Sunday 28 April 2013

Playtime

A couple of weeks ago, the Craft Barn which was in Lingfield, moved to just outside Redhill and had a whole lot of demonstrators to celebrate.  I was quite taken by the Exploding Box one of them did.  I've seen Exploding Boxes before, usually three nesting boxes, and hadn't quite seen the charm, but this was something different.



This weekend I was crafting with a group of friends and decided to try it.

The base of the box is only two inches square and the sides are three inches high, so it can be cut from an eight by eight inch square.  Score three inches in from each side and cut out the corners leaving a cross shape.  One of the corner pieces will make a lid (just add a smidge - two thicknesses of card plus a sliver  - to the two inches of the top).


I used one of the smaller dies from the Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles™ on some plain card and used it to frame a pretty floral.  These (eight) pieces were stuck on the sides of the box, inside and out.


The lid just had the plain and floral card layered as had the bottom of the inside of the box.


Before sticking the layers together for the bottom of the box, I cut four slits diagonally by each corner and threaded a strip of acetate through each pair; then bent the acetate up and glued on some flowers and butterflies.


I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the person who demonstrated this, but thank you to her.

Sunday 21 April 2013

An Experiment in Acetate


Not entirely successful - I didn't like the edges which is why I bound them with ribbon.

I've had the Spellbinders Persian Motifs and Accents™ for a while  and wanted to play.  I also wanted to try out embossing with acetate.  I probably shouldn't have been so mean with the acetate and allowed a margin to fold behind the backing card.


I embossed the largest of the motifs onto the acetate (didn't cut it - just used the motif as an embossing stencil).  In the centre I put a smaller motif for my greeting and cut the long accent from the same card.


I trimmed the long strip accent to fit the top of the acetate.  The acetate fixes to the card with double sided tape stuck behind the shapes and a line across the bottom where I was going to put ribbon anyway. 


Binding up the sides hides the edges - I think next time I will either allow a margin to tuck under or punch a decorative edge to the acetate.

Sunday 14 April 2013

Cupcake Wrappers - too good to eat


There are some very pretty cupcake wrappers in the shops - it seems such a waste to use them once and throw them away - especially at the price!  But, with a little imagination, and a complete disinclination to faff around decorating cupcakes, they make good card decorations.


Both of these were made for Easter last year (I know I said I don't do Easter cards, but a new technique, spring, and a dearth of birthdays ...)  I stamped the flower, stamped onto a post-it to mask it while I stamped a script stamp over the top.  I think the die is Spellbinders Label 18™ and I inked the edges with the same colour as the script and flower.


One wrapper did both of these cards - a little judicious snipping, a few gems and a greeting and there you are.

Sunday 7 April 2013

I don't usually do Easter Cards ...

... but this one has spring colours and I wanted a card for someone.

This is the first time I've tried the Fancy Lattice in colour - so of course I used the darkest purple I could find! It needed a strong frame to pull it off, so I used gold mirror card.   I tried several things behind the lattice, but nothing worked - each would have been fine on its own, but putting them together muddied the overall look.  In the end, I decided to go with Spider Web.


The Spider Web puts a bit of texture behind the lattice - I'm still wondering if I should have tried to colour it with a lilac ink, but I'm not sure that fabric will take colour - something to try another time!

Flowers round one corner, butterflies up the other side and a tag from Spellbinders Antique Frames and Accents™ and the card's finished.  I've found that for sticking fiddly stuff like the flowers and especially the pearl centres, a squeeze of a PVA glue spread onto a small square of Cut'n'Dry™ foam is easiest - my PVA always gums up the nozzle - so I can swipe the flower lightly across the glue using some bent-nosed tweezers and place it on the card - and you only get as much (or as little) glue on as you need.