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.

Card Factory 2015–Swirly Cards

Ages ago, back in the days when I had Sheba (my Cougar cutting machine) up and running, I tried unsuccessfully to cut some very hard and rather thick navy blue card. The swirly patterns cut OK, but the happy birthday sentiment did not. For some reason I did not throw this piece away, but put it in my stash,

In the end I did cut this successfully, using some different card, and this is the card I made from it, which I also found in my stash, and which has gone into this year’s card factory stash along with the more recent cards I’ve been making. This one has some dull silver card behind the cut out parts, but of course this doesn’t show up properly on the photograph!

Today I decided to cut off the badly cut part of thick navy card, and use the swirls on their own to make a couple of cards.

When I was tidying my card and paper stash shelves yesterday, I found some printed note cards that I bought years ago and which I’d never used, and thought I would use these for the back piece of my swirly cards, so I cut a couple of squares and used Pinflair photo glue to stuck them behind the swirly cut pieces.

The advantage of photo glue is that any excess rubs away cleanly when it is dry. It’s pretty messy, gloopy stuff to use, but works well for this kind of project.

Here are the two swirly pieces with the cloud pieces stuck behind.

The next step was matting and layering. The first matt layer was with silver mirror card, with a 1/16 in border. I then rummaged in my stash and found my envelope papers – these are the printed patterns on the inside of commercial envelopes, and they are usually printed in blue for some reason – small, overall patterns that prevent anyone from reading the contents of the envelope from the outside. I cut them to form a 1/4 in matt around the silver, using two different designs.

The final step was to mount the pieces onto white card bases, measuring 5 1/2 in square when folded.

Another two quick cards to add to my card factory stash.

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.

Triple-Embossed Get Well Card

The second of two posts for today.

Feeling much better today, I was able to spend some time in the studio (two sessions!) and I made a get well card for our neighbour who had a serious accident some weeks ago.

I am making up a little basket of goodies for her, to cheer her up as she goes through a long recovery period. So far I have completed the little purple box which will contain a lavender sachet.

I had several sheets of boring printed paper in my stash which I gave the Dylusions spray ink treatment and I am using these for this project.

I have recently been re-exploring die cutting, something I have done very little of since I first started, and decided to make a double-embossed card front, using an embossing folder and an oval scalloped die to make a plain panel on which I could stamp the sentiment. This is a very effective technique and fun to do.

You begin by cutting two sheets of chipboard (I like using those card envelopes you get sent by Amazon) – it mustn’t be corrugated – to the size of the card you are going to emboss. You use a die to cut a window in them – if you run both pieces through, the die will cut the top one and leave an impression on the bottom one, which is the guide for placing the die to cut it. The window on each piece is then exactly lined up, and you can stick the two layers together. Hang onto the “positive” pieces because they are used later to help with the embossing. I used a Spellbinders Nestabilities scalloped oval die.

You then put your card in the embossing folder, and put the chipboard with the window in it on top, and run it through your die cutting machine (with the appropriate plates). The chipboard piece acts as a sort of mask – it presses down on the embossing folder and the card comes out embossed, except where the window was.

You can leave it like that if you want, but it looks much better with a bit more definition, so you run it through again, this time without the embossing folder, with the die with the cutting side away from the card, and using the tan embossing mat, and with the “positive” shape lined up on top to help give a good embossed impression.

There are lots of Youtube videos and tutorials giving details for individual machines so you can find out the sandwich you need for your own particular machine. I used my Cuttlebug.

That’s the “double embossing” bit completed. I then did the “triple embossing” – the third embossing is heat embossing. I rubbed my Versamark pad over the raised embossed surface of the card and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder to give a shiny, more defined surface, and also to act as a resist for further inking.

I used Dusty Concord distress ink with an Inkylicious Ink Duster, all over the embossed surface. I held the “positive” shape cut from the chipboard over the plain window to stop any ink getting there. Once this was done, I went around the edge with Chipped Sapphire distress ink, using a home-made blending pad.

Then it was time to stamp the sentiment. I chose “Get Well” from the “Perfectly Penned” stamp set by Stampin’ Up, using my stamp guiding tool to place it exactly in the centre of the plain, unembossed oval. I used Chipped Sapphire distress ink to do this.

Next came the matting and layering. The purple shiny paper is something I’ve had in my stash for ages, and it was a bit dog-eared – I think it may have come from a box of chocolates or something – it’s not great quality but a nice shiny metallic purple which I chose to go with this project. I matted and layered the card front using this, and some gold mirror card, each with a 1/16 in overlap.

I inked the card base with a combination of Seedless Preserves and Picked Raspberry distress inks, using the Inkylicious Ink Duster, and finished it off with a narrow inking with Dusty Concord distress ink, using the home-made blending tool for a bit more definition, before sticking the card front down onto it..

Now for the embellishments. I punched out a butterfly using part of the paper-glued-to-card that I’d used for the box, and some of the shiny purple paper – I put these two together and punched, because the paper would have been too thin to punch properly. I chose my Stampin’ Up butterfly punch for this.

I stuck the shiny purple butterfly down onto the card and then took the other butterfly, and inked the back with Chipped Sapphire distress ink using the ink blender, and then wrapped some gold coloured wire around the centre, twisting the ends together to anchor them, and cutting them to the correct length for the antennae, and then bending the ends into small circles with my round nosed pliers. I used the stamp from the Tim Holtz “Bitty Grunge” background stamp set that I used for the box, to heat emboss some texture in gold. I bent up the wings, and attached the butterfly over the shiny purple one, using hot glue. Once the card was finished, a put a little Pinflair gel glue under the wings to stop them getting flattened.

I chose two small hibiscus flowers from my stash that I’d made ages ago, and attached them to the card, on the opposite side of the oval from the butterfly, again using hot glue.

Here is the completed card.

Here is a detail shot of the embellishments.

On the inside of the card I inked the edges with Seedless Preserves distress ink and an Inkylicious Ink Duster, stamped the sentiment again, this time with Seedless Preserves distress ink, and added a bit of extra text with a dark blue Marvy le Plume marker pen.

I cut an envelope to fit this 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 in square card, using my Envelope Punch Board. I used a piece of 80 gsm A3 printer paper which is unfortunately not very good quality. I inked the corner which would become the envelope flap, using a mixture of Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire distress inks, and then used two butterfly stamps from the Stampin’ Up set “Butterfly Potpourri” which I stamped with Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire distress inks.

Here is the envelope assembled, showing the lining with the stamped butterflies.

I then turned it over and realised my mistake in using such grotty paper! The stamping had come through to the other side! It didn’t actually look too bad and I thought I’d just leave it. Here’s the flap closed. I inked it with Seedless Preserves and Dusty Concord distress inks as before.

The stamping showed through on the front as well, but I thought it looked quite cool, so I continued with the inking, and added some Chipped Sapphire distress ink with the ink blender to finish off the edges.

Next time I shall remember I need to make a separate lining for the envelope if this isn’t going to happen again! I have to use this paper for envelopes because it’s the only paper I’ve got that’s big enough, unless I raid my 12 x 12 in stash, and this paper is rather thick.

Watch this space for more purple goodies to cheer up our poor neighbour! Here’s what I’ve done so far.