Made with peel off's

You may not believe that this first card is made with peel off's - it is, but not in the conventional way, and it's not made with white peel off's either!

I read an article in a magazine about using ink on cards. I love using ink for other uses than just stamping so I thought I would try it out. It involved sticking the peel off's onto a piece of card and then inking over them. When you peel them off the card you are left with a white outline which looks really quite effective.

I then had another idea and using my transfer sheet I picked up all the left over pieces from the butterfly stained glass window peel off and stuck them onto a piece of card. I then inked over that and one by one, peeled off all the left over pieces. this left me with lots of white areas but the ink had taken the place of where the silver peel off lines should have been.

I then mounted it onto purple mirri card and stuck it onto the background. I inked with a dark purple round the edge of the background, embossed a sentiment with clear powder and inked around the edge and this was then placed onto the topper to finish off the card. I am going to try this technique again now with more peel off's and different coloured inks.

The next card I made for my Mum to say thank you and I used a butterfly window peel off from the same sheet as the one used for the above.

I coloured in the peel off with pro markers and then heat embossed with sparkly powder, certain areas of the image. The beautiful backing paper is from a new design by Echo Park - from their Victoria Garden range and I thought the rose on the paper matched the rose on my picture.

I added a butterfly to the top right corner which had been stuck to white card, coloured in, heat embossed with the sparkly powder and then cut out. The sentiment was stamped with pink ink straight onto the card and then embossed with clear powder. She loved it!

Then I made a get well card using some more gorgeous peel off's that I ordered from Little Claire. They are part of their brown and gold range, and using a transfer sheet I picked up the negative image from the sheet and placed it on the card in the middle of the outline:

The scallop circle was cut out of white card and before sticking the peel off on I coloured it with shimmer chalks. To set the chalk I sprayed it with hairspray, so that they don't rub off. After I stuck the peel off on I coloured in the remaining areas. The edge of the scallop circle was painted with gold perfect pearls which gave it a shimmery finish. A perfect card, which is an unusual get well card.

Now off to play with some more peel off's and to get covered in ink again!

Claire

Friday's card project - using sketches

I was looking through some blogs this morning for some inspiration and came across a sketch that I wanted to try out. I can't make it come up on here, but it was for a square card with an image on the left, some ribbon on the right and then some decoration. I didn't copy it exactly but made my own version of it as this card demonstrates:

The image was coloured with pro markers and some card candi was added to the top left of the picture.

For the next card, I changed a few things around but the general layout is the same:

I added some flowers to the bottom left corner instead of the card candi and the sentiment was added as an extra piece going at an angle on the top left of the picture. Instead of mounting the picture onto some coloured card I very gently inked the edges. I didn't want much colour around the picture so I inked it from behind which left a very small line of ink on the front, just enough to give it a little bit of colour.

Then I decided to turn the design around 90 degrees for the next card and had the ribbon on the bottom instead of the right hand side.

I put the picture on the left instead of in the centre and the sentiment is going down. The blue snow flakes replace the flowers on the last card. I also inked the edges of both the image and the sentiment topper to define it from the background. Although it doesn't come up very well in the picture, the background has very faint blue snowflakes on it which I created using perfect pearls powder dusted over an image stamped with clear ink. They are pearlescent so they shine when they get into the right light and look very good on a contemporary Christmas card such as this one.

Sketches can be very good ways of providing inspiration when you are tired of using the same layouts in your cards. Sometimes they can also prove quite challenging as well and it's always fun to try out new things - why don't you have a go!

Claire

A week full of card making

After a few days with no inspiration at all for card making, my selection was diminishing some what so I had to make some more. Once I had sat down with a few bits in front of me I found that I had more inspiration that I thought and is is what I made:

I had to make Hannah's birthday card first of all and seeing as she was the one who started me off in card making I had to find something that would impress her. I tried a double twisted easel card - it was my first attempt and I thought it turned out very well. She was very impressed

And then I played around with a few other bits and came up with these:

Nothing too exciting there but I have great plans for things to come. I made my first scrapbook page the other day as an example to take to my next workshop and I was quite pleased with the result. I now have a whole load of pictures I want to make scrapbook pages out of now.

I have also been making my own range of backing papers as well and again I am very pleased with the result. They are heat embossed with snowflakes on and will be available in the shop later this month. I hope they are popular and I have lots more designs I would like to try out if they sell well - watch this space!

Claire