Little Claire Design Team Call

Stamp: LC Emma Flower
Papers: My Mind's Eye 'Quite Contrary'

A few weeks ago Little Claire put out a call for 5 new members to join their design team! I was so excited as it's something that I have often thought I would like to do one day and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I have been busy making up some new designs using all the Little Claire stamps that I own and here are the results.

First I made a twisted easel card and layered patterned paper onto the base and easel. I stamped the flower twice, once on a white die-cut oval and again on a piece of spare card. The oval was lightly embossed, layered and mounted as shown in the photo. The spare flower petals were coated with ‘glossy accents’ and left to dry. When dry, I cut the individual flowers out, curled them gently, decoupaged them onto the main image and added buttons. Another small flower, glossed in the same way, was added to the stamped and layered greeting. Coloured ‘Candi’ completes the design.

Stamp: LC Flowerhead

Second, I made a Post-It note gift which was made by cutting a piece of thick, coloured card and layering with patterned paper, a lace border and ribbon. The flower was stamped twice on acetate and once onto a piece of white card. A piece of adhesive glittered sheet was sprinkled with blue micro glitter and fixed to the back of one of the acetate flowers. Permanent pens were used to highlight the features on the other acetate flower and then all three were stuck together and left to dry. The flower was then cut out and mounted onto the gift.

Stamp: LC Flowerhead

With the same stamp, I also made a quick note card. The flower was stamped onto a small square card with a glue pad, sprinkled with gilding flakes, tapped to remove most of the excess and left to dry. Using both stencil and soft brushes the image was then brushed to remove all traces of excess flakes leaving a beautiful gilded image. A red adhesive gem finishes off the centre.

Stamp: LC What Fun!
Papers: PMA Capsule Collection 'Heather'

I thought I would make a variety of projects and not just cards so next I made a corner bookmark. It was made from a square of patterned paper. The image was stamped onto a piece of white cardstock and coloured with Promarkers, using a blender pen to add texture to the elephant’s skin. It was then matted and layered onto the bookmark. A lace border, ribbon, punched flowers and adhesive gems were added to complete the project which was then photographed on my Robert Redford biography!

Stamps: LC Warming My Cockles
and Merry & Bright.
Tag card blank : Little Claire

With my snowmen stamps I made a Christmas tag card. The two images were stamped onto white cardstock, scanned and resized to fit the tags. The resized images were then printed out onto white cardstock and coloured with ‘Promarkers’. They were matted and fixed to the card. I also added a die-cut circular sentiment and a snowflake panel. Details were highlighted with adhesive gems and ribbon & lace were knotted through the holes at the top.

Stamp: LC Swirly Whirlies 'Poppies'
Paper: Craft Creations

I decided to do some stitching for my next card. The 'Poppies' image was stamped onto a white die-cut circle and coloured with ‘Promarkers’. It was matted and fixed to the card as shown in the photo. I made a yo-yo by gathering up a circle of fabric and stitched a button on top. This was fixed to the card with punched leaves as shown.

Stamp: LC Good
Morning Robin

I chose a Christmas theme for my little girl's door hanger. I die-cut an aperture from a piece of thick, coloured card to make the hanger. The image was stamped onto a die-cut ivory label, coloured with ‘Promarkers, highlighted with ‘Stickles’ and fixed to the bottom of the hanger. I die-cut a frame for the aperture and decorated it with ‘Candi’, coloured to match the image. The project was finished with a piece of satin ribbon and dome stickers to spell a girl’s name.

Stamp: LC Swirly Whirlies 'Owls'

Having been involved with Girlguiding nearly all my life, I couldn't resist making a Brownie card with the Swirly Whirly Owls. First, I attached a brown paper rectangle onto a yellow tent fold card. Then I printed a Brownie trefoil onto a piece of white cardstock, die-cut it into a circle, matted it, added a peel-off greeting and attached it to the top of a tent fold card. The image was stamped onto a rectangle of white cardstock, coloured with ‘Promarkers’ and layered as shown in the photo.

Stamp: Butterfly
Paper: PMA

For my last project I used my most recent stamp together with my love of paper folding techniques. I made a diamond shaped card using a piece of double-sided paper and decorated the side panels and centre square with layers of the reverse of the paper, inked at the edges. I stamped the image twice, once onto a piece of white cardstock and once onto a piece of shrink plastic. The main image was coloured with ‘Promarkers’, cut out, matted onto a co-ordinating piece of cardstock, cut out, mounted onto the central square and finished with adhesive gems. The shrink plastic image was coloured with coloured pencils to match the colouring of the main image, shrunk using a heat gun and fixed onto the bottom right of the right hand panel. Adhesive gems were added to the corners.

So that's it! I have sent all the photos off and will keep all my fingers crossed, though I expect hundreds of people have submitted entries and can I wish whoever is chosen the best of luck!

Rediscovering my blog!

I can't believe that I haven't blogged at all in the last two years - I don't know where the time goes!! Anyway I decided that I needed to start again as I accidentally lost all my pictures, patterns, photos etc, last summer when my computer was upgraded - I know I should have backed it all up and really thought I had but obviously not and it can't be undone unfortunately!

Papers: Kate Knight paper stack
Stamp: PMA Retail Therapy

Today is as good a time as any as one of my cards has been published in Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine, issue 94 - it's so exciting to see your cards in print! I also won a small prize so that was great too! It was one of three cards entered for their Card Designer of the Year competition. I didn't expect to win such a huge competition but it's nice to see they liked one of my cards enough to print it in a future issue of the magazine. These are the other cards I entered:

Card blank: Little Claire tag card
Stamp: Little Claire Flowerhead

This is one of Little Claire's tag cards and one of my favourite of their stamps Flowerhead, cut into four jigsaw pieces. I also won a small prize for this when Little Claire featured it on their blog in the countdown to Christmas. So now I have a nice new stamp to play with too! The second photo is the back of the card which has a ribbon bow on it. The purple colours of the ribbon matched each other much more closely in real life, but the camera has made one of them look rather blue.

The last card was made using a recently discovered technique of cutting metal flowers from a recycled pop/beer can using a Sizzix Bigz die. I first saw a video on youtube and couldn't wait to get a suitable die to have a go (with grateful thanks to my friend Rozzy for ordering it for me)! I think they will feature a lot on my cards this year and I have saved loads of different cans to experiment with!

Die: Sizzix Bigz Flower Daisies #2
Papers: Dovecraft Winter Wonderland