Swallowtail Birthday

Welcome to another glorious Spring Day - so wonderful to have warm sun and blue sky and just a few little fluffy white clouds floating by. The garden is growing, the flowers are out and unfortunately so are the flies…..certainly one of the worst things about an Australian summer!

Today's card is for a good friend whose birthday is coming up and it is one of those "round birthdays" so it was time to bring out something a bit different and a bit special :-) I decided to rework a little a card I made for a challenge in March - you can read more about that card here - and yes, it was one of my first challenge wins so a special card for me :-)

I kept the colours from the challenge - as they go so well together - and kept the layered Swallowtail which is stamped twice of course and fussy cut and layered with some dimensionals. The beautiful Gold spotted Vellum is layered onto a piece of white card to help it to stand out and the greeting is also gold embossed and cut out with the Oval Framelits. For the numbers I used the gold foil sheets to stay within the gold theme - and a little hint - when using the Foil with the sizzlit dies is best to use new cutting plates if you have them as any scratch in the plate will show up on the foil…as I found out!!

Card stock: Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White, Gold Foil Sheets

Designer Series Paper: Vellum Specialty Gold

Inks: Pistachio Pudding, Versamark

Stamps: Swallowtail, Well Scripted (Retired)

Accessories: Big Shot, Oval Framelits, Timeless Type Alphabet Sizlits, Crumb Cake Seam binding ribbon, Gold EP, Heat tool, Dimensionals

Thanks so much for stopping by today and I hope you have a great day today wherever you are today and do go and check out the wonderful Eva Bussom today if you can as today she is taking part in the Creative Blog Hop that I was part of last Monday and I know you will love her projects!

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan

Swallowtail for JAI

Welcome to the first of Autumn -  or for those in the Northern Hemisphere it will be Spring :-) Wherever you are today something is in the air - time for a change!

So it is with stamping sometimes too :-) When I started card making in 2008 I jumped into the Shabby-Chic style and loved to sponge every layer etc. In the last 6 months or so….I've found "clean and simple" and fallen in love with that style too! So when I saw this week's colour calling at Just Add Ink I found myself in a bit of a quandary - which style to use?

 It is such a beautifully soft colour combo that it would so suit a Shabby- chic card but then the Team designers have come up with some great clean cards (as well as gorgeous Shabby too!)  so what to do? In the end I think I've used a mixture of the two :-)

The Swallowtail butterfly has two layers and there is a double tied bow - but no sponging :-) And there is a bit of white between the gold dots too :-)

The card base is Pistachio Pudding and there is a layer of white card stock underneath the gorgeous Gold Vellum DSP.

The greeting is embossed in Gold embossing powder and then cut out with the Circle Framelit dies to match the circles in the DSP.

The bow uses Crumb cake seam binding ribbon and the centre is covered using a Gold Antique brad (that for some reason looks a lot darker in the photos than in real life) and held in place with just a few glue dots :-)

Card stock: Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White

DSP: Gold Fancy Foil Vellum

Ink: Versamark, Pistachio Pudding

Stamps: Swallowtail, Perfect Pennants

Accessries: Big Shot, Circle Framelits, Crumb cake Seam binding ribbon, Antique brad 

I hope you are enjoying your weekend and maybe you too might feel inspired to head over to Just Add Ink and enter the challenge too!

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan

EDITED to add that I am so honoured to have been chosen by the fabulous Just Add Ink team as the winner of their challenge this week! Thank you all so much for your wonderful challenges and generous comments!!

Multimedia project

A few weeks ago our parish Priest was talking about how when asked to bless a home he "always looks for a crucifix in the bedrooms". I thought about this….I could've gone out and bought a "traditional' one if I 'd wanted but I thought I could make one.  I had a triplet of Canvases on a bedroom wall that I was looking at changing to something more colourful so I decided to combine the two projects. I've used just one of the three canvases and initially painted it white to cover the old (Ikea) image and that means I have two left over to use elsewhere!

Next I took a little time to create a background for the Easter scene - bear in mind that although I think can use a stamp I have NEVER even suggested I can draw (or paint for that matter!!)

Unfortunately the mountains really do look quite amateurish but the sky at least has some depth to it.

I decided to experiment with a new product to me - Modge Podge (MP) by Tim Holts. it is a little similar to Crystal Effects in that it is to be used as a clear lacquer. Except it goes on white, is a fair bit thinner and therefore dries quicker. I picked up some sticks from the Park for the Cross and applied a layer of MP and when dry then used some Hemp Twine to tie the Cross together and then used another layer of MP including over the Twine to secure the shape before layering on top of some Burlap Ribbon.

For the main Butterfly I used the Swallowtail stamp and embossed it with Cherry Cobbler EP onto card stock. To colour I used Encore silver ink - applied with a Blender Pen, and Marina Mist and Cherry Cobbler markers.

Then came the task of trying to create different words from the three available with the Expressions thinlits which are "Thankful, Merry" and "love"

I wanted to have :faith, hope and love…

Love was easy of course:

it was the other two words that required a little creativity! For "faith" I used the "f", "a" and "th" from "thankful". The "i" used part of the "u" from the same word and I punched a dot with a handheld punch.

Hope was the trickiest of all to create!! I used the "h" from thankful and the "o" and "e" from "love". the "p" used part of the "f"(the lower half)  and then I used the "a" upside down AND back to front on top!! Hope was cut from Cherry Cobbler card stock and then a layer of MP applied before adhering to the canvas. The other two words were cut from Foil card stock.

The other butterfly bases are glimmer paper cut with the Beautiful Butterflies Bigz die and the smaller butterflies are stamped with the Papillon Potpourri set - stamped in both Versamark and coloured inks and then clear embossed. They are also covered with a layer of Modge Podge before being applied to the middle of the larger ones with dimensionals.

Materials: Paint - Coral Blue Structure, White Structure and Australian yellow green Structure and Grass Green Structure, Modge Podge

Garden sticks!

SU! products:

Card stock: Whisper white ( all butterflies), Gold and Silver Foil, Red, Gold and Silver Glimmer paper, Cherry Cobbler

Stamps: Swallowtail, Papillon Potpourri

Inks: Marina Mist, Cherry Cobbler, Pacific Point, Encore Sliver, Versamark

Accessories: Big Shot, Expressions Thinlits, Hemp Twine, Beautiful butterflies Bigz die,  Cherry Cobbler and Clear Embossing powders, Blender pens

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan

Hope Framed Art

I saw a wonderful framed Swallowtail based frame on Cindy Beach"s blog recently and decided to give it a go. I found a frame I liked and then started on the Swallowtail colouring. I realised as it was time to put it all together that my frame was a little larger than Cindy's so I needed to come up with an idea to cover the join in card stock.

I did borrow the wonderful Typeset Jumbo Bigz dies from wonderful Christine, and I changed the word from Cindy's "SOAR" to "HOPE". After all, I am always saying I "hope" so that is the word for me:-) And while talking to Christine I was inspired to use the now retired border punch to cover the card stock join.

The Swallowtail is stamped on Coaster Board and coloured with Markers.

And stamped the DSP with Clock works in Encore Gold Ink and the Collage Curios (retired) butterfly and placed inside a Soda Pop Top after running through the Big Shot.

Now its hanging in the Hall and does look as long as it belongs there!

Card Stock: Coaster Board, Coastal Cabana, Silver Glimmer Paper, Modern Medley DSP

Stamps: Swallowtail, Clock Works

Inks, (Markers: Pistachio Pudding, pool, Party, Island Indigo, Rich Razzleberry) Encore Gold, Stazon Black

Accessories: Big Shot, Soda Pop Tops, Black Brads, Typeset Jumbo Bigz Dies

Happy Stamping till next time, 

Jan

 P.S WOW, my blog Heading has re appeared all on its own as hoped :-)