Card: with brooch embellishment

I bought this brooch ages ago and have been awaiting inspiration to use it, so here is what I did with it:
The sun has been shining today, but I got sunburn yesterday so today I stayed indoors and made this card instead.
The 3 purple-ish strips are glitter card, the centre cream paper is handmade. I added a few brads here and there, 2 of which are dragonflies which I think is the scene on the brooch. I just love the colours of the brooch which is why I bought it.
I have not made this card for anyone, so its the first of my 'stock' cards, hopefully I will sell it, I can always add a message on the front as required and of course make a matching envelope.

All white???

I never did make the mans 'hessian' card, I was out by a week on his birthday. An opportunity missed. However my Friend Val, its her birthday too next week and it was a perfect excuse to create a white card. I have been wanting to do a white card for a while and thought I'd have to wait until Xmas, or a wedding (too rare) so here it is my shabby chic white card.
Only problem was, was writing 'happy birthday' I did not want to use any colours. So I used some tiny bits of vellum I had left over, and blindly embossed on it by hand with a cuttlebug folder. I am not too happy with the result but I could'nt think of any other way. My one and only 'happy birthday' stamp was too large. Thats why I'm not keen on stamps. The vellum was then glued to clear acetate. I dont have any clear 'gems' unfortunately which I really would of liked to of added.

I wanted to add lots of textures and have a lavish amount of flowers bunched together. I've seen thhis done on other cards but mine, well, I dont think I have quite got the hang of it. Other than that I am happy with the result. I made a matching envelope out of white textured wallpaper which I'll photograph tomorrow.
 So here's the white card, all white?
                      

Another digi

I started a more complex one than the first one below, but I just could'nt do it, it was beyond me. Therefore I ended up finding this one, not as sophisticated as the 'Alice' below, but different. The tutorial for it made the face far more distorted than I have done it, I wanted to keep it more natural.

Hopefully Thursday I am going to get card making again, I shall have to day to myself, the weather is too bad to go gardening/riding my bikes and I have another mans birthday due next week. I am looking at using hessian fabric, weaving some rafia and other fibres. Well, thats the idea in my head, whether it turn out anything like that is another matter!

Not a card, digital art

I've been wanting to up my knowledge of photoshop for sometime so I bought a French photoshop magazine for advanced users. Yeah, dive in at the deep end eh? I had to spend 2 days in hospital recently and read it cover to cover and was itching to make a start when I got home.

This took me 11hrs to create, should of been about 2hrs!  I chose this particular tutorial first because not of the actual end result, but because of the steps involved taught me what I wanted to know.
Anyway, its supposed to be based on Alice in wonderland, hence the magic mirror in her hand. However, by the time I'd reached the bit for adding the white rabbit.....I opted to add a white cat instead, by then I had some idea of how it all worked.
The original had much less colour in it, rather gloomy I thought so the overall colours are much brighter.
I did enjoy this project even though it was hard going at first.
Layers???? easy peasy lol. not! There must be at least 40 layers in this project.

Thank you to Alina Silwinska who wrote the tutorial in the magazine. The magazine is in several languages, downloadable on www.psdmag.org
Any comments welcomed

 

Bits and pieces

Hi, hope you have all had a great weekend?
We went to a car boot sale yesterday (yard sale/vide grenier, quite a rare occurance in these parts) and I was really pleased to of picked up a few craft items for the grand sum of 10 euros. Theres a dozen or so ribbons, mainly halloween, some great narrow crocheted lace and some ric-rac plus a box of stamps. There are 3 alphabet stamps of various sizes all the letter 'M' I can only think of M-erry Christmas as a use so far. But there are 4 roller type stamps too, endless pattern! These I will definitely use as they are quite a universal pattern. I have not tried them out yet.

I also picked up a couple of balls of 'furry' wool, wool like all crafting products seems expensive to me here in France. One is brown, 1 is black so they are fairly neutral colours, great fibre embellishments.
I know this post is not very exciting, but for me this was a terrific find. Oh yes I picked up a very pretty flat oval enamel broach for next to nothing which if I wrench the fittings from it, it will make a fab embellishment.
As an added bonus there was a guy there who sharpened my all my craft scissors to perfection. I wish I'd taken my secateurs with me!