Purple Classics

This is a card I made for one of my daughters who started a new job recently.  She is an Assistant Designer at a book publishers so I wanted to design a card that reflects her new role and is personal to her.  One of her favourite colours is purple so the colour scheme was an easy choice.  The stamps I have used are Sheena Douglass' 'A Little Bit Magical - Knowledge' set; the Mona Lisa is from the Tim Holtz collection; the word 'Create' is from Paper Parachute; an embossing folder from Sheena's 'A Taste of India' collection; Distress Inks, H2os, gilding wax have also been used.  The background panel started as a piece of white card onto which I blended 3 colours of DIs before embossing it in the folder.  I added gold gilding wax to highlight the raised pattern.  On another piece of white card I stamped some books, a quill and ink bottle, the word and the Mona Lisa in black ink then heat embossed with black EP.  I fussy cut the images out then painted them with the inks and some gold H2o paint, except for the Mona Lisa.  I blended the same inks all over the panel, added black ink around the edges, then triple heat embossed with clear EP to give a glazed effect.  I made a tag for the word and edged it in black.  I threaded some coordinating fibres through the tag.  Then I took some pink hessian ribbon and stained it with the inks to tone in with the card.  I attached this to the background panel, then matted that onto black card and layered it onto the base card.  The other images were attached as embellishments with dimensional glue.  I am really pleased with this design - and so was my daughter!  I think it will make a good worker card too, for many occassions and male and female cards too

Poppies and Brushos

Another birthday card that I made recently for one of my daughters.  She loves the colour purple and I love red poppies so I decided to use black card and Dyna paints, giving the flowers a 'two-tone' effect.  I also wanted to play with my Brushos again as they make lovely backgrounds amongst other things!  So for this design I have used Sheena Douglass Perfect Partners Poppy dies, Pebeo Dyna paints, black Brusho crystals,Gold Brilliance ink, and other die cuts from my stash.  The base card is white, and I have sponged around the edges with Red Blue and Gold Dyna paints.  Taking a piece of watercolour card I spritzed water lightly over the card and sprinkled the brusho crystals over the wet patches.  The great thing about Brushos is you cannot predict exactly what pattern they will make, as they spread randomly across the wet card.  I only used one colour of Brusho, but each colour is made up of component coloured crystals which separate beautifully as they spread.  When dry I used large nesting dies to cut the background panel and a black matting layer, then with the die still on the background panel I added some gold ink around the inner edges.  I made a smaller panel in the same way for the sentiment.  Next I die cut all the flowers, stems and leaves out of black card and embossed them.  I painted the flower petals with Red Blue and the leaves and stems in Green Gold.  I used Gold paint on the embossed highlights on the petals, and left the flower centres black.  I attached the background panel to the black mat and then to the base card.  I did the same with the smaller panel.  I attached the flowers, stems and leaves with dimensional glue to the large panel.  I used dies to cut the sentiment out of black card and added gold gilding wax, then attached them to the panel and then to the card.  I really love the contrast of the black with the 'two-tone' zingy  Dyna paints in this design.  I think this is a very cheerful card that could be used for different occassions.