Second Wind–Second Part

Today I added some extras to the pages for my “Second Wind” mini-album. For the beginning of this project, please see the previous post.

These are the materials I ended up using for the various embellishments to the pages. Bottom left, clockwise: gel pens in silver and gold, and silver and gold glitter gel pens; white fluid acrylic by Pebeo, watered down for spattering; black acrylic. I used two sizes of fan brush for the paints.

I wanted to add some touches of gold to the pictures, and did some experiments, first with foil – this was not a success. Very difficult to get it accurate, and it was too bright and shiny. I also tried a gold Uniball Signo marker pen but it was rather a dull gold. I ended up using the gold gel pen from a set I have, and then added some gold glitter pen on top.

As always, gold and shimmery effects do not show up well on photos, but I hope you can see a bit of it. I just added some touches.

I also added some black acrylic paint with the large fan brush, to accentuate the curve of the hurricane. Where the lines came out too harsh, I added some dry brushing with the same paint and brush to feather it somewhat.

You can also see that I added some white acrylic spatters, using the small fan brush.

Where the hurricane is at its most violent, I added some lightning flashes, using the silver gel pen, with some silver glitter gel pen on top. In the photos it looks white, but in reality it is more subtle, and shiny and sparkly.

I didn’t add much to the centre picture – just a few light touches of black acrylic to the water.

 

I think the addition of the black acrylic adds dimension to the vortex of the hurricane, and it makes the pictures more dramatic.

There are touches of gold added to the circle in the centre in all the pages.

Not a lot added to the final page either – just a few light touches of the black acrylic paint, and a bit of gold.

The pages are now complete. The next step is the cover and the binding. I am still undecided about the cover, but if I sleep on it I am sure something will come!

Card Factory 2015–Foiled Cards and another Florabunda Card

Today I made up three quick cards. The first two were made from my Florabunda Floral Mandala design which my friend Lucy foiled for me, one in gold and one in purple.

The gold one:

and the purple one.

Always hard to photograph shiny and reflective surfaces, but I hope you get the idea! I kept the matting and layering fairly simple. The gold one just has a 1/16-in matt layer made from gold mirror card, and then straight onto the white card base. I thought that was all that was required, to keep it clean and simple.

I didn’t have any purple mirror card so I used silver, again at 1/16-in, and then some of the pale purple glitter card from the collection I have used for other cards in this Card Factory.

Both simple designs, but with some impact, I think.

While I was having my final chemo on Friday, I did a bit more colouring with coloured pencils, this time in reds, oranges, yellows and a bit of purple, on my Flowers in a Circle Florabunda design, so I made up that card this morning as well.

I made the 1/16-in matt layer from orange glitter card from the same pack, and then onto a wider matt of plain cream card. Again, quite simple, but co-ordinating with the design and colour scheme of the card.

Card Factory 2015–Florabunda Mandala Cards with Perfect Pearls

The first of two posts for today.

My next collection of cards is the Floral Mandala design, which I decided to colour with Perfect Pearls, to give a rich, jewel-like shimmering effect which would emphasise the complexity of the design, which has a somewhat Islamic feel.

The original design, printed on the laser printer.

Some time ago, I created a Perfect Pearls palette to make painting easier. I used a Tim Holtz ink palette, and followed the instructions from Creations by Christie. Here is my palette, together with the first Mandala that I painted, using a fine brush dipped in water, and picking up the colour from the palette.

The completed painting.

A word about one of the amazing properties of Perfect Pearls. Some of the colours exhibit interference properties. A good explanation of how this works can be seen here. The mica flakes in Perfect Pearls and other pearlescent/iridescent or interference pigments act like a diffraction grating, and the same principle  can be found in action in the iridescent and shimmering colours of peacock feathers and certain butterflies’ wings and beetles – these are not actual pigments but are visible as the result of how light is reflected and refracted off different surfaces at the microscopic level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Ts7CsJDpg

I suppose it’s because I am such a fan of bling and shimmering and metallic colours that I love this effect so much!

I recently had a foray into Twinkling H2Os which work on the same principle, but I did not find them as satisfactory as the Perfect Pearls in my palette – with a moistened paintbrush you can apply these fairly thickly and you get a very rich, iridescent and shimmery effect.

Several of the Perfect Pearls are labelled as “interference” colours, such as “Inteference Red,” and “Interference Blue,” but some of the other colours exhibit this property too, such as “Berry Twist” (one of my favourites) and “Blue Raspberry.”

When viewed at one angle, the colours appear somewhat dull and dark, but turn the piece into the light at another angle, and the shimmering colours emerge. I have photographed each of my pieces in turn, showing first the duller version and then the bright, shimmery version, so that you can see this principle in action. Some of the colours just appear brighter, while others actually change to a different colour. Compare the two pictures and see. These photos also serve to give you a close-up view of the drawing and painting.

First, the card with the red mount (the first one I painted).

The card with the blue mount.

The card with the purple mount.

Finally, the card with the orange mount.

Now a picture of each of the finished cards in turn, with details of the matting and layering.

For the red one, I opened a pack of decorative papers that I bought simply donkey’s years ago – so long ago that the shop closed a long time ago! This paper is rather thin, but it works fine for this. This card first had a 1/16-in matt layer of gold mirror card.

For the blue one, I created a 1/16-in matt layer with green mirror card from my stash. I didn’t think I’d be very likely to use this one, which someone gave me some time ago, but it turned out to be perfect for this card, with its blue-and-green colour scheme. The wider mount was created from a piece of scrap blue card which is quite thick and excellent quality, with a slight hammered texture, which had been the cover of a brochure (never throw anything out lol!).

For the purple one, I chose a piece of gold wrapping paper for the 1/16-in matt layer. The gold Perfect Pearls I used for this design was “Heirloom Gold” which is a softer, less bright gold than “Perfect Gold” which I used for the others, as I wanted a more subtle effect, and I thought that regular gold mirror card would also be too bright. This gift-wrap paper is quite thin compared with the gold mirror card, but it worked just fine. For the wider matt layer I used some more of the glitter card that I used for the narrow matt layers in my Brusho Trees cards project the other day.

For the final card, with the orange mount, I again used gold mirror card for the 1/16-in matt layer, and some orange glitter card as above.

By using different colours, and emphasising different areas of the same design, it is amazing the different results one can get, which makes them look almost like different drawings! It has been great fun experimenting with this, and certainly something I would wish to continue with.

Diamond Wedding Anniversary Card

My hubby reminded me we were invited to a diamond wedding tea party today. When we were invited some time ago I wasn’t sure I’d be well enough to go, because it would be less than a week after a chemo treatment, but because I am doing so much better on the reduced dose, I felt just about able to go.

I had forgotten about it in the meantime, and suddenly realised I needed to make a card! This is one of the reasons for wanting to start my card factory – to avoid having to make cards at such short notice as this.

Even though I am feeling better than usual at this stage in a cycle, I am far from 100 percent, and this morning I was suffering badly from chemo brain and made soooo many mistakes, it was driving me nuts! I did succeed in making a card, but managed to leave out one bit which I found after I’d finished! Also, recently I bought some circle dies which I simply cannot find, and I thought I had a music embossing folder, which I didn’t, so I had to rethink the thing on the fly! It was rather a frustrating morning all round, but I got there in the end.

It was rather difficult to photograph because it is white and sparkly. The glitter and silver don’t show up as much as in real life.

This card is not my usual style, but I wanted to do something silvery and sparkly for a diamond wedding. The couple are retired musicians, so I decided to add something to give a musical theme. The wife later said, when she opened the card, “Oh! It’s a record!” I hadn’t thought of it like that, but it does look a bit like a CD!

I began by creating some mat layers, using silver mirror card and some white card which I inked around the edges with Hickory Smoke distress ink, using a home-made ink blending tool. I got this distress ink quite recently (one of the new ones for this year) and am surprised how much I am using it already – it’s a lovely soft grey, and a very useful colour.

Not being able to find my circle dies, I had to resort to my Martha Stewart circle cutter, a tool I really don’t much like. The die would have produced a nice embossed edge, which of course this does not.

I cut a 4-inch circle and stamped and heat-embossed it using the “Music Background” stamp from the Artistic Stamper, using Cosmic Shimmer glitter embossing powder, which came out slightly pink from one direction, and a shimmery green the other way – very pretty! I haven’t used this for ages and had forgotten how nice it was.

Here is the circle mount. Rather difficult to see but you can just see the pinkness of it!

I made a circle with “60” in it to go in the centre. I used stamps from the Stampin’ Up set “Memorable Moments” – a very useful set because it has separate words for the sentiments, and numbers, and “rd,” “nd” etc. so that you can mix and match, and a nice little scalloped oval shape to stamp them in as well. I chose the number 60 for the front of the card, stamped it on white card and heat embossed it with silver embossing powder. I then went over it with a glue pen and added some Hunkydory Diamond Sparkles Angel Whispers fine glitter. I cut out the circle using a plain 2-inch circle punch.

I find the best way to make sure that glitter is well stuck down is to put a piece of paper over the top, and then run a brayer over it several times. I find very little loose glitter falls off that way.

Here is the completed “60” layered onto a slightly larger piece of silver mirror card punched out with a scalloped circle punch.

Turning back to the background again, I found some ice sparkly silver and organza ribbon in my stash and stuck this down vertically across the mat with double sided tape.

Using two sizes of butterfly stamps from the Stamping’ Up “Papillon Potpourri” set, I heat-embossed two of each, using the same glitter embossing powder as before, and silver embossing powder respectively, and then fussy-cut them out with fine scissors.

I added the Diamond Sparkles glitter with the glue pen as before, to the silver-embossed butterflies.

To stamp the inside of the card, I used stamps from the Stampin’ Up “Memorable Moments” set, using Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink in Watering Can, which tones very well with Hickory Smoke distress ink.

I stuck down the two glitter-embossed butterflies using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive in the centres so that the wings were loose, and attached the antennae using the glue pen.

The finished card, showing the glittered silver-embossed butterflies, attached in the same way.

We got to the party OK and it was great. I was so glad I went – the couple were surprised and delighted to see me as they didn’t think I’d be able to come. It was lovely seeing lots of other old friends too, and catching up. A very happy time. The card went down well, too!

I felt a lot better when we got home, and spent the evening relaxing on the recliner. We’d had plenty of gorgeous canapes at the party so we just had some stewed apple and cream later in the evening. I’m hoping to feel better again tomorrow, but I am not pushing it. I intend to rest and get over the busy day I had today.

Beautiful Card from Paula

I have been suffering pretty severe effects from my second chemo session and starting to feel a bit sorry for myself, getting fed up with it going on day after day – at least the nausea and other effects have subsided but the fatigue seems endless. In the middle of all this, last week I received the most wonderful package from the USA from Paula. If you haven’t seen her work, do check it out because she makes the most beautiful cards with intricate die-cuts and gorgeous embellishments, and I am sure she would appreciate a visit to her blog.

She sent me a lovely little pack of crafty goodies to use, with lots of die-cuts and embellishments, which I am going to have a lot of fun with. Also included in the pack were some precious little vintage Valentine cut-outs. Just look a that adorable little bird’s nest with the eggs in it, too!

She also put in a choccie biccie as a spoily – delicious despite it being so NOT what my waistline needs lol! Great feel-good factor though, touching those parts that only chocolate can reach! On the little tag it said “All you need in life is a friend who has chocolate. …I’m that friend.” Lol!!! (I’m afraid I can’t photograph the biscuit. I’ve eaten it!!)

Everything was beautifully wrapped and I felt very spoilt indeed as I opened each little package.

She has made me the most beautiful card, in her signature style with delicate die-cuts and gorgeous papers. The white-on-white is so sophisticated, with a little splash of colour with the delicate lilac of the flowers and the blue organza ribbon.

I had to take lots of detail shots to show just how beautiful this is, and how much trouble she went to to make me something I shall want to keep and treasure.

I have tried to light this so that the photos really show the shimmery nature and different textures of the paper and card she has used. There’s a lovely contrast between the bright silver behind the sentiment and in the corners and the matting and layering, and the more subtle brushed silver and the embossed glitter cards.

I love the floral embellishments with the ribbon and the little pearl flowers.

This embossed glitter card is so beautiful. I hope you can see the sparkle on it. Really hard to photograph to do it justice.

The base card, which extends around to the back of the card, is stunning. Beautiful silvery colour with a subtle design.

Inside the card she stamped a gorgeous floral corner decoration, and I do so love the stamped sentiment! This is definitely something I would use inside my own cards! Beautiful words.

This exquisite card, and the other gifts in the pack, certainly did a lot to cheer me. I feel so blessed to have such friends as Paula, who are prepared to do so much and go to so much trouble, to help me on my way through my horrible chemo!

Thank you, Paula.