Lovely As A Wonderland

Back today with another Wonderland card for you. It really is going to be sad to see this one go, it pairs so nicely with Lovely As A Tree.

For this card I started off with a piece of Soft Sky cardstock and using Island Indigo ink stamped the Wonderland trees on it a few times side by side, then I stamped them inbetween after first stamping off on scrap paper to make the colour less intense. I then stamped the Lovely As A Tree image on a piece of vellum cardstock with the Island Indigo ink. Dye based inks are quick drying, except when you stamp them on something like vellum that won't absorb the ink straight away. While I was waiting for that to dry I stamped the sentiment on a strip of Whisper White cardstock and marked in some slightly slanted score lines so that when the banner was folded you would see a little underneath and the ends wouldn't be in-line with the main part. Once I had those score lines in place I could work out where I wanted the banner ends to go. The Triple Banner punch is made with guides for cardstock that is 1" (approx. 2.5cm), 1 1/5" (approx 3.8cm) and 2" (approx 5cm) wide. The strip I  was using was 2cm wide, but by holding it steady in the Triple Banner punch I was able to get a nice even banner finish to my cardstock. By now the ink on the vellum was dry so I was able to run it through the Softly Falling embossing folder in the Big Shot. It came out exactly how I hoped it would, the embossed dots turning the vellum white and looking a lot like snow. I put a bit of Fast Fuse behind the banner to attch the vellum at the top, then also placed a glue dot behind the tree, with a couple of little bits of glue dot snipped off and positioned behind and embossed dot to help hold the corners down. Once the card was all stuck together, I looked at it and thought "it's nice... but it needs a snowy sparkle" so I added just a touch of Dazzling Details glitter glue to the embossed dots - which of course doesn't show up int he photo but trust me it's there!

The colours for this card were inspired by Catelyn Stark from Game Of Thrones (Winter Wonderland is coming? hehehehe):

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Boo! Among The Branches

Haven't had a lot of time for stamping lately, but thankfully this week I had a little more time on my hands - just in time for Halloween!

This card is actually a birthday card, for a Halloween birthday sleep-over which I am sure will be a scream!  I was inspired by this fabulous card by Michelle Zindorf. Though my brayering wasn't as smooth as normal (I didn't want the Lost Lagoon bit to get so dark it started looking like Island Indigo so the cardstock probably wasn't as damp as it should have been for a more smooth gradient of colour where the Night Of Navy overlaps) the effect works for a spooky card. After brayering the background, and running the cardstock through the embossing folder I brayered over the raised tree trunks with Basic Gray ink. I'd read you needed a very light touch to not get ink inbetween the trunks... and knowing I was unlikely to succeed with that I took a punt that some strategically placed washi tape would help prevent such mistakes. Which it did... but need to be very careful pulling that off at the end! The eyes were hand cut after stamping the "spooky" image from Among The Branches set on Tangerine Tango cardstock with Basic Black ink. I hadn't originally planned on using a sentiment, but after doing everything else to the card felt it needed something more. It was only after I stuck the "Boo!" with the oval onto the card that I thought the card had a very Scooby Doo feel to it. What do you think?

These were the colours I used (with a touch of Basic Black as well):

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Wonder Woman Is Made Of Win (And Butterflies)

Have been busy lately and a few of the things I have been working on aren't completely finished and ready for sharing just yet, but yesterday I finally made a point of attempting something I've been wanting to do for some time...

With all the other geek and super hero cards I have made, it was frustrating me that I hadn't come up with an easy one for a female character. SupaNova is starting in Sydney today (and I'm going tomorrow, yay!) so I thought this would be a good opportunity to give a female super hero card a crack. I had thought the Triple Banner punch would be good for doing the W's on Wonder Woman's outfit, so I had a go... and the angle wasn't any where near right (let alone needing to fold the cardstock, and I just couldn't do that to the gold!). I then moved on to plan B, and plan C... and a myriad of options which saw me considering absolutely everything. And that is the only way it happened - if I had stuck with geometric shapes I wouldn't have a card to share with you today. Which is perhaps the thing I love most about punch art, using the shapes in unexpected ways! Once I started trying things out with the Bold Butterfly die it didn't take long to figure out how to trim it down to get a good look and the rest of the card essentially made itself.

Here are the colours I used, with the addition of gold (metallics don't look metallic in these simple colour swatch graphics... I might have to sort something out for that too!)

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