Saturday 11 April 2015

Little Claire Saturday Project

Today is the launch of the Little Claire April stamp challenge and the theme for this month is "craft card". The prize for the winner of the challenge is a £20.00 voucher for the Little Claire website and believe me £20.00 can get you  a lot of crafty goodies so have a go.
This is the card that I have made as inspiration for the project. The eagle eyed among you might have seen a version of this card already because I have posted it on my blog before but I didn't  managed to write down the recipe for it. It is only a small card but it is really easy to make and I have made lots of versions of it in lots of colours, its just fun to do and I love the sound of a punch punching (is that the same for everyone or just me being
weird).



what you will need:
Little Claire digi Cat on a Branch stamp
Martha Stuart punch around the page combo
base card lager than 4 1/4" x 4 1/4"
craft card
cream card
good quality fine linen card  to print onto
Tim Holtz distress Ink - Vintage Photo
Cut n Dry
Tattered Lace Essentials die No 9, or any 3" circle die
die cutting machine
Colouring implements of your choice
narrow cream lace
small heart of pearls
3 flower embellishments
Glamour Dust glitter
pearls on a wire - optional

Using the craft card and the Martha Stuart Punch around the Page punches make a square where the inner part is no smaller than 3" x 3". You may need to test this out on a piece of scrap paper first. I don't know what my punch set is called but it looks like this.


If you need to make a repeat pattern with your border punch that is shorter than the stencil on the punch flaps and you can not line the pattern in your punched card with the stencil, turn the punch over and line up the punched part of your card with the punch cutting parts. Remember to always punch the card from the same direction i.e. do not turn the card over to punch it. You can use this method of lining up for the corner punch too.

When you have a punched square of craft card tint the edges with Tim Holtz Vintage Photo distress ink and a piece of Cut n Dry
Stick the craft card onto a piece of cream card.
Trim around the cream card to a desired size.
Stick the Cream card onto the base card at the fold  and trim down the base card to the same size as the cream card.

In your graphics program open up the image digi Cat on a Branch and re size it to 2 1/4" from the cats tail to the cats paw.
Cut and paste the image and crop this second image down until just the leaves remain.
Write the words Good Luck and My Friend and make them no more than 1" long (I use Serif Craft Artist as my graphic program and the font I used was a pre installed one in the sentiments section of the program and it is found in the "Thank You" section and then I just changed the words).
Arrange the images and the words on your screen ready for printing but leave enough space around the cat image to cut a 3" circle and enough space between the sentiments to cut them out too.
Print the image onto fine cream linen paper.

Trim the cat image down and place the Tattered Lace Essentials Circles die No9 (or any 3" circle die) around the image, make sure that the three outer leaves are overhanging the image.
Run the image through the die cutting machine.
Colour the image with your choice of colours and don't forget to colour the extra printed leaves.
Stick the coloured image onto the centre of the craft card.
Cut the extra leaves out and shape them and stick them onto the image so that they spill over the side of the circle.
Tie a bow in the lace and stick the bow onto bottom left of the circle topper.
Stick a small heart of pearls over the centre knot of the bow.

Cut down the sentiment words "Good luck" to 7/16" x 1 3/4" and the words "my friend" to 7/16" x 2" and shade around the edges with the Tim Holts Vintage Photo.
Stick the sentiments onto the card in the desired position.

Using the Glamour Dust glitter, glitter the flower embellishments and when dry stick onto the card.
I used some little pearls on a wire which I cut down from a longer wire (part of a wedding sprig from Hobbycraft) to accent the flowers.

I am sorry I don't know the name of the Martha Stuart punch that I used but I think any of the lacy type Martha Stuart Punch around the Page punches would look great for this project. If you have any idea what my punch is called please leave me a comment and let me know because I use it such a lot and I`m curious now.



Wednesday 8 April 2015

Little Claire April Challenge - Flowers



Good morning and I hope you all enjoyed the Easter break and managed to get lots of crafting done. This is the card I have made as inspiration for the Little Claire April digi challenge. The theme is flowers and I thought that rather than take you through how to make the card (which is fairly straight forward) I would show you how to make these lovely looking dimensional flowers. They are time consuming to make but you can make them separate to making the card and you can colour co-ordinate them to your particular project and also (because they are made with a digi stamp) you can make them any size.
Take a look at the Little Claire blog for more inspiration from my design team mates and then get crafting and enter the competition to win yourself some gorgeous digi stamps. Whilst your on the blog why not check out the new range of goodies from Trimcraft.

what you will need for the flowers:
Little Claire digi Flowerhead stamp
280gsm plain white card
Tim Holtz distress inks - Shaded Lilac, Tumbled Glass, Picked Raspberry
Stickles Waterfall
cut n dry
glue gun & glue
water spritzer
pearl gems
clear nail varnish
Tonic ball shaping tools and foam pad

In your graphics program open the flowerhead stamp and re size to 4.7cm.
Copy and paste the flower and re size to 3.8cm and copy and paste a further two times so that you have three flowers this size.
Paste the image again and re size to 2.6cm and copy and paste this image a further four times so that you have five flowers this size.
Print these images onto the 280gsm card and cut them out.
Using the cut and dry, dab on the shaded lilac and tumbled glass distress inks (the idea is to create a mottled effect and not a solid block of colour).
Spray the flowers with the spritzer but do not over drench them (this breaks down the fibres in the paper so that when you come to shape the petals they should not crease, it also blends the colours together). When the flowers are dry the colour may look too pale so just repeat the inking with the cut n dry again.
Cut the edges of the petals into the flower as far as the inner circle of the design.
Shape the flowers from behind by bending the petals around a pokey tool or a cocktail stick.
Using a Tonic ball tool and foam, press down in to the centre of the flower from the front to create a middle.
Shade the edges of the flowers with the Picked Raspberry Tim Holts distress ink.
Paint the front of the flowers with the clear nail varnish and leave to dry (this will make the colour richer and make the flowers firmer but it wont be shiny. If you want glossy flowers then varnish them more times until they become shiny).
Dab the stamen of the smallest flowers with the Stickles Waterfall and leave to dry.
Assemble the flowers using the glue gun (you need to use a glue that will dry fairly quick as you
don't want to be holding the flowers together forever until it is set).
Finally glue a pearl in the centre of each flower.

what you will need for the card:
black paper
6" x 6" white base card
mauve/purple linen card
white pearl paper
white glitter paper scraps
Tattered Lace magazine issue 12 corner die (cut down)
Tattered Lace Essentials Circles dies No 10 & No 11
Joanna Sheen With Love die
die cutting machine
Swiss dots embossing folder
Tonic flower boot punch
white/cream organza ribbon
multi faceted clear circle gem
pearl gems
Stickles Waterfall