Sunday 25 December 2011

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Bloggers,

Yes, yes more Christmas cards. These are all cards I have made for my Family and my Friend.  As Ma and Nicky are followers of my blog I have had to schedule this post otherwise they would see their cards before I had a chance to deliver them.

So first up is a card I made for my very special Ma.  I decided to make her a card with very un- traditional colours.  This is the first one I made using the Metallic silver card, and loved it so much I have used it on a couple since :o)  So for Ma I decided to go with a Purple and Blue theme to make it very different.

The purple paper was from Allison Ellis Design and I love that it is just so different from the normal Christmassy papers we see at this time of year.

First up the cute Something for you Tilda from the Sweet Christmas Dreams Collection - 



This cute little lady has been painted using Distress Re-Inkers in Milled Lavendar, Dusty Concord and Pumice Stone.  With Diamond Stickles on the fur trim.

And now for the (almost) finished product - 



The swirl is from the Magnolia Doohickey's Leaf and Swirl set.  The snowflakes were cut using my Sullivans punch and coloured using Smooch in Pool, and then covered with Diamond Stickles.  They turned out so beautiful and bright.  I have since added some lovely light blue gems into the middle of each of the snowflakes to give that final finishing touch.



For my Sister and her family I have used the gorgeous little Reindeer Tilda from the Merry Little Christmas Collection.  I have probably said it a number of times before but this has to be one of my favourite ever Tilda's.  


Once again I have painted her using slighty unconventional colours for a Christmas card.  Her hair originally was even more orange than it is now but I have toned it down using Brushed Corduroy and by adding some shading using my Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

And the finished product - 




The third card up today I have made for my Brother and his Wife.  I have used the Snow Buddies Popcorn the Bear Stamp set.  Once again I have used liquid applique for the fur trim and the snow - the way that it has puffed up when heated is perfect giving an awesome texture to the card.  It makes Popcorn and his Mrs's hats look so warm and snuggly!



So for this card I didn't really have any papers that would quite match so I have made my own background paper using the gorgeous snowflake background stamp from the Kaszazz range. I embossed them with platinum embossing powder over a background I made by swiping Broken China Distress Ink over a plastic sheet, and spritzing it with Silver Glimmer Mist and dropping the card on top.




The final card is for my friend Nicky.  I have used 2 inked stamps for this one.  The Bildmalarna Mimosa Christmas Flower and Christmas Tree stamps.






I love both of these Stamps and how they have come together for this card.  I hope Nicky and Shannon like it also - 




Finally to finish up I have a birthday card, just for something different :o)

This card is for my Brother's wife and I love the blend of colours with Tilda, the paper, card and the Prima Flowers.

First up lets have a look at Butterfly Tilda from the Butterfly Wishes Collection.  This funky little Tilda with her Purple hair is very out there...



The die cut Butterfly in the background is produced by Cheery Lynn and is a beautiful die, I just love this!  It takes patience to pop out all the shapes, but makes a statement!

And now the finished card - 




I hope that you and your family have had a wonderful Christmas day, and hopefully the celebrations are not concluding just yet :o)






xx Milly

Friday 23 December 2011

Monochrome Christmas

Good Afternoon Bloggers,

A post today to share with you the card I made for my friend Gary for Christmas.  

I had wanted to try and Edwin/Tilda inked in with Black Soot only for awhile, and the effect is fantastic.  I also used the Marvy Uchida Liquid Applique product to give the 'fur' effect.  This stuff is awesome, it goes on like an opaqueish white gel - and then when you use the heat gun over the top it just puffs up to give this most amazing end result. 

So this little Edwin is from the Sweet Christmas Dreams Collection and is called Sweet Christmas Edwin.



The Black Soot seemed a bit harsh on the face, so taking my Ma's advice i used Pumice Stone as it is a bit of a 'warmer' colour.

So at a recent trip to Camelot I bought a beautiful range of Christmas paper from Allison Ellis Designs in black, white and silver.  These seemed perfect for a male christmas card and to go with this Edwin.

I also used a die from the new Couture Creations ones I bought.  These are fantastic, they are very similar to the Spellbinders Nestabilities but about $13 cheaper!! 



Using a plain white square card I used a sponge to colour the edges of the card with Black Soot distress ink.  Then I cut out the metallic silver card, and the Allison Ellis Paper to mount on top.  The die cut was made using white bling textured card stock and again Black Soot sponged around the edges, and then I used some Colorbox Silver over the top which gave the lovely muted grey effect.  The flourish is a Magnolia die - this worked absolutely beautifully on the metallic silver card.

So at this stage I thought it is still looking a little plain.  So using my Sullivan's brand snowflake punch I cut five snowflakes and coloured them with the Colorbox silver ink, using the ink pad direct to the white card, and then sprayed them with Silver Glimmer Mist.  The snowflakes shown with the jewels have been covered in Glossy Accents to stop the silver coming off if people touch it, and the other two snowflakes have been covered in crackle accents.  These two with the crackle turned out really well, I was so happy with the effect!

So the finished product - 



It almost looks like a black and white photo of a normal coloured card - except for those liberal sprinklings of the metallic silver :o)

I have to say one of my favourite cards I have made this year!

Challenges I would like to enter

By the Cute and Girly - Let it Snow
Christmas Card Challenges - Non Traditional Colours
Deep Ocean Challenge - Warm Wishes

Thanks for stopping by.  If I don't make any more blogs before Christmas I hope you and your family enjoy a very happy, healthy and safe Festive Season.

xx Milly

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Something for you....

Good Evening Bloggers,

So tonight I bring you yet another Christmas card.  This time with the Gorgeous Something for you Tilda from the Sweet Christmas Dreams Collection.

This colouring was a bit of an experiment as I decided to ink in Tilda with the very bright Barn Door and then shade her using Black Soot and Fired Brick.  Whilst I have used this technique for other stamps I was a little worried that the colour might be 'too much' for this little cutie.

The other image in this card is the Christmas Tree from the Bildmalarna stamp range.  I used three greens to get the effect on this tree, I started with Crushed Olive, then layered the colours up with Peeled Paint and Forrest Moss.



So onto the card...


Papers are from Allison Ellis Design and the Kaisercraft December 25th Collection with embellishments made using spellbinders dies and Prima Flowers.

This card was put together using the sketch from Debbie over at the MDUC..


Lets have a look at a close up of the gorgeous Something for you Tilda


The gorgeous sparkles on her dress are the Holly Stickles - my new favourite bling :o)



I would like to enter my card into the following challenges - 


Thanks for stopping by.

xx Milly

Sunday 13 November 2011

Challenge Time

Good Evening Bloggers,

So tonight I have decided for the first time to enter a card into an online challenge.  It makes me very nervous to put my work on show at this level, especially when you see how many talented card makers take part. However, I do love creating my pieces, and being able to share them with people, so here goes!!

So this weeks challenge at Magnolia Down Under Challenges is Challenge #122 - So Sentimental.  I finished this card today which I would like to enter.



A couple more photos - 



This one above shows the lovely colour the stickles show off on the black snow flakes.



Of course the cute as cute Reindeer Tilda coloured in with Distress Inks.

Magnolia Down Under Challenges - Challenge # 122 - So Sentimental 

Thanks for looking.

xx Milly

Practice, practice........practice!!

Good Evening Bloggers,

Well it seems like the last half of 2011 has been sent to test me and my close group of friends.  Since a colleagues sudden passing in early August, we lost another 2 lovely souls.  This past 3 weeks has seen my friends and I lose another 3 kindred spirits.  Two of the people that have passed I didn't know, but they were very special to two of my very dear friends, and at this time my heart is with you as you re-piece your world.
The third person to pass was another work colleague and friend of mine.  Tony was with us only 4 months after his diagnosis of skin cancer, the end came around all to quickly.  Tony in the time that I knew you thank you for your kindness, your smile, and your assistance with my studies.  Hopefully in 50 years or so we will be able to share a beer again one day.

I guess we had better get back to what this blog is all about - the scrapbooking of course!!

So in this first post tonight I will show you some of the items I have been working on lately ready to make cards with.  First up is one that I finished a few weeks ago now and has been sitting in my stash ready to be used.  This is the Magnolia Bird Background from the Sweet Rainbow Collection.  I am not so happy with the sun, as I realised once I had inked it up it was a little more orange than I wanted, but it really is a beautiful stamp.



All it needs now is the perfect Tilda ready to be made into a lovely card.  I have some birthdays coming up in January and I think this is perfect for one of them... I guess more on that later :o)

Next up is a stamp my Ma ordered from the Bildmalarna range, this little cutie is called Mimosa Christmas Flower.  I have two photos to show you the progress through the colouring stage.  She has been stamped initially with the Timber Brown Staz-On.  I am liking the brown a lot more these days as it seems to soften the images just that little.



This image has been coloured with Distress Ink Re-Inkers, lets have a look at the colour recipe so far -

Skin - Antique Linen and Tattered rose for her cheeks
Hair - Scattered Straw, Wild Honey and a small amount of Frayed Burlap
Flowers - Barn Door
Foliage - Crushed Olive to start with, then some Peeled Paint and Forest Moss
Leaves - Shabby Shutters with Peeled Paint
Stems  - Bundled Sage, Brushed Corduroy, Vintage Photo at the top for shading, and then Forest Moss along the stems for shading to give the 3D effect.

And the finished picture, minus a final 'deep shadow' shading - I was going to do that today, but got too busy with the new Big Shot and dies and embossing folders that were bought :o)



So additions to the colours shown above.

Flowers - Fired Brick to add Shadow and scattered straw and mustard seed for the centres.
Dress, Bow and Hair Tie - Barn Door with Fired Brick for shading
Apron - Antique Linen with Frayed Burlap for shading
Shoes - Walnut Stain

Next we will move on to another version of one of my Favourite Stamps at the moment, Hannah Lynn's Genevieve.  The recent technique I used on my Rose of Fire Stamp inspired to me to try and colour Genevieve the same way.  So the base colour is as bold and strong as I can make it, and then shadowed in using the Black Soot Ink.




So this photo shows stage 1.  

Skin - Antique Linen
Cheeks - Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany
Hair and Lips - Barn Door

Then I started using Black Soot to shadow in the hair.  The effect is quite remarkable, and it looks even better in person



The other colours used were - 

Eyes - Weathered Wood with Frayed Burlap and Walnut Stain for eyeshadow
Gloves - Fired Brick, also shadowed with the Black Soot, Victorian Velvet for the dots.

Next we move on to what I was working on this afternoon.  My friend Miss Nicky came over to Ma's this afternoon to sit with us to get a few pointers on painting with the Distress Inks.  So to show her how I do it (let me say I am definitely no expert, but I have a lot of failed colouring attempts that have taught me a lot!!) I got out a Butterfly Tilda from the Butterfly Wishes Collection to ink in.  I decided to paint her in very different colours to see how this would work, it may have something to do with that I have always wanted to dye my hair purple..??!?!?!  and I keep telling Ma that I am going to do it one day...she doesn't believe me though.  Anyway I am digressing, lets have a look at Butterfly Tilda - 



The Colour recipe

Skin - Antique Linen
Cheeks - Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany
Hair - Milled Lavender and Dusty Concord
Wings - Spun Sugar, Bundled Sage and Victorian Velvet
Dress - Worn Lipstick with Tattered Rose covered in Stickles for the frill
Butterfly - Tumbled Glass

She looks very different with purple hair, and has made me think about what I can do with my other stamps I have now to make them really different by not sticking to the "normal" colours.

Finally lets finish with a card for a very Happy Occasion.  One of my work mates Shaun and his Wife Rosie had a beautiful baby girl two weeks ago, and the lads at work all put in to send them a present - a giant baby cake, made with nappies and rugs and clothes and more.  If you are in South Australia - check out The Gift Specialist  I have used them a few times now, and they have been fantastic each and every time!!!

I have had this card in my stash for quite awhile, and knew it would be perfect.  I did have to add some sparkle and pearls and a flower though just to Girly it up a bit more for the gorgeous little Eloise.



The base of the card is coloured using a very easy technique. You will need a mister or spray bottle filled with plain water. A sheet of Acetate or any type of plastic really, and a distress ink pad, I used two - Spun Sugar and Stormy Sky.

Swipe the Distress Ink pad directly across the acetate to cover the area required, if you are using two colours be careful not to mix them.  Then spritz some water over (you could also use a glimmer mist spray or similar to add some sparkle to your background) then once the water is added drop your card on top, peel off and lay flat to dry.  This gives a really unique  almost "tie dye" effect and lovely subtle background.

The teddy is actually paper pieced and 3D.  I downloaded an image from the web, and traced him on to card, then I selected the areas I wanted to raise... and you have the finished Teddy.  This next photo shows the layering of the Teddy



I think for now that is all.  I will be back in just a little while with a card I made today for the Magnolia Down Under Challenge # 122.  My first challenge I will enter so fingers crossed for me :o)

Thanks for looking

xx Milly
















Sunday 23 October 2011

Christmas has begun....

Good Evening Bloggers,

So a quick post tonight to show you birthday card I made for a very good friend of mine and also my first Christmas card for this year.

So first up lets have a look at the card I made for the Awesome Gaz!!  The Magnolia stamp is the Starship from the Winner Takes It All Collection.



Colour recipe

Starship Body - Faded Jeans
Flames and Stars - Barn Door, Spiced Marmalade and Mustard Seed
Window - Weathered Wood with Bundled Sage for the frame.

The close up photo above shows the awesome range of colours in my Verdigris embossing powder, with greens and golds it can be matched to many different colours, and is always reflecting something different depending on what angle you are holding the card.

And the finished product - 



A groovy Boys card!!  I don't know about you but I find boys cards hard to make - you can't add much bling or flowers really (well certainly not with the boys I know anyway!!), so it really limits my options for decorations.  I must say though, Gaz was pretty rapt with his card, and tells me it is my best card ever.  Lol, I couldn't agree - only because I can't pick a favourite card I have made.

So onto the Christmas card, my Ma bought the cute as cute Magnolia Reindeer Tilda from the Merry Little Christmas collection a couple of months ago. This is one of my favourite stamps of all the Tilda's, and I love her inked up in this colour. So let's have look at this adorable little Tilda....



Nawww, isn't she cute!!  The Distress Ink refill colours I have used are as follows...

Skin- Antique Linen with Tattered Rose and a hint of Victorian Velvet for her Cheeks
Hair - Antique Linen and Walnut Stain
Suit- Fired Brick
Shoes - Walnut Stain
Bells - Scattered Straw
Antlers - Frayed Burlap
Lace - I have just used Diamond Stickles on this.

The other Magnolia Stamp I used for this card is called Peppermint also from the Merry Little Christmas Collection.



The colours used to ink this up are as follows...

Candy cane - Fired Brick and a small amount of Pumice Stone for the White areas
Bow - Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint

This was a really quick and easy stamp to ink up, and could be used very effectively by itself for a cute Christmas Card, I however had grander plans for this little candy cane.

I also used my Kaisercraft Doodled Christmas Stamps for the wording and the Holly.  Some Bo Bunny 12" Father Christmas Cut Outs paper and some punched snowflakes with plenty of gold and diamond stickles everywhere and I've come up with the following result



Below is a view from a different angle to show just exactly how glittery the stickles are, the large snowflakes actually have two layers.  I first covered them in Gold Stickles, once that had dried I went over with the Diamond Stickles for even more reflect.



I think this is a much better result than what I was trying to put together at Sammy's last night.  Not a single piece of card or paper that I was originally trying to use made it to the finished version :o) Now let's hope all my chrissie cards can look this cute!!

Thanks for looking.

xx Milly

Sunday 16 October 2011

A pick me up and a Birthday

Good Afternoon Bloggers,

So today brings an update of 2 completed projects.

So a little in the life of me lately, the new position at work has begun and it is fantastic.  I work with a great bunch of people and I am really enjoying the different work.  

Last night we had a Girls Night In put on by the wonderful team at Paper Flourish to raise money for the Cancer Foundation, in memorium of the beautiful Fran Normandale.  

It was a lovely night getting together with the girls to scrap, although I don't believe any of us actually did much ;o)

So this week I was talking with one of my mates at work, and he was telling me that his niece who has moved to Montreal to study, and is feeling rather homesick. She has been asking for handwritten letters from home.  So I said I would make a card for him, and he could send a hand made card with a hand made note.  I had very little to go on as obviously I do not know the person this was intended for.

So I went to my stamps to see what I would like to ink up, and I chose my Hannah Lynn Genevieve stamp, have I said how much I love this stamp..???  ;o)

This time I wanted to try purples, The Dusty Concord distress ink is just a beautiful colour.  I have also come to realise that when water colouring with my inks I am good at the bold strong colours...not so good at trying to add subtle colour.  

So lets get to some pictures, firstly lets have a look at the beautiful Genevieve and the distress colours used to water colour.


Skin - Antique Linen with Tattered Rose and a touch of Victorian Velvet for her cheeks
Lips - Spun Sugar, Worn Lipstick and the smallest touch of Aged Mahogany
Eyes - Pine needles, with Milled Lavender and a touch of Dusty Concord for eye shadow.
Hair - Dusty Concord
Gloves - Black Soot and Dusty Concord

And the card all together...


The flourish stamp is from Kaszazz, and has been stamped with Black Staz-On and the had some stickles and crackle accents added.  And the beautiful flower is from the Prima Delightful Day Collection.

As always i finish all my cards with this cute as stamp from Kaszazz.



A week or so ago I painted in this Magnolia Stamp, Beautiful Tilda from the Butterfly wishes collection.  She is just too cute.  I had just bought my spiced marmalade re-inker to paint with and wanted to try out some very different colours from what I would normally go with.  The result was pretty good i think.



This photo shows after I have added the Diamond Stickles, Biscuit Liquid Pearls and a touch of crackle accents in her wings.

Colours Used
Skin - Antique Linen with tattered rose on her cheeks.
Hair - Scattered Straw and Wild Honey
Dress - Spiced Marmalade with Scattered Straw in the frill, although this was mainly covered in stickles.
Wings - Main part was Spun Sugar, lower wings was Victorian Velvet and Dried Marigold around the edges.
Butterfly - Worn Lipstick.

I had bought the beautiful Prima Gillian Flowers in Lemon last week, but I didn't really have any papers in my stash to go with this, so I took her along to the store last night to see what I could find...



The Happy Birthday Stamp is the Kaszazz Happy Birthday dotty embossed with a Zing Metallic Red - this I had done a while ago and I believe the background colour in this is Distress Aged Mahogany.  The background was done by swiping the ink pad over an acetate sheet, spritzing it with water and then dropping the card on top, almost giving it a tye-dyed effect.  The paper is from Prima in the Tropics Collection called 'Fire at Sunset'.  I used the Tim Holtz cardstock, not sure of the exact colour but similar to spiced marmalade.  The butterfly was one I had in my stash.

Happy Birthday miss Mandy, I hope you like your card!!  We shall see at dinner in an hour or so :o)

That is all from me today.  I have a couple of other things in the pipeline that I am working on, so hopefully these will be ready to go and up for viewing soon.

Have a great day, and as always please feel free to leave any comments or questions.

Thanks for looking.

xx Milly
  

Tuesday 4 October 2011

A wedding, a birthday, a little note and some practice

Hi Again Bloggers,

The celebrations in September continued with a friends birthday.  My friend Natu turned 31, and I decided to use the Magnolia Starship from the Winner Takes It All Collection.  It gave me the idea that I could use the cheesy line "I hope your birthday goes off like a rocket".  

So I inked up the starship and used some Basic Grey Circle Stamps I have to try and represent planets in the solar system.

Firstly a close up of the rocket - 



This was coloured with Distress Inkers using the   following colours
Starship - Pumice Stone
Bands and Accents - Stormy Sky
Window - Weathered Wood
Stars and Rocket Flames - Scattered Straw, Spiced Marmalade and Barn Door.

With the circles behind I stamped them with the Watermark Ink pad and embossed them with Kaszazz - Verdigris, Zing - Metallic Purple and Allison Ellis Designs - Platinum.
The Cheesy wording made it to the inside of the card...




The celebrations continued into October.  On October 1 my Brother got married, and what better occasion than to create a handmade card.  So on a visit to the scrap shop a couple of months ago I came across these adorable Wedding Stamps in the Popcorn the Bear range.  You can check out the Popcorn story here and see the stamp range here.  I bought the Romance - Wedding Day collection for my card.  I know I know I am biased, but they are way too cute and the card turned out beautifully!!


Stamp and sentiment came from my Popcorn Stamps. The paper I used is the Romance Collection from Kaszazz and it is called Flourish/Flourish Dots, I used both sides. Ribbon is from my stash, and the flowers are in the Delightful Day Collection from Prima - unfortunately the Dimmet range I used aren't shown on their website though.

A close up of Popcorn and the Mrs. - 


Now lets see if I can remember all the Distress Ink Re-Inker colours I used - 

Bears - Walnut Stain and Antique Linen
Rug - Small amounts of Weathered Wood
Rug Heart and Hearts in Ears - Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany
Veil - Small Amounts of Weathered Wood
Bride's Hat - Victorian Velvet
Grooms Hat - Black Soot and Weathered Wood
Flowers - Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany
Leaves - Shabby Shutter and Peeled Paint
Souffle the Duck - Scattered Straw, Spiced Marmalade and Weathered Wood

Not that it shows in this photo but I used Crackle accents on the inked roses and the band around the grooms hat, some Liquid Pearls in White Opal on the stitching holding the heart on the rug and Glossy Accents on the eyes and noses and of course some diamond stickles for some sparkle.

The second to last thing to show you tonight is a card I made for my Friend Nicky on Sunday. I have had this stamp for a few months now, and still hadn't coloured it in.  This stamp is by Hannah Lynn and is called Genevieve -  I purchased it from here.  I just love the detail on this stamp, and the coloured version shown on the page completely sold it for me!!  

As you will see my colours were no where near as bold -


So the colours I have used for Genevieve

Hair - Frayed Burlap
Skin and Lips - Antique Linen, Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany
Eyes - Pine Needles, Bundled Sage used for eye shadow
Gloves - I started with them painted in Vintage Photo, but that was to yellow for the rest of the colours used so I painted over that with Walnut Stain.  The dots and Bows are Victorian Velvet and Aged Mahogany.

The finished product - 


Flowers used are a Prima Cottage Blossom in Pink Quartz and a Floret Collection in Sunshine. The smaller ivory rose and two rosebuds are from my stash.  The brown paper is from Kaisercraft and part of the Prairie Lane Collection called Hillcrest.

This card was just a little note to hopefully brighten Miss Nicky's day, and in a small way to say thank you for having me over for dinner.

So lastly yesterday Ma and I had a painting day.  I was working on another stamp I purchased when I bought Genevieve. This stamp is called Rose of Fire and has been designed by Molly Harrison.  There were two versions on the website of this stamp coloured, and i had to have a go at the red version - you can see it here, this card was done by Angela Sowell and i just loved the colours she has used on the stamp.

My attempt - 




I just love this stamp and I am looking forward to trying many more colour combinations!!

Well that is all folks, off to colour Butterfly Tilda from the Butterfly Wishes Collection.  So look out for this in the coming days.

Night all, as always please leave any questions or comments.

xx Milly
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