All You Need is Love - Saturday 2nd February

Hello Friends,

Today's card is my Design Team card for the new Emergency Crafters Challenge..the theme is Love, but it doesn't have to be Valentine's! I'm writing this at about 7am, but scheduling for later in the hope that the new challenge will be live by then, as we are out all day...not much crafting for me today!

This card was also my group's card for our class on Thursday and the easiest way to describe it's 'construction' is to break it down into sections...sorry about the photo, I hadn't realised it was quite to dark when I originally uploaded it!

The Rose Topper

I Inked the large rose stamp (Kanban) on watercolour card (that was just my choice, it could be any stamping card) using Cranberry Adirondack ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

Next I mixed  a little Victorian Velvet and Bundled Sage  distress(separately) inks with a spritz of water on my mat and using a paintbrush, coloured in the rose and leaves quickly, it just needed a 'wash'.  I then quickly ran my heat tool over the image just to dry off the ink.

Finally I  inked  the edges  of the card with Victorian Velvet before matting and layering on the pink and white card, ddd a little ink to the edges of bottom white layer as well.

The Rose Background for the Easel

For this I used a cuttlebug embossing folder  and embossed it through a cuttlebug, twice to cover the whole layer of the card. In case those of you who have followed me for a while and know how much I love my Grand Calibur are wondering why I was using a Cuttlebug, as some of you know, my GC developed 'internal' problems just before Christmas. I contacted Spellbinders in the US who were brilliant and got the UK repairer to contact me. They will repair for free, but as mine was one of the original machines and is almost 3 years old, I had to pay for the postage to send it to him, with no guarantee he could repair it. After a lot of consideration and communication with the repairer, we decided that in view of the age and possible extent of damage, it isn't worth repairing, so I'm going to have a new one for my birthday. The original is still struggling on, but the more intricate dies are just too much for it. 

A friend of mine who decided to dabble in craft and then decided that it maybe wasn't for her, had bought a Cuttlebug and hardly used it, so she offered it to me just after Christmas for a very small price...as this means I can use the Tim Holz and other thicker dies, how could I refuse that offer!

To make the background paper for the base

I used a piece of linen card cut to the size of the base. Using the Victorian Velvet, I stamped a single small rose stamp from the same set on scrap paper and then inked the card. This way the stamped image wasn't so  defined. I stamp randomly or in a pattern over the sheet, coated with clear embossing powder and heat embossed, then I inked all over lightly with Victorian Velvet.

The Stencilled Greeting

This is a Dreamweaver stencil, used with iridescent Dreamweaver Paste and Dreamwaver F/x mica powder, heat embossed until it bubbled. I actually saw Ali Reeve on TV making her own paste yesterday, something I'll definitely give a go...when I get the time!

To complete I added ribbon and a few gems and left a corner of the topper free from glue, just to turn it up for more of a Vintage effect.

Well for me I am going to have to 'fit in' crafting when I can this weekend as I have a lot of commissions to make, plus a craft fair in March that I haven't even started thinking about...but we aren't going to be home much...it looks like I'll be playing catch up with tonight's episode of 'Borgen' !!!

Hope you all have a fab weekend...please check out the latest Emergency Crafters Challenge here ("m hoping it's live now! If not, it should be in the next day or so)

Thank you so much for stopping by, I love reading your comments!

Hugs,

Carole X

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