Painting with bleach!

This is a technique I really enjoy.  I made a square mask, this one has a 53mm aperture, but you can make it any size to suit your stamps or projects.  I have a selection of stamp freebies from magazines, as they are all 53 mm square, that's what I cut! The rest of the project is really easy, lay the mask onto your card blank and secure with low tack tape then simply ink the middle aperture in any water based colour of your choice. Stamp your design in black archival, or stayzon ink. If you don't use a permanent ink here, the bleach will take out the lines and spoil your design.  Using ordinary household bleach (I watered mine down a little as it seemed too thick to paint with) "paint" out the part of the design you want to be white. (Actually, the bleach doesn't make the area true white, it just leaves a slight tinge.)  In this case I chose her face and just picked out some highlights in the feather. The rest of the card is up to you! I mounted the smaller card and layered onto a larger background to give this card to my sister in law for her birthday.

Here are a few of the smaller cards I have made using the same technique, they are very quick to make, which is quite satisfying.  You can just do one layer, directly onto your card blank which makes it cheaper for posting! These ones are about 3.5 inch square.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these cards, thank you for looking!





  Any questions about this technique, please message me, I'll be glad to help!

Mothers Day

This one was for Chris's mum for Mother's Day.  She (and I) like the colour (SU Wisteria Wonder) and the gorgeous Centura Pearl card with it's lovely sheen.  Again, the Silhouette was put to very good use and to be honest, I can't imagine life without it now.  The lovely background is from Birds Cards.  She is a great designer of cut files and digi stamps and they are all free - bonus! The stamp is Sheena Douglass Magnolia which I painted with Twinkling H2O's.  These give a very nice shimmer.

Anyway, Chris's mum liked the card, and ended up with loads of flowers from everybody, which filled her house with a lovely scent.  Spring indoors, as we're not getting any outside at the moment.

Thank you for looking!

Valentines Day with Love

Made for the lovely man in my life!  I used the Silhouette Cameo again for this card, downloading the lattice heart from the Cameo website.  The gorgeous heart background is one of  Birds Cards  she makes such fabulous free cut files.  I wanted to put a bit of bling onto the card, so again the plumbers foil tape came in to good use!  I covered some of the hearts that were cut out when making the background, then ran them through the Big Shot in my favourite embossing folder and stuck them back into the holes!  

This little pic shows the foiled hearts more clearly!

Hope you enjoy looking as much as I enjoyed creating!

Birthdays Galore!

Another new technique!  The background for this card is made using plumbers insulation tape.  It's 4 inches wide, comes on a roll and is self adhesive!  Way better than trying to glue baco foil to card!!  I saw a lady use this on tv and had to give it a try for my son's birthday card!  You can stick the tape on in random pieces, emboss it,  then take a ballpoint pen and scratch small lines across the joins to look like staples, sorry this doesn't show up too well on my picture. I used a cog and ticket Sizzix die and some paper from my stash to decorate.  The motorbike was cut using the Silhouette Cameo (love it).  I really enjoyed putting this card together and look forward to giving it to my little boy (age 33) on Sunday!!!
 

I love to paint, but don't do it very often (not sure why)!
I stamped out the ivy and flowers separately, then painted them with Twinkling H2O's.  These have a beautiful shimmer to them as they have mica mixed in - lovely!
This is for a friend's birthday, so I need to get on and finish the inside of the card so I can give it to her!

I hope you have enjoyed looking at these offerings, please leave me a comment if you like them.

Bye for now!.............

Hello February!

 Well, where did January go?  The month seems to have just flown by, with Christmas just a dim and distant celebration from only 6 weeks ago!! I don't seem to have had much time for cardmaking or blogging, but I have managed some cards and felt I would like to share them with you.  Using a new technique, painting with BLEACH!! I love it!!

I just used the ordinary household bleach, watered down just a little bit as it seemed too thick.  Lay down your colour first, you can do this anyway you like, on the flower card above I took the distress ink pad directly to the card to form the square, then stamped over it in black stayzon (or other permanent ink).  Then it was simply a matter of using a small paintbrush and the bleach to remove the colour as you like.
For the cockrell card I made a square mask and then inked through it.  Both are on ivory cardstock and are 4 x 4 inch cards, and I have covered the image with a square of Acetate, hiding the glue with Cosmic Shimmer bronze or black glue dots. You could use brads or gems as well.

I had a go at the technique again on the larger 6 x 6 inch cards, this time on white, not sure which ones I like the best!!  You decide!

I hope you enjoy looking at these cards, if you have any questions about this technique, please feel free to contact me.

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!

Simply Stampin Challenge Sketch Week

This week the Simply Stampin Challenge is a sketch.  I thought long and hard, and wasn't going to make another Christmas Card, however, my goodies from Stampin Up arrived on Tuesday so all my resolve went straight out the window!  I had a bit of a disaster on the way home from work though - as I was cycling along the handles on the Stampin Up plastic carrier bag broke, and all my stuff fell into the biggest, muddiest puddle and got wet in the process (there are holes in the plastic bags)!  Some of my card was damaged, but luckily everything else was ok phew! **Disaster area alert**  Anyway, mud and muck aside...I had such fun with the DSP last week I had a brainwave when I started playing with the Christmas Lodge stamp set and decided to use the Merry Christmas to make a background.  I did try to stamp it "freehand" but couldn't keep it straight ha! So out came pencil and ruler, I just put a very faint pencil line, the width of the ruler apart and used that as a guide to stamping the sentiment, then rubbed it off when the ink was dry.  I just love this set, the lodge and tree are so pretty, and the little bough with the birds on is really cute!  Products I used were Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler and Very Vanilla cardstock, Christmas Lodge stamp set, Festival of Papers and a strip embossing folder from my stash.  I loved making this card, and will probably make some more, hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for looking.