Card Factory 2015–Brusho Trees

Following my first Brusho experiments using the Inkylicous clear stamp set “Simply Trees,” this morning I made the four best ones into cards. My studio became a matting and layering factory for the morning! I think I am definitely improving with this skill and most of them look pretty straight, which was not how it used to be in the old days…

I have thrown out sample #1 as unusable, but have decided to use #2 which was borderline. It does look better mounted.

I went through my stash and extracted various papers and cards suitable for matting and layering these designs, and again spent some time deciding on different combinations.

Design #2

I chose a sheet from a small pack of marbled papers for the main background layer for this card. All the cards have a narrow matt layer of glitter card from another pack. These are in colours that I know I shall never use for anything else, and I am not keen on the colours on their own, or on glitter card in general, but in conjunction with other papers and as matt layers for cards, I can use up a lot of stash that really does nothing for me! I bought quite a bit of paper back in the days when I was starting, and not sure what I really wanted to do, and some of these purchases turned out to be a bit of a mistake until now! I am determined to use up a lot of the clutter in my studio so that I can have room for more useful stuff.

Preparing to stick the layers down, I thought that the exposed white card of the base looked a little stark, so to soften it, I distressed the edges with Forest Moss distress ink, which definitely improved its appearance.

Here is design #2 complete.

Design #3

Another pack of paper is quite thin, verging on tissue paper. It has real leaves embedded in it. I used this paper in different colours for the remaining three cards. For this one, I chose a cream-coloured glitter card for the narrow matt layer.

When the leaves paper was stuck down onto the base card, the very edge of this white card was visible, so I ran my home-made ink blender around the edges with some of my new Fossilised Amber distress ink.

The finished card.

Design #4

For this card, I chose a yellow glitter card for the narrow matt layer, and the natural coloured paper from the leaves pack.

I distressed the edges of the base card covered with the leaves paper, using Vintage Photo distress ink.

Here is the finished card.

Design #5

For the final design, I chose a green sheet from the leaves pack. When this was laid over white (the colour of the base card in each case), because it was so thin, it looked a bit washed out, so I glued it down onto the plain orange card seen in the above photo, to give it a slightly richer appearance. Once trimmed, this double-layer was glued down onto the base card.

In this case, I distressed the edges with Forest Moss distress ink.

The finished card.

Here are the cards made from designs # 2 and 3.

The cards made from designs #4 and 5.

As usual, I have left these cards blank inside, so that I can add appropriate sentiments when I need to use them, with the exception of design #3. We are going to a birthday supper tonight, so this card hasn’t even made it into my new card stash! Using Forest Moss distress ink, I stamped the “Happy Birthday” sentiment onto a scrap of white card, which I trimmed to size and coloured with Fossilised Amber distress ink, using a home-made ink blender, and then matted onto more of the cream glitter card. I stuck this down onto the base card, and then stamped the same sentiment inside, again using Forest Moss distress ink, and applied some Fossilised Amber distress ink over the stamping to give it a bit more impact. This stamp is one of a collection of clear sentiment stamps that I have had from when I first started, and I no longer have the packaging so I do not know the name of the set, or the manufacturer.

Here is design #3 in birthday card mode.

Despite this being my first attempt at using Brushos, I am pretty happy with the results, and think they have come out quite nicely mounted as cards. This is definitely something I am going to again, using a variety of different stamps.

Brushos–First Experiments

Today I finally got around to testing my recently acquired Brushos. These crystalline waterclour pigments with their intense, vibrant colours proved a lot more difficult to use than I expected! I am sure I will get the hang of them eventually, and as you will see, my final results today were an improvement on my first attempts!

I began by cutting five pieces of card measuring 5 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches – these will matt and layer nicely onto an A5-sized card. I stamped them with two stamps from the Inkylicious “Simply Trees” clear stamp set that I got recently.

For my first attempt, I stamped the trees using sepia archival ink, but this proved to be not dark enough, so for the rest of the samples, I used black. The stamping didn’t come out terribly well, but I think this would be improved by using better-quality card. I had to touch up some of it with my permanent black drawing pens.

The colours of Brushos I chose were Dark Brown, Leaf Green, Scarlet, Yellow and Orange, to give an autumnal effect to my trees. I added the brushos by using a soft dry brush to pick up a few of the crystals from the pot, and tapped them onto the card. After this I spritzed it with water.

My first attempt was definitely underwhelming! I think I put on too much Brusho powder, and it didn’t really go where I wanted it! This stuff is really hard to control, but then that’s part of its attraction!

Attempt 2: This was definitely an improvement. With Brushos, less is definitely more! This girl definitely needs more practice!

For my third attempt, I used less again.

Fourth attempt: We’re definitely getting somewhere now. You really do need the absolute minimum of Brushos to get a good effect. Once I had dried the samples, I put a small quantity of the Leaf Green and Dark Brown brusho crystals onto my craft mat and mixed them with some water, using a fine brush, and then painted on some foreground.

My fifth attempt I was pretty much satisfied with. I quite like the foreground on this one, too.

In each case, I had to use a bit of judicious blotting with kitchen paper to remove excess water and Brushos, in an attempt to control where most of the colour ended up.

Here are attempts 2-5 as a group, the only ones I feel I could actually use, although #2 is debateable. #1 is definitely a reject and not included.

I thought that the addition of a little distressing around the edges might improve things further, and provide a little cohesion to the designs. Using a home-made ink blender, I applied Forest Moss distress ink for the bottom half of each one, and Vintage Photo distress ink for the top halves.

Here are the completed pieces in order. First: sample #2. I am still not sure about this one. I shall matt and layer it and see how it looks, but it may join #1 as a reject.

Sample #3.

Sample #4.

Finally, sample #5.

Watch this space to see these pieces matted and layered, and made up into cards.

My First Florabunda Drawings

The third of three posts for today.

After I won the lovely Florabunda book from Neil’s blog giveaway, I started experimenting. I cut some pieces of plain white card and also found some narrow offcut strips to make borders with, and got my Zentangle drawing pens out and started to have fun!

These are the little border pieces I did. They are 5 1/2 inches long.

With the book, Neil sent me a lovely little Zentangle card with my initial on it, so I decided to start making a set of alphabet letters in the Florabunda style. So far I’ve got to E. Each one measures 2 3/4 inches square.

A couple of circular designs.

In the book, I love Suzanne McNeill’s use of pods and gone-over flowers as well as all the pretty petals. Here’s my first take on this. They look a bit half-dead, with some of the leaves drooping and dropping off!

Some stylised leaves on a curve.

All these last ones are 4 3/4 inches square.

My plan is to draw a good collection of these Florabunda designs, and then scan and print them. I can then make up a collection of cards quite quickly, and colour them how I want, in a variety of ways, giving different interpretations to the same designs and seeing which I prefer. I am keen to try adding colours with my new Brusho paints in an uncontrolled way so that the detailed drawing sits on a suitably-coloured background, giving contrast between fine detail and random colour. The shapes can also be coloured with markers, watercolours, coloured pencils… As with the adult drawing pages, the possibilities are endless. These drawings also stand alone with no colour. So many different variations and so much possibility to have fun! For me at the moment one of the great advantages is that I can do them while relaxing on the recliner.

Purple Basket

Yesterday I made a little basket to put all the purple goodies in to give to our neighbour. I found the instructions for making this basket via Pinterest, which directed me to this blog. I decided to alter it somewhat – making it twice as large (a 12 x 12 in sheet rather than 6 x 6 in, and even so, it comes out quite small) and also to make a single handle rather than the two in this design. I am grateful to Rachel Ricks for her template.

Here is my piece of purple 12 x 12 card, scored and cut as per the instructions.

I cut several strips and panels to embellish the outside of the box. I made a bit of a booboo over this (more later) because I didn’t fully visualise how it was going to work!

I began by embossing these panels, using one of Tim Holtz’s embossing folders, “Damask,” and my Cuttlebug.

After this, I inked the raised embossing with Seedless Preserves distress ink, using my brayer.

I wasn’t happy with the result as the background was too pale, so I inked it with Dusty Concord distress ink, which looked a lot better. I did most of the inking on this project using Inkylicious Ink Dusters.

Turning to what would be the inside of the box, I thought the plain purple card was far too boring, so I smooshed a background using Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves distress inks, rubbing the ink pads on my craft sheet and spritzing it with water.

I felt it needed something extra so I decided to put my new Brushos to use, and sprinkled on some purple, and spritzed it with water. I am not sure whether this was a component part of the purple or whether the crystals had got contaminated with another colour, but some little gold flecks appeared which I really liked! Unfortunately the photo doesn’t do this justice – it looks really rich in real life.

This is a set of butterfly stamps I got a few months ago.

I heat-embossed these on the inside of the basket, using gold embossing powder.

Returning to the panels for the outside, I heat-embossed the raised embossed surface of the panels, applying Versamark with my brayer and embossing with clear embossing powder.

After this I added more Seedless Preserves distress ink to darken the background still further.

The final touch was to add some Treasure Gold gilding wax very sparingly over the embossed surface. Just the effect I was after!

It was at this point that I realised that I had not made any panels for the ends of the basket. I tried to remember what I had done, and they didn’t look the same at all! What I should have done was to look at the photos I’d already taken but I didn’t think of that… chemo brain… Anyway, I quite liked the result even if the panels did come out lighter than the rest – let’s call it “contrast” lol!!

I also realised that I should have cut the strips into short lengths to cover only the cut strips of the template, and not to have a piece going across what turned out to be the ends of the basket, so I cut off the embossed parts and disposed of the middle part. I stuck them down with my ATG glue gun. I had cut them 1/8 in smaller all round (apart from where they joined the fold) to give a matted appearance. The pale square in the centre is the bottom of the outside of the basket.

The next step was to assemble the box. If you look at Rachel Ricks’ blog you can see how it all comes together.

I glued the strips to each other in turn, and to the triangular flap underneath, trimming off the excess to give a nice neat edge.

Here is the basket being assembled. I used Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive which is a good strong wet glue. When I make this project in the future, I shall use this to attach the panels too, because as I flexed the strips to assemble the box, some of them started to come away at the edges and I had to squirt some of the adhesive between the layers to secure them.

I punched two pairs of circles to cover the join where the strips all came together, and also to cover the backs of the brads to attach the handle.

The larger circles were cut with a 2 1/2 in scalloped circle punch and the smaller ones with a plain 2 in circle punch. I embossed and inked these as before.

I folded each circle in half before sticking them together, and then stuck half the circle to the outside of the basket on each side.

To make the handle, because my Cuttlebug embossing folders are not long enough, I placed the narrower (1 in wide, 11 3/4 in long) strip onto the opened embossing folder and hand embossed it with a ball embossing tool. I could probably have folded it in half and embossed it in the normal way because the fold wouldn’t have shown once it was stuck down to to the other piece, or embossed each end in turn, but it looks OK. This narrower strip was cut from the same pale mauve cardstock that I used for the panels.

The wider piece was 1 1/4 in wide and 12 in long, cut from the same purple cardstock as the basket. I rounded all the corners with a corner rounder punch and stuck the two layers together with Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, curving the handle as I went, so that the two layers would stick together in the correct curve without any separation or buckling. I chose two decorative brads to attach the handle to the basket.

I made a hole on each side through the half circle and all the layers, and discovered that it was much too thick for the brad to go through and its ends be spread apart to attach it. I therefore got my craft knife and carefully trimmed away some of the layers until I was satisfied that the brad could be attached securely.

Once this was done, I threaded the brads through the ends of the handle and attached the handle to the basket. The final step was to fold down the other half circles and glue them in place, hiding the trimmed away layers and the brad backs.

This finished the basket apart from a few little embellishments to go on the handle.

I punched three butterflies with my Stampin’ Up butterfly punch from some of the altered purple paper stuck to a layer of card, and chose the Tim Holtz Bitty Grunge set of background stamps to heat emboss them in gold.

Here are the completed butterflies. I had inked them on the backs with Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves distress inks, rubbing the butterflies directly across the ink pads.

I made a bow from purple ribbon, using my bow maker, and stuck this to a cream and gold bow I already had in my stash. The final touch was to add a little “made with love” heart charm in gold. All the embellishments were attached to the handle of the basket with Pinflair gel glue and left to dry overnight.

Here is a detail of the embellishments.

The completed basket with the gifts inside.

Today I made the lavender bag to go in the little box, and picked some lavender from the garden to make a nice little spray to go in the basket. I was hoping to make a small notebook with some of the purple paper I have left, but unfortunately there was no time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This afternoon we went across to see our neighbour and she absolutely loved her little basket full of goodies – she said her favourite colour was purple and she loves butterflies – both of which I knew! So nice to hit the spot and shed a little happiness – she’s had some hard knocks recently.

I am delighted that this little basket is just large enough to take the square card I made, and the other bits and pieces too. It makes a nice presentation of a collection of small gifts, and it’s definitely a project I shall be doing again. Thank you again, Rachel, for your lovely design. I hope you approve of what I have done with it!