Congratulations card

Hello. This is my second post for the day. It happens when you have a little one to tend to and you don't find time for blogging. And when you do, you post all your cards at once :D

 

Ok, so this is another card I made for Avery Elle's current challenge, which is to incorporate stripes in the card. This is what I came up with. I have used the Petals and Stems stamp set for this card too, but this time I thought of using the smaller flowers with stems.

 A close-up of the card...

 

Don't those glitter stripes look gorgeous.... yes I used glitter here. No embossing.... This is how I made the glittery stripes. I used the super tacky red tape (my current fav adhesive). Stuck it in stripes on both ends of the card.

 

Peeled off the backing and then generously covered it with white pixie dust glitter.

Tap off the excess and there you go.....It looks really gorgeous in real!! I got this tip from my crafter friend Dr. Sonia. She has many more ideas here on how to use the super tacky red tape.

Challenges entered

Avery Elle Challenge #22- Stripes

Handmade Christmas Card 2014 - Design 4

Hello. Here is my fourth Christmas Card for the year 2014. You can view my other Christmas cards here.

What's special about this CAS card is that I have used a totally unrelated stamp to make the Xmas tree.

 

I used two scroll stamps and mounted them side by side on the acrylic block.

 

 

 Then I cut out a tree shaped stencil and stamped over it.

 

Hope you like my simple experiment to use stamps in a more creartive way.

Thanks for visiting.

How to make a Dot Rangoli in 5 Steps

It's festive time here in India and I love to decorate my home with beautiful rangoli (floor art). I am not an expert nor have I learnt it formally. I just love to experiment with my rangolis each year and today I am going to share my process of making a portable rangoli with colors. 

I found this method easier as you can make this rangoli sitting inside your house, unlike the traditional method of sitting outside on the floor. I adopted this process mainly because here in Mumbai we have very less space outside the flats to make huge rangolis, and also sitting outside is not viable because of the humid weather and space constraints. I have this 12 x 12" square piece of wooden ply, which I use to make my rangoli every year. You may make any kind of design on it, but I usually find the dot rangoli easier to do.

Material required:

• Wooden plank - preferably square
• Dot rangoli patterns (lots available online)
• White Rangoli powder
• Rangoli Colors

Here are the steps with pictures....

Step 1:

Select the desired rangoli pattern that you want to make from a book or any other source. As per the design, mark dots at equal distance all over base (wooden ply). 

You can use  a scale or a paper stencil like the one shown here to do the markings.

Step 2:

Since I am not very good with it, I generally use a pencil/chalk to draw the design on the base to get it right. I have faced situations where I had to redo the entire stuff, if I try to make it with colors directly.

Step 3:
Use the plain white rangoli powder, to make the outline.

Step 4: 
Prepare the colors by mixing in the white powder.

Step 5:
Start filling in the patterns, one color at a time. I have first filled in green color in the image below.

Then fill second color, and so on...

Here is the ready rangoli!! You can now pick it up carefully and place at any corner of the house.

Light earthen lamps and place over the rangoli.

This is another example of the dot rangoli that I had made during Diwali, in the year 2012.

Have a safe & wonderful Diwali. If you get inspired by my tutorial, please do let me know and share your rangoli pictures with me. :)

Handmade flower with no tools

Hi there. I made this tutorial for my GD post at Lulupu. I had won the Feminine Card Challenge #30 for my Tall card with handmade flowers and was thus invited as GD for this fortnight.  These are the flowers for which I have compiled a detailed photo tutorial. They are all made using different colors of distress inks.

 

Although there is no dearth of readymade flowers from various brands, I still prefer making my own flowers. That way you never out of stock and you can customize them to suit your project size and color. The pictorial below gives detailed step-by-step instructions to make the flower.

The current challenge at Lulupu is to create a Card/LO based on this sketch.  

 

So I decided to make a card using this sketch. I have used MS fence punch to border the embossed paper panel.  Then I used a square frame die cut and scalloped heart die cut as the base and placed the flower arrangement on it. The leaf flourishes are stamped and fussy cut. Finally, for the finishing touch, added the dew drop pearls from Pie Lane.

Challenges entered

Imaginations#1 - Anything Goes With Distress Inks

Card Mania - Flower

CSCC #4 - Wedding and with floral inspiration

Guest DT post for Rainbow Craftykari Blog

Hi friends. Today I am showcasing 2 projects and a bunch of tutorials that I made as a Guest DT for Rainbow Craftykari blog. Few days back, Maninder got in touch with me on Facebook and invited me to design few projects using some stuff from her store. This is the gorgeous kit that she sent me to play with.

Few of the things in the kit were totally new to me like UTEE and flocking powder. And had it not been for Maninder, I would have never tried these things out. I must say I really enjoyed playing with my new craft goodies.

I created two projects using the stuff. Let me talk about them one by one. Since there are a lot of pics, I will keep the text short. 

Project 1: Door Hanger

I have given a vintage look to the door hanger. For the base, I have recycled the cardboard from PaperMania Chipboard album packaging and covered it using MME - Oxford Lane Plaid Pattern paper from Rainbow Craftykari Store. I have used lots of embellishments decorated using UTEE. The pictorial below will show you the step-by-step procedure on how I used UTEE. There is another pictorial for using flocking powder which I have used to cover the plain White Color me Crazy Petaloo flower from the kit.

 

Few closer shots...

 

Project 2: Wall hanging/Desk Keepsake

For this project, I used a sturdy cardboard base, covered it using MME - My Girl - Bouquet pattern paper from the kit and distressed the edges with Worn lipstick, Broken CHina and Vintage photo distress inks. The sentiment is stamped on a price tag. Here again, I have used many embellishments which I have transformed using UTEE. And then ofcourse I used the lovely flowers from the kit and lot of bling here and there. The tiny clothespin is colored in blue using a normal sketch pen.

 

 

A collage of the project..

 Now onto the tutorials...

 

 

 

 

For the complete list of craft supplies used hop on to Rainbow CraftyKari Blog.

Hope you enjoyed this post and will get inspired. If you have any questions feel free to ask me. Thank you Maninder for this opportunity and inviting me over your blog.

 

Challenges entered [For Door Hanger]

Color Conceptions Challenge #9: Anything But Cards

 

Challenges entered [For Wall Hanging/Keepsake]
 Melonheadz Friends Challenge - Spring
Lacy Sunshine #30 - Add Flowers
BGC#49 - Grown with Love! + Photo Inspiraion [Colors: Green, White & Pink; Garden Element: Flowers ]

How to make a Lattice Window Card - Video Tutorial

Hi everyone! I recently posted quite a few lattice window cards and these were my first experiments with them. I also won some blog challenges for these cards of mine. One such win was at the Lulupu blog and I was invited to be the GD on their blog. So I made a video tutorial on how to make lattice window cards. There are many tutorials available on the net and each one has their own style. I have tried to showcase my style and how make these type of cards. Click here to view my GD post at Lulupu blog.

This is my first ever attempt on making a video tutorial, so kindly bear any kind of misses. Also please pardon the bad lighting and my badly abused craft mat. My husband pointed that out later :)

I did not get time to take pics side by side so I don't have a pictorial. Here are the pics of the completed card.

Thanks for dropping by. Do share your frank comments on how the video turned out to be.

UPDATED - 26 May 2014:
I made another version of this card. Here are the pics.

Triangle Front Card

Hi Friends. Today I am sharing a very different kind of card that I saw on You Tube. I loved the simplicity of this card and I think with our imagination we can do a lot with it. In case you are not able to view the video, I have made a small template below to show you how to make this card. The template is not to scale and is only a guideline.

I have used this rose stencil from Pie Lane for the design on the center portion. Since I wanted multiple roses and not the full stem, I masked some areas of the stencil and made my own pattern.

The diagram below will give you an idea about how the triangle part is cut. Take any size of card say for example 4x6" in this case.  On the front side, mark the center point of the card and cut along dotted lines as shown. Cut another panel of the size of the card front which will be placed below the triangle part. For more details, do refer the video I have shared.

Challenges entered

Itsy Bitsy  - Say it with Roses Challenge

Lulupu Challenge #26 - Try Something New !

Handcut Stencil Card

Hi lovely people out there! I am here to show you another card I created using a handcut

stencil. The fascination with stencils still continues after the Stencilled class....

I have been experimenting with stencils when I was in school and I used to trace the patterns that I liked and cut them using a normal craft knife or blade. I still have many of those stencils with me. After watching the Stenciled class, I was looking for more designs in my stash and didn't want to indulge in buying many of them and then not using them. Also I didn't have the patience to order and then wait to create till my stuff arrived.

So I decided to try cutting some patterns on my own. Here is a one with simple diagonal lines. I placed the stencil on CS and dabbed distress inks on it. Then I inverted the CS to make the criss cross pattern.

The paper I used to make the stencil is from an old diary. These were the separators inside the diary. These papers are of high gsm than the normal paper and have a glossy finish. I find it easy to cut through these papers.

Here is the stencil and the finished CS... I went in a VIBGYOR manner with the inks. I wanted to finsih the stenciled CS with ditressing the edges with co-ordination colors.

 This is the card I made using this as a background. Does anyone of you recognize this pattern I used on CS. Let me leave this open as a small quiz here. I will come back with the answer tomorrow :) HINT ***Clothing Brand***

That's all for now... cya and have a great weekend. If you have any queries regarding the stencils, do leave a comment below.

Upcycled Liquor Box into Gift Box

It's been a long time I made an upcycled project, and something like this had been on my mind since a long time. So I got my hands on a liquor bottle cover.. and converted it into a pretty keepsake/gift box. You can view my other recycled projects here and my recycled project tutorials here.

I have used pattern paper from Papermania pack, MS Swirling Lace Punch, pearls, punched flowers, leaves, roses from Nupur's store and the big bloom is made by me out of handmade paper. The sentiment is stamped and embossed using zing embossing powder from Crafters Corner that I won as winner of a challenge.

I have lined the upper edge of the lid with brown paper to give it a finished look. It closes sits snugly on the lower lid and to keep it in place I have used velcro dots beneath the straps [see pic2].

I filled it with some {yes, some.... i have loads of it ;)} of my junk jewellery..... that necklace peeking out was a RAK from Ekta Maker.

A view from the rear side... 

The floral arrangement sitting pretty on my shabby chic box..

The big bloom is made out of a handmade paper carry bag of a hospital. I loved the texture of this paper bag and I tore it apart to make these pretty flowers :)

Side view of the box...

Behind the scene pics...

Recycled stuff used here is:

Liquor box for base

Net from old couier envelope

Flower made of paper bag handmade paper

Old broken jewellery piece as a charm, next to brad

Challenges entered

1. Lulupu #17 - Fancy me [Fav technique – Recycling and Shabby chic]

2. Itsy Bitsy – 4 P’s: Pearls, Pattern Paper, Posy, Pink

3. Crafters Corner #12 - 3 embellishments (Flower, Pearls, Brad), 2 Pattern papers, 1 sentiment

4. Color Conceptions #4 - Spread your wings with distress inks (Worn Lipstick for Big bloom, Forest Moss for Leaves, Tattered Rose for Flourish die cut, Wild honey for Daisy centers, Vintage photo and Worn Lipstick for distressing PP edges)

5. DCAM #2 - Shabby is Chic!