Butterfly Friends

This is another card I made for this month’s challenge (love, friendship or stamp kissing technique) on the Hero Arts blog.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Antique Engravings, Fabulous Flourish, Scallop Borders, Tree Birds and Messages.

I clear embossed the Fabulous Flourish on kraft card. The butterflies were stamped on white card and coloured with ProMarkers. For the scallops I coloured some white card with the same green marker I had used on the butterflies and embossed the scallops in white. The sentiment is also embossed in white and I lightly inked the edges of the sentiment panel with white ink. Then I added some blue gems to finish.

Hope you are all having a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Hero Hostess Good Friends

Over at the Hero Arts Flickr group all the new Hostesses have happily donned their new colourful aprons – Linda (purple), me (green), Anita (hot pink), Sharon (aqua) and Sally (pink).

Sarah came up with the brilliant idea of a colour combination challenge based on the apron colours. Here’s a quick card I made this morning to celebrate becoming a Hostess with these wonderful ladies. I'd love if we could all meet in real life as we did on this card, well just not on a tree branch!



Stamps (Hero Arts) – Clouds, Heart Owls, Tree Bird and Messages

I ran out of the smaller size googly eyes so my little owl has the same surprised and excited look as I did when I received Tami's email about becoming a hostess!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Wild Flowers and Butterflies

This month the challenge on the Hero Arts blog is to make a card, page or project with the theme of love or friendship or else to use the stamp kissing technique. I love making cards for friends and it’s great to send a card to a friend without a particular occasion in mind.


Stamps (Hero Arts) Wild Flowers, Old Letter Writing & Tree Birds and Messages

To start with I applied faded jeans distress ink to white card and using the same ink stamped with the Old Letter Writing. For the main panel I applied shabby shutter, broken china and faded jeans distress inks to white card and spritzed with water. Then I embossed the Wild Flowers in white and added some gems.



To make the butterflies I embossed the Old Letter Writing in white on vellum, punched out four butterflies, layered and added gems. The sentiment is embossed in white.

I'm submitting the card into these challenges -

ABC Challenge - N is for Nesties.
C.R.A.F.T. Challenge - In the roll of a die.
Stamptacular Sunday Challenge - Whateva!
Stamp, Scrap & Doodle Saturday - A Punchy Challenge

Hero Hostess and Friends : )

I still can’t quite believe this is happening, but I have just become a Hero Hostess!! I’m so excited and feel honoured to have been invited to be a Hostess by Hero Arts. I would like to say a big thanks to Hero Arts, my absolute favourite company (as you can probably tell from my blog!), for everything so far and for what promises to be a fun three months ahead.

Hero Arts is such a generous company and I love the fantastic quality and amazing range of their images\products. Nearly everything I’ve learned about card making has been through the artists on the Hero Arts blog and the members of the Hero Arts Flickr group. As well as learning and enjoying the fun aspects of the blog and group, one of the brilliant and unexpected benefits for me in joining the group has been the wonderful friends I’ve made within the group. I know a lot of other great friendships have also been formed because of the group. My good friend Linda donned her apron yesterday and I’m so happy we’ll be sharing this great adventure together. I can’t wait till you “meet” the rest of the hostesses during the week – you’ll love them!


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Scattered Leaves, Antique Engravings, Clouds Background, Big and Small Flowers, Music Background, Tree Birds and Messages

Tami from Hero Arts gave us the great theme of friendship to work with for our cards for the blog this week. The blocks on my card represent some of the wonderful friends I’ve made in the group and have had great chats and laughs with. A detailed description of how I made the card can be found here on the Hero Arts website, but here is a brief description. I applied various distress inks (Shabby Shutters, Mustard Seed, Broken China, Spiced Marmalade, Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans and Barn Door) to panels of white card and spritzed some with water. Using the same inks I stamped the images on each panel, the exception being where I used white ink for the Music Background. The sentiment was embossed in white and the completed panels were then machine stitched to the card base.



To make the flowers I stamped a piece of red fabric and a piece of yellow fabric with the small flower from the Big and Small Flowers set. Then I put together three layers - a piece of unstamped fabric on the bottom, wadding in the middle and on the top the piece of stamped fabric face up. Using a tiny stitch setting on my sewing machine, I stitched all the layers together by stitching the outlines of the petals. The smaller details were hand stitched and I sewed some beads to the centre. Then I cut out the flowers trimming close to the stitched edge without cutting through the stitches.

Surrounded by Love

As soon as I saw Lisa’s post on the Hero Arts blog this morning I wanted to make a card. Lisa created an adorable card inspired by her super cute card on page 74 of the catalogue. I love these cards and decided to use them to come up with an idea for my hubby’s Valentine.

Lucy is sharing a sketch and card every day this week on her blog so I decided to use her sketch from Day 2. I may have strayed a bit too far off the sketch though!


Stamps (Hero Arts) – Heart Owls, Designer Woodgrain, Buttons, Flourish Background, Tree Birds & Messages.

The card came together pretty quickly. Most of the pieces on the card were in my pile of scraps - I really have to use more of them! The owls were coloured with watercolour pencils and I perched them on a twig which came from an old Christmas decoration. I made the heart wreath using the cute little heart shaped button from the Buttons set. The buttons were covered with a layer of Glossy Accents and some yarn threaded through the buttonholes. Thanks to Sue for the brown twine I used for the loop on the wreath. One of the scraps I used for the background had been clear embossed with the woodgrain stamp. On the other one I had applied walnut stain distress ink to white card and stamped, spritzed and spattered with water.

Butterflies and Flowers

I'm just posting photos of some cards I sent to friends which I didn't get around to putting on the blog before. I hadn't really thought about it until now but obviously I must love butterflies and flowers!

The Silhouette Grass is clear embossed on fabric and the butterflies are coloured with ProMarkers.
Stamps (Hero Arts) - Antique Engravings, Silhouette Grass & Messages.


A distress ink background with white embossed vellum flower. I just added some glitter to a button and diamond stickles to the petals for some sparkle.
Stamps (Hero Arts) - Large Flower & Tree, Bird and Messages.


The large flower again!
Stamps (Hero Arts) - Large Flower & Tree, Birds and Messages.


Vellum butterflies and the Fabulous Flourish is embossed in white on fabric.
Stamps (Hero Arts) - Fabulous Flourish & Antique Engravings


As you can see I love the Antique Engravings set!
Stamps (Hero Arts)- Antique Engravings & Tree, Birds and Messages.


The Wild Flowers are white embossed on fabric and the butterfly coloured with Promarkers.
Stamps (Hero Arts) - Antique Engravings, Wild Flowers & Tree, Birds and Messages.


I love using Crackle Accents!

October Card Chain Challenge

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve blogged! Hopefully next month, I’ll be back in full swing again.



Through Deborah’s wonderful Card Chain Challenge, I received this fantastic card from Janet in the U.S. Janet has been having fun with her Silhouette and I love the design and colours she came up with. The layered flower is so beautiful and the all over shimmer on the card is just amazing. Because of the grey skies we’ve been having here recently, I just haven’t been able to catch the shimmer in a photo, but it is absolutely gorgeous! Clicking on the photo twice to enlarge it will give you more of an idea of the shimmer but Janet's photo here captured it much better than I did. Thanks again Janet, I love it!

This is the card I sent to Dwita in Indonesia.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Fabulous Flourish & Tree, Birds and Messages.

On the background I embossed the Fabulous Flourish in white, applied distress inks (broken china & faded jeans) and spritzed with water. The sentiment was done in the same way. I added a sprinkling of pearls and a gorgeous flower from a set that Kelly had sent me a while ago with a CCC card – thanks again Kelly!

Keep Out!

Although we have a great time at Halloween and the kids and I love it so much, I’ve never made a Halloween card before. As I don’t have any Halloween stamps I thought I'd try to make a little Halloween scene. Robin has made wonderful Halloween cards using houses, see here and here, so I thought I’d have a go at a spooky Halloween house too. It took me a while to make but I just had so much fun putting all the bits and pieces together.



Where to start with a description! The gates\fence are embossed in black and after adding a mask for the moon I applied distress inks (shabby shutters, dusty concord, broken china & faded jeans) for the background. I printed the “KEEP OUT” sign from Word, distressed the edges and applied antique linen distress ink. I used a piece of string (with some antique linen on it) and a sparkly brad to attach the sign to the gate.




Now to the inside of the card. I made the background for the house using distress inks (shabby shutters, dusty concord, broken china & faded jeans) and masks for the moon and hill. The path is a scrap (with walnut stain distress ink) left over from another project. I coloured the house with watercolour pencils and added some cracks to the wall with a marker. The occupant of the house has left her broomstick and hat outside – fiddly but fun to make. The tree in the pot has little dots on it so I added an extra dot beside each one to make it look likes eyes peeking out of the greenery. I love decorating our house for Halloween and on the day itself we fill the driveway with leaves so the trick or treaters have to rustle through the leaves up to our “haunted house”. So I had to add some leaves on the ground and on the house like we do at home. Then I just added some googly eyes to finish.



I made this card for Hero Arts’ current challenge “Everything Autumn” as well as Jenny’s Wee Memories Challenge #23 - S.O.S..



The S.O.S. Challenge is to incorporate any 2 of the 3 designs, Scallops, Orange or String into a card\project. So I’ve got the scallops (on the roof), orange (leaves & on house) and string (tied to raffia on broomstick, gold string on witch’s hat & on the keep out sign).


Stamps (Hero Arts) Flourish Grids, House with Plant & Tree, Birds and Messages

The CRAFT CRITIQUE blog is having a HALLOWEEN BLOG CARNIVAL where you can see and share all kinds of Halloween related crafty projects; cards, scrapbook pages, knits, jewellery, clothes, gifts, foods, costumes etc. The Halloween Carnival will run until 14th October so if you have a crafty Halloween project you’d like to share it has to be linked to their blog before that date.

Peace and Flowers

Since I’ve got back from holidays I’ve been itching to get stamping again and thought it would be fun to try to combine the Signs of Peace Challenge in the Moxie Fab World with the current Hero Arts' challenge Keeping in Touch and Back to School.

Stamps (Hero Arts):- Four Dolls & Tree Birds and Messages.

The peace sign makes me think of the 60s and 70s, flowers, Woodstock, hippies, embellished clothing, friends etc. So I tried to incorporate these into my card. To start with I made a peace sign out of card. Then I stamped and cut out lots (and lots!) of flowers, put them on the peace sign using foam pads and added quite a few gems. For the background I used the Cuttlebug distressed stripes embossing folder which reminds me of wood - a bit of a stretch I know for Woodstock! I love this sentiment and thought it would go with the peace sign and the Hero Arts keeping in touch theme.



Hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful, groovy weekend!