Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Textured Wall paper Butterfly Card

Surprise… It’s me again. I thought I would be out of character and be the first one to do a blog post the other day to shock Zoo and here I am again. Like she said, I do produce a lot of cards to send to friends and family every month. My cards are fun to make and not always as detailed as Zoo’s but I enjoy sitting down and seeing what will be the finished product of the relaxing time spent in my craft room. As Zoo has now received the card I wanted to tell you about next, here it is.


I had some leftover textured wallpaper from renovating our upstairs bathroom and was playing with my water soluble wax pastels (by Caran D’ache of Switzerland) and my Stampin’Up! Aqua brush. I love the feel of the wallpaper! It is soft and pliable even after the pastels were applied, painted with water and dried. I kept the pieces of painted paper out to mull over what I wanted to do with them until inspiration finally struck.

I recently purchased a large page of butterfly stencils (one for me and one for Zoo) with four types of butterflies on it, all about 4” square in size. They are gorgeous. As the first card was to be for Zoo I chose the end of the wallpaper that had a lot of peach/pink on it. I used washi tape to attach the paper directly to the back of the stencil where I wanted it and then proceeded  to cut out all the shapes carefully, so as not to cut the stencil. It worked very well, though the hands and elbow barked at me afterward. I saved the bits I cut out and placed them aside in the correct placement for use on another card.

I found a little scrap piece of textured green paper that looked good under the butterfly and then mounted it on a complimentary pink card stock. I mounted the entire top piece onto the card stock using a piece of fun foam. It gave a uniform thickness and as it turns out, I didn’t have to pay extra postage. Yay! The idea of using the fun foam came from a YouTube video Zoo had sent me (sorry but I can’t find it at the moment – maybe Zoo will add the link later). I liked the uniform thickness for this card but on some cards I made the other day it didn’t make a difference between that and the double sided sticky taped dimensional squares I usually use.

The saved bits of the cut out butterfly I glued onto a plain piece of white card stock. It made a nice subtle card. Here is that one and some others I made with the remaining big pieces of wall paper. I really liked how the butterfly shows up so well from across the room. I wasn’t sure what I was going to use the butterfly stencil for but boy did this turn out nice! Oops. Forgot to mention that the stencil was made by Craft Décor. Cool... the computer added the asterisks for me. 














Hope you enjoy the butterflies. They made my day!

Red Bear : )

Saturday, January 02, 2016

Using up scraps

Good morning and Happy 2016.

For a couple of months now I have been trying to use up some of the paper I have made or painted over the years and also to use scraps of paper and odds and sods from around my craft room. I always discover things I forgot I had when hunting for something in my craft room and it is my goal to use these things more often in future.

With that in mind, I found two tiny baggies containing little squares and four sided stars. I can’t for the life of me remember what project the squares are left over from but the little pointed bits are left overs from using a friend’s die cut plate. It was a stained glass type of die and because I never throw anything away, I saved the tiny bits in a baggy and forgot about them for a couple of years.

I haven’t used my embossing powders for a while (some of which are over 20 years old) and wanted to compare my old Bridal by Personal Stamp Exchange and my new Iridescent Ice by Stampin’Up!. The pink and purple one is Bridal and the blue/green one is Iridescent Ice. I prefer the Bridal one for this project but there is tinsel like sparkles on the Iridescent Ice one that in batter light is cool.
In making the card I wanted to use a stamp to cover all the squares and then to pull them apart and place them on a darker background. I had to think for a moment to find a way to keep all the little squares together while stamping, heat embossing and then keep them in order so I could transfer them to the darker paper.  I used my ZiG Memory System 2 way glue dotted all over a scrap piece of paper, let it dry (with the help of my heat gun, as I am not a patient person while crafting) and then placed the squares on in the pattern I wanted. It worked like a charm!!



The two stamps I used are my favourite background stamps, both by Stampin’Up!  I prefer the floral one as it had more surface area to emboss but they both worked well.

I used brads the colour of the background paper to bring depth to the card and it finished it off nicely. Now I just have to do the insides of the cards and then start all over with the remaining squares and pointy bits to use them all up so they don’t go back a drawer for a couple more years.

I hope everyone has an awesome 2016 and that you and yours are happy, healthy and near loved ones!

Take care and have fun,

Red Bear : )