#450

First things first, here’s this year’s cards:

I was so stressed out about them this year, and combined with the heat, I ended up sick on Christmas day and couldn’t go out! I guess that’s a lesson for next year. But for now, I’m all carded out. 

So my boyfriend has found us a new project.

There is a tabletop game known as Warhammer 40,000. If you haven’t heard of it, it is like an adult board game with hundreds of tiny figurines, that you piece together and paint yourself, and battle with other people. You choose your army, buy a whole lot of items in order to personalise your figures, build scenery, learn the rules of the game, learn the entire 40,000 year history of the universe, then you can finally play. There are competitions for playing, and ones for painting your army, too. Artists hand painted and modified figures are quite expensive, and great for selling to collectors. For years I’ve wanted to paint miniature figurines, as they look so great when they are finished.

This guy is called Raphael, and the army I ended up with is called ‘Dark Angels.’ They are like robot crusaders from what I can tell.

I didn’t really get to choose, as my partner chose Chaos, so we bought the two army starter set including them. But they are growing on me.

We went for a walk today to buy primer and glue, so my legs are tired, and my hands are sore from all the little plastic spikes from putting them together.

Figure I need some sleep now 😉

#448

What you may have guessed from previous examples and subtle character profiling, I’m a procrastinator. This is relevant today, as I still haven’t finished the Christmas cards, despite beginning near the end of October. It is certainly not from lack of trying, nor because I’ve been working on other projects. It’s quite the opposite, actually. For the last couple of months I have been making elements and patterned papers and embossing, inking, printing, drawing and colouring till the cows came home. I just rarely stopped to glue them all together. I now have rather large piles of elements of cards, all waiting to be matched and glued. Probably more than enough for two to three Christmases…

One day I will figure it all out, start early, envision finished cards instead of pieces, and produce a plethora of cards early and maybe even hand them out before Christmas day. One day, I’ll get it together.

Until then, I’ll continue with being me.

#447

Instead of making things easier on myself, I decided to stamp out some of my own patterned paper to use on cards. I was watching YouTube again, and whenever I see people colouring on toned paper, I always get the urge to do it too, as it’s one of my favourite art types to do. So I wanted to incorporate it into cardmaking, and the YouTuber made hers into a lovely card by colouring all the stamped images. I thought that looked great, but would be time consuming. I was inspired to develop my own version by lining up one stamped image to colour, and stamp around this with just outlined ones on the rest of the paper.

I ended up adding some simple shading on the background Santas, which makes them look more dimensional. I haven’t finished the colouring on the main Santa, but he’s in the right area to be pointing to a sentiment, which I hope looks as good as I’m imagining.

It’s been a long day, goodnight.

Sleep. Eat. Craft. Repeat.

#446

Today was very fruitful in the cardmaking department for me. I actually had a reasonable sleep without waking up drowsy from medication. I also had to go to the shop early to get cat food, so I ended up staying up for a while, being productive for once.

I set YouTube to crafting Christmas card videos, and let the inspiration flow. I didn’t have the same momentum watching other videos, even drawing videos. Crafting videos have a nice vibe, like you aren’t crafting alone, and I even begin to talk to the video.

I had some great die cutting ideas and put together some embellishments together, like the reindeer pictured above. I tried a bunch of different ideas, including watercolouring areas of  to diecut, mixing papers and making my own marbled paper using shaving cream.

I had seen this come up on Pinterest and various places, and kept meaning to try it out, which I did finally today. It was a bit tricky to stand up at the sink for long, but I managed to make four A6 pieces before I needed to rest. The colours are food colouring, which is so vibrant, and works just like watercolour. I was concerned about it fading, but I had trial pieces from last year that haven’t changed colour. The only time there was an issue was it burning and turning brown under the heat gun tool. I ended up giving each piece a thin layer of matte sealant, as the colours were able to be reactivated with water and I wanted to protect them. As long as I didn’t stay in the same place, the colour didn’t lift too much.

I cut some of the paper into strips, and others into tags, but I have a lot left to play with. This technique is so easy, you could do it with kids, just look up ‘shaving cream marble paper.’ I urge you to try it, it’s very magical.

Here’s a shaker card that I made with a snow globe stamp that I received with my latest magazine purchase. I coloured the inside on one piece of paper, and the base on another. Using black fun foam, I could disguise any wonky cutting by colouring around my image in black, so the seam is invisible and just looks like a shadow. I like how it works just like a dry snow globe would. Perhaps if I was braver. I’d use liquid soap and glitter in a bag and attach it to the card, but I’m too nervous it would break, and ruin everything before I’ve given it away.

Hopefully I can keep up this momentum, and get the rest of the cards done soon. Christmas always creeps up on me.

Stay cool, my peeps.

#445

Busy busy busy. Almost like I forgot to keep blogging…

Anyway, I’ve been balancing between multiple projects, trying to keep the mess at bay and sleep. Not all going to plan, but slowly progressing while keeping myself busy.

A couple of things I have discovered to improve my cardmaking that I can share, making the blog more than pretty pictures.

The first, pictured above, is making patterned papers look fancier. There are heaps of ways of getting cheap paper, or paper that is a bit plain, and turn it into the expensive looking ones really easily. High grade papers often have dimension, glitter and glossy areas on the patterns. You can personally decorate patterns using a variety of materials, including glossy accents, glitter glue, shimmer pens, gel pens, fine liners, markers and so on. It’s very lenient, as it will depend on your tastes and what paper you have in your own stash. The paper shown in the picture was from a card kit that came with a magazine. I liked the pattern, but I experimented by adding a shadow to one side and I like it much more. Try different designs and use whatever you have to accentuate patterns and come up with your own creations.

The other discovery came about when I was thinking about how bad I am at stamping, and I don’t like the mixed results when trying to get a good impression. This lead to the idea of scanning in the plastic stamp sheet that comes with the prestamped images. This worked well for me. Ensure you have a white sheet of paper behind when scanning, and this allows you to have the images on your computer to resize and print at any time. I was able to enlarge some stamps I have and print them in light grey, a colour I don’t own in ink pads. I had been stamping out all my stamps to keep on the computer anyway, but this way it’s already been stamped nicely.

I hope these tips help. I have a huge amount of ideas for blogs. Getting to them is another story.

Go forth and create.

#443

Christmas cards are full steam ahead, with plenty of supplies and crafting stations set up and ready. To be honest, I probably had enough left overs from last year to make this year’s cards, but I have gotten quite a few more supplies that I’m excited to be using this year.

I’ve been die cutting frantically, inking profusely and glittering everything and everyone that crosses my path. This has been a good time as I’ve been in the mood to be making a bunch of cards. Hopefully I can start finishing them, and not have a box of just started cards like I do now from last year.

I’m feeling a very traditional, red, green and gold vibe this year, though there have been a few exceptions. Also, reindeer, gingerbread men and Christmas trees are taking a forefront in the focal department, as there have been a rise in supplies featuring them.

Before this blog post sound anymore like a news report, I’m going to take my leave.

Back to you in the newsroom.

#442

It’s getting late, so I’ll be quick. Even the cats are tired from chasing all the moths that spring has brought.

With the birthday money that I received, I decided I needed to invest in a new trimmer as I was getting increasingly impatient with my old one, which left so many burrs on the edge of the paper that I needed to use a pair of scissors anyway. After researching, looking at sites and reviews, ( which I rarely do, but my partner does for everything, to the point it’s annoying and I know more about his purchase options than I ever wished to.) I came to the conclusion that the GBC 4 in 1 rotary trimmer, while looked great, didn’t have any reviews, and I wasn’t willing to pay $200 on a gamble. So watching videos and looking at Amazon reviews, (not to buy on there, of course, they are awful at shipping to Australia,) and I found some useful information in reviews, which led me to look at the Dahle brand. I originally looked at the Dahle 550, but as I’m not going to be cutting on a business level, I didn’t need the industrial version, and found that the Dahle 507 was more suitable for me, and a bit cheaper.

Here he is, all lovely like. Excuse the mess… I’m creative.

I’ve only used it a few times, between naps as I wasn’t feeling well, but he’ll get a lot of use soon with the Christmas cards.

I think I’ll call him Roald, as Roald Dahl is my favourite author, and it suits him.

So much for being quick. Goodnight.

#441

A few weeks ago, when I bought a bunch of craft supplies online, I ordered some X-PressIt blending card. This is a nice smooth cardstock, that’s designed to work well with Copic markers. I’ve been meaning to buy some for ages, then when I finally received it, it took me a while to plan what I wanted, and when I couldn’t decide, it was left even longer. Finally, yesterday, I decided to just go for it. I cut an A4 piece into quarters, so I could budget my ten pages, and not feel daunted by a whole page, or annoyed if it turned out badly.

The paper was lovely to work on, and felt smoother than regular cardstock. As written on the packet, blending was lovely. I did add coloured pencil over the top of the markers, to add details and get a better variety where my Copic marker collection is lacking, and due to no roughness in the paper (tooth, as it’s often referred to), layering the pencil got a bit difficult and waxy. I could help this by adding some workable fixative before working on it more. She’s rather pale, as I wasn’t willing to take too many risks, and the picture I was loosely referencing was very brightly lit, so I even had to enhance what little shadow there was to make it more colourful.

Considering I have many cards to make, and painting to do, in the next few weeks, I wanted to do some drawing first. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to draw something on some cards. I haven’t planned much for them, although I did buy a 100 pack of gold card today…

#438

Hey everyone! I missed you! Did you miss me? Awwww thank you…

I’ve been super busy lately making super secret projects that could be enterprising secret super stuff. So I can’t show you guys yet, but it’s been taking up a bunch of time, so I haven’t had much to show you. I did get a bunch of new dies and supplies in the mail, but I am still waiting for a bunch of mail (including an early birthday present) so I’ll likely show you all of that at once.

Anyways, I thought I’d show you a baby reindeer stamp that I got from a magazine and coloured in today. The set had ornaments, flowers, and sentiments, as well as a tree embossing folder, that I haven’t tried yet. I figured I should get the Christmas stuff early, so I can make all my cards on time. Despite planning ahead, I know I’ll do the usual last minute rush, it’s who I am… 

Also, just as I get something to show you, I have another inspection coming up, so many cleaning. Though I’ve kept mainly to one pile of mess (aka room) this time, so cleaning should be easier. Should…
Keep crafty, my deers.