Wedding Favours

My daughter is getting married this year. It will be just a very small wedding only close family so I decided that I would make wedding favours for her lady guests. I have started to make some photograph booklets to store a few memories of the day. The colours of her wedding are ivory with just a splash of purple, two colours I love to work with when crafting. The little crochet wedding bag I made before she decided on her colours in the hope that it would match but the colour is wrong. No matter I will use it or sell it.

The booklet is made from envelopes cut and folded from 12 inch square cardstock. A little flimsy at first but as the layers of embellishment are added it becomes more sturdy. My daughter chose 3 readings for her ceremony and I have included them on the front page, inside a double door tag and on the back of a puffy heart tag. Pretty papers, vellum, stickers, embossed stamps, handmade paper flowers and lace finish the embellishments. I am using tags inserted into the last envelope and folded around to the front where I will put magnetic clasps.

Carte a Jouer #10

PRINCIPLE OF THE CHALLENGE:

Thème : Coeur Theme: Heart
Technique: Puffy / swollen tissue (material)
For this challenge we were to use two playing cards. The front card to have a heart cut/punched out of it and material attached loosely at the back and stuffing then sandwiched between the material and the back card. I used a piece of cream silk that I decorated with red and white lace and a charm heart before sticking to the back of the front card. I cut part of the edging of this lace to border the card and coloured it with ink. The "LOVE" embellishment was cut and embossed with my cuttlebug and trimmed down and edged with tiny pearl beads. The background of the front card is painted with gesso and then with acrylic paint. I stamped it with roses enhanced with perfect pearls.
http://carteajouer.blogspot.com/

Carte a Jouer #9

The subject for this challenge is Baby and the Shabby Chic Technique shown on Isa's blog http://carteajouer.blogspot.com/. shabby chic items are chosen for their age and signs of wear and tear or new items are distressed to achieve the appearance of an antique. At the same time, a soft, minimalistic, and feminine feel is emphasized to differentiate it from regular vintage decor; hence the "chic" in the name. I chose my paper to be pink for a girl baby, the only link to the baby subject I'm afraid. I wanted to focus on the feminine and antiqued side of the challenge.

The cardstock is embossed and attached to the playing card with decoupage medium, thin watery shades of pale pink and ivory acrylic paint are brushed lightly over the whole card. The embossed stems and flower petals are then highlighted with a dab of white acrylic paint to make them stand out more. I edged the card with ivory cord with beads and punched a heart out of the original cardstock and again brushed lightly with watery pink paint. The "ADORE" saying was stamped with pink acrylic paint and attached directly onto the heart. The heart is placed at an angle on top of the corded edge. If you click on the image you can see the detail better.

Carte a Jouer Challenge #8 - Picasso's Nude

The latest challenge on Isa's Carte a Jouer (see link to the right)is to use crumpled paper in some way that is highlighted and a nude. I don't want to offend anyone who doesn't like the nude art form so I chose a painting that I love by Picasso and I drew her in chalks and mounted her by a stream made of crumpled onion skin paper torn at an angle with the edge burnt and scrunched up to make raised areas. The water and grass I coloured with chalks in shades of blue and green paying particular attention to the raised areas of the onion skin paper. The shimmer in the water is sprinkled crushed gold glass.

Carte a Jouer # 6 and 7

I am so far behind with my crafting work that I have missed the deadlines for these two playing cards. Still I carry on and try to catch up. The challenge #6 was Christmas and melted plastic. I tried lots of time to get a melted shape that I could use on my card. Some plastic was too thick to punch with my blunt punches, I tried embossing them first and the impressions melted away when heated with the heat gun, but finally I found a piece of oval plastic that was already 3 dimensional and when heated gave the look of a bevelled glass window. I embossed the back with white powder to give the look of snow and highlighted the raised parts of the window with silver ink. Dark blue star paper stuck on the back and the window was then mounted onto corrugated paper highlighted with rub-ons to look like striped wallpaper. A band of crochet silks was wrapped around the window to frame it and a small piece of a carol stuck underneath.

Challenge #7 was snow and a method to teach. I embossed a piece of cardstock with my cuttlebug, then painted it white with acrylic paint and then a layer of blue highlight Lumiere paint. When heated with the heat gun the paint bubbled to give the look of snow falling. Stamped and embossed snowman, letters and edging were then added.

New Year, new enthusiasm

Having spent the last two months of 2010 creating nothing but Christmas cards and travelling round the country I thought it was time to get going again with my craft hobby. I made the following tag book for the group Art 'n' Soul. The only stipulation was that it be 4 tags with button/buttons on each side.

The front has "If my words had wings" saying stamped on this pretty paper then a button flower added with stems made of wire and the leaves filled with green tissue paper soaked in collage medium, I will use this technique again the result is great. The stamped butterfly clear embossed and cut out and is mounted on foam squares to give a 3 dimensional look. The edges of the tag are rubbed with metallic rub-on. the rest of the saying "they would fly to you each day" was stamped and clear heat embossed on the reverse side. The bird stamp I inked with felt pens so that I could get a red breast to the bird, and clear heat embossed. The next tag used a beautiful paper that needed little to embellish it, so I added some flower buttons threaded with corded ribbon for stems and tied together into a bouquet with contrasting ribbon. the diamond shaped paper on the next side was dry embossed and highlighted with rub-ons. A paper flower made from cut and twisted contrasting papers and clear button was added to the center. For the next side a bee on this stamp represents summer in the middle of a this snow storm of gems, rub on snow flakes and silvered buttons. The sand and sea tag has muslin net inked with aqua and shells, seaweed and starfish are trapped within it. For the next side I stamped and stencilled this pretty paper tag and mounted an ink coloured wooden tree with buttons for oranges. The back tag is stamped and heat embossed with clear powder. A frame lined with lace was added and stickers, stamps and tiny scissors coloured with silver rub-on placed around it. I fastened the tags together using a charm leash threaded with beads.

Carte a Jouer #5

The challenge this week is for a material background and cake, you can see Isa's challenge blog at http://carteajouer.blogspot.com/. I stuck a piece of cream silk onto my playing card and then ran it through a cuttlebug folder coated with cinnamon stickles to give it an embossed and glittery look. My cake is made from 3 pieces of card again each run through a cuttlebug flower edge folder and highlighted with stickles. Each layer of cake was edged with copper leafing pen and tiny punched pieces of pink paper in the shape of stars and swags and stickles were used to make the candles on the top. Sadly the photo merges all the stickles and it is not easy to see the definition. The word "engaged" is layered on card stock to form the base of the cake. Finally I edged the playing card with copper leafing pen.

Carte a Jouer #4

The theme this time is plants like the pumpkin that have curly tendrils and to use coloured wax for the background. I melted several colours of blue wax onto the card and twisted it around while wet so that they ran and mixed. In one corner I made a mask of part of a circle and melted white wax into that area to give the impression of moonlight. I then drew 3 bats in black wax across the moon. My pumpkin is cut out of a coke can and embossed and coloured with alcohol inks. A thin glaze of glitter glue was applied to the dark sky to add shimmer from the moonlight.

Carte a Jouer # 3

This is my card for the 3rd challenge set by Isa, (http://isasart.blogspot.com/) to make a card with a Halloween theme and to use make the subject as a textured relief out of tissue paper. I lined my card with black tissue paper and cut out a silhouette of a pumpkin and covered it with white tissue paper using decoupage medium. A thin glaze of orange and green acrylic paints was applied and extended over the edges onto the black tissue to give a faint halo of colour around the pumpkin. Thicker acrylic paint was then applied to the pumpkin and when dry a thin lustre of gold lumiere paint was applied with my finger to highlight the raised areas. This same lustre was applied to the black tissue background.

Carte a Jouer #2

The theme this fortnight is a child or children and to use a capsule, bottle cap with item or picture sealed in it. As you can see from my card I did not use a picture but instead chose items to symbolize childhood. The ABC building blocks were encapsulated in the bottle cap using a swirled mixture of pastel pink and blue puffy paint. The background is a beautiful ribbon with balloons of various pastel colours printed on it. The little blue ducks, to symbolize boys, are cut from ribbon and edged with ink to make them stand out more and the pink flowers are to symbolize girls. The ribbon has a holographic edge at the sides and where I cut the ribbon tip and bottom to fit the playing card I have tinted the edge with Brilliance inks.