Butterfly in Yellow and Grey

This is another Study in Yellow and Grey from Elka Romero Designs, I printed the designs on cardstock and then cut it to the size that I needed.  I used white cardstock from my stash, and I know it is a cheapy brand, as the colors are more muted than on the other cards.  I did that on purpose, as I wanted a more muted color scheme for this card, as the butterfly is the feature of the card.  I used prima pearls colored with a N7 Copic Marker.  The butterfly is by SEI I think.  The tag punches are by Stampin' Up as is this ribbon and black ink.  The flowers are a Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die by Sizzix and the leaf is a Birch Leaf by McGill.

This was a quick card once the printing was complete.

Thanks for coming by.
Namaste

Uncaged Birdday Card

I know I have been gone for a while, and then all of a sudden I have a bunch of cards up. 2012 was not a great year for my family. It started right out in January with moving from the farm, and while in that process my mother passed away. She was 94, and ready to go, so she did.

My daughter, who is 41, did not take her death very well. She has epilepsy, and her seizures were pretty much under control prior to this event. During the funeral she started having lots of seizures, and nothing seemed to stop them anymore. She started out trying lots of medications, but nothing helped.  She finally went to the Cleveland Clinic for evaluation for the first time in September, and she underwent many tests, and many hospital visits and about 4 weeks of hospital stays to determine whether she would be a good candidate for surgery. She was a good candidate, and she had the surgery December 7, 2012. So far, she is seizure free. She is no longer in need of close watch, and she is in really good spirits. The surgery seemed to be a piece of cake for her, and we attribute this to her courage and her great surgeon Dr. Jorge Gonzalas-Martinez.  We had a wonderful and blessed Yuletide Season, with much celebration.

This year will be much different I'm sure.  It is already getting off to a nice smooth start.  The house is in order, and as organized as I every get when I'm creating.  At least I can put my hands on everything I want to use, and I'm finding things I thought were gone for good.  All the excitement made it impossible to get my stuff unpacked after the move, and by the time I got around to it I had forgotten where things had been placed:(.

 

Now to describe the card.  I made it with a view to putting it on the Color Throw Down site, and I intend to do that.  However, I've found several other places that I can use it in a challenge.

 

The papers are all from Stampin' Up, as are the inks.  I used McGill Punches Birch Leaves for the leaves, and I Am Roses roses.  I used Lindy Stamp Gang Mission Bells Brown Starburst Spray to highlight them after applying Soft Suede ink to the tips.  Unfortunately you can see the pretty shimmer on the roses in any picture that I have taken (I gave up.)  I used a Spellbinders die Fancy Labels One to cut out the sentiment.  The Bird Cage and Bird are from Tim Holtz for Sizzix called Caged Bird, however, I didn't cage mine.  I think that pretty much sums up the materials.

 

The leaves were quite flat when I cut them, and I didn't think they looked good with the flowers, so I did some bending and folding.  I folded the leaf in half, the hills are all on the front side.  I then just pinched some creases in the edges with my fingers.  They turned out far better than I would have thought.  I distressed them with the Soft Suede Ink I used on the flowers and other edges on this card.

 

Here is the recipe for this card from Color Throwdown.  Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.  I hope you enjoy.

 

Namaste

Cricut Ornament Card

   
I needed to feel like it was justified for me to have one Cricut let alone two, so here is a project I worked on all weekend.  I finally decided I like the Cricut Classroom.  It took a very long time for me to think it deserved a second chance though.  The beauty of this project is that you could cut all the pieces at one time, and then build the cards while you watched TV.  The longest part of this process was picking the coordinating papers.  The design and stuff were all in the magazine.  I just love these.  I did several different types for variety, but for a gift one design is enough.  The assembly goes really quickly.

I used the instructions out of the Northridge, Cricut Magazine. 

I used the Winter Frolic Cartridge, Ornament 1 and the Cricut Classroom.  I did these all proportional, based on placing the pieces over each other to see how they fit.  I used the Shadow, copied it, and Flipped one 180° degrees.  I lined the up with the ornament tops aligned to form a card, and welded them together.  Make sure that you have the whole piece selected before you fill the page.  I found that about four would go on one page if you flipped one welded assembly 80° on its side.

I added as many layers as I needed for the whole project. 

I used the Ornament 1 just a bit smaller than the shadow, and filled a pages with it.  This is the layer on which I used the shiny paper.  Leave the hook on this one.

Next I made another Ornament 1 just a little smaller than the previous Ornament 1.  I cut the hook off of one of the ornaments to prevent an overlap.  Now I wish I had kept the metallic hook though so that is why I say cut this off here.

I used the Happy Holiday Greeting from Winter Frolic along with the shadow, which I did in white, for the first card and just the Greeting for the second one. I like having the white behind that as it makes it pop.  I used distress ink in Tea Stain from Tim Holtz.  I used this on some of the ornament pieces, but didn't see much difference so stopped doing that.  It really depends on what colors and designs you use whether you want to bother with this step or not.

I cut them all in different matching cardstock & paper patterns, but made the middle a shiny piece. 

I used the Language of Friendship, Stampin' Up stampset to make the bird and branches, and used the matching punch to cut is out.  I used scraps of the paper from which the ornaments were cut for the stamping and punch, which made minimal waste on this project.

 I used prima flowers and gems to finish the decoration.

 

These would make a cute gift if placed in a decorative box..There are plenty of tutorials on this all over the web.  I really like to SplitCoast Stampers sight for that.

 

I hope you enjoy.

 

Namaste

Purple Flutter By

My apologies to everyone who read this before I corrected all the grammar and spelling errors.  What was I thinking; well clearly I wasn't thinking.

I have studied lighting and depth of field , f stops and all sorts of things today.  I will be purchasing some photo lamps and my hubby is going to make me a home diffuser out of a box.  It looks and sounds simple enough.  The lamps I can set up easily enough, thank goodness.  These two photos turned out reasonably well, but I can't wait to see what it will look like with the new set up.  I also studied on improving the looks of the photos, even after they leave the camera.

This card was lots of thinking.  I know you could smell the rubber burning while the wheels in my minds eye turned.  It took me a bunch of tries to get this right, and I ended up making all the elements myself.  I made the paper for the flowers and greeting in Photoshop.  The background Color Me paper came from Hot off the Press, but I had to color it with Almost Amethyst from Stampin' UP.  The stamp is from Wee by Sylvia Zet and it is Rose and Felix.  The hat pins come from Maya Road.  The Roses are made from the second smallest flower on the Tim Holtz Tatter Florals die, the tri-floral is from the smallest flower.  I'm going to put a tutorial up here on how to make both of those flowers.  They are a mainstay with me.  I use them a lot as they are simple to make, and just lovely to look at.  The circle and scalloped circle came from Spellbinders.  Well that kind of gives you the recipe for this one.

This card is on my top 10 list of cards I have made and love.  Can't wait for an occasion to give it to someone. Hope you enjoy.