Creative Expressions Thursday

Hello Blogglies

Welcome to Thursdays Creative Expressions Kraft and natural fibres card.

I love Kraft card and I managed a little twist here also with the sentiment which I hope makes you smile.

Here is today's card.

.Different isn't it,  I used another of the gorgeous Singles stamp range from Creative Expressions called Temptation , here is what it looks like.

 I love these silhouette images they are nice and sharp and you can adapt them as you saw over the last few week where I had used white and sparkle pens to add lights into the hair etc or as with this one where I did several layers of True white embossing powder for a very shiny flat white image which looks fab with Kraft and red card stock.

 I took a large piece of Foundations Kraft card and embossed it with Couture creations embossing folder from the Ambassador Collection called Large Classics I also extended it to make it a larger square shape rather than rectangle 5x7 which the folder is. I ran a little sand paper in fine over the top of the words very gently just to break the top coat of the paper a little to absorb ink a little more.
I then took a white ink pad and some cut and dry foam, you can also use a brush or a blender/duster or even a piece of micro fibre cloth works and dab into the white and using Small circles buff it into your lettering.

I took some gorgeous silky crush ribbon in champagne which I think is my 2nd fav colour in this ribbon of all time, my first is the teal/seafoamy colour and both together... stunning. (I digress haha).
I wrapped the ribbon around the bottom of the card and then mounted it onto some Milk card stock keeping a nice small border.

 Here is the backing piece ready like a blank canvas waiting patiently for its masterpiece (ooo get me lol).

 I had a small piece of corrugated card on the desk next to me so I again rubbed some white ink into the raised striations and added it to milk card and set aside.

Using Perfect Medium embossing ink I stamped out the main image from this stamp set and embossed it with True white as soon as the powder melted I moved quickly and added some more powder two more times to make it very opaque and shiny. I then added that to a layer of milk card to match the other pieces.

 I then stamped my sentiment three times close to each other and of course it then changes the appearance from simply, "lead me not into temptation.... I can find the way there myself". to having a centre line of " I can find temptation....I can find temptation....". which made me smile haha... It is always good to find others ways to use things and other ways to show an item in another light etc.

 I used Coffee Archival to stamp out this one on milk card and mounted it onto red cardstock for a small pop of colour.

So to keep it all matching I took the backing piece and gave it a thin layer of red and another very small milk mat also.

 I stamped my sentiment one more time mounting it on red in the same way and adding it onto the ribbon on the bottom right  I cut off the corner on the corrugated piece so I could add it next to the sentiment without raising it too high from the card front.
I decided to take a piece of Calico Cotton and fray the edges to create a natural mat to go under the main image. But first I added my corrugated piece with some of the cream crochet ribbon from Creative Expression to the left with a small piece of red card behind to show through.

 I added it to the card and added the calico and then added foam to the back of the main image and adhered that onto the cotton. I then tied a bow out of the matching ribbon and added that with a glue dot and covered the knot with a large 8mm cream sticky back pearl and wrapped some of the fused pearls in white around the pearl and left the end free to dangle prettily.

I added those same pearls to each corner and then three atop of the corrugated card. Lastly I took one of The Wendy Vechi embellishment pieces from one of my last shows and coloured the back in a little cocktail style colour as it is a little clear acyclic cocktail/Martini glass , I used alcohol pens so it would no rub off and then used a white ink in dots on the from and highlighted pieces to sharpen images. I also cut a little circle and made a little umbrella for the glass , because the centre section is raised It allow the umbrella not to squash onto the card but to sit freely away from the card.
So here are a couple of the finished images.

 I hope you like all the layers and natural materials on this one, I know I love the pop of red with the Kraft and milk card teal looks fab too if you are looking for a male alternative with maybe a beer glass and a tartan bow cut very square and boxy. Masculine style.

I decided to add a tiny bit of glitter in a few of the letters on the back and just around the dress and a little fizz coming from the glass to finish off.

This is a total contrast to yesterday's inky card but look how versatile these two looks are and ho its such fun to adapt to all different styles. I really do love the challenges. I would love to do some workshops as a few of you mentioned in comments recently and I would love to come to shops near you to do it so if you have any shops near you and you would like to see me there with Inky styles or today's gorgeous natural look please ask them to contact me and we can arrange something otherwise please bear with me as I do have a few things coming forward in the coming months to share with you all.
Huge thanks to you all for being here with me as always.

You all have my appreciation and grattitude , lots of love and crafty hugs to you all.

Kim 

XXXX

Visible Image Wednesday.

Hi folks

Happy Wednesday guys and dolls ( mostly dolls haha),  Visible Image Wednesday of course , I hope you are all having a really good week and that you are starting to see some lighter nights at last I can't believe I came out of work tonight and the sky was still slightly blue and it was light wooooo. Isn't it such a relief.... Don't I sound old haha...

Anyway I hope you all fancy a good old Inky treat today cos did I get covered making this one, I had it on my face and my hands were simply so covered I had to bleach them to get them clean haha.. I love it.... best place to be elbows deep in inky glory.. who agrees? and who prefers the clean paper styles then or do we have some budding mixed media artists here today , what is your favourite styles folks....
That's the fab thing about being on a team  you get to see so many styles and talents and enjoy the way several people all look at a stamp set with a different perspective. Visible Image have a great blog too which shows the whole teams talents so be sure to grab a cuppa put your feet up and have a browse if you get a minute or 30.

Today's card as I said is very inky and features a very newly released stamp set from a new collection and this one is called Behind every Mask and as soon as I saw it I knew it was right up my ally so what do you think?.

Isn't it different... the stamp set is the bird and the sentiment the rest I have drawn in and used several techniques to show of this glorious set to its full potential.
Here is a close up of the picture.

To start this one I took a white piece of card and pulled out several Distress inks , Black Soot chipped Sapphire, Faded jeans, Dusty Concord and Milled lavender.
I also used a template I made with another new stamp in Visible Image Background stamps range called Orbital. I stamped out the image once and cut it out, made it tacky on one side and stuck it down on the page slightly moving off the top of page.

I also had a doily die cut I had cut out with a scallopy edge so I tore that in half to use for the cloud edges. (use what you have folks).

For the skyline I took some white card and freehand cut the shapes of some buildings out I held it by hand onto the bottom of the card and used black soot all through the stencil to just put down the basic image.

I worked lots of the colours on the rest of the card  quite patchy which does not matter for a sky at all, as naturally it would be. Keep the area around the moon lighter though as we need to show the reflections and the edges of clouds etc.
I also used the edge of a piece of cut and dry to drag in some ink in lines across the moon and from outside edges of the card in and kept the lines soft and blended but you can still see them very well.
Once I had the depth of colour in the card I spritzed it with water  left a few seconds and blotted with kitchen paper and removed some of the ink, I also dropped some bigger water droplets and left then blotted them off. All these different times we layer and spritz and blot creates a much more real lifelike image which makes it more believable and less cartoon. ( you know what I mean don't you haha). I went through the sky with a water brush too taking a Little colour away from cloud edges and blotting again with plain water. This works with this ink and say adirondack and any other water soluble inks but not with an oil based ink like archival.

Nice and close here for you to see the sky and how bright the moon looks once the template is removed and a few lighter clouds are added and some glitter around the cloud bars across the front.
So to those roof tops.
I used again the same technique in two parts firstly i took a paintbrush and painted plain water onto the tiles of the roof's waited a few seconds and dabbed the colour off this lightened it a fair bit but not with the light you see above so the 2nd stage was to take a white drawing ink and add a little water to it to make it very fluid  I then used the same technique with a solution of the water and white ink and then dabbed it off which gave me this fab light grey base to work with , I then used sepia ink and white ink to highlight edges in its pure form.I drew in stars in the sky and painted some white in the eyes in the birds wings to make them stand out as if they stare at you. lastly on the actually picture part of this card I used some glitter under the bird sparkling in the moonlight and on the roofs too, not to much but enough to look very special , without looking festive as I did not want that look.

Of course I had some matting and layering to do on Aubergine card and cream card which matched greatly with the darker colours , I also stamped my sentiment in perfect medium and used a white embossing powder for the words to stand out nicely.

I love this card and of course this weekend was the huge tradeshow at Birmingham NEC for the trade to show off lots of new goodies coming up this year from a range of companies and I must say the Visible Image stand looked simply divine  I hope Helen and Mark don't mind me sneaking a facebook photo to show how amazing they created their booth with all their and our hard work on cards we all certainly make a great team for sure.

Didn't they do an awesome job on the layout of all our cards and the promo posters at the top. Retro and gorgeous with the Black and white table cloths. Stunning Helen and Mark I wish I could have got there to see you all but definitely the next one.

So the stamp set I used for this one as I said is called Behind every Mask and it looks like this.

                                                                       "Amazing"

I also used this one Called orbital to create the moon template but I will show you cards in the coming weeks creating just this stamp on its own for some awesome backgrounds too.

                                                                         'Orbital'.

Well I hope you like this one so here is a final look at today's card.

Look forward to reading your comments and I will see you back here tomorrow.

Lots of love 

to all my lovelies

Kim 

XXXX

Creative Expressions Thursday

Hi Folks 

Hope you are having a good day.

Today is Creative Expressions day and I am working on a theme of these beautiful ladies in silhouette  so I am hoping to get four cards very similar in theme by the end of the month but with variations . 

This time I stamped out my lady in Black archival and highlighted her in white as I always do. 

My white highlighting is another of those staple things I seem to do on most cards.

I love black white and red together it always seems so elegant , its like a woman dressed in Navy and tan or navy in white with a splash of red in shoes or handbag or a scarf always looks so elegant and classy doesn't it... Or am I rambling haha... What do you lovlies think?

 I stamped my lady out on one sheet of white card and did the highlighting, I measured out my next piece of card and using a spellbinders doily die cut, cut out the centre I then added a black mat behind and also die cut the centre of it out through the aperture I just cut.  I wrapped a piece of red crinkle edge ribbon around the card and added foam to the back and mounted in on top of the first layer.
I also made another layer of black and white mats a little larger and added foam in between.

Here you can see I stamped out the sentiment that came with this set and just look how perfect and neat the sentiment came out, amazingly sharp. I then added that onto black to make it stand out from the back and added it slightly on top of the ribbon added earlier.

 I added a nice bow onto the ribbon and tied another double bow out of bakers twine in black and white from CE and topped it with a black dazzler which really reminds me of a poppy.. can you see it now I said it haha...

 I have taken a picture with the long angle so you can see the lovely layers and how you can play about with the height of foams etc  they don't need to be the same for instance her I have one layer at 2mm and one layer at 5mm here as I wanted a good gap behind the aperture I cut for my lady to sit in. ( oooo I sounded like a thunderbird then with the My lady business haha... I know you all thought I was too young to remember them  lol )  But nooooooooooooo ...

Here is a close up after I went back and added a bit more detail in white and also a sparkle to her hair and bags  etc. I added some nice sprays of beads on wire as part of CE's embellishment lines too.
The stamps set I used is called Temptation and is part of the singles range of stamps from Creative Expressions released this month  for the DT to work with etc.
The last thing I did was to add some little sparkly black gems to some of the corners to add a little bling to match the bow centre. I just love black sparklies.

Here is the finished sample again

I hope you like it in its classic glory and I have an extra post at the weekend so be sure to look out for that.

Huge hugs from my house to yours and lots of crafty hugs to you all.

Love 

Kim

XXXX

Visible Image Wednesday

Hi folks

I hope you have all had a good week and not too affected by the recent snow flurries. We had a couple of days worth but not too much.
Did you all get to enjoy the recent new launch of lots of gorgeous stamps for the fab Visible Image if not I have a card today I did in some really pretty girly colours that I really enjoyed making.

See what you think?  Colours of the  wind.

What an amazing stamp set this is. as soon as I saw it I hoped I could create with this one, I just loved it .
So here is what I did to start.

I took some versamark embossing ink and some clear embossing powder on some white card and took one of the small leaves from the set and stamped a cascading array of little leaves going diagonally across the card . I added my powder and heat set.

Next I chose the colours I wanted on the card, and while I new I wanted this one to be a pretty card, I wasn't sure which colours until I remembered my lovely Seedless preserves Distress ink and so I took my Milled lavender first and started to work this into the page and followed in with the darker shade. just in gentle circular blending movements with a very light hand to keep from getting lines etc. I then took the Milled lavender and the same little stamp and stamped several in the lighter shade which you can just see and then of course I did the same with the darker shade. I also darkened the edges of the card with the Seedless preserves so we had no white edges showing and really darkened the bottom right corner fading up into the card.

Here I took a micro fibre cloth and rubbed the ink off the embossed piece and worked the colour with the cloth into the little leaf edges which casts like a very subtle shadow if you look carefully , which gives the backing a lot of dimension without loading the card with lots of flowers and goodies on top  just for a different look this week.

 I chose to stamp the matching sentiment in simple black archival at the top of the card .

Then mounted it onto black card and then some foam and another matt and layer of white then black card for a classic clean look.

Next I took the large stamp from the set and look at himmmmm wow hes huge, haha and all that veining. stunning just stunning.
So using the same two inks I added the colour to the stamp with the light on one side the dark on the other and sort of blended and got it all covered then stamped it onto some thin white card the bendable type. and heat set it but of course distress is reactable with water so I spritzed it and then dabbed the colour off leaving some droplet shapes here and there. I also took a white chalk pen and flicked it at the leaf and heat set it all again.
I added a few white highlights around the edge and crumbled the leafs edges a little, not too much  and lastly I used a Sakura gel ink pen and traced some of the veins to give some sparkle and shine.
I added this to the the bottom of the card using some dimensional foam to lift it away from the  card too.

This picture shows the shine more and the edge s with the little highlights and a little darkened  and blended edges too.

 I left the leaf slightly off the edge of the card to look almost like it was just floating away .

 I added this angle so you can see how flat this one is compared to usual but yet how much depth you can add with how you stamp your backgrounds. I also went around the little leaf edges with some white highlights as on the big leaf and some sparkle so in the light this looks so sparkly and pretty, I just love these colours, they really are some of my favourite.

This is the set called , Colours of the wind. I used from the Fabulous Visible Image team, My very good friends Helen and Mark.

 Please pop over if you would like to and look at all the new images on the launch there was so many this time, it was a huge huge launch with several different types of stamps this time and we were just sooo lucky to be a part of it on the team .

I thought I would share with you this little girl balancing on the back of my craft chair while I was creating this one for you all to see. My chair is very wobbley so she was hanging on for dear life here haha, meet Duchess my neighbours Kitty giving me an old fashioned look as if to say ... sit still haha.

Well I hope all is well with you all and I look forward to sharing lots more things over the next couple of days.

If you are inspired and would like to see more of the fabby teams work with the 24 sets of new stamps from this launch feel free to pop over to the Visible Image blog and have a scroll through at all the amazing inky goodness from the Design team, so much work goes into these launches and Helen and Mark really do work through the night and make sure everything is all set. This is a true family run business and I love it.
Here is a link to go have a look and leave some love if you would like too.

Lots of love to you all 

Kim

XXXX

Creative Expressions Thursday

Hi Folks


Happy happy Thursday and today is the start of course of another month on the DT and so a new set of stamps to play with , this time we have a silhouette type theme and humour thrown in to boot, you will see what I mean once I show you the pictures of the card I have created for today.

I have a huge thank you and a shout out to my lovely friend Carol Clark and hubby David here on the blog for my birthday card, she did a fabulous job on my card and it was so very nice of her to remember so thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will keep it forever as it means such a lot to me. Carol you have a huge heart, bless you.

So who has had Snow then? oh I was so disappointed when I looked out a couple of days ago and there it was all glowing taunting me and twinkling, of course it looked soooo pretty but those of you who are aware of the recent ish foot op you will know I just panic the minute I see any thing remotely slippy so I was hoping I may get out of work that day but no such luck haha.

Ok so here is today's offering lovlies...

Something a little different isn't it.?

 So this is a nice easy one and  just has a little inking and die cutting i used an embossing folder for the background and a gorgeous ribbon and embellishments.

I started with a piece of Milk card which I ran through my Couture Creations embossing folder called Large classics from the Ambassador collection. I cut the card to size and left a section on the bottom to stamp my sentiment which I did using Archival black ink from Ranger.

 I used Vintage photo embossing ink to shade the edges of the card and drag some colour in towards the centre gradually getting lighter on a gradient toward the centre.
I mounted that section onto a piece of black card leaving just a small border to be seen.

I stamped out my lady from the set called 'Chocolate'  I think she stamps soooo chrisp the lines are fab..
I coloured in any parts I wanted blacker and then added some white pen highlights and dots etc on the cakes and shiny things like hair and shoes, I knew I would add a sparkly pen later but thought I would add the white to brighten the sparkle later.

 I cut her out using a die and while it was still in the die I took off the tape and inked it with the same Vintage photo.

 I wrapped the red ribbon that I also got in my DT pack around the edge where the sentiment is and added foam to the back to raise it from the next level on the card

I then cut a black mat for my lady to sit on and added lots of sparkle to her and her cakes and dress etc. I added her to the black mat too and added a bow toed from the ribbon to match

 I tied a double bow and shaped it into a nice chocolate box type bow with little pointed legs and added one of the black embellishments  I love these, they sparkle so much in any light. I also found my black marabou feathers. So I slipped one of those floaty things under the bow also, They always amuse me with the way they fluff about lol daft I know

Ok I thought I would show a  close up after I had coloured the cup cake and dress and hair shoes etc with their sparkles.

My finishing touch was just to add a few little black pearls in the corners and voilla all complete.

I

I hope you like this card and the silhouette image.

 Have a great day. 

lots of love

Kim

XXXX