Dinkie Snowman pop up card

Welcome again blogger friends.

Thank you all for your birthday wishes, I really enjoyed my birthday although it all passed by so quickly & now I'm trying to concentrate on Christmas.

I was so excited to find that I had won the Visible Image November Challenge with my Butterfly pop up box card!
My first ever blog challenge win! :-) .

I've already spent my £20 prize on the Visible Image website & am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my goodies in the post.

In celebration, I thought I would share another pop up box card with you today.

This time it features stamps from Indigoblu.

Here I have used the Snowman dinkie, I wish you a merry Christmas dinkie & the A6 baubles flourish stamps.

Once constructed, the box card panels were decorated with the stamped images coloured with peacock feathers & faded jeans distress inks.

My snowman was stamped in black ink & coloured with promarkers. 

The snowflakes were fussy cut from the baubles flourish stamp & stuck onto clear acetate stalks to look as if they were falling snow.

I also added some snowflakes made with spellbinders & some touches of stickles glitter glue here & there for some added sparkle.
This all folds flat enough to fit inside an envelope ready to post or give to your recipient.

Thanks for looking, I'll be back again soon with some more Christmas makes.

Amy x 

Imagination Crafts Design Team Inspiration. Poppy fields

Hi all, I'm back today with my first design team post for Imagination Crafts.
Every month there is a new challenge over on the Imagination Crafts Challenge Blog with a great prize to spend in the  Imagination Crafts shop.
 So me & the rest of the design team have created some projects to hopefully inspire you to hop over & join in with the challenge.

For my inspirational project I've created a card using the Dragonfly & Poppies stencil & Inkadinks in Brights.

I attached the stencil to some white card & drew around the design with a pigma micron black fineliner pen to create an outline.
I then squeezed out small amounts of the red, yellow, orange & green inkadinks & watered them down to use as water colours to paint the dragonflies & poppies as above & used Distress Inks to blend in the background of the sky & field.
I then replaced the stencil & applied clear texture paste through it using a palette knife.
I removed the stencil & applied clear microbeads while the texture paste was still wet.

Once the texture paste has dried to clear, the colours of the inkadinks show through whilst the microbeads add texture & a lovely subtle sparkle.

I didn't really think that any more was needed to finish my card as there is quite a lot going on, so I just matted & layered my design onto red, black & then green card stock before fixing it to my white card blank.

 Make sure you pop over to the Imagination Crafts Challenge Blog to check out the fab creations by the rest of the design team & join in yourself.

Thanks again for stopping by.
 As always your comments are much appreciated & I'd also like to say a big Welcome to my newest followers, its great to have you here :-) .

Amy x 

Fabulous Forty!

Well, I must apologise for being abscent for a little while.

 But I think I have good reason, I've been celebrating my 40th birthday!. 

I've had a few days away here & there over the last week or so with family & friends & have been treated to some yummy meals out & gorgeous gifts. 

My best friend from school also celebrated her 40th birthday & my card today is the one that I made for her.

I cut the 40 with my cricut machine out of pale blue card. I then colour washed the numbers with some Lilac heaven & Blueberry ice Inkadinks that I received in the post along with lots of other gorgeous goodies from Imagination Crafts.

I've really enjoyed working with these inks & I'm looking forward to sharing some more projects that I've made using them as part of my new Design Team role for Imagination Crafts.

I also created my background with the two colours of inks & then spritzed the numbers & background with watered down mica powders to add shimmer. Unfortunately, the camera doesn't pick this up very well.

I then used Heartfelt Creations Sun Kissed Fleur Swirls stamps & stamped it randomly over the background with Dusty Concorde distress ink. Once dry,  I removed some of the colour from the centre of the flowers by brushing with water & then blotting with kitchen paper.

After trimming the background to fit my card blank, I stamped & cut more flowers from the offcuts, shaped them & added some turquoise micro beads to the centres.

My sentiment is also from Imagination Crafts.

I used all the same colours for the inside of the card plus a Phill Martin sentiment stamp to finish.

I hope you like the finished card.

Thanks for stopping by, I'll be back again soon.

Amy x 

Flutterby Butterfly

Hello & welcome back.

 Phew! What a busy week its turning out to be.

 This week we are hosting our annual Christmas Shopping Evenings at Out Of The Blue, with last night being the first of the 3 evenings. 

I was kept very busy running up & down the stairs, topping up items that had sold, chatting to our loyal customers & handing out festive drinks & nibbles.

Looking forward very much to the next 2 nights which are no doubt going to be just as busy, so I thought I'd grab these few spare moments to share my card with you.

It's a pop up box card that my half of our workshop group made a little while back using Visible Image  stamps.
Visible image design & make all their own clear stamps so if you're not familiar with them, please check out their fab products, some of which we are very pleased to stock in our shop.

I've used 4 stamps by Visible Image, Large Butterfly, Butterfly, Butterfly Sentiment & Tall Grass.

I used a template to create the base box card out of a sheet of A4 cream card. There are lots of instructions on how to construct pop up boxes of varying sizes available on YouTube etc.
 Once constructed & decorated the card folds flat enough to fit inside an envelope.
 I created my own background paper by making a piece of A4 card wet & then using Cosmic Shimmer Water Paint Garden Tones set & applying the various colours in patches.
Once dry the background has a beautiful shimmer to it.
I then stamped the 2 sizes of butterfly stamps randomly with distress inks that toned in with the shimmer paint.
The A4 background card was then cut into panels, mat onto lilac card & applied to the panels on my base box.

I stamped & embossed 3 large butterflies & 4 small butterflies & painted them with the same Cosmic Shimmer paints & cut them out.
I added distress glitter to the butterflies & made antennae from craft wire with tiny beads on the ends.
I stamped & embossed the Tall Grass onto lilac card several times & then cut around it & glued it inside the inner supports inside the box & onto the back panel.
The butterflies on acetate were then glued in & around the grass so they appear to be fluttering .

I stamped the Butterfly sentiment on to the offcuts of my background sheet & chopped it up, attaching it to the very front panel with 3D foam pads.

It was great fun making this card & although it was maybe a little time consuming to complete within the 2 hour workshop timescale, many of our class members came back to show more pop up cards they had then made at home based on this design.

These butterfly stamps are some of my favourite stamps to use & are great for lots of occasions.

I'd like to enter this card in the Visible Image November Challenge.

Thanks for visiting

See you soon

Amy x 

Exciting times!

Hello my friends, welcome back & welcome to my new followers too!.

Well, I have some exciting news to share with you today.

I recently saw that Imagination Crafts were looking for DT members & I decided to try my luck & apply.
Imagine my delight when I was offered one of the positions!!
So, as of the 1st December myself & the other design team members will be showcasing products from Imagination Crafts & bringing you some inspiring projects.
 I do hope you'll keep stopping by to see what we come up with.

So today I thought it appropriate to show you a card I have made using Imagination Crafts products.

I stamped the Decoupage Stamp Sets - Owls Border twice & coloured with promarkers.
I cut away the background in the middle of the design ready for my own created background to show through.
I then cut out the little owl & decoupaged it onto the main coloured image with 3d foam.
I die cut a silver scalloped frame for my owl image using a spellbinder.
Next I created my background by scraping diamond Sparkle Medium through the Random Stars background stencil.
Once dry I then added my owl image with 3d foam to give depth.

Finally, I matted & layered this onto vintage silver card to match the frame around my owls & then again onto navy card edged with blue dimensional paint dots.

Before I go I thought I would share some pics of the cake & other bits & bobs I made for my daughter's birthday this week.

She turned 5 & like most 5 year olds she is completely obsessed with all things to do with the Disney film Frozen.

So that was the theme of the party which we hosted for 20 children.

 Unfortunately, Daisy got chicken pox a couple of days before her birthday but after a trip to the doctor we were given the OK to go ahead with the party.

I'm pleased to report that the chicken pox seem to be on their way out,  just in time for her to go back to school!.

Thanks for stopping by, see you again soon.

Amy x 

Funky Christmas

Hi everyone!. I'd just like to say thank you for all the lovely comments you've all been leaving me recently, its much appreciated & I'm still working my way around catching up with what you've all been up to as well.

Also, a big hello & welcome to my new followers!

Thank you for following me & taking the time to visit.

Now, onto today's card.

It's one I made a while ago when I was trying to get into the swing of making Christmas cards.

It's 8 x 8 on a scalloped card blank & features 2 stamps from Indigoblu. 

Funky Circles Tree & Merry Christmas dinky.

As you can see, I've gone for the traditional red, green & gold Christmas colours.

I stamped the tree in Evergreen Bough distress ink onto white card & heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

I then cut around the tree & inked it with Festive Berries distress ink.

I stamped just the star at the top of the tree with flitter glue, applied gold gilding flake, cut it out & stuck it over the original star with 3d foam.

Next I stamped the Merry Christmas dinky with flitter glue onto red card & applied gold gilding flakes.

I then mat & layered this onto green card, the edges of which I'd lightly touched with glue & gilded.

I gilded the edge of some red card & attached the tree to the left with 3d foam & the sentiment to the right.

I stamped the funky tree around the edges of a piece of white card with flitter glue & once gilded inked with the red distress ink as before.
This was then mat & layered onto red & then green card & the whole lot was mounted onto the card blank.

The final touches are a gold organza ribbon bow & red, green & gold gems in the circles on the tree.

Right, I'm off to bed. A busy day tomorrow. Daisy has her first Harvest Festival in the morning & then its busy, busy pricing up several deliveries that arrived in the shop today.
Christmas is definitely on it's way!

Amy x 

Season of Joy

Phew, what a busy week!. 2 workshops for Out Of The Blue & non stop Christmas deliveries & sorting to do in the shop. 

The weather seems to be changing & customers are buying with Christmas gifts & crafting in mind.

This first card is the project my half of our group made on Thursday at our Out Of The Blue card making workshop.

 It was quite a busy 2 hours with lots of heat embossing & stencilling with texture paste.

The card was made with the Season Of Joy Dreamweaver stencil & silver embossing paste.

After applying the paste onto purple card the paste was heated with a heat tool until it bubbled & added texture.

Here is a closer view of the texture achieved by this technique.

The background was made by embossing white card with an embossalicious embossing folder through my grand calibur.

Before running it through, I applied perfect medium to the debossed side of the folder. The clear ink was then transferred to my piece of card as it went through & the pattern was embossed into it at the same time.

Once removed from the folder, I applied silver embossing powder all over the piece of card & heat embossed it.

I then inked the embossed stars with dusty concord distress ink.

Areas of the scenery were enhanced with the same ink to create shadowing & depth &  I also applied treasure gold silver.

Final touches were silver & lilac ribbon tied with a double bow & some die cut & embossed Snowflakes edged with silver.

I also made the same card to show it in another colour way.

Finally, here's the card we made at the workshop on Tuesday. An additional workshop to our normal schedule.

We were asked to do this workshop as part of the Discover South Gloucestershire festival 2014.

This card was designed by Carole, my co workshop teacher & everyone really enjoyed making it, including me.

Its made using the Dasher & Tree stamps by Sam Poole from Creative Expressions. 

 If you don't already follow Carole's blog please pop over & check it out at 

Carole's Crafty Creations

She makes some beautiful cards & other great crafty projects.

Right, that's it from me for tonight. Its way past my bed time & I have another busy day tomorrow in the shop.

Thanks for joining me & please pop back again soon.

Amy x