Spring Leaves for Countryview Crafts

Hi everyone and happy April to you all! I am so longing for Spring, so let's hope that any April Showers will bring forth lots of Spring flowers.

The theme for our challenge this month at Countryview Challenges is to use Kraftcard.

I absolutely LOVE Kraft card, it is so versatile and can be used in so many different ways. For this project I simply used it as the base of my card.

The background to my card was created using Water colour paper and Distress Stain Sprays and clingfilm, my favourite technique of the moment, I just can't get enough of it.

As you can see, the focal point of my card are two leaves. I cut the leave with the Tim Holtz Layered Leaf die from the centre of my water colour card background. I adhered Kraft card behind the leaf opening, using foam tape for depth. I then added some gel medium with my finger and sprinkled various embossing powders onto that and melted them for texture. I also did some background stamping around the opening.
I then took the leaf I had cut and embossed it with the matching folder and arranged it at a slight angle over the opening. I added shadows around it, again, to create more depth.

This is the birthday card for my daughter in law who lives in Australia where Autumn is now well on the way, so the colours seemed quite appropriate. The sentiment is of course from the Tim Holtz simple sayings set.

Well, that's it for now. I will be back later in the day with two further projects, always busy here on the first of the month. Hope you will take the time to look at the projects my team mates have created, plenty of inspiration to use Kraft card!

Thanks for visiting like always, and perhaps I will see you later.
Have a good month!!

Variations on a theme

Hello all and welcome.
Today I am sharing another set of textured Christmas cards.

I don't remember a year when I have enjoyed making my Christmas cards quite as much as this year.... Maybe it's because I started earlier, maybe it's also because I decided to keep them simpler (well for me anyway) without all the tons of embellishments I used to add to my cards.

This set is not so different from the last set I showed, but made in a slightly different way.

I used a beer mat for the base again, but instead of covering it with gesso, I added a scrap of neutral coloured scrapbook paper. I adhered it to the beer mat, and when dry, sanded around the edges.

Next I added texture through a stencil, I used the Memory Box Lathenay and Heartwood stencils for this set. I am completely in love with them. It was my blog friend Dee Adams who told me about these gorgeous stencils. She had used one of them on a beautiful card she made me a while back.

Each of the 3 cards are basically done in the same way, after the texture had dried I added 2 colours of Distress Paints: Pumice Stone and Antique Linen, blended them with a baby wipe and then did some spritzing with Tim Holtz Distress Spray in Walnut Stain and a Lindy's Stampgang spray called Cowabunga Copper.

The final steps were to highlight the texture with Treasure Gold in two different colours, White Fire and Copper. If you use the back (black side) of a bit of Cut n Dry blending foam, it's much easier to just hit the raised bits.

The sentiment is from the Tim Holtz Christmas Nostalgia set. The Santa images are from a sheet of Maja Vintage Frost basics paper. I cut them out and them embossed around the edges with Stampendous Ancient Gold embossing powder.

Thanks for visiting like always and hope you are having a good week.

Mixed Media and Shabby Chic Chirstmas - the final two tags

Hello dear visitors and thank you for dropping in.
Today I am sharing the final two tags I put together for A Vintage Journey's Destination Inspiration post.
Here is the first one, a mixed media tag:

This started out as a plain size 8 tag over which I scraped some gesso with an old credit card.

I then pressed a piece of scrap card over it, pulled it off again and that gave me the cool textured pattern. Next I sprayed with various blue tones from the Distress Sprays: Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers and some Iced Spruce

I wanted to tone it all down a bit and give it more interest, though I was impressed with how well the sprays adhered to the gesso.

I added some strips of tissue wrap and stenciled some numbers with the help of the Cargo layering stencil. When the texture paste had dried I did some stenciling with Picket Fence Distress Paint and the Bubble Layering stencil. I also added a little home made spray using Chipped Sapphire re-inker and water. I then put the number stencil back in place and darkened the number with black Stazon Ink.

Time to embellish the tag:

I stamped the compass rose from the Classic 1 set twice, once straight onto the tag and then again on card. I fussy cut the actual compass rose and adhered it to the base and then added a little gear and nut which I had rusted up in the center.

I stamped the gents from the Steampunk set on smooth card, cut two of them out, inked them and then stuck them to the bottom of the tag with a little stamped round label.

Finally I stamped the sentiment from the Going Somewhere set onto some book paper, cut it out, distressed the edges and stapled it to the center of my tag and that was it.

The next tag is very different and much more feminine. No doubt it will eventually be integrated into a Christmas card.

For this one I used clear embossing paste from Wendy Vecchi and Tim's Harlequin layering stencil.

Next I used Vintage Linen, Iced Spruce and Brushed Pewter sprays for the background.

When it had dried I added a bit of Black Soot to the edges. As you can see it made a nasty wet edge at the bottom, but a bit of added water soon took care of that. I loved the wintery feel of this colour combination and at that point decided to make it into a Christmas tag. I created a kind of ornament by layering several die cut snowflakes and other dies on top of each other.

It's maybe hard to see from the photo, but there are three different dies layered on top of each other. Number 1 and 3 are from a Spellbinders snowflake set, in between is a die from the Ironwork accents. The central bit is a little metal filigree piece (available from the Funkie Junkie Boutique I believe

The little sentiment at the bottom was stamped with little letter stamps from the Papermania Madame Peraud collection, I punched them out and glued them to one of the Tattered Curvy Banner die-cuts and further embellished with some roses and pine branches and a piece of cheese cloth.

Well, that's it for today, thanks for visiting like always and have a good weekend!