Puzzle (secret message) card

15/04/2013birthday card, card, puzzle card, secret message cardJackie

I have been watching some youtube videos on how to make these secret message cards and this one I made for Harry’s birthday is an amalgamation of a few. It is very easy to make but you have to make sure you don’t stick down the panels that move. The arrows point to the places to pull open in order to reveal the secret message inside. Check out this great mission impossible secret message card video as it shows how it is made clearly and what a great idea for wedding invitations.

Card: Basic Grey patterned card, brown, white.
Ink: Stampin up Crumb cake and Soft suede
Stamp: All night media paw print
Other: computer generated words, arrow mask, Sizzix jigsaw puzzle die

Natural surfaces sketch

31/03/2013art, natural surfaces, sketch, sketchbook challengeJackie

Finally on the last day of the sketchbook challenge for March I have had time to do a sketch. The theme for March was Natural surfaces – I absolutely love the patterns you see all around in nature and I have quite a few photos of surface that I have yet to do something with. A while back I took a couple of photos while we were visiting the Natural museum of Scotland above is orbicular granodiorite. You can capture quite a lot of detail even with my small camera and I can see I will have fun doing a few things with these images when I have time.

I did a small sketch using shades of grey Pitt pens on some patterned paper which already looked like a stone background. This was then manipulated in photoshop (inverted and coloured) to add colour. I was just mucking about so I don’t know if I would ever be able to replicate it.

Camel birthday card

30/03/2013birthday card, camel, card, grungy photoJackie

For this card I used an old photo which was not great but I really wanted this image as her gift (gold camel charm for her bracelet) was to remind Ceara of her trip to Tunisia. Here Ceara is feeding the camel something like dried cactus. The original photo was far too bright and once it was scanned ended up with pink and blue stripes across it so I changed the colour of the sky and added a grungy background for a bit of texture and a grungy border. I did make the centre lighter than the area around it but that didn’t come out too well once it was printed out.

Spring fold card

23/03/2013card, spring fold card, X box cardJackie

This is my version of a spring fold card. It makes a nice change from the normal shaped cards and it stands up well. They are actually very easy to make and you can find a few tutorials for them on you tube. I have never seen an X box so I had to look online for an image and there were so many designs to choose from so I just drew this one as I guess it is a rough likeness. I used buttons and brads as the controls.

Card: ivory card, Basic gray patterned card
Inks: Distress inks Frayed burlap, Stone washed jeans, Adirondak Denim, Memento black.
Other: buttons, brads, diamond glaze, green thread, rub-on letters/words

New home card

22/03/2013card, new home cardJackie

I made this card for our great friends who have moved into a fabulous house which they are doing up. I hope the move went well what with all this rotten weather we have been having. My photo is not great but you get the idea. I used Cut n dry pen nibs with the ink pads to colour the image.

Card: white card
Inks: Distress inks Sea-washed glass, Fired brick, Memento black, Stampin up Crumb cake, Old olive and Certainly celery.
Stamps: Stampin up Polka dot, Crafty secrets Bug’s life, Eline’s Huis EC0121 (home sweet home)

Seeds art journal page.

09/03/2013art journal, Crane'sbill, Milliande, seeds art journalJackie

After watching some of Milliande’s seed journal videos and I took few photos last year of some seeds I found in my garden with the intention of creating my own seed journal. I finally got around to doing this double page. Although I absolutely love the blues and browns Milliande uses but I wanted to keep the reds and greens I saw in the plant, apart from that I don’t have many acrylic ink colours and I really wanted to have a go with them.

Octopus card

21/02/2013birthday card, card, octopusJackie

An octopus may not be the first idea you have when making a card for someone but John has mentioned them a few times when regaling us with stories from his holidays in Greece. This one is an Oxford Impressions stamp from The Deep set. I brayered the background blue onto silk matt coated card then sprayed with water and sprinkled with salt to get a speckled effect. The image was stamped using black memento ink then using a water brush filled with bleach I took some of the colour out so I could then go back in and use a pinky colour for the octopus. I used a variety of copics and other pens but couldn’t quite get the blended effect I was after.

Steampunk cards

14/02/2013card, steampunk, steampunk cardJackie

I was in a bit of a hurry the other day to get a couple more cards finished. I wanted to do a couple of steampunk cards but not in the usual brown/sepia colour so I chose black, white and grey. The grey colour in real life is more of a warm grey than you see here. There is a bit of masking, layering and brayering going on here and some small details are highlighted with silver liquid pearl. The stamps are Oxford Impressions Steampunk and Stampin up (cogs in bottom pic).

Napkin card

13/02/2013card, napkin cardJackie

This was a fun card to do but it didn’t turn out quite as I had expected it to. Tegan likes this kind of scrapbook/journal type of thing and I found the perfect napkin in my stash for it. It feels like a bit of a cheat really as the artwork is all from the napkin. I made a base first from a music print along with some acrylic paint and soft gel then I glued the top layer of a (3 ply) tissue napkin over it. The intention was to see some of the music print through the tissue napkin but it is quite faint. If you click on the image you might just see it. I layered it up with some red vellum and added a punched out red vellum butterfly with some lemon yellow liquid pearl for the body. Lastly I added diamond glaze to the button.

Tarte tatin sketch

05/02/2013art, sketch, sketchbook challenge, tarte tatinJackie

To encourage me to try sketching a bit more for practice I have joined the sketchbook challenge and this months challenge theme is ‘Sweet: sugar and spice and all things nice’. I didn’t know what to sketch so I flicked through some cook books and found a photograph of a delicious looking caramelised apple flan (or tarte tatin) so I thought I would have a go. I scanned my sketch with a sheet of acetate over it in black and white mode so it is not picking up the subtle colour of the pencil. I am looking forward to doing a few more of these challenges.

Cardesque

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