Mother's Day

Mother's Day Card

I rounded the cardstock with the corner punch and stamped the sentiment.  The flowers stamp is from magenta and I used Letraset Tria markers to colour the images, and Glossy Accents to highlight them.  All the orange card/paper is offcut.  I recycled a mandarine bag from the supermarket to give a bit more texture to the image.

Ingredients for Mother's Day Card
Clarity stamps cardstock with rounded corners by Woodware corner punch
Flowers stamp from Magenta
Woodware Francoise Read 'Tiny Phrases' sentiment
Distress Inks in spiced marmalade
Staedtler triplus fineliner in orange
Letraset Tria markers: yellow Y156, green G356, blue C555
Inkssentials Glossy Accents
Art Glitter adhesive

Quick Make - Teabags

Teabags

These are just quick makes.  Sometimes I just want to experiment with different colour schemes, so I used these "tea or coffee?" morning invites to do just that.  

I used a glass desert bowl to draw the circle around the stamps, coloured everything in, backed with contrasting paper and decorated with gel pens.  To give a tiny bit of movement to the cards, the teabag is hung by a turquoise thread from the sentiment.

Ingredients for Teabags

Anita's cards - readymade, but halved using guillotine

Daler Rowney Manga Pad paper

Papers free with magazine or offcuts
Woodware Francoise Read "Making Time" clear stamps

Letraset Metallic markers: gold, red gold

Letraset Tria Markers: yellow Y337, green G136, blues C528 and C555, pink (old style) Pantone 184-T

Staedtler triplus fineliner in orange

Gel pens (various makes and colours)

Beware the Weeping Angels

Weeping Angels, scariest Dr Who baddies ever?

My youngest son is a HUGE fan of Weeping Angels.  If you haven't come across them before, they are Dr Who menaces who first appeared in the episode Blink, back when David Tennant was around.  Essentially they work by plunging you in the past to live out your life there, whilst they steal the energy of your potential future.  This isn't really what makes them so scary.  

They are terrifying because they can only move when you aren't watching them. "In the sight of any living being, they literally turn into stone.  And you can't kill a stone.  Of course, a stone can't kill you either, but then you turn your head away.  Then you blink.  Then, oh yes, it can...  Don't even blink.  Blink and you're dead.  They are fast, faster than you could ever believe.  Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink!"

A visit to possibly the loveliest store in London Blade Rubber Stamps (opposite the British Museum) saw me spending far too much and buying some new rubber stamps.  The main feature of this card is an Aubrey Beardsley angel, from Blade's own collection.  It was obviously crying out to be a Weeping Angel, so I made it one.  The torn wallpaper message is also a reference to Blink, where the heroine of the episode is warned by finding a message under ancient wallpaper in an abandoned house.

Inside the card - really duck Sally Sparrow, duck now

As cards go, this one took me a while.  It was difficult to get the different elements to gel.  As soon as I put the message on the front, it stood out too strongly and stole from the angel.  I used Tria markers on the angel image and background to try to link the pieces with colour, but the angel still seemed to drift into the background.  I solved this by using Glossy Accents on the angel to make it stand out.

Ingredients for Weeping Angel
Beardsley Angel stamp - Blade Rubber Stamps
Distress Ink in "chipped sapphire"
"Wallpaper effect" paper free from a magazine, matted onto black/gold tissue card offcut (and black/gold tissue paper inside)
Letraset Metallic marker in green
Letraset Tria markers: pink R327 and green G136
Pentel Chinese calligraphy brush pen
Zebra Jimnie gel pen in silver 
Inkssentials Glossy Accents

Seahorse Birthday Card

Seahorse birthday card for William

My brother William is mentally handicapped.  He likes happy colours, especially bright, joyful pink.  Accordingly, in anything I make for Will, I always try to include a bit of pink.  The year before last I knitted him a forest green scarf, which included pink details at the edges.

The background of this card is a combination of pattern origami paper, a dark blue piece of insurance advertising literature (guess whose insurance has just come up for renewal?) and offcuts.  I layered a few pink, red, purple and gold offcut/recycled anenomes on the the background.  Then I stamped and embossed the seahorse, before backing it and hanging it on ribbon.  The embossing was weak (perhaps the embossing ink is getting a bit old), so I touched up sections with gold ink.  I then covered the background section in recycled pink netting and layered over that with more anenome pieces.  The sentiment came free with a magazine, but I jazzed it up with Glossy Accents.  Finally, I mounted everything on pearlescent blue cardstock.

When the card is held, the seahorse on its ribbon (and the seahorse's googly eye) both move behind the rustling anenomes and the netting, which I am hoping invokes an underwater feel.  If I am honest, I think that the colours and patterns are too diverse, too disjointed to work as a whole and overall the image is way too 'cute' for my liking.  That said, I think William will like it, and that is all that really matters.

Ingredients for Seahorse:

Foam seahorse stamp (no details on the stamp itself but I am fairly sure I got it from Craft Central)

Top Boss 'Tinted' embossing stamp pad, Stamp-n Stuff 'Jewelled Gold' embossing powder, heat tool 
Windsor & Newton 'Gold' ink

Cardstock in pearlescent blue, Dekon origami paper, recycled/off cuts card and paper

Recycled ribbon, recycled netting 

Lakeland googly eye

Free-with-a-magazine sentiment

Inkssentials Glossy Accents, Uhu glue, doublesided sticky tape