Monthly Archives: April 2019
Hero Arts – Monthly Hero Kit Add on
Being someone who absolutely loves to travel, this month’s Hero Arts Kit was calling loudly to me. The images of Venice transported me back to that wonderful place. The laundry line reminded me of Naples and the background building reminded me of the view of Florence from a viewpoint over the city. I was done for when I saw the add on die set called European Village. It reminded me so much of Canterbury in England with its’ cottages and cobblestone streets, it had to go in my cart.
The card turned out well. Once more my Dirty Sand embossing powder from Emerald Creek came in hand to give the cobblestone road some texture.
#HeroArts
Monday Challenge- Simon Says Stamp 3
Here is my second post of the day. This time my card uses the negative or leftover piece of hot foil as the background in this shaker card. It took a couple of tries to get the right combination of heat and pressure so that the background was smooth and fully adhered to the cardstock. It looked great though when complete. The frame is from Hero Arts.
Here is the second card:
Simon Says Stamp-Monday Challenge 2
I have a couple more examples of foiling for the foil challenge at Simon Says Stamp. This is an interesting post (maybe to me only 🙂 ) as it and the next post show examples of being able to use regular dies as foiling plates. Additionally, the two posts show that it is possible to successfully use both the positive and negative pieces of the hot foil on cards. You will note, I didn’t say it was easy. It is actually easy to use the positive piece. It foils just like any of the foil plates that you can buy. Foiling the negative (part you would normally throw away) is a bit trickier as it requires some experimentation to get the right combo of heat and pressure, but my second post today shows that it can be done.
The card uses Bubbles and Fishes cover plate from Lawn Fawn as the hot foil plate. Take a look:
Simon Says Stamp – Monday Challenge
The Monday challenge on Simon Says Stamp this week is foiling. They are featuring Gina K Designs and I have lots of her great products. Sadly, I did not bring any of her foil products to Phoenix. I did, however, acquire quite a few “hot foil” products while down here so I am going to enter the challenge using those.
I think that foiling is particularly suited to sympathy cards. On sad occasions, it is not “about the card”, it is about the person we are missing and foiled cards always manage to look elegant without taking over.
The dandelion in this card is from Picket Fence and the sentiment is from Spellbinders.
I had a boo boo on this card as I hovered the Heidi Swapp gold spray over the card one second too long after dripping on some dandelion fluff. This resulted in a spot of faint gold where I did not want it, but the card was too nice to throw away.
Riverbank Collection
I had said that I wanted to try another Riverbank Collection card so that I could showcase the wonderful paper in the collection a bit better than I did in the last froggy card. Well, as usual, “a funny thing happened on the way to the forum” and it didn’t really go as planned. Just so you know, that quote is from a 1966 movie of the same name, so I am really dating myself. Usually, crafters quote the more modern, “I was distracted by something shiny” when describing why something didn’t go as planned. Now, back to the cards.
I had a problem with the swan card. I had decided to use Copic markers…………but wait………….we are talking about a white swan here. It didn’t take long to colour! I did use light grey markers to provide shadows, but I still didn’t think it stood out enough to look like a focal image. I decided to cover the whole swan with glossy accents to make it stand out more. The problem was that my bottle of Glossy Accents had turned quite yellow with the Arizona heat. Interestingly though, I found that the yellowish shine matched the yellow-green in the background paper quite well, and I decided to go ahead and use it.
Here is the card:
On the second card, I was also distracted a bit from my mission to show off the beautiful paper. I had just bought a set of rectangular dies from Penny Black and it occurred to me that they would work really well for a stacked mat style. That is a style where the image is continuous over three different sized mats with varying degrees of depth. Sounds confusing but you will understand when you look at the card. I love how the squiggly lines in the mats provide interest without overpowering the image. Anyway, it turned out really well and the background paper did provide a nice enhancement by repeating some of the elements.
Take a look:
Scraps of Love – The Riverbank Collection
Scraps of Love (scrapbook store) here in Phoenix recently moved to their new location. It is only a couple of blocks from their old location but is much larger. I went there bright and early on opening day wearing my Scraps of Love T shirt. This qualified me for a 20% discount which I used with gusto.
Amongst my many purchases was a pad of patterned paper from a UK company that was new to me. The collection is called The Riverbank and I bought it along with two matching stamp sets. The company is called the Craft Consortium. Anyway, the paper is thick and double sided which is wonderful. I think this may be the first time that I ever bought a pad of paper where I loved every page.
I made my first card using one of the stamp sets and one of the papers. I had to make the card larger than the usual A2 size to have any of the background paper visible. I am thinking the images are sized for a typical UK sized card which is bigger than A2. In any case, I am about to try again with a second card designed to showcase the wonderful paper better. In the meantime take a look at this card.
DebSelby
Maverick Muses 