Love Always

Happy Wednesday! Just popping in to share a card I made to enter into this week's CAS-ual Friday challenge - Stuck on You. The idea is to use a sticker so this is what I created:





I know I seem obsessed with white/clear embossing at the moment! I can't help it though, it's one of my new favourites. I'm also entering this one into Lily Pad Card's Emboss Resist challenge.

I clear embossed the Roses stamp from Inkadinkado's 'Flourishes' on a sheet of labels by Avery. I used the ink blender tool to swipe on some Spun Sugar distress ink and then some Milled Lavender over that to make it a bit less pink so that I could come in with Worn Lipstick and a paintbrush to paint the roses. I gave the same treatment to the leaves using Shabby Shutters. I blotted excess ink off with a tissue and then adhered the labels on to the front of the card with great care to get them lined up evenly.
I then wrapped some white cotton string to the front of the card, tied a bow and stamped a sentiment from Hero Arts 'All Occasion Messages' in Worn Lipstick. To give the Worn Lipstick a more muted effect I stamped it once on some scrap paper and then on the card front.

This card was extremely hard to photograph - I think mostly because of the pale colours but also the awkward placement of the bow - the ends sat awkwardly when I stood the card up so I had to lay the card flat to get a better shot.

Also a question - does anyone find my photos of poor quality/ hard to see details / too light / too dark or...? I find that photos look better on my home computer (which I have edited them on) and on the odd occasion I've looked on my computer at work I find they look darker and less eye-catching. It's hard to please all monitors I know, but any feedback (whether positive or negative!) would be appreciated!

Thanks for taking a peek! :)

Happy for you!

Hello there! I left work on time today for the first time in ages (it's been crazy busy lately so I have been working lots of extra hours) so that I could have a bit of a potter in my garden while there were still remnants of daylight left, and also, so that I could complete the following card I made for this week's CAS-ual challenge which is to use an embossing technique.

Here's what I came up with:






I made the flower panel last night before I went to bed by clear embossing on watercolour card the biggest flower from the "Petals from Scratch" set by Fiskars (I know I keep using this set, but I love it!) which I stamped with Versamark ink. I then used a drop of Spun Sugar Distress Ink reinker on an acrylic block with a little bit of water to colour the petals. For the flower centers I used Soft Peach shadow ink on the acrylic block with no water added.

This afternoon I created the tag using one of the sentiments from the above set clear embossed on the same watercolour card and coloured it with Spun Sugar and water. I punched out the tag with an old Carl tag punch and tied it on to the ribbon using white cotton string. The ribbon is from Kaisercraft and the button is from a cheap pack I bought from a discount shop.

Thank you for looking and have a fantastic day (or night)! ;)

Thinking of you + new craft space

I'm happy to have the day off work today as it's a mid-week public holiday! I set myself two tasks...

1. Clean up my craft table which is still a mess from two or three projects ago. I have the horrible habit of getting up and going off to do something else after I've finished a project and when I sit down again to start another I just sweep all of the materials to one side. It irritates me but I'm powerless against it. BTW, still haven't done it! Ha! I'm writing this entry instead. See what I mean??

2. Make a card for a work colleague who has suffered a recent personal tragedy.  I used the CAS-ual Friday's challenge which was to use the Clean and Simple FTL for this week.

I used the above sketch to create the following card:







It's a really little card to fit these cute mini envelopes I have in my envelope stash. The cardstock is watercolouring card from an A5 pad. I used Black Onyx Versafine for all of the stamping. For the colouring I used a green marker on the flower stem which I cut out and attached using my Quickie glue pen, and the flower was coloured using prismacolor pencils.

The stamp sets I used were "Petals from Scratch" by Fiskars and "Classic Sentiments" by Hero Arts.

If you want to play along in the CAS-ual challenge too you can check it out here. The challenge is to use the FTL sketch from Clean&Simple here.

I thought I would also share a photo of my new craft space which is looking MUCH neater in the photo than it does presently:

It's still a work in progress, I need to figure out more storage and better ways to organise the things that I reach for most like ink pads and scrap paper...

Note the little brown cat bed... my cats LOVE looking out of windows so I have to oblige them by putting beds next to every window possible. It's really the cats' house, we just pay the mortgage ;)

Thanks for looking, and have a wonderful day!

Have a wonderful birthday + free sentiment!

Hello again :) I've got a card to share as well as the sentiment I used which I'm giving away as a freebie. 

To save, right click on the above image and choose 'save target as...'.

Sentiment info:
File type: PNG (can be dropped into MS Word, background is transparent)
File size: 171kb
Full dimensions: 25cm x 11cm
Fonts: I wish I knew! My old computer died and I have yet to reinstall all of my fonts...

All of my free digital sentiments can be found on the "Free Digital Sentiments" tab at the top of every page of this blog, or by clicking here. I'd love to hear from you if you use them! Please leave a comment or drop me a line: jess@lennonforever.net.

 And here is the above sentiment in action:




 After printing the card (see template below) on white cardstock I used a strip of Mask-It film sheet - a temporary low-tack adhesive plastic - to create an invisible border above and below my sentiment. I then stamped some of the flowers from 'Petals from Scratch' by Fiskars with Black Onyx Versafine ink. After pulling off the masking film I took out Versacolor cubes in Boysenberry, Grape and Raspberry (yummm) and diluted them with a spritz of water on a stamping block and used a paintbrush to colour the flowers. As you can see from the photo above I went for a very loose and watercoloury effect which goes well with the loosely drawn flowers.


It can take a bit of trial and error to get the sentiment placed just right on the cardfront but to make the process even easier I've done the hard part for you by making up a word document with the sentiment already in the right spot and the page dimensions to print a 4x8" (score at 4") card - all you need to do is print it out and stamp/embellish/whatever!
You can download the word document I used for the above card here. Please let me know via comments or email if you have any problems accessing the file.


Thanks again for looking at my cards, and for leaving such lovely comments. :)

Hope this day is as special as you are

Back again with the card I created last night. It isn't challenge-based... I was just flipping through my Kaisercraft stamp collection and felt inspired. Isn't it lovely when that happens!









Everything is Kaisercraft except for the cardstock which is Stampin' Up's Very Vanilla. The bird and leafy branch is from the 'Peachy Keen' stamp set and the sentiment is from the 'Birthday' mini stamp set. I love the birds in the Peachy Keen stamp set - actually they're the reason why I bought the set in the first place, but I haven't used either of them until now.

The inks I used were Versacolor 'Pinecone' and 'Bamboo'.

Thanks for looking and have a lovely day!

I'm back!

It's been so long since I've even looked at my blog (the end of March apparently) that I even forgot the url! (Turns out it isn't http://paper-play.blogspot.com... hmm)

I've been really busy moving house, taking care of a sick kitty, unpacking, more taking care of a sick kitty, gardening, rearranging my new craft room about a zillion times, and finally settled in fully about a week ago. I haven't gone near my crafting supplies since I stopped blogging (except for a couple of little projects here and there) as I haven't felt motivated or inspired.

I thought this week's CAS-ual challenge would help me get back in the groove, and it did!

Here's what I created:








I printed the gorgeous butterflies this digital kit from Hero Arts on bleedproof paper (as per advice from Melz!) and embossed the digital butterflies with embossing powder straight out of the printer so that I wouldn't get any smudges when I used my blending tool on them. I used Turquoise and Marigold versa color inks with the blending tool on the butterflies and then used Turquoise again on the cardfront for the text ('Cursive Script' clear stamp from Kaisercraft). This was a bit 'meh' so I edged the card with the leftover ink from my blending tool and when that was not enough I used the blending tool and streaked it all over the cursive script to smudge it. I then adhered the butterflies on top, added some antennae with a sharpie and stamped the sentiment (from 'Wedding' mini clear stamp set by Kaisercraft) to finish it off.

I'm going to enter this card in this month's Hero Arts contest to fit within the digital category for 'Creatures'. Wish me luck! :) Details of the comp are here.

Thanks for reading and I will be back to share another card real soon! :)