Butterflies and Dragonflies Easel Card

On AFTCM I joined a swap to make and easel card with the theme of Butterflies and Dragonflies with heat embossing on it.

I started with white 130LB cardstock and colored two pieces with fluid chalk inks using Cathie Allan's "stamp smoosh' technique.

On one piece I stamped the Stampendous dragonfly with green pigment ink and embossed it with clear embossing powder. Cut around most of it leaving an area on the bottom right, flipped it over, then traced around some chipboard letters to spell out the word "FLY". I cut around them, ensuring that there was areas joining the dragonfly and letters to the panel. I edged it with a green marker, and stamped some corner stamps at each corner.

I embossed the chipboard letters with green pigment ink and clear embossing powder and attached them to the front of the card panel.

To hold the front in place and create an easel, I cut a piece of embossable window plastic and folded it in half, attached it to the back panel and then to the front. I attached a little 3-D butterfly at the corner of the front panel.

To complete the inside I stamped a saying and attached it over some butterflies wings.

I colored a piece of ribbon with pigment inks to coordinate with the colours I used on the card. and attached it to the back (covering it with another piece of cardstock to hide it) then tied it in place to keep the card closed.

Sparkly Stained Glass

Another swap on AFTCM is the card of the month, themed Sparkly Stained Glass.

I have several stamps that are a stained glass type so I decided to try them for the technique.

I stamped an Iris stamp by All Night Media on a piece of embossable window plastic with blackbird fluid chalk, then gently heat set it. I started by filling in the areas with Judikins diamond glaze using a small paint brush, sprinkled on Glitter Ritz, allowing it to set for a few minutes then continued on with the various colours.

After the piece was dry I realized I had gone over the edges of some areas and tried to remove it and add the appropriate colour, but ended up having a hard time as it had set too much. I decided to go ahead and put it on a piece of cardstock I had previously stamped with bleach, which had an old world look.

I decided not  to use this for the swap due to the mistakes I made, so proceeded to make a second card.

This time I chose a Holly Berry House stamp, stamped and embossed it on a piece of embossable window plastic. I followed the same steps to apply the Glitter Ritz and Stampa Rosa glitter, being more careful to ensure it stayed within the lines, (the embossing was better for this technique as the lines were more visible).

When the piece dried I attached it to a piece of white cardstock using Sookwang tape and cut it out. I adhered it to a red background then a green background (edged with a dark green marker), which I had made then to a piece of red metallic cardstock.

I considered trying another one with some stained glass paints that I have in my stash, but opted against it as I found this technique very time consuming.

A is for...

On CC Swaps I joined an Alphabet Swap where we use a medium, technique or theme using the alphabet A.

For this swap I used one of the pieces of Acrylic pages done on metallic cardstock. I covered a piece of heavy weight cardboard with it. I then took some embossable window plastic and coloured it with alcohol inks. I attached these to the covered cardboard with eyelets  and some thin strips of double-sided foam tape to form pockets.

I then added some little cooking utensils at the top with a plastic piece (from socks) and attached them to the top. I covered some typewriter keys with page pebbles and added them to the bottom pocket to spell out recipes. ( I got the idea for this from Julia Andrus' book but did not use the same techniques). Finally, I wrote out two of my favourite recipes and put them in the pockets.

Flutterbyes (AKA Butterflies)

I am participating in another swap in the DCI group where we are creating butterflies for each participant. The only one who specified a colour choice was Lynne who wanted shades of purple.

I had no idea what I was going to do for this swap, but when cleaning up my craft room I came across my Gallery window paints and decided to use them.

I started by stamping and embossing a large butterfly (by Embossing Arts) on a piece of embossable window plastic. I did not want to do all of them in the same colour so chose a few different colour combos. I found that I had to do at least 3 coats of the gallery glass to make them more intense.

On the purple one I used iridescent violet on a portion which did not show up very well, so I got out my Ranger adirondack acrylics in Wild Plum and painted it on. This did not appeal to me, so I then sprinkled some fine light lilac glitter over the top.

On the blue one I had the same problem, the light blue glass paint did not show up well, so I used dimensional paint on it and sprinkled it with blue glitter. The green one was the same, (light blue) not showing up, so on that one I painted over it with some DecoArt metal/glass paint and then added crystal lacquer over the top. The remaining ones are fine as the colours were more intense, so I will leave them as is. These look much better "in person" than on the computer as the detail does not show well in the picture.