Caroline's Creations: April 2014

Sunday, 27 April 2014

Shake your...Steam Punk!

Ready for a fabulous blog-hop?

There's a whole lot of shakin' going on...

Paulina is hosting a shaker-card link-up event over on Pretty Pink Posh.

There's a video tutorial, lots of inspiration and prizes!

The guidelines are listed on the Pretty Pink Posh site. You have until midnight, Monday April 28th, to create your shaker and link it up.

My youngest son's birthday is coming up and he is studying mechanical engineering with the Royal Military College (Canada's version of West-Point).

I combined sequins and steam-punk for his card. An obvious combination!???

First the card design, from Freshly Made Sketches:

Then paper and stickers from Paper Wishes:

Along with assorted sequins, brads, copper ink and a silver pen.

Here's the inside:

I'll add the birthday greeting, too. He turns 19 this year, which is a big deal in Ontario.

Go check out the sequin shaker blog hop! There are some amazing cards over there already.

Happy crafting (and shaking!),

Caroline

Supplies:

Steam Punk paper pack and beaten silver paper (Paper Wishes); black card-stock (Wausau paper); acetate sheets (Archivers).

Steam-punk Dazzles stickers and Papier Tole (Paper Wishes) .

Ink: Archival black (CTMH); copper Pearlescent ink (Tsuneiko); silver gel pen, Signo-Uniball.

Dies: Paper Smooches border die (curve); Lil'Inker stitched squares dies.

Embossing folder: cogs and gears (Provocraft).

Sequins: CTMH, Verve Stamps, Neat & Tangled Stamps, Studio Calico. Copper brads: CTMH.

Saturday, 26 April 2014

One of a Kind...Dynamic Duos #100

Grab your paint-brushes, crafty friends! And your tissues.

It's Triple-Threat week at the Dynamic Duos--THREE colours to play with.

BUT

You may also have noticed the auspicious number of this challenge: #100.

Lesley Croghan and Anne-Marie Hile have decided to close the challenge blog, and this will be our last post :(

Anticipating that sad event may be why I had a little trouble getting geared up for my project this week... I didn't have any cardstock or paper close to Pool Party/aqua in my stash, so I had to improvise. I've signed up for the next Online Card Class: Watercolour for Card Makers. The pre-class homework includes getting in some practice dabbling with different media. So I tried some watered-down dye-ink, colouring in a stamped and heat-embossed image.

and came up with this card.

Wasn't totally satisfied, so I tried again, this time CASEing a design by Laurie Schmidlin.

I stamped the dress-form three times, in Archival ink, then swabbed some diluted dye ink over top, in the three challenge colours.

Laurie had given each of her dresses a cute accessory. I decided to go all out with just one of them, adding a gathered tulle skirt, resin flower and of course, PEARLS. That led naturally to the sentiment...

Please go leave some love for each of my fellow DT team-mates. They'll need the virtual hugs...

AND we really hope all our Dynamic Duos fans will join us for our final challenge! I double-dog-dare you to link up your project!

Finally, a HUGE thank-you to Anne-Marie and Lesley for believing in me and my teamies. We've had an inspiring six months!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Tim Holtz water-colour paper

Cardstock in Black, Juniper, Slate, and White Daisy

Ink: Juniper, Honey, Slate, Archival Black (all CTMH); Versamark; silver embossing powder

Ribbon and bling from the stash (all items CTMH)

Stamp sets: Taylor-made, Home (retired CTMH); sentiment set, The Stamps of Life

Dies: Lil'Inker stitched rectangles die; Spellbinders Labels #2.

Paint-brush and water

Saturday, 19 April 2014

Wood-grain Congrats....for Dynamic Duos #99

{guitar softly strumming in the background}

Good Saturday morning, crafty friends!

It's Black Tie week at the Dynamic Duos Two-Color Challenge:

Dramatic colours, huh?

A couple of weeks ago my middle son had his senior recital, the final hurdle/event for his Bachelor's of Music degree. He studies Classical Guitar. The concert was awesome. And a graduation card will be needed shortly!

I've been enjoying Christine Drogt's video tutorials. She is on the Neat & Tangled design team and recently came up with this beauty:

That wood-grain background was done entirely with ink-pads (plus a little definition added with a marker). Amazing, eh?

So I used the challenge colours to create my wood-grain piece, then turned it into a card by CASEing some guitar images found on Pinterest (here's a link to Ruth's blog).
Here's my version:

I used real wire for the strings, which were a little difficult to stretch straight ☹. My son reminded me that the finger-board should have frets, so those were added afterwards with a gold pen. I think I would dry-emboss them next time. The guitar pick adds the "dessert option" of gold-embossing.

He thought it was a pretty cool card, and asked me to make another one as a "thank-you" to his guitar teacher.

Check out what the Dynamic Duos designers have been up to! Some pretty amazing projects over on the challenge blog.

Hope you are inspired to join us this week! The challenge runs through Thursday at noon.

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Cardstock: Cashmere (CTMH) and Black (Wausau Paper); Rich Razzleberry (SU)

Ink: Powdered Sugar (white pigment ink--The Stamps of Life); Vineyard Berry and Black (CTMH); Versamark; gold gel pen (Signo-Uniball).

Embossing powder: Pearlustre Champagne (Stampendous)

Gold-tone brads and wire--the stash.

Cutting dies: Large circles and Labels #2 (Nestabilities)

Saturday, 12 April 2014

Eggs! Dynamic Duos #98

Happy Saturday, folks!

Time for another challenge from the Dynamic Duos.

This week's soft and subtle colours are perfect for Easter projects.

I saw this card with similar colours on the Operation Write Home blog a couple of weeks ago, and really liked the addition of GOLD to the yellow and violet.

My blogging friend Hansi recently made an adorable card, "decorating" her eggs with embossing,

so I knew my card this week would feature eggs.
I also wanted to play around with using cutting dies for embossed frames.
So I first used an embossing pad to define a rectangular frame on my card front. Then I masked off all but the central panel and set to work with my egg stamps.

Can you believe it? A one-layer card!

The yellow eggs were a two-step stamp and I coated them with Wink of Stella pen. The purple eggs were stamped with Tsuneiko opalescent ink in Lavender. Then I added the gold "Faberge" eggs, using Versamark ink and gold embossing powder. Then I pulled off the masking tape and VOILÁ! I'm still kinda shocked with how well this turned out!

One more look:

I added a "Happy Easter" sentiment to the inside of the card.

Now off you hop, like good little bunnies, to see all the lovely creations by the Dynamic Duos design team this week.

Hope you find some crafty time this week. Make sure to link up your project. We love seeing your creations!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Cardstock: White Daisy, CTMH

Inks: Buttercup, Creme Brulee (CTMH); lavender opalescent (Tsuneiko); Versamark.

Stamp set: retired CTMH

Gold embossing powder

Wink of Stella glitter pen

Die: Lil'Inker's Stitched Rectangles cutting die; Spellbinders embossing pad.

Thursday, 10 April 2014

Warm Hugs... for Colour Me...!

A little mid-week post to play along with my friends at Colour Me...! where the theme this week is "striking."

My crafty sister Morag sent me a link earlier this week to a tutorial by Dawn McVey, on the Make It Monday YouTube channel. She demonstrates a simple method for a no-sew quilted look. I had tried something similar before with embossing folders, but I had not tried using a cutting plate to emboss layered paper.

So, a little time to play presented itself last night, and I tried it out.

Here's the first card, pretty much CASE'd from Dawn's examples:

She lined her blocks up with the diagonal on the card base. It makes for some funky angles, which didn't really line up too well with the diamond design on my cutting plate. I added a vellum tag, attached with some cross-stitch "kisses."

For the second card, I placed the patterned squares more "squarely" and used a random-pattern cutting plate, which looks more like free-motion quilting:

I gave the vellum tag a little more definition with some white faux stitching.

Which do you prefer?

Plenty of time to join in Colour Me...!'s challenge this week!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Patterned paper: CTMH, featured colours are Crème Brulé, Lagoon and White Daisy; vellum.

Ink: Lagoon pigment ink; clear embossing powder; Signo Uniball white gel pen.

Fibres: CTMH waxy flax in Colonial White (retired)

Lawn Fawn Hearts-lawm cuts

Cover Up Die Swirls

Paper Smooches- First Aid Kit

InLinkz.com

Saturday, 5 April 2014

Happy Birthday...for the Dynamic Duos #97

Good morning, peeps!

It's bold and cheery week at the Dynamic Duos.

Here are your colours to play with:

They seemed to call for a celebration, so I made a birthday card for my youngest sister (it's okay, she doesn't read my blog!) using a technique I've been seeing, overlapping inlaid die-cuts.

See Amy Kolling's cute card HERE, for an example and method.

I used scraps of cardstock and patterned paper in the challenge colours, cutting out circles consecutively from my white base panel, and subbing in the matching sized PP circles. Kind of a fun bubbly look!

The sentiment is embossed on a white-dotted vellum flag. I used dye-ink and clear embossing powder, but the pink colour "cooked" in the heat and didn't match the rest of the card anymore! I salvaged it by going over the letters with a bright pink alcohol marker. A few sequins finish off the card.

Check out the cards from the design team at the Dynamic Duos' blog.

How do these nice bright colours inspire you?