Shake your Valentine

Hi again,
here's another Valentine card to share with you.  It's a shaker card.  I used the extra bits from our February kit to make a fun shaker card full of hearts and glittery bits.
I had a total craft fail though.  I thought the shaker part was sealed up but when I went to shake it, there was glitter and tiny beads falling out and bouncing all over my desk. ah well, nothing a little tacky glue wouldn't fix.
The outlined hearts over top of the window is a die from Memory Box. Can you spot the beaded garland embossing folder in the background?  Subtle and pretty.
thanks for taking a look. The paper is all included in the February Kit at Urban Scrapbook. You will get to see my layout for the month's kit soon.

Valentines

Hello everyone,

I have some valentine cards to share with you. I love my  Silhouette machine ( as you all know). These cards were actually really fast to make. Let me show you...

The card above was a combination of 3 cut files. I added a little foiling glue in some areas and gilded his wings and bow. I also "smudged" some glue on the large heart and added some iridescent foil and gold leaf to that. A shadow press folder is in the top right. I used foam tape to adhere the cut outs for a little more dimention.

This next one was even quicker to make. One cut file, a basic square mat and mounted on a card base.  I made it a little "blingy" How?  I ran the squares through the xyron machine to coat them with adhesive, that made it easy to stick the filigree hearts on, next I pressed gold foil here and there over the exposed adhesive and then filled the rest with red glitter.

You've Got Mail

Hello again. 

I wanted to share this cute little mailbox I made.  It's a silhouette cut file from Lori Whitlock. And embellished with some extra hearts and flowers I had hanging around on my desk. 

I hinged the front part of the mail box and created a base and pole out of my hoarded recycles. (You just never know when they will come in handy) 

I made a few little "love letters" to go inside the mailbox too. Overall, a fun little project that looks cute on a table. Happy Valentine's day. 

Urban Love Mixed Media

Hi again,

I created a grungy mixed media piece that has (I think) a real urban vibe to it. The one thing I learned from doing mixed media art, is that it truly goes through an ugly stage. Just keep building the textures and layers first. I have taken pictures during the process to show you what was involved. 

I started with 12x12 chipboard, texture paste, glue and a great stencil from Donna Downey. I covered the board in random areas with the stencil and then embossed cardstock. I then adhered that to preplanned areas on the base. I added some heavy gel patterns with a texture tool (you can see it on the top there)

next, I base coated the chipboard with black gesso (starting to look a little better)
I started gluing flowers and different textured pieces to the base, the LOVE is just there for placement. it is not stuck down yet.
It's back to "not so pretty" again.

here we go with the fun part... I coated the entire piece with grey gesso (just black and white mixed together)
Now we have a nice coherant monochromatic piece

next I started adding washes of Primary Elements in Garnet and Black Orchid slowly building up the color
after that was done, I felt it needed a hit of gold to highlight some areas

finally, I added the brick word LOVE over top of the background. This was created in my Silhouette studio software and cut to fit the 12x12 board. I offset the design and cut it again with wood grain paper.

The final step was making the word "Urban" to hang off the middle grouping (it also adds another layer to the piece) and some heart clusters

I love the shimmer that the Primary Elements give you. The photos don't do it justice.

Thanks for taking a look at my project. I hope you picked up a few tips as well.  See you soon...

Shasta Trailer - winter edition

Two words that should never be in the same sentence are winter and camping.  Seriously, who would want to camp when it's -20? Anyway, this is as close as I get to winter camping.

The kit is, of course, from my favorite website SVGCuts.com  you can see the it here.

I cut the pieces at 200% of the original size and added a trailer hitch and propane tanks to the front. The paper I used was from the Bo Bunny Altitude collection.

I used some distress inks in Seedless Preserves and Evergreen Bough to compliment the paper and a beautiful stamp from Indigo Blu on the top panel. The snowflakes were stamped with the same ink colors. They are from an older set I have, however I can't remember the name of the company.

I even made my own texture paste for the faux snow. I happened upon this great talented lady's blog Pamellia Johnson's "my little craft things" . I followed the recipe Pamellia shared. She has some wonderful tutorials, including the texture paste recipe post, which you can check out here

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed my winter camping experience.

Silent Night

Hello again,

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas season.  I always get the Christmas let down a few days after the big day.  I have so much fun decorating and preparing for it, when it's over, I don't know what to do with myself.
I made this church quite a while ago, but I kept forgetting to take pictures of it.  It's another SVGCuts.com kit called Silent Night.  You can check it out here.

It glows so beautifully beside the Christmas trees.

I used some great patterned  paper to mimic an old rustic country church. The panels are printed from a background file I downloaded in Silhouette Studio. The rest of the church was constructed with some very neutral coloured paper from "Jilly Bean Soup"

I added a couple of lanterns beside the door. These lanterns  are actually from the Pumpkin Carriage files in the "Enchanted Autumn" SVG kit.

Some wreaths on the windows and paper icicles finish off the decorating enhanced with a little fake snow made with texture paste.

Thanks for popping in. I hope you find peace and happiness in 2015. 

Urban Scrapbook January Kit

Hi everyone,

The January kits at Urban Scrapbook are fabulous! This month it features the line "Altitude" by Bo Bunny. I love this paper line. I've used it for my 3D houses last month and a special project I made for the store. The teal, aqua and purple color palate is perfect for winter. You can check out other projects from the design team here.

The white background was distressed and then stamped with Broken China and Dusty Concord inks

check out the glittery flourish die-cut.  It was a "freebie" included in one of the Tattered Lace Magazines this past summer.  I added a few Tim Holtz Snowflakes in the same color to make it wintery.

Check out the other beautiful pages on display this month at Urban Scrapbook.  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy New Year

Hi everyone,

It's a new year and I am already behind!

I made these cards for my co-workers before New Years Eve, but I didn't get around to posting them until now. Ah well, what can you do?

The cards were cut with my Silhouette Cameo.

This one was quite a happy accident. The print and cut was off by an 1/8 inch so I ended up throwing 2 coats of clear EP on it, then used Shabby Green (Stampendous) on top.

My dear old snowflake stamp (PSX - remember them?) stamped in white pigment ink created a snowy background.

The weathered clock die got the crackle treatment. Now if anyone has tips on how the bloody heck I can get my crackle paint to behave as it should, PLEASE share with me.  I have no luck with it. 

See look, you can barely see any cracks.

My second card here was pretty fun. Again, a Silhouette cut file. I used my favourite paper for the card base (Simple Stories) and cut everything else out in white to add my own colours. I used antique linen, spun sugar and seedless preserves.

Thanks for stopping by. I will be back with my January page kit from Urban Scrapbook next time.

See you then.