Butterflies and scallops

The Spring and Summer seasonal catalogue also comes to an end this month so if you still have things on your wish list then now is the time to order them.  
One product that was introduced in this catalogue and will continue in the new annual catalogue is the Simply Scored Borders Plate.  The designs coordinate with many of the die cut shapes and stamps.
On this card there is an embossed border along the bottom, a scalloped edge which echoes the scallop circle sitting behind the central butterfly.

Papilon Potpourri

I have a very pretty card to share today.  It wasn't designed by me (no surprise there!) but by one of my Stampin Up colleagues Angela Blechynden and she demonstrated the card at the Sandown show in January. 
It doesn't show up very well in this photo but the background has been embossed with the Flower Garden folder and then the punched butterflies 3d mounted on top.

Zigzag butterflies

Once more this card was designed by Hayley Gillie, I am never sure where to start with a card structured like this so I am very glad of the template.
The stamp set is Bordering on Romance, coloured with marker pens and blender pens. The flowers have been enhanced with pearls and embossed butterflies complete the card.

All of a Flutter

I am having a strange few days! I am writing this post from a hotel room in Wales where I am settling my daughter into university; she doesn't need me to crowd her of course so I brought a few crafting bits and pieces with me to keep me occupied.  I am busy making some bunting in preparation for the Sandown craft show next weekend where I will be helping out on the Stampin Up stand, do pop along and see us.  Consequently my hotel room is looking very cheerful at the moment! I will have to take a photo before I leave and share it with you later in the week.

Anyway, back to today.  This bright and cheerful card was for Make, Do and Send card club at the beginning of September.  The layers are Tangerine Tango, Pumpkin Pie and Daffodil Delight, very summery. I stamped the All of a Flutter butterfly randomly over the yellow layer in matching ink and also brushed the inkpad very lightly over the white panel to soften it slightly.  The butterfly was inked using marker pens and then stamped at a jaunty angle.

Flight of the Butterfly

Does this look familiar?  It's a new take on the thank you card that I made for Alice to send after her birthday, you can see the original post here. 
I redesigned it slightly to use for Make, Do and Send card club at the beginning of August, if you would like to join us please check out the details on my monthly clubs page. 
I really love the Twitterpated designer paper that we have in the Summer mini catalogue, we only have it until the end of the month and I will be sad to see it go so I;m making the most of it now. so the paper gave me the colour pallette for the rest of the card; the butterfly is 3d mounted to look as though it has just landed and I used a dauber around the edge to give it more definition. A detail that I added to this version is the paper pricking in the top right and bottom right corners, I think you can just see it in the photo.

Beautiful Butterflies

You will find several versions of this card on various blogs, this is mine.  My base card is the lovely deep purply blue Concord Crush upon which I have layered an embossed whisper white mat.  The embossing folder is Elegant bouquet. The gorgeous butterflies, again in concord crush are created using the embosslits die which cuts and embosses the shapes at the same time.  I just glued one half of the butterflies to the card so that it looks like they just landed for a moment.

Flowers and Diamonds, a girl's best friends

Another scrap book page! I found this one quite hard, anyone who knows me will know that I really struggle with the whole tearing technique. It just feels so wrong to tear or scrumple such pretty papers. Believe it or not I began with a plain white page and took my inkpads to the edges. I then added some strips of First edition designer paper, again daubed straight from the inkpad, to make a border. The paper layers are a mixture of punched paper and torn circles then I but some shapes from the remaining paper. The flowers are cut using a big shot die from designer paper and layered up and compiled with a very blingy brad. A final touch of some embossed butterflies flying through the  page from bottom left to top right. There's a lot to look at on this page and yet the focus remains on the photo of my beautiful daughter. 

Loads of projects!

Remember my weekend away in Worthing when I spent the whole weekend crafting? The photo shows some of the projects that I made.  
I took some of my own projects to work on but these are the classes that I bought into from Elizabeth and below are the gifts that she made for us.

Elizabeth has shared the projects we made on her blog which you can see here, she also has details of next years weekend!

Over the next few days I will share all the projects in more detail with you but today I wanted to highlight the frame that we decorated.  Elizabeth included this project in the cost of the weekend so we had all the components waiting for us on our arrival.
The background paper is Stampin Up's confetti card and has flecks of colour within it. I embossed it with stripes which added some lovely texture. All the stamps are from the Creative Elements set, I used cherry cobbler for the accents and early espresso for the words. There is a strip of the gorgeous vintage lace ribbon across the middle and although you probably can't spot them in this photo there are some pearls too.

Rockin' Butterflies

This is the last card from last months card club and was inspired by a card I saw online, again I'm sorry I can't credit the person who designed it as I forgot to take note. 
It seemed to evolve as it went on; the butterflies are created from the mixed bunch flower stamps, punched and then two petals removed. Initially that is how they remained but then at card club we came up with the idea of using the discarded petals/wings to create a more 3d effect.  The two colours are achieved using the rock and roll technique, inking the stamp first in daffodil yellow colour and then rolling the edges of the stamp in pool party ink. A piece of twine tied around created the body and antenna of the butterfly.
The base card has been embossed with the striped embossing folder and some matching pool party ruffled ribbon tied around to finish.

Flight of the Butterfly

This stamp set has been on my wish list forever and it's another set that has a coordinating punch to go with it. 
My daughter turned 18 in March but for various reasons we couldn't hold her party until mid April and Oh what a great night it was. Lots of family and friends joined us to celebrate and we all danced the night away to the wonderful A-band-on-ship who did indeed abandon their ship for the evening to entertain us.
However, I digress!  Back to the card.  Of course Alice had many thank-yous to send and this, along with yesterdays card, was one of the designs that I made.  This version uses a designer paper that retired from the Stampin' Up! catalogue last year but you could use any coordinating paper to create a similar version.  My colours were Rose red and Marina Mist which are echoed in the dsp and the butterfly is punched and 3d mounted for definition.

Bountiful Butterflies

Morning, I am off to a workshop today and am really looking forward to some time to myself doing something I love and it means I should come home with some more projects to share with you another day.


Today's card is one of my favourite styles, a Twisted Easel card.  The card base is one of this years In-Colours, Island Indigo and has a mat of Pool Party which helps make the design pop.  The front of the card was scored diagonally which allows it to sit up in front of the base.  The butterflies are all cut from the In Colour Designer paper stack using the Beautiful Wings embosslits die in the Big Shot. The embosslits are great as they emboss designs as  they cut. The greeting is from the Perfect Punches stamp set and 3D mounted.

Blooming lovely

Some more of the new in-colours today; lucky limeade is the gorgeous green.  The flowers are from Everything Eleanor stamp set and the butterflies are made using the embosslits die in the big shot. Everyone loves butterflies don't they?

Bright Butterfly

This is the last of my adventures into iris folding for the time being. A very bright butterfly, pretty isn't it and perfect for a birthday I think.

Pillow Box

Morning! How's the weather today?  I have to confess I cheated and scheduled this to post while I'm at work today.  I have such a busy few days ahead, I have an interview as a volunteer for the London Olympics this afternoon, prep for card club to do tomorrow oh and collection of my costumes for next weeks show and then Saturday is a visit to Birmingham with my daughter to look at the university.  On Sunday we get to the theatre for the last couple of rehearsals before opening night on Wednesday.  So you may not see much of me next week.
But back to today's offering, we made this at card club last month but I first did this at the Girl Guiding event I did in March.  The card stock is So Saffron and I inked boho blossoms in the same colour.  I added some butterflies in Marina mist ink and 3d mounted a marina butterfly and boho blossoms cut of course with their matching punches, so much easier and lovely to have an exact match. The Thanks sentiment is again stamped in Marina mist onto marina card and punched with the scalloped circle before being adhered to the matching satin ribbon.  Add a bit of bling with rhinestones and there you are!

"Love your Stamps"

... that's what the workshop where I made this card was called. I went to the Make It craft show at Farnborough today. I usually try and do a workshop while I'm there and this one quite appealed as it was aiming to get you to look at all your stamps in new ways. We all have stamps that love when we buy them, use them a few times and then put them away never to be seen again. On this card the bear from Penny Black was stamped onto white card and then twice more onto brown bazzil card stock. The butterflies in the image were painted and the brown bears cut out and 3D'd with foam pads. We matted the background paper onto coordinating card and tied a ribbon round before attaching it to the card. The flowers were punched out of remaining paper and we used an embossing tool to give them some shape adding a self adhesive gem for the flower centres. I'm quite pleased with the result, a design I shall use again I think. :O)

Lilac flowers and Butterflies

I have a bit of a thing about dresses at the moment I think. This was a kit card so all the embellishments came together. The flowers are decoupaged to add some depth and I added some glitter to lift the dress a little. I like the use of paper doily type paper as a background, I think I may exploit that a little more another time.

Back to Birthdays

Christmas is over! and I now have some table back and a little bit of time as it is the school holidays so back to birthday cards. I rediscovered this QVC kit when i was clearing the table for Christmas dinner. The hedgehog images are stamps from the Penny Black range which I watercoloured, the shopper is a Jolly Nation image.. They were matted onto holographic card and coordinating papers. The butterfly card is finished off with some matching peel-offs and vellum attached with gem brads.

Fat page for Buttonbox

This page is my contributions to a book being compiled for a friend of mine on Craftswap who is feeling down at the moment.
The background stamp is the butterflies from Tanda stamps and the flowers are from Pocketful of posies paper.

Flutterbys

I finally completed all the pages for people on the Butterfly Fat Book list on Craftswap Forum this weekend. These examples also include my first attempts with alcohol inks. I used a butterfly peeloff on an inked background which I then cut out and placed on the page which had been stamped with a butterfly background stamp from Tanda. The other pages include butterflies made from acetate and shimmer papers.