Creative Expressions Thursday and A Rose.."Just for You".

Hi My lovely ladies and Gents (if there are any, lol do hubbies count too?)

Well haven't we had some lovely cheery wall to wall sunshine, my daughter has been going off to work in the morning in just shorts and little T shirt. She cycles to work anyway but it has been so horridly wet that most of time she gets soaked and luckily gets a shower in the gym before work but these last few days she got to cycle in wearing nice things before hitting the gym then work,, ooo to be so young and carefree hey girls. However as I am typing this it is now torrential rain oh dear...( I jinxed it)

Ah well today's card has a number of things going on but looks quite simple , I went for a colour scheme that in my head I never thought would work but you know once I laid it out I really liked it even though I am not a pink person with the right colours with it I warm to it and this really came out all romantic with the tulle etc.

So have a look and I will get started on how I made it.

Blush , Milk and Teal card stock.

 A slightly different look so you can see the layers here.

            Here are the stamps I used to create this card.

For you  and  Floral spray , I used just he rose in that one.

So to start I used perfect medium and stamped the Just for you stamp on Milk card  and embossed in Gold detail embossing powder. I cut it out with a simple rectangle die and Inked through the die with a little Antique linen Distress Ink just simple around the edge.
I then used the Matt chalk paints and a water brush as the colours are just so smooth and easy to blend, I used just three colours here , a hint of Pacific Teal in the clouds well watered down, Tuberose and china pink in the flowers with a hint of black pen in the centres. I also used a little hint of glaze over the flowers to make them shine.
I matted this onto a small piece of teal card and wrapped the bottom with a thin double sided satin ribbon.

 I took a larger piece of blush card which has a hint of pink in it already and I stamped the Rose from the floral spray set but this time I used my distress pens and simply coloured onto the stamp with the pens til I had the colours of the outline I wanted , I then breathed onto the stamp to re moisten the ink and stamped it on the right hand side of the card. I finished adding a few shaded areas with the same pen colours which were Spun sugar, Victorian velvet, Worn lipstick, Peeled paint and forest moss. The good thing about stamping with pens is you can mix lots of colours to stamp in and get the colours where you want even in detailed areas.

So I knew I wanted to have some embossing or debossing on the card but my dilemma was that I wanted it to have some hessian and tulle (as these seem to be my ultimate fav thing just now along with the Chalk paints.) But it is so easy to go over the top when adding so many things all in the one place so I wanted to show you ladies that you can use all things if you want to add texture but if you balance the card your eye will always still be drawn to the main focus point so it is best to choose in the beginning what that will be , whether it is the sentiment, the image or are you going to feature some handmade flowers  or an embossing technique, here I have shown you all of those items in one card but this is how to do it with balance. ( ooo don't I go On hehe)

So I took the same piece of blush card that I stamped the rose onto and ran the left hand side through Sue's Sea Garden embossing folder ( remember to hand the embossing folder over the edge of the plates so that you don't get a line on your card stock. I could have inked on the positive side of the folder to letter press the colour into the debossed areas but I find sometimes it doesn't always transfer neatly and for this card I wanted the colour on the card in a neat as opposed to shabby Chic style ( I love shabby chiq things and vintage styles but I would do it all the time so I like to be versatile) Once it came out of the folder I took my spun sugar pen and my Victorian velvet pen and began to draw in the debossed areas, just around the edge where I knew it would show. You can see it in the small picture above. I then added a strip of hessian which I frayed to the left of the card and a piece of tulle over the hessian and out the other side to lay over the area I just coloured.

 The top Image shows the Hessian and tulle out the left hand side of the image  and after I added the whole piece onto a double matt of blush card which I pierced. I thought I would make a little flower section, so I took a piece of hessian and added a small circle of card on top to give me something to adhere things to and I took a piece of tulle and tied a know in the middle I folded it in half and added it to the left on the card disk, I then added a small cream flower that I made using a strip of the Crochet ribbon cut in half and I just did a quick running stitch down the fixed end and gathered up with a knot stitched in the end. I added a pearl spray so it ran up the left of the card. On top of that I laid my thin ribbon double bow and a hessian strip bow too ad finally a heart dazzler was the bow cover as we can have naked bows here lol..

Here is a bunch of the flowers I made form the crochet ribbon and other laces in my stash.

This is the really thin , looks a 5mm doubled sided satin ribbon I used this week, last week I used one double as thick as this, so it comes in the two different thickness's and at least 3 double sided colours.

To finish I added a couple of flat back pearls and voila as they say.

I wish you could see this card in person it really does look so very pretty, well in fact I will make sure when I send out my little treats that this is one of the cards that goes out. 

Now ladies I am sure you don't want to see too much more writing today as there is a lot on this post but as promised I took a few pictures of all the latest stick pins I have been making, in all different sizes as sometimes we wanted shorter pins others longer so today I thought I'd show you the pictures and then on another day I will show you how I have been making them. They aren't as nice as Sue's I can tell you hers are amazing but I was pleased with this last bunch and so I wanted you all to see them, especially as they aren't staying mine if you know what I mean some of you  lucky ladies haha.

So here they are.

 I laid out a fair few to start then realised you weren't going to get very close like that so i then took a few at a time, when I made these when i first had the Op done and I had been home about a week I didn't have any of the CE stick pin blanks that Sue uses and sourced for us all but I wish I had, these in the pictures are mostly headpins cos I found even though they are blunt at the bottom I could still add them into bows or under them with a dab of glue etc, But the thing is some of the really skinny ones can bend while you are making them ( most don't but they can) so now I have learned a bit more I use the CE ones, they are much thicker and sturdy as those of you who are lucky enough to have them will know. But this is what I have so far and as they all have crystal on them I want to use and give them away before I make the next ones.

 Mixed pinks.

 Yellow, green and clear.

 Dragonflies.

 Blacks.

 More green and yellows.

 Tanzanite purples.

 Deep purples mixed.

I bought some pearls on sticks and added a bead cap these are gold but I also did silver.

So there we have it ladies  for today. 

I am now heading off as I have lots to prep for , Not only my shows On the 7th June but we also having a blog hop (shush) around that same time to prepare for and Saturday this week is the amazing new launch of the next characters in the Visible image range so we are doing a special launch that day too.

 I want to say a huge thank you to all you wonderful ladies for leaving me so many comments over at Craftwork cards on Monday , wow you are not only followers on my blog but you are also warm lovely ladies who have become my friends so thank you from the bottom of my heart for that , it is very much appreciated.

Lots of crafty hugs 

Love

Kim 

xxxx