Single Rose...

Yay! It's Friday, it's sunny and to celebrate, I thought I'd share another card, that I'm so proud of! Once again, it features some of my craft obsessions of the moment, including the Spellbinders Flower Creations, Tim Holtz's dies and Grungeboard and the beautiful illustrations by Leanne Ellis.

Another thing that I love at the moment, is the natural look and these corrugated cards are perfect for that. As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to have them and combined with some beautiful backing papers and these dusky pink tones with a hint of sage green, I think they work perfectly!

Another element that I'm using more and more in my crafting is Tim Holtz's Grungeboard...which is fantastic. It's a very strange product and unlike any other papers or card that you will use, it's flexible, doesn't break or tear and if you haven't used it, you must. Combined with other products in his range, it really can be an essential product in your craft cupboard.

SO, WHAT DID I USE?

Dies: Spellbinders Shapeablities Flower Creations 3

Natural Cardstock: Kanban

Rubber Stamp: Funky Kits

Ribbon: QVC

Papers: K & Company

Tim Holtz Grungeboard: Flourish painted with Crackle Paint

Colouring Mediums: Promarker Pens, Stickles Glitter Glue

Inks: Distress Inks ~ Brushed Corduroy, Memento ~ Tuxedo Black

I hope you all have a great weekend and the sun is shining wherever you are!!

Happy crafting...

Umbrella Man

In honour of this rainy bank holiday that we're having in the UK, what better way than to show off my latest card using Tim Holtz's fabulous range of products! As some of you know, I am a huge fan of Tim Holtz and his style of crafting and to make this card, I used most of his products and hope that I've done him proud!

So, where do I begin? I took a piece of white card and using various colours of Distress Ink and a blending tool, I built up the colour to what I wanted. I then spritzed the card with some water and also flicked some water droplets across, to give the effect of rain. If you have time, you can set it aside and let it dry naturally but I dried it with heat tool. Once dry, I started to build up my stamped images, layering one on top of the other, in different colours of Distress Inks and Archival Ink, to give a collage effect. I used Black Soot ink around the edges and then set this aside. The background paper is some that I printed off from the Men's Sport and Travel CD Rom from The Crafthouse Press, cut to size, aged the edges for a grunge feel and then matted onto a card blank, together with the image. As finishing touches, I used white paper Petaloo flowers, which I stamped on with a script stamp and once again, aged with inks. I then popped a large eyelet from WRMK into the centre of each flower and scrunched them up slightly so that the petals looked less static and more realistic. Finally, I added the decorative swirl...which is from Tim Holtz's Grungeboard ~ Plain Elements Shapes. I painted the element with a metallic bronze crackle paint and this, once dry, gives the most amazing crackled effect and is the perfect finishing touch to the card.