Card Challenge: Stempeleinmaleins 18

The sketch looks like this and the theme is Sommerzeit (Summer Time).

One of the challenges I am taking part in this month is being run over at   Stempeleinmaleins

The card was inspired by a photo taken by my husband of the smiling Buddah we have sitting in a terracotta tub enjoying life and grinning at the world.  The green and red of the geraniums and the dark colours of the hostas seem to push this little Buddha out from his surroundings. Cropped into three 5x5cm squares, the photo was matted onto white cardstock. The green panel was stamped  with several versions of the word 'happy' using stamps from a selection of the packs from the Stamps of Life. The sentiment banner was created using my PC and the Butterfly and Flowers are punched out from 30x30 page from a Folia paperpack with Efco punches.
So as the card says 'Don't worry be HAPPY' and don't forget to leave your comment.

Daring Cardmakers - Suitcase

Hi All, another late, to the wire submission for the Daring Cardmakers challenge. This weeks theme is 'Suitcase'.  I started my card with the subject - the suitcase.  I ran some light-brown coloured cardstock through my Big Shot machine embossing it with a dotty embossing plate. I then stamped over the raised side of the paper with an embossisng pad and dusted it with clear embossing powder and heat set it.  The effect was 'sort-of' a patent-leathery look. I added a dark-brown handle and some corners of black cardstock held on with ordinary office brass brads I finished off by rounding the corners and viola! there was my suitcase.

I was fortunate to have a travel themed scrapbook kit and I was able to pull the background paper and embellishments from this. I am quite please with my  'Come fly with me!'  card and I hope you like it too.

Thanks again for stopping by and don't forget to leave your comments. I love to hear from you.
Angela

Eddie and Jenny - Wedding Day

This is a photo of my lovely In-Laws on their wedding day. The photo has just recently come into my hands and was a bit of a challenge. Because this is a precious photo I did not want to cause any damage using glues or adhesives.. The washed out black and white colours were also not easy to work with, so I went with a  lot of colour and tried to keep the decoration nostalgic. The corners of the photo are not adhered to the background. I have used  the embellishments to act as photo-corners on three sides and some cream satin ribbon with red hearts to anchor the top left edge. A little bit of journaling is all that is needed to complete this scrapbook page.
Hope you like it

Angela

My latest scrapbook page is one of my favourite photos of my parents at my sister's wedding.  I'm afraid this old and a little bit degraded photo does not show the colours very well, but the photo itself means a lot to me so worthy of a dedicated page.  I copied the meaning of the word 'family' from a dictionary and then enlarged it unil I was happy with the size. The image was then treated with a wash of water-based inks in green, blue and pink and allowed to dry. I further distressed the paper by tearing it  and adding pre-printed words, adhered to the page to link with the word 'family'. The 30x30 background sheet is from  a Folio paper pack.

Daring Cardmakers - Lily of the Valley Challenge

Daring Cardmakers May Challenge Card. 

I think I am just scraping under the wire with this enty. But I have the best excuse. I was distracted by my lovely visitors from the UK. Weather was fab and a great time was had catching up with all the news and enjoying a few beers in the process.

I was stuck for a while to come up with an idea for this challenge and looking at all the other submissions, it seemed that all the good ideas had already been used. So I looked up Lily of the Valley on the web and found out that, amongst other things, the flower is the national emblem of Moldova! The card is based on one of the Moldovan postage stamps. I made my background by fusing the top layer of a paper napkin with a sheet of photocopier paper using clear food wrap as a bonding agent! This technique I found on another craft site (Splitcoast Stampers, I think) and I have used it quite often for christmas cards where I want something unique for my background. The postage stamp image  was matted onto lime coloured cardstock, then a slightly larger piece of white and then another larger piece of dark green cardstock. The background was adhered to a white card base with the postage stamp layer on top. The card was finished off with a dark green ribbon and a sentiment from Stamps of Life "Thank you" mounted onto a "Make Me!" 1" scalloped circle and an "Efco" 8 Petal flower.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like this weeks entry.
Angela

P.S. In case anyone is interested, I will try to find the demontration for the Paper Napkin paper technique and post  the link later.

P.P.S I found a site with the 'how to' for the paper napkins on it. It is not the site I used but the method is just the same.
http://lifesmomentsetc.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/handmade-card-technique-using-paper-napkins/

Birthday Guitar

Just quick post for today.
Great inspiration from my copy Papercraft Inspirations magazine, issue 88.  I needed a birthday card for a teenager (male) and this guitar template was just the thing for the job. I downloaded the template on to photocopy paper and used the template to cut out the pieces from red and silver cardstock. Some penciled-in 'strings' and a couple of brads completed the guitar. The stamped sentiments all come from Stamps of Life , stamped with Staz-on Black and embossed with clear embossing powder to add dimension. The red and silver ribbons were left-over from christmas!

Hope you like todays card.
Angela

Birthday Birdy

Today's card is for the Get Funky challenge currently running over at the Funky Hand web site. I have used one of the  Lilac backing-papers from their 'The Funky One' cd-rom. The paper compliments the polkadot ribbon quite well. My card topper was made using my favourite technique, emboss-resist.  The Bird image was first stamped onto watercolour paper using Staz-on black and dusted very quickly with clear embossing powder. After treatment with a heat gun, I then coloured the stamped image by mixing some water based inks onto an acrylic block and spritzing the inks with enough water to cause the inks to run together. The embossed area resists taking up the colours when I press the watercolour paper, image-side down, onto the block. I love this technique as the colour combo results are never the same and every image is a pleasant surprise.The embossed areas have a  nice sheen which helps the image pop up. Sadly the photo does not show this sheen very well. Once dry, the bird image was mounted onto layers of black cardstock and another panel of the same backing-paper. The sentiments were stamped with Staz-on black. 'It's your Birthday' was stamped onto a scalloped  Lilac circle using a Stampin' Up scalloped punch and Hero Arts stamps.

Thanks for stopping by. All comments are appreciated.
Angela