My Craft Blog

Hi there, my name is Marcia, I am happy to meet you and share my craft makes and ideas with you. I hope you enjoy looking. Please feel free to join my blog and leave me comments, especially if they are helpful ones! I love to learn new craft techniques and am more than happy to share the ones I have found. Thank you for looking.....

Friday 11 January 2013

Well Hello and Happy New Year to you all...it's been a very long time since my last blog!  You know how it is, time just seems to overtake you and Christmas definitely overtook me this year.  I had a wonderful time, even though it seems so long ago now!  Two gorgeous  granddaughters to brighten my day - how lovely! Back to card making now!  I have to confess to making a major purchase just before Christmas, a kind of pressie to myself lol !!!  I got the Silhouette Cameo die cutting machine - Wow!  I can honestly say its amazing!  I have had so much fun using it and making things, I have made gift envelopes, embellishments for cards, cards and other 3D projects I could only dream of making before I had the Cameo. I will put some more pics up in the next few days, can't do it before as one of them is Rachel's birthday card, and her birthday is not until Sunday! Just to tempt you, I will put up a pic of the envelope!!  This card I made today, not using the Cameo at all, and I really enjoyed just stamping and colouring!  The stamp I used was a freebie from the Craft Stamper magazine.  They always give you ideas of how to use the stamp, so I just adapted their idea into a design I am happier with.  The first layer is made lighter by using the 2nd stamping, the next layer is all first impressions and inked with darker shades of the same colours.  The top layer was stamped then embossed and inked quite heavily.  To make the colours really pop, I then used glossy accents to cover the entire image so it looks more like a tile. Inks used are all from SU:  Rose Red, Regal Rose, Pink Pirouette, Pumpkin Pie.

Rachel's card was quite an adventure - I downloaded the background square doily from the Cameo store and printed it out on SU Very Vanilla.  What a mission getting all the little bits off the cutting mat, ended up using a paint scraper - worked a treat!  After that I mounted it onto the Rose Red SU card.  I knew from the outset that I wanted to used the Apothecary Art stamp set as having got these before Christmas, the event completely took over and I hadn't had any time to use them!  I love these stamps, they are such a nice shape and the dies and paper pricking set that goes with them just finish everything off nicely. I used Rose Red SU ink to blend in with everything else.  The other thing I learned to do on the Cameo was Offset, this made a lovely backing to the leaves The flower and leaf decorations are from www.birdscards.com - she has a whole website of fabulous free designs both cut files and digi stamps she is a very talented lady.  I will be using quite a few more of her designs in the coming months as they are all excellent and of course ...Free!  Hope you like it, thank you for looking!