Daring Cardmakers-Packaging

Everything we buy has packaging, some of it excessive, some of it beautifully designed. Tags, labels, stickers... all sorts of bits and bobs that we can recycle onto cards.I dare you to make a card using a tag, label, sticker or anything else you can find, thats from packaging and would normally end up in the bin. Of course you can ink it, change it, distress it and add anything else you like!If you're feeling brave, I DOUBLE DARE you to make it a card for a man.

OK.......that is Rhi's dare for this week..........remind me to have words with that young lady later...........lol!!!
After scouring the house for something suitable to use I found something sitting not six inches away from where I first started. A shoe box which had contained my daughter's new work boots.
Striped paper is from the DCWV Black and White Stack coloured with Adirondack inks in Red Pepper and Cranberry then grunged with a black Stazon ink pad.
Extreme Boy is a cheapo stamp I picked up and Walk Tall has been stamped using an alphabet set and then I went over it with a white gel pen.
The Grafters panel is from the shoe box. Sanded and grunged with a star brad added for embellishment.
The boot panel is from the box. Coloured with Adirondack inks again and grunged. I then used white gel pen around the image.
Final touch is two plain silver Fastenater staples.
What a fab challenge Rhi and I am so pleased that I managed the Double Dare.

Fine Feathers

Here is the latest card made with one of the new TandaStamps Retro Women sets.
Isn't this just the most gorgeous image?
I have used it in conjunction with the TandaStamps Backgrounds Set 1.
The lace has been stamped in black Stazon and then painted over with Opalite Re-inker in Nordic Ice. Once that was dry I dragged over it with an Opalite ink pad in Cypress Frost and also used this to add a slight sheen to the stamped music. I then buffed it with a piece of cotton wool to remove some of the moisture and hasten the drying time.
I have cut around the stamped images to give an interesting outline to the background and then edged it with a gold pen.
The feather and the face were then stamped onto a piece of smooth cream card and coloured with various brush markers. The feathers were then brushed with Opalite in the two colours used previously and I used Opalite Crystal Blush to colour the lips on the face as they stamp solid black.
The images were cut out and the feathers were 'feathered' with a pair of sharp pointed scissors, arranged in the ladys' hair and embellished with tiny crystals.
The buttons were plain turquoise so I covered them with Opalite and Crystal embossing powder and heated. These were attached with Glossy Accents.
Once again the scan doesn't do this justice and it looks much better IRL as you can imagine if you have ever used Opalite inks.

I had the most wonderful surprise today. I met a lovely lady called Rosie when I was down in Devon and today I received the most gorgeous piece of altered art from her.
A beautiful frame with stamped glass on a theme of Time. I have tried to scan it but it didn't look right so I am going to get DD to give me a quick lesson with the digital camera later and take a pic for you to see.
I love it so much and I will treasure it forever.

Well I need to go and get some sleep I think as I am feeling pretty whacked now and have a horrible feeling that I have an ear infection starting.....I could soooo do without that right now. Hopefully I am wrong and I'll be fine when I wake up.

Night night
Sheila-x-

In The Pink!!!

I am really liking these bathroom scenes on the new TandaStamps set. They are so different and make lovely girly cards.
Here I have masked off stripes and stamped various images from the sets in the top middle and bottom stripes and then used a paintbrush handle for the small dots and a pen top for the bubbles. I've used the scallop circle again and this time added an organza bow.

It's funny but here it looks like the bottom sections are a bit wonky but IRL they are perfectly straight.
This would also look great done on powder blue or a mint green card so I shall have to have a look in my stash and see what I have.

I am blogging very early today as I have a pile of ironing needing attention so must get it done. Once I've had enough though I shall be back playing.

Bye for now
Sheila-x-

New TandaStamps Retro Women Sets!!!

How excited was I to receive my sample sets of the new TandaStamps Retro Women 3 & 4 on Saturday morning? Erm....well very excited actually.

These two sets are just absolutely stunning and I spent all day Saturday and Sunday just dying to have a session with them but had other more pressing jobs to get done first so didn't get time to play until the early hours of this morning.

These are the two cards I managed to make before my eyelids got to needing matchsticks to keep them open.

The first one I made was the Scottish card. It looks very dark but it's not a very good scan. The Windows Photo Gallery programme doesn't have the fine tuning that my previous programme had.

I really love this stamp. I'm not totally sure she is a Scottish lass but that was the first thing I thought when I saw it. The colour scheme is navy blue and green so I stamped the image in Midnight Blue Stazon and coloured with Marvy Le Plumes. Her jacket was coloured with white gel pen.

The bathroom card is my favourite as a finished card as I love the colours of the background paper.....Celebrate Beads Green by American Traditional Designs.

I only bought it on Friday and had no particular use in mind for it but I think it just goes so well with this image.

I used a mega punch to punch the scallop circle and a Sizzix die for the cream circle. Stamoed the image and coloured with Marvy's and a water brush. The detail around the edge was added with a fine tipped drawing pen.

The bubbles were made using clear bubble stickers.

There are lots more stamps to use yet so I will be having another session later today when I have had some sleep.

Hope the rain didn't spoil your weekend too much.
Bye for now
Sheila-x-

Daring Cardmakers-Embossing No 2

I thought I would have another go at this challenge and do something a bit brighter and this is what I came up with. I am disappointed with the scan because the green background is so much nicer IRL being more acid than it looks here. Oh well never mind.
So I started off with a piece of A6 plain smooth card and coloured it with pigment inks from a Colorbox Paintbox starting with a dark at the bottom and going lighter as I worked up the card. The image was then stamped in Versafine Onyx Black.
I added Crystal embossing powder starting at the womans' shoulder and working down in a diagonal line to her feet and then added clear embossing powder to the top half and heated. I then trimmed the image saving the strips that were Crystal embossed to use as an embellishment.
Added a layer of Versamark ink all over and then clear embossing powder to smooth out the finish.
The flowers are die cut from the Poundland chopping boards I bought the other week and I punched a hole with the Crop-A-Dile, covered with Versamark ink and then embossed with Crystal embossing powder and attached with star shaped brads. I positioned the flowers loose, marked where the holes needed to be and punched the holes with CAD.
The background is Bazill in two shades of acid green and I embellished with pieces of the strips leftover from trimming the image.