my Crafty Corner

Cards and other handicrafts made by Jean Straw

Wednesday 29 January 2014

Belated Rudolph Day

Last Saturday saw the first Rudolph Day challenge of 2014 over at Sarn's Stamping For Pleasure blog, but I didn't realise the 25th had come around so quick and missed it. However Sarn keeps the challenge open until the end of the month and she wants us to make at least two cards to enter this year, I am popping over with two more of my recycled cards.


For the first one I first cut out the part of the image I wanted to use with a Go Kreate oval die and then using some white card with silver sparkles in it I used a Dienamic fancy edged die to cut a frame for it. I folded some dark blue card to make a 5.5" square base card and stamped the Chocolate Baroque holly flourish on it with Versamark ink and embossed it with WOW silver powder.I stuck the oval image on with foam tape and added the sentiment, also from Chocolate Baroque, stamped onto a snippet of the white and silver card.
For the second one I used Nestabilities plain and scalloped dies to cut the image and mat. I covered the front of a dark green square card with some background paper, Papermania I think, after inking the edge with vintage photo Distress Ink .The greeting was cut with a Britania die. Both the mat and greeting were cut from snippets of gold glitter card so I am going to enter these at the Pixies Playground as well.

Thank you for taking a look and for all your comments which are much appreciated.















Friday 24 January 2014

Green Cards ?

Hi there everyone, I am sorry I have been very slack in my blogging lately. I think I have spent too much time browsing other peoples blogs, and snuggling up in front of the TV during the horrible winter nights. It's not that I've been completely idle though, I have been busy recycling some of the Christmas cards that were sent to us,( not the hand made ones of course), and I always have some knitting or crochet on the go for when I am watching TV. I tend to just fall asleep if my hands aren't doing anything.
So today I will show you a couple of my recycled cards to get my blog brain going again.!
The picture on this one came from a very ordinary looking card and I cropped the main part out with a Go Kreate  oval die.This is the largest of the set so I didn't have one to make a mat but discovered that it just fits onto  this fancy oval from Dienamics which I cut from red mirri card. I thought that this greeting from Chocolate Baroque Christmas Cheer set complimented the mounted image and I stamped it onto a white base card with barn door Distress Ink. The Penny Black holly swirls were stamped with Versafine olympia green ink and the berries coloured with a Sakura sparkle pen, and then the image added on top.




This second card was made in much the same way , with the fancy oval being cut from gold glitter card, and the holly swirl stamped with gathered twigs Distress Ink to match the foliage in the image, and the berries again coloured with the sparkle pen. To finish the card I added the tiny greeting, I don't know the make, and a red ribbon.
Every year I save bits from Christmas cards to use on something else and they stay shut away in a box never to see the light of day again. So this year I decided to use them before I got too involved with anything else and I am quite pleased to have made some nice cards with them and with the help of some stamps, cutting dies and embossing folders. I will probably show some more of them at a later date.
Right now I am hopping over to the Pixies Playground to link these up as I used some snippets of card to cut the mats from, and that is all that you need to do to join the fun at the playground.
Thank you for visiting and for your lovely comments which I enjoy reading and really appreciate.
                                                                                                                                                             

Sunday 5 January 2014

Mellow yellow.

I have been invited to do a guest DT entry at Stamping Sensations this month as part of a prize. The new challenge today is Ribbon Buttons Bows and here is the card I came up with. As most of my regular followers will know I quite often add ribbon or bows to my cards but seldom use buttons so I had to think about that for a bit, and in the end decided to use them as centres for the flowers. I have been told that yellow is the "on trend" colour for crafting this year but that is not why I chose it. It was my daughter's birthday last weekend and I wanted to use this card for her and yellow is her favourite colour, the colour of sunshine. One of her other favourites is cats and as I won this Penny Black stamp and the backing paper recently it seemed the perfect choice.The image was stamped with Memento black ink and coloured with promarkers. I chose card colours for the mounting mats to echo the colours in the Penny Black paper. The base card is a 6" x 6"  white square, and the flowers, buttons and ribbon are all from my stash. The tiny happy birthday stamp is from Stamp Tapestry stamped with tumbled glass Distress Ink.

Thank you for visiting my blog and for your kind comments which are all truly appreciated.

As I have used snippets of card for the mats I will also be entering this at the Pixies Playground.