Africa

Two cards in One Day!

I have also finished off this card which was inspired by a mask I bought from Imagination Crafts.

I used black acrylic paint with a stencil brush through the mask. The white mat  is a simple shaped piece of card on which I stamped an Accacia tree and zebra, both stamps from Barbara Gray and the foliage was also made using one of her tree stamps. I was pleased to see that when I put the elephant on the card, the white mat looked like a window against the black and white background  - a very happy accident.

The elephant is a Jane Netley Mayhew stamp which I coloured with an Ice Grey Promarker. 

I think I am beginning to be a bit nostalgic for Africa given that I have featured elephants in two of my most recent cards.

I'd love to know what you think of it.

Naughty But Very Nice

Hi everyone

I have just finished another little cup cake card which I hope can be sold on my friends cake stall - along with the others I made earlier and which are shown below.  I wanted to give her a selection of six so can now hand them over.

The main image is a sweet little Lilly of the Valley stamp.

I mounted her on a white scalloped shape and backed it with a round mirri card shape. The backing paper is from my stash. She was coloured with Promarkers in Cocktail Pink with Ivory, Vanilla and Blush for her skin and straw hat. I also used alittle Sky Blue and Ice Grey1 for her shoes and the shadow round her. Her hair is Sandstone and the cake stand is in Warm Grey 3.

The stack of cakes is a stamp I bought on Ebay and I'm afraid I can't remember its name. That was also coloured wit Promarkers - same shades as previously mentioned plus Berry Red and Lemon. The sentiment was also backed on mirri card and finished with a mirri card heart.

Nor sure how I have managed to complete these cards as I am currently on a strict diet  to get ready for my holiday at the beginning of September.

They make me feel really hungry!

I do hope you like my latest effort.

African Elephants - with a twist.

Hi everyone

This card was made using a lovely little stamp called,  'Are we there yet' by Little Claire's Designs.

I thought it might just fit in with this week's Promarkers Challenge - Animal Crackers.

I made the background using the Letraset Letrajet Airbrushing System again. The sky was airbrushed using a Sky Blue Promarker and I masked out some little clouds with a new product I found on E-bay,  called 'Mask It.'  It's a see through low tack paper so you can see exactly where you have put the masks  and you can use the same mask several times too. I really like it as I am always losing my masks and it's easier to keep them now they are sticky.

The background hills were airbrushed with Apricot Promarker  and the foreground with Marsh Green Promarker. I used torn paper masks to make the hills while I was airbrushing the hills and foreground.  The Accacia tree and the birds are  stamps from Barbara Gray and the grasses were also made using a couple of her little stamps. I used Marsh Green Promarker and Forest Green Promarker to stamp the grasses and the trees, elephants and birds were stamped with Black Memento.

I stamped the little family group of elephants out on plain white card and coloured them with Promarkers, Ice Grey1 and Warm Grey 2 with the little flower being Cocktail Pink. I then cut them out and stuck them into the foreground of the card and added a little shadow with Ice Grey1 under their feet.

The card reminded me of one of the many elephant  photograph I took in Tanzania in 2009 and has brought back some happy memories.

I thought you might like to see the photograph too.

This was part of a really large group of elephants which passed in front of us -they were so beautiful and I just adore elephants!

Change is as good as a rest!

Hi everyone - just spent some time working out how to change the font on my blog. Wish my handwriting was like this.

I will probably get bored with it before long but hope you like it - let me know if not and I'll change it back now I know how. lol

Hope you are all having a lovely Sunday

I'm on a roll - or rather a cup cake!

I have been asked by a friend of my daughter  to let her see a selection of cards featuring Cup Cakes. 

She runs a a cake stall and said she thinks she could sell cup cake cards as many people buy her cakes for gifts. She makes the most scrumptious cakes and often brings us the ones she hasn't sold - hence my need to go on a very strict diet before I go on holiday!

Anyway - these are a selection of five that I have made today. I have kept them simple until I am sure they have a market. I'd love to know what you think.

The one with the silver heart has not scanned very well as it's a bit more 3D than the others.

 

Thanks for looking!

Another Gingham Card

I rediscovered this lovely little stamp while tidying my craft room - I must do this more often - who knows what I might find next!

I put her together with some little flowers from Wild Orchid to make this card which I thought I would also enter into the Promarkers Gingham challenge.

The sentiment is from a Barbara Grey stamp.

 I stamped Daisy  onto card and cut her out - that was fun! The flowers around her hair were very difficult to cut out I can tell you.

I used some paper from my stash to create the gingham and heart background. The image was coloured with Promarkers and the sentiment background was made using the Letraset Letrajet airbrush system which I have only just discovered and absolutely love! The colours used were:

Ivory and pale pink for the skin tones.

Ivory, vanilla, and gold for the hair.

Ice Grey 1 was used to highlight her white top.

Blossom for the pink tones in the jeans, the  flowers in Daisy's hair  and for the sentiment background.

The leaves were made by cutting petals from a paper flower and colouring them with grass green Promarker - highlighting the veins by using the new fine Promarker tips and the butterfly was from my stash -it was folded and stuck onto card with silicone glue to make it 3D.

The lace was also from a piece I bought from Wild Orchid Crafts.

I  really enjoyed making this card which is a little more fancy than the cards

I usually make - I do hope you like it .

My Youngest Babies are One Today

Marmaduke and Orlando my ginger twins are one year old today.

They are the youngest of our  six - yes - six cats. They were never meant to be living with us but the family who took them in originally decided they couldn't keep them so they came to us at ten weeks of age to join our already large enough cat  population. Now we wouldn't be without them but they are very naughty!

These pictures of them might show you why we love them.

They do everything together - even getting stuck up the tree in the garden.

Gingham Sunflowers

This is an image I have had stamped in my bits box for some time. As I have been tidying up my craft room I thought I had better start to use up some of the items I had already started.

I saw that the  Promarkers challenge this weekend was for a card using gingham so thought I'd enter this card.

It's a very simple card This is what I used.

Moss and Marsh Green Promarkers for the leaves.
I used the new fine tip to enhance the veins on the leaves and found they worked very well for this task.

The flowers were coloured with Gold and Apricot Promarkers  with
 Burnt Sienna and Apricot for the centres.

The image is backed, first onto a piece of green gingham card and then with a flower border square made with a Martha Stewart round the page punch - a small green gingham bow from my stash was added in the corner - and that's it.

Sorry but I can't remember where the stamp came from - if anyone recognises it I'd love to know!

I love sunflowers, they are one of my favourite flowers and I remember growing them when I was a little girl. They seemed to be enormous then but I don't expect they were - it was me who was smaller back then .............
in every way. lol

Hope you like this effort.

Airbrushed Butterflies

It's been absolutely ages since I've posted anything on here. I have been marking exam papers again so haven't been able to play with all my craft goodies for a while. In one of my breaks, a few days ago, I saw on the Docrafts Forum that people were talking about the Letraset Airbrushing system - called Letrajet. I remembered that I had bought this some time ago and had it in my craftroom waiting for a chance to play with it. Today I got it out and had my first go.

It is used with Promarkers and enables you to use any of  your Promarkers like an airbrush - creating lovely shading and backgrounds. I can't pretend to be any good yet but the above card is my first attempt.

I used a butterfly mask that I bought recently from Imagination Crafts to create the background, using the sky blue Promarker straight on to the card.  The image is a Sarah Kay digi stamp that I had coloured some time ago and I created the scalloped shading round her by masking her with a shape cut with my Cricut and spraying round the edges with the Letrajet in the same shade as the background.

I mounted the image on a piece of dark blue mirri card and added three,  3d silver  butterflies to tie it all together.

I'm not sure how quickly the Promarkers will run out using this system - or how long the can of air will last - but I really enjoyed using it and can think of lots of different ways to use it in the future. I wore a thin plastic glove on my left hand as I was using that to hold the mask down and otherwise I think I would have had a very blue hand! It's also probably a good idea to wear something old in case the spray goes where it shouldn't while you are learning how to use it - but to be fair I didn't make much mess at all. I was just expecting that I would.

Hope you like my first effort! I'd love to hear from anyone else who has this system.