Thinking of You Card

I've been working on learning lately. Learning LOTS of different techniques which is just fascinating to me. One of my favorite places to learn new things is the Weekly Webisodes over at Paper Wishes I advise you to not venture there unless you are better than I am at controlling the desire to  purchase every cool thing they have on their website.

That said they were actually the inspiration for my wedding invitations that I'm working on thanks to their wonderful Color Me Papers. I've got a whole slew of these papers that I am hand coloring for the wedding invitations. But. In order to figure out what the heck I'm doing I've had to do some playing. The thing I really like about this paper is that Paper wishes/Hot Off the Press has done all the hard work for you, by stamping and and heat embossing the raised image with clear embossing powder. All you have to do is add your color to show off the beautiful designs. So here we have a card that I've recently done with lots of different techniques I've been trying out.

The card itself is from my stash of primary cards from Joann's. The blue swirled paper is the Swirl Color Me. I applied ink from my Surf Cat's Eye with a make up sponge dabbing all over the surface and then wiping the ink off the raised swirl images with a paper towel. My Lady Bug image is from Bugaboo Stamps. This I colored with my chalks and although you can't really tell from this picture the Lady Bugs were topped with Rangers Glossy Accents.

Here's a close up of my circle sentiment. I've been fascinated with these in the last couple of weeks. This sentiment is from the great designers over at Squigglefly.  I love circle sentiments but I have some major issues cutting and so... Well lets just say the embellishments I quilled for this was to hide the fact that I apparently cant follow a line very well. Even with a template. I was rather tickled with my fringed flower. I really like adding the three dimensional quality to things I'm working on. Sure, it makes it harder to send through the mail but it's awful pretty to look at.

Quilled 3D Butterfly "Prototype"

Happy Saturday! I hope everyone is having a good weekend. I thought I'd take this morning to play catch up on a few things and get another post up on stuff I've been working on.

I'm getting married in August and I'd decided that there were several things that I wanted to DIY, you know, to make the wedding and reception mine. There's lots of stuff out there for ideas and it can be a bit overwhelming. But after finally narrowing down the particulars of color, formality, location etc I started on the details. I finally decided that I would make my own invitations and some of the decorations for the flower arrangements and my cake "jewelry." I think that's all but that's really enough. My darling fiance thinks I'm a bit nuts but he's very supportive and has had lots of ideas of his own which is fun.
So of course when you start a big project like this there is trial and error, prototypes and one-offs just to see what the end result is going to be and what needs tweaking, and for me I'm still working on my skills so some practice is in order.

I have to thank Inna's Creations for my inspiration. This woman is phenomenal. She has really good tutorials on her site and her work is exquisite. She has some of the best 3D butterflies out there so I've sat and stared at them for hours.

So here's my first butterfly prototype. I think I did a pretty good job for the first time. I know it looks pretty big and I didn't take a picture of it with something to reference the size but the finished butterfly was about 3 inches. Not very big at all. I'm not completely happy with the body as I'm going to end up wiring these guys for both the flower arrangements AND the cake so we'll see if I can get the hang of the bodies. It's a little harder than I expected so I think a little practice is in order.

Will You Be Mine?

So it's a little past valentines day but here is the valentine card I literally threw together for my fiance after my brothers 2 year old grandson got his hands on my first fish. My concentric circles were beautiful. Not so much on the second go around, I was working fast.

This was inspired by the really cute stamped card on the cover of January issue of Cardmaker Magazine. I saw it and knew I had to do it. Not only that but I spent about an hour coming up with other combination's for other quilled V-day cards like Aa Lion and the sentiment, "I'm not Lion! You're Grrrrreeaaattt Valentine!!!!

And I had no stamp for the sentiment and didn't think about printing one... next time.

I used 1/4 inch paper that I got from Denise over at Custom Quilling and I mounted my little fish on a white label which was actually a card I cut with my Cricut Expression and my Sentimentals Cartridge. Then I mounted it on some awesome K&Company Kelly Panacci double sided valentine paper that I purchased. The whole stack is wonderful...then I threw it on a red card from my stash that I got from Joann's. Oh and my little red heart "bubbles" are heart shaped Jewel Dazzle Stickers from Hot of the Press and Paper Wishes I love that company.
I hope you like it.