Mother's Day Shaker card

This mason jar shaker card was inspired by this one from Chari Moss. I had a lot of technique troubles with this card but I got it done in the end.

It was my first attempt at a shaker card and I learnt a lot! If you wanted to try to make a card like this, I recommend that you check out Lawn Fawn's youtube video channel and find the video of Chari's shaker card.

It really is easy to make if you have the right equipment. I just couldn't find my Stazon black ink or clear acetate sheets. I tried to buy them from my local scrapbooking store and they didn't have any in stock. I also went to Spotlight but they were sold out. I ended up buying a Versamark brilliance but, although it dried on the plastic, it easily scratched off when I was attaching the top layer to the card.

Materials:

Card: Concord Crush, Rich Razzleberry, Whisper White, In Colour patterned paper
Ink: Concord Crush, Rich Razzleberry, Melon Mambo, Versamark Brilliance in Black, Copic Sketch N1 marker.
Stamps: Summertime Charm by Lawn Fawn, Teeny Tiny Sentiments by Stampin' Up
Accessories: Striped organza ribbon, sequins, clear plastic treat bag, purple rhinestones, iridescent clear beads, all from discount stores
Tools: Big shot machine, Summertime Charm Lawn Cuts dies by Lawn Fawn, corner rounder punch by Fiskars, white foam from Spotlight, craft glue, dimensionals

A flowery birthday

Today's card took a long time to make and I'm pretty proud of it. I poached this card design from Vicky Hayes at Crafting Clare's Paper Moments. Her card must have been a lot smaller than mine because it took me so many stamped images to fill in all the white! This is for a friend of my husband and I:

This is a 6 x 6 inch card. I'm really liking this size of card but I'll have to buy some 12 x 12 inch cardstock as I don't have much of it.

Materials:
Cardstock: Concord Crush, Rich Razzleberry, Whisper White.
Ink: Concord Crush, Rich Razzleberry, Not Quite Navy, matching markers, Green Garden marker, Versamark.
Stamps: Sweet Summer (from last year's Sale-A-Bration?), Curly Cute.
Accessories: Basic rhinestones, silver embossing powder.
Tools: Paper trimmer, heat tool, aqua painter, kraft mat, glue tape runner.

Tips and Tricks:
1. I stamped and embossed the sentiment first because I didn't want to spend heaps of time colouring the flowers and then ruin the card with a mucked up sentiment.
2. Apart from the first row, I stamped the flowers randomly in all three colours. Then I stamped the leaves.
3. I put ink on my kraft mat and coloured each set of flowers with an aqua painter. I tried to get a gradient of colours within each set of flowers. I coloured the leaves and put a pale green wash in any blank spaces.
4. I dried the watercolours with my heat tool on the front and back to help stop the card from warping.
5. I coloured the flower centres with markers of the same ink colour.
6. I added rhinestones randomly around the flowers. The camera doesn't pick it up too well.
7. Then I layered it all together with a glue tape runner.

Stuff Ups:
1. My water colouring needs work. I thought it was going to take ages so I rushed a bit in the beginning.
2. Initially I added too much ink to my aqua painter and the colour separated on one of the flower heads, oops!
3. Either I didn't wait long enough for the water colouring to dry or I didn't put enough glue on the back of the layer because it has warped slightly on the finished card (bubbled up and not sitting flat).

Pleasant Surprises:
1. The overall look of the card is nice. It was becoming dodgy for a while there.
2. I think the colour combination is pretty. I would normally stay away from navy blue on this kind of card but it seems to work.
3. I made an envelope with my scoring board that turned out ok. I practised on paper first because I forget how to do it and that meant I didn't waste any cardstock.

Christmas Eve and Birthday Cards

Yes, it's Christmas Eve and I've spent most of the day making birthday cards for rellies I'm going to see tomorrow who have birthdays in the next couple of weeks. I'm pretty pleased with the results (except for that off centre brad). Here's the first card:

Rating: Decent

First of all, this design isn't mine - I cased a much more attractive card from Card Scraps Blog and wish mine looked like that! So what's different? I don't have any Soft Suede card stock so I used Crumb Cake and crumb cake ink. I spritzed the Crumb Cake layer with Perfect Pearls Mist in Heirloom Gold (omg I love this shimmer spritz) which the photo doesn't really show. It's a gorgeous golden glimmer that I could stare at for hours. I have used a different sentiment stamp. My card has gold brads for the small flower centres and a purple jewel brad in the centre of the big flower.

Here's another I made today using Concord Crush instead of Rich Razzleberry, simply because I ran out.

Here are the details:

Materials:

Cardstock: Rich Razzleberry or Concord Crush, Crumb Cake, Whisper White.

Inks: Rich Razzleberry or Concord Crush, Crumb Cake, Always Artichoke.

Stamps: Vintage Vogue.

Other: Gold brads, dimensionals, sponge.

Non Stampin' Up: Perfect Pearls Mists in Heirloom Gold, American Crafts Elements - medium jewel brads: brights, Wendy Irving Collections: Expressions Clear Cling Stamps -  'Occasions'.

Tips and Hints:

1. I have sponged the edges of the Whisper White card with Crumb Cake ink.

2. The lighter coloured flowers are created by using the 'stamp off' technique which is simply stamping the image on scrap card once or twice before stamping on the finished piece, so you get a lighter colour effect. I stamped off once for the medium colour and stamped off twice for the lightest colour.

Stuff Ups:

The border stamping: too lazy to use a stampamajig so some of the images are a bit crooked.

The off centre brad - it stares at me like a wart on a witches nose.

The cover up - I smudged a bit of ink on the Razzleberry card above the birthday wishes stamp so I covered it with another flower.