Wednesday 28 April 2010

Wild Flower Card

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>
This card uses a gorgeous set called Wild Flower Stamps from MyGrafico and if you can’t be bothered to colour them in yourself, they sell the same set pre-digitally coloured – yay!

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>I spent quite a lot of time cutting out all of the features of this card, but it was so worth it in the end. I just love this effect! I’ve got more plans for this technique…

I have done a video tutorial on this – and it was a labour of love I can tell you! My computer died, just as I finished editing the video and I lost it all, despite saving a zillion times, and I ended up reinstalling my pc and starting from scratch. So it’s three days later than originally planned. Grr!

I also have news – I’ve been accepted as a YouTube Partner!!! I’m so excited about this new development. Apart from anything, it means I get to choose the thumbnail on my videos, which is 100 times better than the thumbnails YT picks for you =)

So without further ado, here’s my latest video! Please rate & subscribe =)

Watch it here | Watch over at YouTube

Sunday 25 April 2010

Happy Birthday Dad!

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>
This card is for my Father-in-law who’s 58 today! It’s a single layer card, so I’ve also added to Kristina Werner’s One Layer Card Challenge. Single layer cards are difficult! The temptation to add extras to it was almost unbearable at times, but I did have fun challenging myself to stick to the one layer, and made it doubly difficult for myself by making the challenge card a masculine one too!

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>I’ve made it using black c.s. which can be a difficult colour to work with, but this c.s. has a nice embossed pattern in it, so it’s not just a block of black, there’s a subtle pattern there too.

The Happy Birthday sentiment was stamped with Papermania’s Alphamania stamps, and I was inspired by an idea from one of Kristina’s earlier cards to stamp them with Versamark in a circle using a masking technique. I then embossed using white e.p., faux stitched around the edges and added some clear embossed stars around the outside just to help break up the expanse of black a bit more.

No video tutorial for this one – but I am currently editing my ‘Sneak Peak’ video for a card I made the other day, which should go up later on today. I just didn’t want to miss entering this card for Kristina’s challenge which ends in a few hours.

Enjoy your Sunday afternoon’s!

Thursday 22 April 2010

Sneak peak!

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>
I’ve been a bit quiet on here of late, it’s mainly due to work pressures and working silly long hours! But I got home this evening and locked myself in my craft room to make a card and now feel a lot better for it, phew.

So, here’s a close up of my next project…I filmed it tonight, so I hope to edit and publish the video over the weekend, so watch this space! The card’s not like my usual designs, although there is white faux stitching and the base card is Kraft c.s. so there are still some similarities, lol =)

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Happy Birthday!

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>
This card was a lot of fun to make, and it is a really quick card to make in a birthday emergency! I really enjoyed using the big alphabet stamps, stamping over letters and squishing them all together so they’d fit onto the card. I like this effect as it gives a lot of movement to the card. 

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630> The flowers were cut out of some patterned paper and I used my embossing tool to create the 3d effect of the petals.

The swirls were stamped onto the cream c.s. in versamark ink, and embossed in gold e.p. This gave a less vivid gold colour, that looks more yellowy than anything else. If you want a more obvious gold sheen, then you should ink up in gold, and emboss in gold e.p. on top of this.

This card is now for sale at My Folksy Shop!

The video is below, and as usual, you can head over to my YT Channel to rate & subscribe and to watch in HD. Thanks for watching!

Saturday 3 April 2010

30th & 60th birthday’s for the men!

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>
Yet another of my friends turned 30 recently. I now feel so young – still just over a year to go for the big three-oh for me, he he! ;0)
<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630> My wonderful Dad also turned 60 last month, so I made a very similar card for him too (in fact his was the 1st!). For both cards, I’ve used some masculine-esque papers and done some antiquing using distress inks. This looks great as an edging effect and has the added bonus of covering up any errant craft-knife slip ups when cutting out! You could cut out such a card using a CraftROBO, but I fancied doing one by hand. Also, the cardstock I used was quite thick, so maybe a little much for my little ROBO. The ‘30’ card has the fold on the top edge, and the ‘60’ the fold is on the left.

These cards would’ve taken far too long to film, so I just had fun at my craft desk and went ahead and did them without the video. I don’t do this often enough! However, I may make a similar card to these soon and film it, now I know what I’m doing and can probably go a little quicker =)

<Digimax S600 / Kenox S600 / Digimax Cyber 630>
As for how I made these cards, I first made a template for these in Illustrator and printed it out on some copy paper. I then stuck it with removable adhesive onto the card front, onto which I had already stuck the patterned paper, using spray glue. Using a craft knife (and a lot of patience!), I cut out the template. I then sanded all my cuts using the Basic Grey Precision file set, & distressed all the edges using Distress Inks. I faux stitched all around the edges, added the ‘birthday’ stickers, then added the tag with an eyelet.

I really enjoyed making these cards, and they were definitely worth the effort, but they certainly aren’t ones you can whip up in half an hour!! I think each one took about 1.5hrs…both men loved their respective cards though - success!! Hope you like them too.