Buzzzzzz!

Todays post is of a card that I have wanted to make for quite some time now. I first saw a YouTube tutorial with Natasha Foot about 9 months ago in which she was making a very similar card, I´ll link to her tutorial at the end of the post. Cute and whimsical, it is a card that you are not likely to forget that you have seen, and as an added bonus, it is very easy to make. This card in particular was made for a Facebook Group challenge called "Birds and Bees", but you can make it with a lot of different critters etc, spinning around a center. Because it has such a busy card front, I have chosen to stamp my sentiment inside the card instead of on the front.

This is Natasha Foote´s Tutorial:

Hogs and Kisses

This was really a fun card to make! I just got this adorable pig stamp a few weeks ago, and I have wanted to make a card with it ever since. The first thing I did was to stamp the pig on a white piece of paper measuring 4 1/2" x 8" piece of paper. Then I masked it off, before inkblending what I thouoght was a suitable background. I felt like the pig would go well with fall-like colors, so I chose the distress oxide colors: carved pumpkin, fire brick, gathered twigs and pine needles, and blended them around the stamped image. When I was close to done, I decided that the background needed more subtle transitions between each color, therefore I added a little touch of Hero Arts Unicorn pigment Ink. I then proceeded to color in the pig, using copic markers. I stamped the sentiment: Hogs and Kisses on a white scrap of paper and did some light ink blending on top of it, before cutting it down and adding some foam tape on the back. I also added some twine to the bottom part of the ink blended background, and placed the sentiment on top of it. I prepared a card base measuring 5" x 8 1/2", as well as two mats, using canned pumpkin and red cardstock. I then added foam tape to the back of my stamped, colored and ink blended background and added it to the actual card. Quite a few of my outlines had gone rather blurry in the whole process so I went over everything with micro pigment ink pens to make them sharper. Last but not least I addes some glossy accents to the pig´s eyes, as well as some clear decorative drops to the bottom of the card. I aslo added some droplets flickered onto the inkblended background using white watercolor. However, I didn´t take into account that the white whater color would react with the distress oxide and turn yellow instead of white.

Papercraft Society´s September Box

 

For the last few months I have subscribed to Papercraft Society's monthly boxes. The boxes I have received have all been beautiful, but I found the September box, which was designed by Clare Rowlands from Daisy Mae Designs, especially pretty. This might have something to do with Clare Rowlands being an exceptionally good designer, who offers an array of the cutest stamps, dies and matching papers. 

The box itself screams Christmas, which I find a little bit too early when we are just in September. However, I did end up making a Christmas card this weekend, as I really wanted to try to be creative with the stamps and the dies in the box. There were also some fake snow enclosed that I was dying to try out. I had lots of fun coloring in the stamped images, before putting everything together in a way that I think says "Christmas"!

I will certainly use this box for some more Christmas cards in the coming months!

The inside of the card.

Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Precious Metal Pen review for Craftworld.

I was one of three lucky members of Craftworld that were chosen to do  reviews of the Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Precious Metal Pens a while back. 

The Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Precious Metal Pen Set contains three metallic brush nib pens, that have non-drip reservoirs for the inks. 

I was really curious to see whether or not it would be easy to activate the Aqua Shimmer Pen, so I eagerly read the instructions on the back of the packaging, and went to work. I was both happy and relieved when it turned out to be really easy. (see video)

After activating the pens, I started making swatches on three different colored papers, white, black and red. I did two swatches on each color, to see what several layers of ink would look like, as supposed to just one layer. 

Of the three pens I by far liked the coverage of the Blush Rosette (878)pen the best. That goes for all the swatches, no matter which colored paper I tried it on. One thing I was a bit dissapointed by, was how runny especially the Midas Touch (881) was. 

I also tried the Aqua Shimmer Pens out on letters, this time on white as well as on black letters.

When trying the Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Pens out on letters, my favorite changed from being the Blush Rosette (878) to being the Glitter Gloss (882).  The reason for this being that I feel that when adding shimmer to letters, the shimmer should be just that, a nice shimmer on top of the letter that just adds to the letters instead of changing the letters completely. Although I found the coverage of all the pens to be better this time around, I felt that especially the Blush Rosette (878) totally covered up the letter, and just left it rose gold, completely changing the initial color of the paper. Although it is pretty, it is not really what I was after. The Glitter Gloss on the other hand, lets the color of the paper shine through, just adding the shimmer to it that I wanted. 

I also tried the Aqua Shimmer pens out on a stamped and colored pointsettia that I had l lying around. I colored it with alcohol markers quite some time ago, and I thought it would be perfect for trying the pens out on top of alcohol markers. 

I used the Glitter Gloss (882) on the petals, the Blush Rosette (878) for the middle of the pointsettia as well as on the berries on the outside of the leaves.

Next I wanted to make some cards on which I added the Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Pens as an embellishment. I first decided to make a Christmas Shaker card, with a snow flake front, on which I was aiming to use the Glitter Gloss Aqua Pen (882) on the whole front. 

I am quite happy with the finished card, although the Glitter Gloss (882) Shimmer doesn´t really come across in the photo. (it is much easier to see in the video I have enclosed.)

On the second card I made, I encorporated all three Shimmer Pens. 

I first used distress oxide inks (Mermaid Lagoon, Salty Ocean, Tumbled Glass and Broken China) and made an ink blended background, on which I first spritzed lightly with water. I then adhered some waves, a mermaid tail and a sentiment onto the background, before I squeezed some drops of Glitter Gloss (882) onto the background as well. I guess I was curious to see how it would react with the distress oxide ink. The reaction is evidence that these pens are "Aqua" pens, as the drops left the shimmer in a circle in the middle, before spreading out into the ink. I tried to touch the shimmer in the middle of the drops once they were dry, and they rub off very easily. I aslo used the Glitter Gloss on the waves, while I colored in some of the scales and the tail with the Blush Rosette (878) and the Midas Touch (881).

My conclusions after trying these Shimmer Pens on various projects, are;

• they are really easy to activate
• the brush nib is great
• the colors are really beaautiful
• the coverage they provide is varying
• they are a bit too watery for my liking
• they "shed" a bit more than I would have liked

Thanks for letting me have the chance to try out the Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Precious Metal Pens!

Triple Stepper Card

I really love the Triple Stepper Card style card, it is really elegant and yet fairly simple to make, and there is no limit to how you can decorate it. For this card I chose to use Craft Consortiums "Little Fawn and Friends". The card is made as a birthday card for a former colleague of mine.

Sam Calcott of Mixed Up Craft made this card in one of her Facebook Lives, and the card she made then, really turned out beautiful. The Lives are usually fairly long, so I will just link to her YouTube tutorial for this card, here. 

This is the version of the card that Sam made during the Live, totally different from the style I chose to do it in, and also very different than the ones she shows how to make in her tutorial. 

I just love it!😍

 

Slimline Concertina Card

 Craft Consortium Ltd is a company that has many lovely paper collections, and I have been lucky enough to get my hands on a few of them. This card, a Slimline Concertina Card is made using the collection called "Little Fawn and Friends". I adore these papers, and if it wasn't for the fact that I have to order them from England, I would have invested in a lot more of Craft Consortium´s collections than I have.

This card is a birthday card for a man who turns 87.

This Slimline Concertina Card is the fourth card I have made in a relatively short while, that I have made with either the "Little Fawn and Friends" or the "At Home in the Wildflowers" collections. The collections have a nice fall-feeling to them and they match up perfectly with warm browns and bronze colors.