Kaleidoscope Butterfly

Today I have a card to show you that I made for the Butterfly Challenge  where the letter this time is K for Kraft and/or K for Kaleidoscope. First off I apologise for the shadows and odd angle in the photo. I took it fairly early the other morning because the sun was shining so bright and I thought I would be able to capture the sparkle on the butterfly, but the sun was still rising and window frames were causing the shadow. I kept moving it around but it's surprising how fast the light changes. In the end I settled for a bit of shadow and a reasonable show of sparkle.
I started with a 15cm square Kraft card, and stamped the butterfly with Aridondak  Snow Cap ink and embossed it with WOW Diamond White EP. That's where the sparkle comes from. The stamp is a very old wood mounted stamp, PSX  I think. I masked the butterfly and stamped the random dots in various colours with another wood mounted stamp by Denami Designs, hoping this would represent the Kaleidoscope effect.The greeting across the bottom is a self adhesive paper tape from my stash. I tied the green ribbon with a bow in the corner and then added the multi coloured daisies and a few tiny butterflies. Whenever I have been die cutting I use my mini punches to punch out little flowers, butterflies ect, from the scrap bits and save the for projects like this.
So as well as The Butterfly Challenge where I hope my card qualifies for both parts of the challenge, I am also going to enter it in Pixies Snippet Playground because all the flowers are from snippets.
Thank you for visiting here today and for your comments which are really appreciated.
Jean

A First Birthday card

Good evening, and thank you to everyone who left me such kind comments on my last post after my being away for so long.  This coming weekend is the first birthday for my fourth Great Granddaughter, Ella and this is the card I have made for her.

The image is a LOTV stamp,
stamped with black Memento
ink and coloured with Promarkers. I die cut it with a Lil Inker stitched die and then cut  a mat from some pale pink paper. I cut a piece of the patchwork design paper very slightly smaller than the front of the 15cm square base card. I used a Victorian Velvet Distress Marker to ink the edge of this and all the other cut pieces. I stuck the pale pink mat to the background paper at an offset angle and stitched 3 pale blue buttons to a length of pink ribbon before wrapping it round the paper, slightly overlapping the mat and fixing it at the back. I then fixed all this to the card, and added the image. The greeting is another LOTV stamp which I cut out by hand as none of my round dies were the right size. I used an X Cut die to cut the hexagon mat and having stuck them together I added it to the card. Both the pink and patterned paper are from a pad called Belle and Boo which contains some really pretty designs for baby and young children's cards.
The pink paper and white card used were all snippets so I am taking this to show in Pixies Snippets Playground.
I am also entering at Love To Craft Challenge Blog- Anything Goes
and Simon Says Stamp - Anything  Goes.

Rudolph Day Medley

Woohoo! I,m back!! Hello happy bloggers, I have had a rather long break from blogging, due in part to a computer problem which was preventing me from accessing my blog pages. This was caused by a mistake on my part that  I didn't know how to fix, but I am pleased to say that it is resolved now.The trouble is, that having had a break I was finding it hard to get started again, but one day this week I sat down to sort out a huge pile of old Christmas cards that had been sent to us in the past with a view to finding something I could recycle to enter the Rudolph Day Challenge this month, and this is what I came up with.

The challenge is hosted by Scrappy Mo at Scraps of Life by Scrappymo Blog, and runs monthly from the 25th. (Rudolph Day), until the end of the month. I enjoy this challenge and have missed being able to enter. The requirement is to make one or more Christmas themed items.
I kept them fairly simple selecting some images that I liked and trimming them close to the edges. I chose coloured card that toned with the pictures and cut and folded the base cards. I found contrasting coloured and metallic snippets to mat the images and used various stamps, embossing and die cuts for further embellishment. The patterned paper that I used on the two square cards are from pad that came free with a magazine last year. The orange paper on the top left hand card was a snippet that has been in my box for ages, I think it may have come from Graphicus, ( before it became Chocolate Baroque)

Thank you for dropping by today and if you leave a comment I will really appreciate it and will return the compliment and visit your blog. I hope to get back into the swing of regularly  visiting and commenting again now.
 I hope every one is enjoying some good weather this holiday weekend.
Jean

Rudolph Day in June

Hi to all of you who are wondering if I had hibernated for good. The truth is that to start with I had lots going on, but since then I have a big problem with the computer and it's still not resolved. It means that I can't use my blog dashboard to write posts or to see my reading list. I can do this on my tablet, and I have managed to do some commenting by this means, but I apologise for not keeping right up to date. However I really wanted to enter the Rudolph Day Challenge as I missed last months and I am way behind with my Christmas cards. I am trying to do this on my tablet, and it is very frustrating as I can't make my photo go where I want it to. I will attempt to post it when I,m done  but I don't think I will be able to link it up to Scrappy Mo's for the Challenge from here though.

I used a new signature die to make my card, and cut it from a piece of white card which was cut slightly smaller than the front of the dark blue base card. Before sticking it down I put some double sided tape behind all the window openings and coloured  the cut out bits with a yellow Promarker  and put them back in place. I also stamped and embossed the star at this stage, using Versamark and WOW sparkle embossing powder. I stamped the wise men with part of a Stampendous stamp and the words are all Chocolate Baroque stamps. I used Brilliance Lightning Black ink for this, and then stuck the two layers together.                                                                                                             

I shall now see if I can post this and maybe even link it to The Rudolph Day Challenge.

Thank you if you are visiting here today and for bearing with me, I really hope to  get this problem sorted out soon. Any comments you leave are gratefully recieved, I hope to be back soon.

Jean                                                                                                                         

A Birthday Rose

This is a card that I made recently for a friends birthday. The Joanna Sheen rose was stamped onto a piece of white stamping card that had been used to mop up the last bit of ink from my craft mat at the end of a previous ink smooshing session. I can't remember what inks I used and the result is very subtle. I used black Memento ink to stamp the image and then coloured it with Promarkers. Next I cut it with a die from the Spellbinders Radiant Rectangles set, and then mounted it onto a green mat. I chose two patterned papers from an old Papermania pad called Regency, and cut two rectangular panels each with a scalloped edge on one short side. These were also mounted onto matching green card. I wrapped a length of green silk ribbon around the striped one and tied a bow on the edge, before fixing them to the 15cm. square base card, and sticking the rose panel on top. I stuck a piece of the spotted paper to some thin card before die cutting the small butterfly with a Cheery Lynne die. I gave it several coats of clear Wink of Stellar before adding it to the card and sticking some tiny pearls to it's body. The Birthday greeting is my favourite little Stamp Tapestry stamp. As I used my Cuttlebug machine for the die cutting I am entering this at,

                        Cuttlebug Mania - May Flowers, and also at the following challenges.      Simon Says Stamp - Flowers
                        Stamping Sensations - Anything Goes
                               
                               

Robbins For Rudolph Day

Hello, here I am very late again with my Rudolph Day card this month. We have been away this week and I made my card ready before we went and started to prepare the blog post but I lost the photos as I uploaded them from the camera and I just didn't have time to sort it out before we left. However we are home again now and magically my photos turned up again when turned the computer on!! So I think I might just get this posted before the close of play.The main stamp I used for this is from Crafty Individuals, and I stamped it onto white card with black Memento ink. I coloured it with Coloursoft pencils and Distress Markers, and after trimming it close to the image I brushed the edges with Tea Dye Distress ink. Next I mounted it onto a red mirri card mat cut with a scalloped Spellbinder Nestabilities dye. The base card is a white A6 size with the fold on the short side. I stamped the Chocolate Baroque corner stamp and sentiment directly onto the card with Olympia Green Memento ink, and then stuck the image panel in place. I added some Stickles to the corner berries and to the icicles on the main image to give  bit of sparkle.

I am now going to dash over to enter the Rudolph Day Challenge at Scraps of Life by Scrappymo.

Thank you so much for visiting here today and for all your kind comments on my last post. I am fine now and hope to get round to visiting all your blogs soon.

Jean

Birthday Snippets

Once more it has been ages since my last post. A little accident and nasty bug have left me with little inspiration for craft or blogging recently, so I apologise yet again for my lack of commenting and I hope to be back to normal soon.
I suddenly realised that I needed a birthday card to post for this weekend so set about to make something fairly flat and pretty, and this is what I came up with. I cut and folded a white 15cm. square base card, and all the other card used was from the snippets boxes. For the background colour swipes I used a stamp from a Paper Smooches set, stamped with three various ink pads. I just picked colours that I liked the look of together. The leaves and flowers and the tiny butterflies are all Stampin Up stamps. The centers are stamped with yellow ink and then prettied up with yellow Stickles. The sentiment stamp is from a Sheena Douglas set that came free with a magazine that I was looking at because it had some pretty fairy stamps and a flowery embossing folder with it and then I realised there was this fabulous SD set as well as an extra freebie with copies sold in Sainsbury's. It has two nice sentiments a lovely corner flourish and several nature, meadow flower type stamps. The layering card is from Papermania, and this was the last little piece of this particular shade and it was just big enough to cut both mats. All the squares were cut with Li'inkers stitched square dies. The sentiment square looked too white so I stamped some random dots in the same inks as the flower background. I stamped an extra flower and cut it out and fixed it where the panels overlapped, and stamped a further partial flower onto the card base, and the little flight of butterflies to the right of the main image.

Now I am popping over to link this up at Pixies's Snippet Playground.
I am also entering at Stamping Sensations - One For The Girls

Thank you for visiting. and for your comments, I really appreciate them all.
Jean