Can glitter be clean and simple?

It's a stash challenge at the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown this week, and they've given us "Glitter". And what's more Christmassy than a bit of sparkle?

I'm really feeling that silly season has set in - I had my first Christmas dinner last night - so it's another CAS card. I'm really appreciating having built up a stash of cards over the year, and having been able to take my time over at least some of them! This time I've done a version of this card I made last year (almost to the day).

I cut Clarity Card to size to go onto a 5x7 card and also an A6 card, as I couldn't decide which to use.

I tore copier paper, and attached with masking tape to create a panel.

On the smaller piece I added picked raspberry and seedless preserve distress ink, with a blending tool.

On the larger piece, I used tumbled glass, salty ocean, peacock fathers and chipped sapphire.

With the paper still in place, I stamped snowflakes into the panel in versamark ink. I added white glitter embossing powder to the pink one...

... and black glitter embossing powder to the blue one, which I completely forgot to take a photo of.

I drew along the edge of the pink panel with a black pen, and edged the card with a bright pink sharpie. The blue one I edged with black sharpie.

For the topper, I got out my "other" Tattered Lace reindeer die. The one I used last year is my favourite, but it's nice to give this one an outing.

I cut it from black and white glitter card. I wanted a drop shadow behind each, so cut out two of each, and attached them (with PVA on the back of my hand) to the opposite colour, one with black on top, one with white.

If I'd planned a bit, I'd have cut two of them with the thin adhesive sheet on the back, to use to attach them.

I then put the panel cards onto the card bases, and the reindeer on top (with foam pads for dimension). I ended up putting the blue one the opposite way up to the original plan, but it just looked better that way!

This is a brighter, more shocking pink in real life, the contrast with the black is pleasing.

This black embossing powder is a more solid colour than I'd anticipated. I quite like the modern black snowflakes!

Sparkle snowflakes

Having missed last week's 52 Christmas Card Throwdown challenge, as I was away for a few days, I'm back this week for the technique challenge. They've given us embossing to work with.

Lots of ways to play with this one!

I started with a frame. I blended distress ink onto a sheet of Clarity stencil card. The colours used are tumbled glass, peacock feathers and salty ocean.

I then cut out my frame with my new square stitched dies.

I've got the outside aperture and inside square left over for use elsewhere.

To emboss the frame, I used the Clarity snowflake stencils. I covered them in gold pigment ink (it's more visible than versamark, so you can tell when the stencil is covered), and positioned them onto the frame.

I ran this through the grand calibur, which gives the first emboss (or deboss really)...

...then added platinum embossing powder and heated, for the second emboss. I repeated until the whole frame had been covered with snowflakes.

I also tried a darker blue card, with gold powder.

I like both, so will make another card, but have used the lighter one for the moment.

Time to make something to go in the middle! I tried stamping and embossing various baubles, and die-cutting some too.

But I wasn't that taken with any of them. The frame is quite strong, so needs something that won't be overwhelmed, and none had that wow factor. More bits to go into the stash pile for another card.

After a bit of mulling, I was writing up another blog post on some favours I made recently (see below this post) and realised that one of the techniques I'd used for that might be just the thing.

I started with some co-ordinating blue holographic paper from my stash, and stuck an adhesive sheet to the back of it.

I then turned over and peeled off the other backing sheet, and started adding to the sticky surface. Firstly I used gilding flakes, picking out the gold and blue colours from my mixed pot. Next I added blue glitter, then pale gold mica, and a bit of blue, although I didn't like that as much. Finally, I covered the sheet in platinum embossing powder to fill in the gaps.

I heated the sheet to "develop" the powder, and this was the result.

A lovely textured, shiny, glittery sheet to work with. I'm not sure if this counts as embossing, although it does use embossing powder.

I then die cut it with snowflake dies. You need a good die to go through the plastic adhesive sheet - my tattered lace dies did okay, but a cheaper one I had struggled a bit, and isn't such a clean cut.

Very pretty, you don't really get the sparkle and shine in the photo.

The last piece of the puzzle is a dry embossed background. I tried a few different folders, but chose one of my staples, a dotty pattern from tattered lace. I cut the card to size and edged it with the gold pigment ink before embossing.

This went onto the 6x6 card base first, then the frame. I used thick foam tape all round the frame; it had curled a little through being embossed, so the tape holds it nice and flat.

I used three of the snowflakes, mounted in the centre of the aperture using clear foam pads between the layers for lots of dimension. And finally a pearl in the middle - it really stands out in the photos, it's not quite so dominant in real life!

The end result is quite a delicate card.

Unfortunately, the 3 D snowflake doesn't photograph very well, but the mixture of colours and textures really catches the light.

Another blue card, I seem to be in a blue mood this month! I think this would look lovely in purple and silver as well, or in richer colours, maybe burgundy with copper. When I get some free time to play!

Harvest Festival Favours

Today I'd like to share with you the wedding favours I recently made for friends. And I'm going to submit them for the October Berkhamsted Creative Challenge, as they fit the theme of Harvest festival - Time of Plenty, with their Autumnal colours and edible filling.

Let's start with the samples I made for Becci and James to choose from.

The box in front is based on the meadow from my walled garden piece. They all use the dragonfly stamps, from Sheena Douglass.

The design they chose is a mixture of the two jars shown behind.

There are different parts that came together to make these favours. Let's look at the lids first. (The jars are the 110ml hexagonal glass jars from Hobbycraft.)

I painted the gold lids with white gesso, then decoupaged them with a decopatch paper.

The dragonflies are the larger stamp in the set. I stamped with versa mark onto heat proof acetate, heat embossed in gold and cut out with scissors.

For the flowers, I used a sheet of double sided adhesive. I attached it first onto the wrong side of gold paper (so the reverse is gold).

I then peeled off the other backing, and started adding to the sticky surface. First came gilding flakes, dotted across. Then glitter in bronze, gold and brown shades, including some tinselly pieces. I dusted gold shades of mica into some areas, then finished with gold and platinum embossing powder in the gaps, which I heated to set.

This is the first sheet I made:

And here's the second version, with more gilding flake and less mica. (It's also bigger.)

I love the texture this creates! It's fun too, basically you throw everything you have at the sheet.

I then die cut flower shapes from the sheets and layered up to form 3D flowers. I attached these to the lids, and the dragonflies to the flowers, using a glue gun.

On the jars themselves, I heat embossed the couples initials, R and J (Becci was Rebecca for this). I didn't know if heat embossing onto glass would work, but had a go, and it did. It just takes a long time to turn, as the glass absorbs more heat than card, and then takes a while to cool again.

The next step was the mini envelopes. These were cut from parchment using a punch, then embossed using the Groovi system. I added the fold lines, the names of the guests (the favours became place settings as well) and a twirly flourish.

To colour them, I sprayed them with gold paint from behind.

Inside, they each had a personalised printed message, which I edged with a brown sharpie pen to finish them off.

I pierced the corner of each envelope, and made a ring from wire to feed through to attach them.

I threaded the envelopes onto organza ribbon, along with a selection of beads, and feathers (I wired these with a spiral round the "stalk" and a loop, to be able to thread them on).

The ribbon was wrapped around the jar, with the knot hidden inside a bead. I used a dab from the glue gun to hold them in place.

I filled the jars with colourful dried fruits and seeds, arranged in layers.

When you see them all together, they make quite the swarm!

In situ they look rather more the part. What a beautiful table!

And many congratulations to Becci and James.

Baubles

It's been a while since I posted - lots going on! Not least, I spent a very enjoyable few days at the Clarity Retreat, my first time going. Such fun, and learnt a lot too.

So I'm a little delayed in posting my entry for the Berkhamsted Creative Challenge this month - I did have these ready to go a few days ago.

The theme is "Circles".

I posted this teaser photo mid month:

Know what they are? This might help:

I bought a set of 12 of these in a cheapy junk shop years ago, and I'd never got round to doing anything with them. So this is a big tick for my personal "use something that's been hanging around unused for ages" challenge. I'd removed the hanging bit and painted them with gesso for the teaser photo, and had them drying on kebab sticks.

I haven't done all of them yet, I have lots of different ideas to try - and need to test if they will withstand a heat gun without melting. But here are the four I have finished.

This one I decoupaged with a Christmas paper I've also had for ages without using.

Here I started with a couple of layers of pearl paint, then masked off strips with a narrow masking tape. I painted over with PVA, removed the tape and sprinkled a white glitter over. I used cheap hairspray to seal it.

This is a mirror mage of the one above - I started by painting it as before, then added strips of super sticky tape instead of the masking tape. I added the same glitter and hairspray varnish.

This one was painted with claret fresco chalk acrylic paint. It's translucent, so needed three coats, but is such a glorious colour.
I then stuck some scraps of adhesive sheet to copy paper, and applied gilding flakes to it. I die cut snowflakes, using the smaller Tattered Lace snowflake dies, and glued them to the bauble. I used PVA, but next time I think I'd use a thin adhesive sheet on the back before die cutting, as it was a bit messy.

So four new baubles to go into the Christmas decs box, eight more to play with before December.

Metal circles

Just a quick one tonight.

The 52 Christmas Card Throwdown Challenge for the week is to use metal embellishments.

I don't have a lot, but a rootle through my upstairs craft cupboard turned up a metal snowflake and a candy cane. I went with the snowflake.

I teamed it with design papers in shades of blue, from a pack from Anita's Craft. The circles were die cut - another circle card this month!

I added white glitter to the third layer, for a bit of interest. The square base layer is edged in navy sharpie - using the trick I learnt at last weekend's workshop, to make it look like an extra layer without using another sheet of card.

Finally a navy ribbon to suspend the metal snowflake, and a triple bow to embellish.

Very simple and quick this week! The end of the month means lots of deadlines so I have other projects I need to complete by tomorrow!