Last Christmas card for 2014

I am running short of time this year so I needed to come up with something quick and simple. This one is very easy to make. The background is heavy parchment card, with embossed gold paper layered on the top two thirds. I added ribbon and a loopy circle before topping with a bronze flower. The Christmas greeting is a circle on a circle, both from the same Spellbinders set.

2 Christmas Cards

Both cards use a similar greeting set up, with a circular greeting within 2 layered circles. Both are then layered and bows added. The two filigree circles are from the same Spellbinders set.

Christmas card 2

Finally a card using my own artwork. I scanned and printed one of my pastel paintings and used it within some spellbinders frames to complete this card. The printed picture has been edged with distress ink. The decoration on the bow is a heart shaped rosette.

An anniversary card for my husband although it could be used for any occasion. I used a spellbinders die for the background and then used a series of layered ovals. I threaded the ribbon through the background cut out and then tied a separate piece of ribbon around the centre of the two threaded pieces of ribbon. Two purchased paper roses finished the card.

Male Birthday 2

Yet another card fro a man. This started off life as the previous card but the inking made the vintage picture too yellowed so I worked on a different colour scheme. I printed the image on a bubble jet printer and inking it smudged the image, but I liked the smudging as it kind of aged/distressed it, so I left it. The image is from a  book of vintage steampunk illustrations from Dover. The circle behind was a floral one but I tucked the very flowery bit behind he larger circle. The black strip was cut using s Martha Stewart punch. I used my computer to put together the sentiment. Double click on the image below to open it full size, then right click to save it to your computer.

Man's birthday card

I seem to have a run of male cards to make of late. Most of the men in the close family are not "blokey" blokes..not into fishing, golf, drinking or any of the other things that seem to dominate cards for men. Keeping it simple and clean seems to fit the bill well.  I made this one from scraps.

Baby shower card

A card for a baby-que...a baby shower barbecue. We know the baby is a boy, so I came up with this card based on some similar ones I'd seen on the internet. The bunnies were cut using s die and the tiny stars using a punch. I had cut the onesy by hand with scissors. Pearls make the obvious choice for drawer handles and buttons on the onesy.

Fishy card

A birthday card fpr a young lady who isn't really into girly stuff. Yes, I know..the top of the fish on the left isn't quite straight but by the time I noticed it, it was too late - the glue had dried. These fish were done with a 2 inch circle punch and an elongated heart punch. Cut out both the under and top part, then snip out a piece from the top circle. They do need a smiley face or else they look like rather angry fish! I used different sized pearls for bubbles and hand cut the sea plants from scraps of card using scissors.

70th birthday

A 70th birthday card for a man...not so easy! I eventually settled on a satin look background and kept the whole design very simple. Not wanting to use an actual bow, I simply tied the ribbon into a knot with tails.

Pastel Art - Holly

More of my Colin Bradley art. This time still life. This was easier because I'm a bit more used to drawing plants.

St Peters Snow Scene

This is the St Peters snow scene I mentioned last week. Colin Bradley refers to them as Christmas cards but the finished artwork is far too big to fit on a card as each picture is almost A4 in size. Maybe he is thinking that you could scan your finished artwork and then resize the images for Christmas cards. Not that it's very useful for us Aussies as we don't see snow on the winter, let alone at Christmas! If you don't want to try your hand at doing your own artwork, you're welcome to download the images of mine. (Actually, I'd be chuffed if you used them!)

By the way, Colin is happy for people to post or even sell the artworks they create using his lessons, as long as they credit him, which is why I seem to be name dropping a lot. His lessons are very reasonably priced considering the cost of art lessons, either on line or "real", so I think it only fair that credit is given where it is due.

Pastel Art - The Old Barn

I've been so carried away with pastel pencil art that I've done no cards for weeks but I have managed to finish a quilt top.... but of course now the weather has become too hot to quilt it!

So this is what I've been up to. It's another of Colin Bradley's lessons - The Old Barn. I've changed it a bit by removing the bath tub, mainly because I'd stuffed up the pallet and tyres on the right and didn't want to ruin the picture further. I also didn't do a very good job on the barrel.

I've nearly finished a snow scene and will post that next week. I'm becoming more confident now which is partly what led to the stuff ups on this because I've been anticipating his next move and not actually following his instructions closely enough. But I'm taking that as a good sign, because in the main, I'm doing pretty much what he is doing, one step ahead of him. With each picture though, I'm learning something new, so the plan is to keep going until I run out of Colin's landscapes and then embark on some of my own.

Old Man

I seem to have a run of cards to make for men lately. This one is for a birthday. It has to be posted so I've kept it to a standard size. I haven't distressed the edges of the image layer - just badly inked it but i rather like the jagged effect. Sometimes mistakes work in my favour!

The image has been coloured with copic markers. I don't have many skin tones so that was done with Prismacolor pencils and zest it blender. Despite all the warnings about the paper needing tooth for pencils, it was fine done on smooth blend it card. In real life the skin colour is not quite as dark as it looks here in thee photo.

Pastel art swans

Another of Colin Bradley's lessons - Swans and Cygnets

This one was a lot harder - trying to make an all white swan look all white but fluffy at the same time. Not a good job on my part.

Venetian Acccents

This card was made using the venetian accents  die from Spellbinders. It is layered and the cut out in the centre is layered down, but it needs more depth. I have been trying to figure out how to do that. I have some theories - I just have to put them into practice and hope it works. My problem is accuracy and how to manage that without wasting too much card.

The centre flower is a pressed bronze metal piece with a half pearl glued in the middle. On something simple like this, it looks quite effective. Not to feminine so it could conceivably be used for a card for a man.

Waterfall Pastel Art

This time another landscape exercise from Colin Bradley's lessons.

This one was very hard. The bushes in the background are a challenge at any time. then there were the rocks. I couldn't seem to follow what Colin was doing and mine was very different to his in the end. What he started out with and which I did, was patches of pale colour which were then blended into the paper with a colour shaper - all looking very vague and a bit of a mess. then he started shaping the rocks and that's where I got lost. What I ended up doing was rounding off my rocks that looked all angular and darkening the areas between them. I was just about to rip it up in frustration when the phone rang. When I got up and  looked back on it from a distance it looked like real rocks! It was all done by sheer accident - me just messing around with the shapes because I didn't like the angular look of what I had drawn originally. So I started scribbling with a variety of colours, darkening the shadows between the rocks, rounding the rocks off and adding some highlights just below the darkest parts and miraculously it looked a bit more real.

Then of course I messed it up again with the waterfalls.....

Hedgehog Pastel Art

Another of the drawing lessons from Colin Bradley.

I'm not very good at animals and this picture leaves a lot to be desired,  but it is by far the best animal picture I've ever managed.

Sun Flowers

So cheerful and just right for a card. This started as an exercise in shading with copics...something I am yet to master on small scale things.

I was also trying out a new type of centre fold card. I made a mistake on cutting the side panels - they should have gone right down to the bottom. Of course I didn't realise you'd see the bottom of the side panels until I'd cut and glued them on. So then I decided to cut out some flowerpots (which you can't see  very well) and some foliage and glued one set of foliage behind each flowerpot at the back of the fold and one set behind the front of the fold. It gives it a rather nice 3d effect. While I was scrabbling in my box of embellishments for something to put on the front, I came across a packet of painted wooden ladybirds that I bought age ago.  I glued those on to the front. The ladybirds on the flowerpots in the drawing are part of the original picture, so it all tied in nicely.

Pastel Art - Castle Coombe Bridge

My second picture using Colin Bradley's fantastic lessons. His, of course, is much better than mine and doing this picture certainly underscores his statement that trees are the hardest thing for a landscape artist to render.  Mind you, the clouds also leave a lot to be desired too....

While there is plenty of room for improvement in my work, it's still by far one of the best landscapes I've produced, thanks to Colin's instruction.

This picture was rendered in pastel pencil on Fabriano Ingres paper.

Miss Holly - traced stamps

We are coming up to the mad week in September with a whole bunch of close family birthdays in the one week. I have a stack of cards I've made but none suitable for my niece who will be 7. So, I used a cute Sarah Kay design and coloured it with Copics. (Yes..I'm still trying to get control over the pens!). I cut the finished picture to a rectangle then used the corner rounding punch on my envelope board to round off the corners. the die is from Spellbinders. The flower is a hand made dampened scrunched flower using a tutorial at Such a Pretty Mess and the heart sticks are die cut. The die has a whole bunch of the sticks on the one die.

 I'm a hopeless stamper - my stamps always seem to be blotchy and/or blurred, in the wrong spot or slightly skewed/off centre/not quite straight. My solution? Stamp on to scrap paper and use a light box to trace the design onto the final surface using a fine (0.2) pen. If my surface is card and I can't see through it to trace, I trace it on to printer paper, scan the tracing, then print it onto the card.

Stamping and tracing also has the advantage of being able to eliminate parts of the design that you don't want. Some stamps come with "shading" on them which I don't always like, and sometimes I want parts of the stamps in different colours. Modifying this design for instance, I could leave off the flowers on the dress or the checks on the pocket. Or I could have made a plain bow in the girl's hair instead of a flowered one.

Another advantage with stamping, tracing and scanning is that you can combine designs and line up multiple stampings easily. You can also change the size of the stamp which is really useful and makes your stamps a whole lot more versatile. You pay good money for a decent quality stamp...make it work for you!

The only thing you mustn't do is share or sell your scans as that is an infringement of copyright. Stamping, tracing and scanning should be for your personal use only as the design is still copyrighted to the original owner of the artwork.

Less Is More - Rosebuds

A very simple card - just trying out copics. I am taking a while to get the hang of using them as they feel clumsy to me in comparison to the control I have with a pencil.

Having finished the colouring, I decided to mount it simply on a spellbinders frame. I cut 2 of the burgundy frames and glued them together along the top edge and then tied the ribbon through the holes at the top for extra strength. The rosebuds were pre-purchased paper rosebudss.

Rustic Doorway Pastel

Another exercise from Colin Bradley that I completed in pastel pencils.

 I WILL use scans of these in cards soon, I promise!

Meanwhile you can get a 300dpi scan of my original artwork here

Pastel Pencil Art - Harbour Scene

I've stumbled across a great site for learning how to draw in pastels. Colin Bradley does the most amazingly lifelike pictures using pastel pencils. This is my first attempt at a landscape following his free video tutorial. I'm planning on using the scan I made of it on a card - probably a DL sized card.

You can get a 300dpi scan of my original as an image to use on your own card here.

Simnple birthday card

Sometimes less is more - particularly for cards for men.

I got the inspiration for this card from another I saw on Pinterest. I used a 300gsm white card as a base, then layered on some hand made paper at the bottom and a piece of patterned paper for the top and tied the ribbon around. A fragment of the same ribbon was folded in half and glued just under the top layer. The card was finished off with black acrylic jewels. I rounded the corners on the bottom using the corner rounder  on my envelope board (another great bit of equipment!).

Father's Day Card 2

 

A simple card for Father's Day, using layering and a large sentiment. I hand cut the layered paper banner ends. The card is finished with black acrylic jewels.

Father's day card

What to make for a man?

I found the image I used for this card on  TuckDB Ephemera. The images on the TuckDB site are postcards that are over 100 years old and are public domain. I generally download the big image so that I can make a 300dpi quality image for printing and then use Photoshop to modify it, clean and extend the background for use with paper dies. The images that I have "cleaned", I am making available for download. You can download the image I "cleaned" for this card here. The right hand edge is not great, but gives enough room to crop and looks fine cropped. I've also added a sentiment to the image.

You can resize the image using Phoxo software (see my tutorial on using digital stamps). Once cleaned, I printed the image on a bubble jet printer, cut the image and sponged the edges using black ink. I used two sizes of label dies from Spellbinders for the image and it's dark green background, then layered these on another cut out using a Spellbinders die. I then cut the remaining background layers using a Cutterpillar Pro. This bit of equipment is possibly the best investment in card making equipment I've ever made! It cuts like a dream.

My one gripe about spellbinders labels is that even though I used consecutive dies, the difference in sizes is too great, leaving a border which I think is too thick.To get a thinner border you have to buy an additional set  and they are not cheap! I'm thinking I might trace around one of the dies in gold pen to add a boarder to break up the thickness but I don't want to risk ruining the card either....so maybe I should leave well enough alone?

Angela

Silver and Blue Quilled Card

Blue 2mm strips were used to make the scrolls and  leaf fronds. The large fringed flower has a smaller punched flower glued to the centre. The cream flowers are made from 4 scrunched scalloped circles pinned together with a small brad. The remaining flowers were made from six 2mm wide loose leaves with a fringed flower in the centre. The quilling is mounted on white card and matted on a light blue linen backing card, also mounted onto a darker grey-blue linen base card.

More Hanging Christmas Cards

The bells on these cards are quilled. simply roll up a length of gold metallic paper tightly and glue the end down. when dry, gently push up the centre with the end of a pen and glue a pearl inside for a clapper. the small bells are made with one strip of 1/4 inch paper cut lengthwise down the page. The larger bells are one and a half strips glued together. The dividers between the papers on the left hand card are stickers, on the right I have used a scrap of metallic braid. Rolled fringed flowers finish the right hand card, together with some punched branches and some cold porcelain buds sprayed with gold paint.

 This card has small paper roses that I made, punched branches and some small wooden star buttons.

 This card has silver cold porcelain buds and a fringed flower with a half pearl centre.

 This card is decorated with a cluster of  tiny  jingle bells that I bought tied to some narrow silver cord. Dab some glue on the knot at the back of the jingle bell to prevent the knot from undoing.

 This is one of several blue cards. Again I have used silver jingle bells which I hung from a fringed flower.

Download the images used in these cards here 

 

Comb Quilling

More quilling. This design was experimental (mind you, aren’t most???). I made the large flower some weeks ago using Meg’s  comb quilling method, then made the scrolls and used up left over strips to fill in the gaps. The corner strips are gold adhesive sticker strips that you can buy in sheets. I’m still managing to get glue everywhere and can’t seem to get neat ends to my scrolls – hence the tightly wound two coloured circles over one end and the blue punched flower over the other. Useful ways to hide a multitude of sins!

More Quilled Chrysanthemums

Larger quilled chrysanthemums. These have layers of stamens between the layers of tear drop petals. It’s very fiddly but looks nice when finished, reminding me of Jacobean crewel embroidery designs.
Might explore this idea further!

Quilled Chrysanthemums

I saw these mini chrysanthemums made from curved quilled tear drops and decided to give it a go. I also wanted to try attaching single stem scrolls. I used slightly thicker paper – about 100gsm and cut the strips on the spaghetti cutter of my pasta machine, making the strips about 1.5-2mm wide. This width is perfect for making stems and single scrolls as it stands up well.

Double Fringed Flower

This quilled card I made to display a double quilled flower. I followed Pritesh Dagur’s instructions but the flower didn’t turn out quite how I expected. My paper was very crisp making the fold very stiff and the petals didn’t open the same way as they do in Pritesh’s video. I opened out each of my petals individually and gave it more of a scruffy spikey look, teamed it up with some leaf scrolls and scrolls made from 1.5mm strips I cut using the spaghetti cutter on my pasta machine. I have just bought a 3mm trenette cutter attachment for a pasta machine. Although it is the same make as my pasta machine, mine is a much older model and doesn’t take attachments. However, the winder fits the trenette attachment and it is easy to balance the attachment on the side of the table and cut the paper.

Hanging Christmas Cards

I’ve been playing around with some hanging Christmas card ideas. Not sure if I like the hanging bit so I might remove it and mount the cards onto bases. The images used are available for download below.

The images used in the4 cards are here

Purple Quilled Card

Another go at quilling – this time a DL sized card.  I was using up my 2mm strips on this one and practicing making scrolls.

Handbag gift bag 2

Another bag from the set I bought from SVG Cuts. Again I found the perforations left parts a bit weak – especially the tabs that hold the handles on. The bag is decorated with a die cut mini lace doily ad a quilled decoration. The quilled decoration is a circle of green tear drops with a dark  pink fringed flower in the centre.

Handbag gift bag

The cutting file for the basic handbag is available from SVG Cuts. I added the top  and the bottom contrasting pieces as I found that he perforations on he bottom fold caused the handbag  to split easily as you put it together and it needed reinforcing as I wanted to use it as a gift bag. Then I added the rosette as an embellishment.

Easter Baskets

I used the instructions for these cute baskets from

http://hobby-di-carta.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/packaging-spring-basket-by-fiorella.html.

On the blog they were filed with paper strawberries but I intend to fill  mine with Easter eggs this Easter.