Tim Holtz Bird on a twig

I have to say that my card is based on Lucy Abrams far more superior version here. I really love the twig. That's one of Miaowski's. One of my neighbours gives little twigs to Miaowski thru the window. She loves taking them in her mouth and running off like a little dog. I find twigs scattered all around the carpet! Very handy for my bird cards :)

My new phone doesn't take very good photos compared to my old phone so I might have to go back to using that instead. I've tried adjusting the light levels in photoshop but don't really know what I'm doing. This is the best I could come up with.

Interestingly the colours seem to go better together here than in real life! I embossed the musical notes (Allegro by Cuttlebug) onto a Nestability circle and rubbed over it with Stampin Up's Whisper White and layered it on a Nestability Big Scalloped Circle. The background was made with TH distress inks, Crushed Cordroy and Mahogany and overstamped with nice swirls from TH's Artful Flight stamp set.

I was only saying to Miaowski the other day, we take life too seriously, so better lighten up. She agreed ...
Ooops, just messing with the clipart on the phone. Little things amuse me, probably too much!

Thanks for stopping by ...

Thinking of You

A friend of mine asked me to make a 'Thinking of You' card so this is what I came up with. I'm always nervous when people ask me to make something to order without specifying exactly what they want. Taste is all subjective after all. Luckily she liked it so that was good.

The background is embossed with a Sizzex Daisy embossing folder. And the ric rac ribbon I applied with little dots of glossy accents - there is no way that is ever going to fall off. That's the great thing about glossy accents - as well as an accent it is also a brilliant glue.

The bird is from Stampin Up. I coloured it with water colour pencils, it looked nice but it needed an extra lift. So I used a clear Versamark pen to make the image nice and wet so I could apply clear embossing powder over it. And look how nice and shiny it looks once I'd melted the powder.

Yummy, I love that glasssy look.

Thanks for stopping by ...

Card Lite

I am inspired by Susan Raihala's blog. I love her clean and simple style. She makes some really cool cards. So I thought I'd try out her 'box' cards. She gives a tutorial on how to make them here.

However, I didn't follow the tutorial, I did it a quicker way which is not as professional looking, but I wanted it to look a bit looser (or truthfully I didn't have a lot of time :)). I used a Nestabilities square die and drew around it with a pencil. Then I stamped the bird and sentiments (Hero Arts). Instead of rubbing out the pencil marks, I went over them with a black marker so that I wouldn't get totally straight lines. The 'Hello' should have been stamped a bit lower down as opposed to above the line but never mind, I will do it better next time. I love this style, simple but effective.

Yesterday was our last day of heat for the time being (not too long, I hope!) We've had wonderful warm weather in the high 20's and now we are due for some temps in the low teens :( And that's why I made such a quick card yesterday, so I could spend as much time outside as possible.

The upside of having no sun is that I will spend more time on my cards, yay!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by...

Fly little bird

I thought I'd try out the Barn door distress ink by Tim Holtz. My favourite colour combo is red, black and white so I thought I'd use that for this card. I think it might be okay to enter this for the black, white and red challenge too over at Inkurable Stampers.

I really love the effect water has on these inks and especially spraying water onto an uninked stamp and then stamping onto the inked page because it gives a lovely bleached out image of the stamp as the water reacts with the ink. Well that's what it's supposed to do, and I have watched the genius Tim Holtz do it and it worked for him. But did it work for me, or did it splash water in big splotches all over the place? The latter of course! And that's why you can see quite a lot of white splotchy bits on the background. Ah well never mind, I think it gives a kinda batik effect.

So then I stamped some flourishes from the Tim Holtz Artful Flight set in both Barn door distress ink and Versacolor over the background. And added the Hero Arts branches (from a set I can't remember the name of!). The bird is also from Artful Flight and what I did was ink around the edges of the stamp and then stamp it on the back of some text I'd typed in Word. The other words I typed in Word also but in different fonts.

Here is a closer look...
Will the little bird escape or will he be captured and caged forever? We will never know.

Have a lovely weekend y'all!

Songbird

As people who read my blog know, I love Tim Holtz products and now especially I love his rubber stamps. I was lucky enough to receive a great present from my friend Kate who bought me one of his sets 'Artful Flight' which has this gorgeous bird. I didn't have a clear idea of how I was going to use the bird but after playing around I ended up making this card. I used Tim Holtz distress inkpads for the background (Wild Honey, Scattered Straw and Adirondack Sail Boat Blue) - flicked water droplets over it to give cool faded out spots. I had some sheet music that I downloaded from Craft Stamper that I tore and added for a collage effect. The hearts are from Blonde Moments

I like using Tim Holtz distress stickles so added some to the bird to give some texture. I don't know if you can see it in this closer up picture but there is some on the bird's stomach. It kind of looks like coloured glass and gives a nice shiny effect.

Our clocks went forward an hour yesterday and I'm still not used to it. I've been yawning all morning so I better go and make a nice strong coffee to wake me up!

Happy Monday everyone :)