Over the rainbow clouds

Hello Everyone, 

did you have a good Easter weekend? Since my girls aren't small anymore, we took it very relaxed and had a lazy weekend. 

I created this card last year, for my great-niece's first Birthday. At the time I'd seen a lot of rainbow clouds on the Internet and wanted to try it out myself, so found my cloud stencil and blended a lovely rainbow directly onto the card base. Then I looked through my stickers and found an image to go with the idea. 

I kept the colouring very simple because the stickers don't handle too much blending with alcohol inks. But since the banner happened to have just the right number of triangles, I personalized the card by adding her name.

Otherwise, I kept it simple. I stamped the sentiment directly into the clouds and reinforced the sticker with a piece of card stock so I could adhere it with foam tape. I also found a sticker to dress up the bright yellow envelope.

I love how the clouds turned out, clouds should be rainbow in real life...

XOXO 

Ela

Happy Birthday from the heart

Hello Everyone, 

how did the first week in 2021 go for you all?

I had 4 days off work last week, which was wonderful and desperately needed at that. I am not much looking forward to having to work again next week, but at least everyone will be back from their Christmas holidays. The last two weeks of December were very stressful...

Today, I'd like to share some die-cut inlay cards I made, with the is very intricate hearts die. 

 

I started out by inking a card panel to get some nice gradients. Then I cut the die from the inked panel and white and inlayed the coloured pieces three different ways, to see what worked best. 

For the first card, I stacked up the white harts, so they have dimension. For the second card, I didn't cut the coloured panel, but only made an impression with the die, thinking that might be easier, so I could just glue on the hearts. Did work too well. It was the first time using my embossing mat and I messed it up, so the cardstock cracked slightly in some places. It's not very noticeable, with the hearts adhered, so I still used it for a card. 

For the last card I went back to regular inlay, but this time I inlayed it flat and added some dimension behind the whole piece, not only the hearts.

I love how they all turned out, I'd love these in all kinds of colour combinations, but the intricate inlay is just a little much for mass production. 

Have a beautiful day

Ela

Happy New Year 2021

 Hello Crafters, 

I'd like to wish you all a happy and above all healthy new year. I sure hope 2021 will turn out better than 2020 did. 

I don't send out extra New Year's cards myself, since December is always a busy time. But my friend does and we have the (still new) tradition of me giving her a set of new year's cards for Christmas. 

This year I wanted to make an early start, while she still hadn't given me the latest count. So I decided on 25, assembly-line style, since the year before she had needed 20 cards.

First, I stamped each of the balloons individually with the main colour. I left the stamp in place in my stamping platform and stamped each balloon again, with a darker shade blended around the edge to achieve the shading. Then I set out to die-cut all the individual numbers and stacked them up for more dimension. After they were all ready, I blended on some yellow ink from the bottom and adhered them to the card base, using a straight edge to get them straight.

Next, I stamped, heat embossed and cut out all the sentiment strips. They read "healthy new year" in German. Before I adhered them, I loosely doodled in the balloon strings. 

Normally I would have put glossy accents on all of the balloons, but since they were so many I didn't do that this time. 

I was very glad to finish these cards in mid-November because I knew that would be the most involved Christmas present this year. 300 die-cuts, I must be losing it... 

Stay safe and healthy and a happy new year!

Ela

One layer stencilled Christmas card

Hello Crafters, 

I do hope you are still safe and healthy, wherever you are. And hopefully well on track with your Christmas preparations. 

I am not much in the mood this year, but at least I am less stressed about Christmas preparations than ever before in my adult life. I started early and am well on track at the moment. 

Today's card is one I actually made last year. We had two French exchange students staying at the time and had a little crafty session together. I made this simple one layer card with a stencil and some inks and sequins. Very simple, but I like that in a card. 

 

Have a lovely week!

Ela 

 

Hello Pirate

Hello Everyone, 

how are you?

Today's card is a piece of ancient history. 

I found this pirate card panel in my stencil storage basket when I was re-organizing my stencils into a file folder. I had created it way back and ruined it with some glue on the front that left a shiny spot. So I never used it, forgot all about it and obviously managed to drop it into that basked by accident.  

Pulling it out again, I thought the shiny spot wasn't soo bad after all. I wanted to make it work.

I wanted my card base pale blue but didn't have any card stock that pale. So I blended some blue ink onto a white card base. Then I distressed the edges of my panel and adhered it to the base.

I wanted the Hello sentiment in the same pale blue so I blended some more ink on another piece of card stock to cut the Hello out. I also stacked it up to give it more dimension. I added a black sentiment strip and some sequins in strategic spots and now the shiny spot is still visible, but not very obvious anymore. 

I like how this card turned out, even though it's not quite my usual style. 

So, what do we learn? Mistakes are just an opportunity for embellishments! 

And probably that I am less of a perfectionist these days than I was in the past. 

Love

Ela

 

Birthday shakers and ink blending

Hello Everyone, 

how have you been? 

A while ago, my daughter and I spent a wonderful evening together, ink blending background panels together. Look at this happy mess...

I created a whole lot of panels with the chevron patterns because I still wanted to create more shaker cards like this one: 

Meanwhile, I made a bunch of shaker cards over several days, one day die-cutting circles and balloons and glueing the die-cuts to acetate, next day cutting off the access acetate and creating shaker wells etc. 

The two striped panels were made with metallic watercolours. 

I love how all of these turned out. I still have lots more panels, so I might well make another batch soon. After all, shakers are always fun. 

Have a good day

Ela

4th Birthday shaker squirrel

Hello Crafters, 

I hope you are all still staying safe. 

2 days ago, one of our family youngsters turned 4 and we gave him the board game 'Nuss voraus', which roughly translates to 'nut ahead'. I couldn't find it in English, so I am not sure if it's actually called that. 

It is about a squirrel, so I absolutely wanted to use my only squirrel stamp, which I've never used before. Besides, I wanted to use the number '4' as a design element and I also had the vague idea, that a shaker card would be fun. 

With these two and a half elements as a starting point, I water coloured the squirrel with my ZIG markers and fuzzy cut him out. 

After that, I struggled a bit. First I thought I'd use a row of numbers, like I did for my niece's birthday last year and place the squirrel on top of the line. But somehow that didn't appeal to me as much for this card. So I went ahead and cut out a bunch of numbers to cover the whole background. I think of this as faux dry embossing, since it adds white on white texture without being in-your-face.

I liked that, but now my squirrel had nothing to stand and there was space to fill therefore I decided to go with the shaker circle die, with bright green and blue sequins inside. 

I wanted one of the numbers to stand out from the rest, so I blended some blue and green Oxide ink on one of them and on the circle die as well. I thought these colours would compliment my squirrel's c. 

When I had adhered it all down, I felt the colours were too muted, I wanted them glossy and bright, so I added liberal amounts of glossy accents to the 4 and the circle, but not the Happy Birthday. I didn't trust myself with the intricate letters. 

A bit of a stupid idea, since we were due to visit only a few hours later, so I had to place the finished card over the heating to make it dry faster. It turned out okay, luckily. 

In the end, I am not sure if the squirrel really fits in with the rest of the design, but I used him anyway since that was the whole point of it. I grounded him on the letter H.

Since my great-nephew will also be 4 next month, we'll give him the same game, and I'll have another chance to make a card with this squirrel. I am thinking fall coloured tiny leaves in a square shaker, maybe...

Sadly, 4-year-olds don't really appreciate Birthday cards, but at least the parents do. Cardmaker's children are probably the exception, my girls always appreciated handmade cards, because they knew how much love went into them. I bet it is/was the same for your children if you're a cardmaker. 

That's it for today, stay safe wherever you are

Ela