and dusty concord around the edge of the cardstock.

Secondly I created my own backing paper inspired by a recent Sheena Douglas demonstration where I applied splodges (technical term) of milled lavender and dusty concord on to my craft sheet, I then shook up my chosen shimmer mist in Angel Mist from Cosmic Shimmer and spritzed the craft sheet before placing my paper face down on to the inks.  This created a lovely piece of mottled backing paper to coordinate with my card stock and image.  This was then cut to size using deckle edged scissors and placed to the left hand side of the card.

The next layer was a dark lilac centura pearl card again cut down to size and matted on to the card with a deckle edge.

Finally the House Mouse topper, this comes from the Allsorts Weight Lifting stamp sheet.  As with most of my house mice they were coloured in using sandstone and blush however, for the baby on this occassion I used putty and blush so there was a slight difference.

The cup was coloured using the following promarker colours of lavender, orchid and plum.  The shadows were accentuated using warm grey 1 and two on both the images and for the shadow beneath the cup and bottle.

The water was coloured using the following promarkers cool aqua and duck egg blue with a small amount of denim blue for the waters movement and some waterfall stickles to highlight the light on the water.  The waterfall stickles were also applied to some of the bubbles which were also highlighted in cool aqua.  The bottle was coloured in cool aqua, warm grey 1 and daffodil bloom (from the spring set) for the label.  The bottle cap was left white with warm grey 1 and 2 added dimension and shadow to the cap. 

The topper was then cut using a spellbinder dye with a rectangular deckle edge and placed on to the other matts on the card.

To complete the card, I then made a bow out of the purple shades of twine from the vintage and pastel sets from creative expressions and adhered this to the card with pin flair glue gel.  Finally to complete it I threaded a lilac button using two shades of lilac/purple thread and placed this at the centre of the bow, all from my crafty stash.

I hope you like this card.

Emma

Happy Birthday Love Bug



I have recently attended a Spring Cardmaking Class at Stamp Addicts in Bedford near where I live, they are a constant source of inspiration and their unmounted stamp range offers a wide selection of materials to drawn your inspiration.

This card was inspired from their Love Bug unmounted stamp sheet which contains these adorable love bug/bumble bee characters which I feel cover a variety of occassions, in this particular instance a birthday card.

I found some amazing red card stock and decided to do this card in white, red and silver.  The card was a A5 white card with its corners rounded using my crop-a-dile, I then placed a matt of red card stock, matt silver dotted cardstock as the base of the card.

I then cut a piece of white card stock to fit beneath the Marianne Designs Designable 908 which I had cut and embossed using my cuttlebug in the red cardstock and cut out the central panel.  I marked the central panel on to the white card stock with a pencil to enable me to stamp the sentiment before placing this and the red designable panel on to the card.

I then stamped the love bug holding the flowers twic using memento black ink as I then coloured the first image in full using a pale pink flex marker in pale blossom using the bullet tip to create a shadow of the image.  This took three coats to get the right colour I wanted for the shadow.  This was then cut close to the image with the antennae removed.  The antennae were then added using silver glitter wire from papermania and adhered to the base image with double sided tape.  This image was then added to the card in the bottom right hand corner using pin flair glue gel for dimension.

The second and top image was coloured with the hand and face in satin and blush, the foliage for the flowers was meadow green (from the spring set) and the remainder of the bug was coloured using antique pink, cerise and magenta with the stipes accentuated using black fine tip promarker.  At the centre of the flowers I used some perfect pearls to add definition and dimension then I cut around the love bug leaving a small border and removing the antennae.  Once cut out the characters white edge was removed using the pale pink flex marker and then adhered over the shadow image using pin flair glue gel for three dimensionality.

Finally to complete the image, I added three flowers in a similar shade of red and accented their centres using silver circle accents from my crafty stash.

I hope you like the card.

Emma

Your Just the Sweetest

Apologies its been so long posting on my blog, I have unfortunately been unwell and also on my return back to work so busy I have not been able to card make or blog as much as I would have liked.

To make amends I have posted above my first card made using Kraft card, I have completely fallen in love with this card stock and you will see a recurring theme in this nature I am sure over the next few months as I get back in to the swing of things.

The card shown above is made using some stunning peach glitter card stock I had in my crafty stash which I felt went extremely well with the kraft card and also the wonderful House Mouse rubber stamp from Joanna Sheen which was coloured using promarkers (sandstone and blush) for the mice and the new spring colours (fresh meadow, budding rose and daffodil bloom for the floral element), I then cut the image out using a current favourite from my spellbinders dyes (fleur des lyes rectangle) which I then shaded using a light application of worn lipstick distress ink, I finally accented my topper with some stunning copper kaisercraft pears and large peach Kort & Godt flowers again from Joanna Sheen.

I hope you like this card and look forward to shoring you some further cards as the week progresses.

Many thanks for looking.

Emma