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

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
  

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

Ma's 60th Birthday

Good Evening Bloggers,

September was a pretty big one for celebrations within the family.  Firstly, my beautiful Ma turned 60.  As it was such a special occasion Ma's partner asked if I could make a card for him.  Ma to has recently fallen in love with the Magnolia range of stamps also, and is quite often my painting buddy on the weekends.  I pack up my stuff and head to her house and we sit at the dining room table and lose hours while we watercolour.  

So for Denis' card I used the beautiful Tilda with Hawaii Flower from the Butterfly Dreams collection.  My favourite distress ink colour at the moment is Victorian Velvet, so I inked up Tilda using this as the main colour and let this set the tone for the rest of the card. Diamond Stickles and White Opal Liquid Pearls for the something extra.

So then I used my Walnut Stain Distress Ink to add the extra shading.  This is where I had a brain fade, I though how good would my Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist look spritzed over the top.....as soon as I did that first spritz my brain kicked in and I realised how silly I had been - ummm duh! it was going to make my inks bleed.... and it surely did!!  More so the walnut that I had used for the extra shadowing than anything else, as you can see on Tilda's left arm. It also intensified the colour considerably!  So lesson learnt, spritz the glimmer mist on to an acrylic block and use this in place of water for blending, or lightly brush over the top of the image once I have finished colouring.

And finally the finished product.  Magnolia paper and a paper from my stash used, edges have been distressed and sponged with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.  A purple Prima flower, and two others from my stash. Simple yet effective,  Denis and most importantly Ma were very impressed :o)

Next on the list is an album my sister and I put together for our Ma.  There are 3 of us altogether, my sister is the eldest, and we have a brother in between.  So this Kaisercraft 60 Album was perfect as there were 3 pages inside to decorate, so each of us kids gets a page.  The following is the front of the album, I wish I knew where I got the red paper from that covers the 60 - it is just gorgeous, but alas I only had 1 sheet.

So the pretty stuff, from Kaszazz we used the Daisy punches, the Aged Copper embellishment kit and the love charm and black ribbon.  The pearl flourishes are Kaisercraft, and the Martha Stewart Monarch Butterfly Punch medium.  The butterflies were covered in Glossy Accents, and then liquid pearls drops.  

Inside the album we also cut out and added the following two Tilda's.  You may remember one of these being shown half done in a previous blog :o)  We have below Longing Tilda from the Fairy Tale Collection and Tilda with Balloon from the You are So Special Collection.

Both the images are shown before they had the extra shading done.  I tried to get some photos last night of how they looked when in the album, but the camera just didn't want to work to take a clear close up photo...grrr!!

Finally is the card I made to give to my Ma.  You may remember the Magnolia Mushrooms with Snail Stamp from the Sweet Rainbow Collection that I blogged about in August.  Also I used the Ladybug Tilda stamp from the Raising the Ceiling Collection.  Love this Ladybug Tilda, she is just gorgeous.  Also with the colours I chose, very difficult to watercolour with Distress Inks.  I used Barn Door and Black Soot Refills for her main colours, both of these are extremely unforgiving!!  The best tip I can give when colouring with these two is go gently! Build up the colour slowly, patience is most certainly a virtue!

I was so incredibly happy with how Tilda turned out!!  She is just too cute.

So with the paper I had put aside for this I decided to make a step easel card.  My first attempt!  The finished product was definitely worth it!

A close up of the finished Tilda with Stickles added on to the lace under her hat, and around the hearts, she also has some Black Soot added to help the shadow.  See the video link in my last blog for how to do this.

Finally the ladybug I made in the top right hand corner has wings that move.  The two photos below show you them open and closed - 

I added Vellum in between the red and black card to try and represent her clear wings, and hand wrote the sentiment on to a scallop punched piece of card.  brads were used at the top of the wings to allow them to move.

A lot of work, but a 60th birthday is something very special, let alone how incredibly special my Ma is to me!!  She has had a tough couple of months, and anything that can bring a smile to her face is most definitely worth it!!  She did smile, and then unfortunately there was tears when she read the words I wrote, thankfully this time happy tears.

Thanks for looking, and feel free to leave a comment or question

xx Milly

It's been awhile....

Good Evening Bloggers,

Well it has certainly been awhile between posts, and there is much to catch up on.

I have been a busy little bee lately, so I will do this update in a couple of posts.  Seeing as I have the day off work tomorrow I should have plenty of time to upload all my recent cards.

So it all began with my nephew James' 7th Birthday on the 28th of August (Aunty Milly is wondering where on earth 7 years have gone!!)  For this card I used my Cool Edwin Magnolia Stamp from the Sweet Rainbow Collection (I tried to find a link at THE Magnolia website, but couldn't find theses stamps on the website any where, so I have directed you to one of my favourite online stores - another excellent online store to check out is here), and combined it with the Kaisercraft Konstrukt clear stamps.  All stamps have been coloured using the distress ink re-inkers except for the ruler, this has been coloured using Lyra AquaColour Crayons.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the finished product.  I was at my Mum's place when I was playing with the bits and pieces to see how they would work, so I took a photo of how I wanted the pieces to be set out so that I would remember what I was going to do when I got home.  So imagine a plain black card instead of the timber table....

and a close up of Cool Edwin

Next on the list was my friends, daughters, 6th birthday.  I had just received my Circus Tilda and Circus Horse stamps from the Magnolia Cozy Family collection through the post, and I was itching to stamp and ink up these images.  What perfect stamps to use for Indie's 6th Birthday!!  I messaged my friend and found out that Indie's favourite colour was green, and away we went.

So I have a first photo here that shows part way through the initial inking stage...

As Indie likes green I had inked Tilda up using Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint, with Victorian Velvet to break it up.  This next image shows the finished product ready to attach to my card.  As you can see there is a fair amount of shadowing in this next image.  I learnt how to do this from a youtube video that you can watch here.  This gives the image so much more depth, and just adds that something special I think to make your image even more 3D!  I have used Walnut Stain to shadow Tilda and Black Soot on the horse.

Now to make the card!!  I had never made an easel card before and I thought with such a cute image to attach it deserved a special card! So I had a go and this is the final product...

The purple butterfly paper is Magnolia and the green paper comes from the Kaisercraft Utopia Collection.  The bright pink was from my stash. The Big white butterfly's I bought from my local $2 shop and I have forgotten their brand.  The Flower is Prima, and the butterfly cutout is a Martha Stewart Punch, cut ou tin white card and sponged over with Distress Ink Dusty Concord.  The extra pearly details is the White Opal liquid pearls.

If you would like to know all the colours I used on Circus Tilda and her Circus Horse, drop me a line and I will do my best to help!

Finally for tonight I will finish off with a card I made for my Brother's Fiancee's (his wife now!) Kitchen Tea.  Unfortunately the photo of this card does not do it justice as the cake is actually 3D.  I traced a picture of a cake off of my laptop screen (very gently!!! as I don't actually have a working printer at the moment).  I then traced it onto card and cut out all the separate elements.  The top tier of the cake is stuck flat to the card, the second tier has one layer of foam mounts and the third tier has two layers of foam mounts. It's decorated with liquid pearls, diamond stickles, some roses and a rosebud from my stash and a liquid pearl decorated butterfly with my Martha Stewart punch.  Simple, yet effective!!

I have a few more projects to share with you, including the finished result for the card I made with my mushrooms. However it is now 3am, lucky for me I don't have to go to work in the morning, so check back soon to see some more bits and pieces!

Thanks for looking, and as always feel free to leave any comments or questions!!

Good night,

xx Milly