Monday 25 July 2016

Silhouette

Weather wise it has been a strange couple of weeks - brilliant sunshine, temperatures in the 30C's, thunderstorms and torrential rain that the car's wipers could barely cope with. During a break in the wet weather, hubby finally got around to putting up the 3 panels of fencing that he's promised to do for the last 3 years - hooray!!!

Our wee Jack Russell is happy that he's finally able to enjoy the freedom of the whole garden again rather than just as far as his long lead allowed him to go. He was really funny on the day of the thunderstorm, this is a dog that hates the rain but he was absolutely fascinated by the storm & kept pawing at the patio door. I knew he wasn't going to out in it so I opened the door for him.  Straight out the door went his nose and he seemed fascinated by all the scents that were being stirred up by the lightning and heavy rain, he'd sniff the air, then he'd look at me as if to say "can you smell that" all the while his tail was going nineteen to the dozen. At one point he did take a step out into the rain but shot straight back in again.


My friend is finally on the road to recovery and, although she couldn't see it before, she now admits that she's making improvements everyday. It's hoped that in a few weeks instead of going to a stroke rehab unit she will be able to go home and continue her treatment here.

Not been making anything this last couple of week's but thought it was time to get started again. This Freshly Made Sketches Challenge  seemed a good place to start.



The only thing I knew I wanted to do was not to make the horizontal piece a sentiment - but wasn't sure what it should be! I had a look through my stash and came across a Cottage Cutz Petites "Bird on Branch" die and decided to use that as the basis for the card.  Originally I'd thought of using a Kraft card base as the ready made tags I had were Kraft card but finally decided to make my own from white cardstock and have the die cut bird on a branch as a silhouette. Originally I thought about the circle as the sun but after making up the card decide and mulling over it overnight, next morning I decided that a. I felt I'd made a couple of mistakes in the placement of things  & b. A paler, perhaps moon-like, colour would be better for a silhouette.

The tag was embossed using the trunk section of the embossing folder from "A Walk in The Park" set, free from Simply Cards and Papercraft Issue 150.

























So I started over again. 

To do this it was just a case of changing the colour of circle and extending the branches across the tag. I decided to add a little movement to the card by setting the tag at a slight angle:


























What I Used

300gsm White Card - Fabiano
Black Linen 12x12 - Black Cat

Dies, Embossing Folder & Stamps

"Bird on Branch" - Cottage Cutz Petites
"A Walk in The Park" Set, Tree Folder - Simply Cards & Papercraft Issue 150 
"Just Because", Paula Pascal Mixed Sentiments - Personal Impressions

Inks

Weathered Wood - Distress Ink Tim Holtz
Scattered Straw - Distress Ink Tim Holtz
Tuxedo Black - Memento






















Monday 11 July 2016

Salty Cat Story

I  may not have posted much lately but it doesn't mean I haven't been crafty . Perhaps not really crafty, crafty just sort of crafty as in playing about with Distress Inks to make some backgrounds that might come in handy.

I have bought a few of the Tim Holtz Distress Ink mini pad sets so have a wider range of colours to play with now - added 4 new colours to my collection at the weekend. I sat and played for a wee while the last couple of nights putting ink on to card stock - different colour combos some left as the were while other had various things done to them. Nothing too exciting just some sprayed water or a fine spray of diluted bleach. The last couple I made were done using a lot of  water over the inked card stock followed by taking my salt grinder and leaving pieces of sea salt on the card then allowing it to dry. The salt reacted with some of the now diluted inks leaving flower-like images behind.

My camera has run out of charge and only had enough power left to photograph my entry for this week's Freshly Made Sketches Challenge so will post other examples once it has charged up again.







I decided to use one of the new backgrounds on the card I was going to make for the challenge, if you look closely you can see the little flower-like areas left by the salt after it reacted with the ink. I decided to pick up on the orangey/yellow colour in the background to use as a contrast and to colour the Crazy Cat.





What I used

Cardstock
White 300gsm - Fabiano
Yellow - American Crafts

Dies & Stamps
Crazy Cat Stamp -
Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz
Crazy Cat Die & Stitched Ovals -
Sizzix Thinlits Tim Holtz
Cat Sayings - Stampendous


Inks
Assorted Mini Distress Ink Pads
Assorted Promarkers