A Circle of Flowers

This card was made using  Ivory coloured parchment paper.  If you have not got coloured parchment paper, you can still achieve a coloured background by colouring your parchment paper with Pergamano Dorsos first.

Although it does not look like a card, it actually folded as a card.

I was really pleased with the way that this turned out and this is a card that I would certainly send someone special.

I first drew the pattern onto the parchment, apart from the outline of the leaves and stems with white tinta ink.  I used a nib to ensure the fineness of the line.  I then drew the outline of the leaves and the stem in sepia tinta ink.

From the reverse, I then embossed the flowers, leaves and borders. 

With the flower petal, I just used a light stroke rather then heavy embossing which gives movement to the petals.  With the centre of the flowers, I used the one hole tool to gently pierce them.

With a fine grid, I then pierced the spaces in the border pattern.  I then folded the card and pierced through the two layers around the outside of the border pattern and then cut away the excess to leave the shape of the card.

I have shown a closeup of flower and the border section.

Ships Aweigh Two

I was going to send the first card I made with this stamp desinged by Sam Poole and and the Couture Creations embossing folder to my cousin for his birthday but wasn't 100% sure about it.  I showed it to my mother and she said it was fine but then decided that I would make another one and change it a little. 

This time I made the card a little smaller to fit the embossing folder.  Once I had embossed some light blue card, using a cut-n-dry pen nib and Gathered Twigs distress ink, I coloured all the land brown.  Then using Broken China distress ink, I coloured the lines, compass and wording. 

I  then mounted some dark blue card onto a cream background and mounted the embossed card onto this. 

Then I stamped the ship using Brilliance Starlight Silver and then coloured in using the same ink with just a little purple and blue in the sea. I  cut the ship out using the Spellbinders Circles, using the Out of The Box technique for the top of the ship so that I did not cut that part off and using foam pads mounted onto the card.

Again, using the Starlight Silver, I stamped anchor, wheels and small ships around the outside of the embossed card, masking the embossed card so that it looked like the embossed card was mounted on the stamping.

I felt that this was a much better card than the first one and the right one to send to my cousin.

Using the Starlight silver again, I stamped a sentiment from the Paintbox Poppets stamp set and then cut with a circle spellbinders and mounted on the card to finish.

Pink and Blue Parchment

I really liked the way the colours showed through on this card.  This combines the techniques that I like as it includes dorsing, gridwork and cutwork.  It is acutally quite an easy card as there is not much work involved to get the effect. 

The pattern was first pierced using a straight grid.  This ensures uniformity of the pattern which would be extremely hard to achieve using just four hole tools. 

Once the pattern had been pierced, I then coloured the back of the parchment alternating between  Pink and blue Pergamano Dorsa colours.  

I then embossed around the pattern and the straight lines from the box and flower pattern. I embossed a circle at the end of each line from the box pattern using the Star tool and a solid circle at the end of each line from the flower.

Then I cut the crosses in the centre of the box of the pattern and the centre of the flowers with scissors and then cut the long slots and the top, bottom and sides of the box patterns.

I used a piece of pink card as an insert and cut around the edge of the card with shaped scissors to finish.

I have shown a close up of part of the card to show the cutwork in more detail. 

A Quick Card

I needed to make a card for a birthday quickly so decided that I would use a Stampavie image and used Sarah Kay's Juliet in the field of nasturtiums and coloured it with Copic sketch pens.  I really like this image and it is quick to colour in.

After colouring, the image was cut out using Spellbinders Lacy Ovals. This was mounted onto another Spellbinders oval die cut.  The backing paper was one that I had in my stash but I cannot remember what is was.  The edge was made with Martha Stewart Floral Band Double Edge Punch.

The flowers were from Wild Orchid Crafts.  I wrapped a ribbon around the background card and fastened with a bow. 

The greeting was a peel off and again a Spellbinder die was used to cut the tag to put the peeloff on.   

Butterfly Parchment Card

This is another parchment card but has very little whitework this time.  It is an easy card to make parchment wise but is effective.

I first drew the pattern of the butterflies in white tinta ink and then drew the flower pattern in gold ink and the edging at the bottom of the card.

I then embossed the inside of the petals and also the grid lines on the card. 

The next step was to pierce the centre of the flower with a one hole piercing tool and then to pierce around the bottom edge of the card.  Once I had completed the piercing at the bottom of the card, I then cut this out to finish the bottom edge.

The butterflies were then coloured in using PCE's (Perga Color Exclusive) and the antennaes where drawn on with tinta ink to finish. 

Patchwork Card #2

I enjoyed making my first patchwork card so much that I thought that I would continue with that theme but use a different size, pattern and colourway to complete this card.  I thought that this would be an ideal card for a male in these colours.

I have used the pattern King of Crowns for this and used black, dark grey and light grey to make it.  This was a four-patch patchwork block.  I first embossed the paper using  Patchwork M-bossabilities and then with a square spellbinder, cut out the amount of blocks that I needed. 

I then cut the blocks - apart from the four centre blocks and the four corner blocks - diagonally. 

This was then attached to some white card and then I pierced around the edge of the card using the Tim Holz ruler. 

I stamped an greeting on some white card and using one of the Spellbinders Lattice motif dies, cut it out and mounted it onto the centre of the card.

This was then matted onto black card to finish.

White and Gold Parchment

This is a fairly easy parchment card to make with just whitework and gold tinta and can be made very quickly. You do not need much in the way of tools to complete this card - just a nib, white and gold tinta ink and an embossing tool. It is also a good card to practice white work on but to get something at the end that you can use.

I first drew the pattern onto the parchment paper on the front of the paper with white tinta ink and a nib.  You could do this with a white pencil instead but I prefer the ink method.  Then on the reverse side I embossed the pattern.  If you use ink, never embossed on the same side as the ink as you will get grey marks on your embossing that you will not be able to turn white and will ruin the look of your work. 

Once all the white work was complete, I went over the flourishes with tinta gold ink.

I drew a border in gold about a centimetre inside the outside edge of the card and then finally I embossed a white border on the outside edge of the card to finish.