Making life brighter one card at a time
I managed two more cards from last May’s virtual event – a blue variation of one of yesterday’s cards, plus one of the make and takes. I think I’ll go back to do two more of the make and takes before tackling the next class. It’ll be nice to finally get this stash off the floor and filed away! I
must say I’m not a slimline fan, but I do love the mini slimline make and take card!
I never finished the Create and Connect virtual event with Pinkfresh held in May 2022. I started off really gung-ho for the first two sessions, then got pretty frustrated with the third class as the video quality was woeful and difficult to follow, and truthfully I ended up losing all momentum and mojo for it.
Eighteen months later and I’m trying to clear up my backlog of old classes so I can start putting supplies away … and last night I finally managed to get through the video and complete my cards for class number 3. I think getting this event’s backlog of classes finished will actually be a huge weight off my shoulders.
Here are the two cards I finished last night. I used a congrats sentiment we received as part of the kit on the pink card, as that’s going to be given to a work colleague tomorrow.
I don’t think I ever shared the first two classes of cards that I created earlier from that event, so I’ve included them below. In the first class I followed the colour schemes from the class projects, but then did an aqua background version with my own brighter colours.
For the second class I kinda followed the colours for the slimline card using whatever inks I thought were close, then went totally rogue with the A2 card using aquas and purples – I really love that second card.
I definitely took some liberties with the colour schemes of this class, but managed to get all the colours that I used just by using the three primary liquid watercolours that we received in the class of red, yellow and blue. We don’t really celebrate Fall/Autumn in Australia, so I tried to shy away from those colours as much as I could, and went for my favourite cool tones – such a surprise haha.
The vase is meant to be a pumpkin, but I decided I’d interpret it as a beautiful cobalt blue hand-blown glass vase. I started following Christopher’s colourscheme with the flowers, but then decided to just do my own thing.
I think this is my favourite card of the three I made in this class. The technique with watercolours and a stencil were fun, but that Rainbow Sparkle embossing powder totally stole the show – crikey that’s got some sparkle in it! I actually already own a wee tub of that one, but I hadn’t used it yet … well it’s going to get a lot more use now! I really do like the monochrome die cuts against the background images – I’ll have to remember to do that more often too!
This is the hardest thing to photograph on my iPhone, because it keeps trying to adjust the light – it’s phenomenal in real life!
I’ve always loved the look of embossed resist, and this was no exception – totally fun how we cut the panel up and changed the orientation of the centre panel for visual interest. Note to self: remember this for the future! I tried to go with a wee bit brighter colourscheme for this one.
Things I enjoyed:
Such a fun class with Simon Hurley and Ranger! We got to play with Solar Paste for the first time, along with some Lunar Paste, and different techniques using them both. Oh boy that Solar Paste is exquisite on the black cardstock, although the purple is sooooo hard to photograph well on my iPhone.
I was a bit heavy-handed with the gold lunar paste mixed in with the solar paste, but I love the results with the smooshed half using the residual product on the stencil!
This photo shows the purple colour a bit truer to life … although it changes depending on the angle you view it on in the light – it’s truly beautiful!
Using a blending tool with the lunar paste through the stencil for just a light covering of the paste is a great technique and is fun to give different texture to the snowfall thicker texture.
Things I enjoyed:
I’ll be honest this class with Scrapbook.com was one of the classes I was looking forward to the least because I found the paper pad etc unappealing, and as usual my expectations were far exceeded – it turned out to be a really fun class. The projects in real life are actually fun and lovely, and I thoroughly enjoyed it all.
I went a bit rogue with the first class using Cloud Whip – the class used lemon and pink colours, but I stuck to my own preferred colour palette of cool tones, and I adore the finished card.
The shaker card is one of the projects I was a bit ‘ho-hum’ about because of the paper pad, but I really like the card in the end – it goes to show that you never can tell, and shouldn’t judge a book by its cover!
Another one I was ho-hum about because of that paper pad again, and infinity cards have always made me nervous … well it was much easier than expected, and was really fun to put together. I decided it was so much fun that I’d try using another Scrapbook.com paper pad I’d recently received in the mail for a Christmas version. I’ll eventually add some other embellishments to the front of the Christmas one, but it was fun to create them both at the same time for practice.
Things I enjoyed:
I was really looking forward to this class with Taylored Expressions, and it didn’t disappoint. I just love this set of layering stencils and it’s so fast to make the elements for three cardfronts in any colourway you choose. The first set of cards are close to the colours chosen by Taylor in the class, then I decided to do a few more variations of my own choosing in different colourways. I must’ve had fun, because I ended up with three more versions!
Things I enjoyed:
What a sweet stamp, stencil and die set from LDRS Creative. Such lovely mages and sentiments for uplifting cards. I couldn’t fit the life of me get my stamped trailing vine to line up with the die even with following the tips – but I still really like these.
Things I enjoyed:
The Crop & Create event kicked off with a beauty of a class taught by Sara Davies with Crafters Companion. We received wee pots of gilding flakes in silver, gold and copper and this was a first for me to use this sort of product. Definitely a learning curve, but I’ll definitely try more of this in the future.
I especially loved the first card with the butterfly on the marbled paper – this combined stamping on acetate and adding gilding flakes to the back of the acetate. The pink marbled paper came in our kit, but I’m not a pink fan so I straighaway had to try again using some aqua/teal marbled paper from my stash … I really love the results!
In the below photo the top two cards (heart and butterfly) used kit supplies – I enjoyed using the stencil and glue to create the hearts, but not quite as keen using glue to stamp with for the butterfly – that technique definitely needs more practice on my part! I decided to just do one ‘extra’ card using my own stash as I didn’t have enough gold left over to do more samples – so I combined the two techniques in the one card for the bee card.
For the bee card I used a honeycomb stencil by Brutus Monroe, and the Beautiful Bees stamp set by Gina K Designs. I added the few gold flakes I had left randomly over the honeycomb stencil then added copper flakes to fill in the spaces. I love how it looks on the darker background! I would’ve loved to do a Christmas scene with gold and red, but I guess I need to go shopping for more gold gilding flakes first 😉
Things I enjoyed:
Michelle Currie did Pink & Main proud with this class – the products are so much fun, and really quick to put together.
Things I enjoyed:
If I’m brutally honest these have been my least favourite classes so far in the event – the teaching style just didn’t suit me and I really struggled to follow along – it actually put me off so much I actually put the event contents aside for a while as I totally lost my mojo after that – not helped at all by the fact I was still recovering from Covid at the time and I was finding it hard to follow … each time I looked up to watch, the camera angle had moved away from the card, so I got frustrated with it bouncing around between three different camera angles. When I did eventually make these cards recently I just followed the written instructions instead, and found my groove again that way. The products themselves are of a high quality, it’s just the style of teaching that didn’t suit how I learn, that’s all.
Things I enjoyed: