Monday 11 March 2013

Grey Monochrome with one colour

Morning all I hope I am here today to share with you my card I did for my MIC Weekly Inspiration Post. 
Our inspiration for you this week is CAS (Clean and Simple) with an additional colour challenge being Grey Monochrome with one colour.
This was a great challenge and strongly suggest you all challenge yourself to try this out. 
I choose to use Flying Balloon Contraption as I felt using the monochrome would suit this image giving it a real vintage feel. 
monochromatic
You can see I obviously choose to use red as my additional colour I think it pops against the greys.
I really enjoyed doing a CAS card especially with this image as it just allows it to be the focus.
I used lots of grey copics for this choosing to blend the warm grey's with cool grey's and am pretty happy with the end result :-)
Copics used:
W1, W3, W5, C1, C3, C5, C7 & C9
R24 & R14
MIC Products:

So I hope you have enjoyed my card and hopefully I have inspired you! I look forward to seeing some of you Monochrome projects. 

I am going to enter this into Debbie Dolphins candy challenge. I don't normally enter candy/giveaways but I really liked how Debbie was doing this one.  I'm hoping she will enjoy something other than a Maggie creation from me! Make sure you pop over to her blog and check out the details. 

Thank you for visiting my post today. 
Happy crafting x

Sunday 10 March 2013

Happy 4th Birthday MDUC

Good morning all I hope you have having a lovely weekend. It is long weekend for us here and yesterday we spent the day and evening down at the beach with my family water skiing. Was such a wonderful day and a great way to to cool down from all this heat we have here. Boy I am looking forward to it being over. 

So this week we celebrate the 4th Birthday of Magnolia Down Under Challenges. I have been on this team for two going on three years now and I can honestly say it is an absolute delight being on a team with these ladies. Not only do we talk craft we talk about everything and I know that no matter what time of day or night it is that I can put a call out for help and somewhere will be there to listen. Thank you ladies for being so wonderful and a very big happy birthday to us!

With every birthday celebration there is a party and party is complete without a party hat, so that is what I decided to make. 


A pretty simple design but its a party hat so you cant really go adding lots of embellishments as it would make it too heavy and really not enough room to do that. 

My first attempt at no line colouring and have to say I am happy with the result. Loving my new purple copics I got the other week. 

After a slow start from me this morning I better get my bum into gear. 

WE have a wonderful sponsor at MDUC this week pop over to the blog and check it out along with the other birthday projects on display. I look forward to seeing you entries. 

Thanks for stopping by today, until next time 


Wednesday 6 March 2013

Eeeeek My very first Tutorial..

Hi everyone I hope this post finds you well.

When I put in my submission to join Make it Crafty I was nervous and one of  the main reasons being was because I knew I had to write a tutorial! 

So today it is with lots of nerves that I bring you my very first tutorial. 
Today I am sharing with you different techniques for faux stitching. I would like to clarify that I did not come up with the idea of “faux stitching” I am here just to show you how I do it. I personally don’t own a sewing machine so 99% of the time of use “faux stitching” , yes 99% as occasionally and very occasionally I might hand stitch. If you ever get a card with real stitching on it from you your know you are special!!!
I know that some people use a roller that perforates the paper but I actually use a matt pack from Stampin Up! together with my paper piercer. You can also use a ruler and a foam mat or I am sure that there are many other companies out there that have a paper piercer guide/template.
Let’s begin shall we:
Step 1.
Place the paper cardstock on top of the matt.
      or                   
           
Tip - If you have a dark colour cardstock and your matt/foam pad is dark then use a bit of scrap paper behind it so that you can see the edge of your cardstock clearly.
Step 2
Now depending on which tool you are using either use the template/ruler as a guide and use your paper piercer and poke holes into the paper.
Once you have pierced all your holes, as desired, your cardstock should look like this:
Tip – Make sure you hold that template or ruler down tight otherwise your cardstock will slip underneath and you will end up with a wonky line!
Sometimes I like to stop it here and not add any stitching. It really does depend on the look you are after.
Step 3
Using a gel pen, fine liner, sharpie whatever you prefer, draw lines connecting your holes together on your cardstock.
Here are some different methods of stitching you could try:
  • Straight Stitch. Using the ruler over the holes rule a line through the holes. I personally feel this gives a too perfect line and not as realistic.

  • Going freehand I join draw lines between each hole, stopping at each hole. I feel this gives a better definition. I try to put a slight curve to my line when doing this.

               
  • Cross stitch. Draw a diagonal line to the centre between the holes and then I come back from the other direction

  •       Ever other Stich. This is simply leaving a blank between the holes

             
Now I know sometimes even the effort of piercing all the holes can sometimes be too much! 
So depending on my mood  I don’t pierce my paper and I do some freehand cross stitching or stitching.
Cross stitch example
Straight Stitch example
Line dot example (excuse the wonky stitch in the corner!)
You can also choose to add some doodling to the edges as another sort of border. I really depends on what you are doing as to whether that would suit. Doodling can look great on scrapbook layouts or journaling books.
Here are some different samples of doodling I have done for you. 
Really as to what you doodle comes down to your own creativity!
            
I think I have exhausted the varieties of stitching you can do and ways to do it!
Here is a card I made using some of the different faux stitching techniques. 
MIC TUT
MIC Products Used:

Digi Stamp - Anastasia Digi Stamp

Chipboard - Flower Leaf Swirls

 Copic's Used:

Hair - E79, E29, E25 & E21

Purple Flowers - V9, V95, V93 & V91
Teal Flowers - BG78, BG75 & BG72
Skin - E00, E21 & R20


Now I did not have any flowers that matched my card so I grabbed some white ones and coloured them up with my V91 to match in. I do this all the time.
I hope you have enjoyed my first tutorial and even picked up a pointer or two!
Happy Crafting. Bron xo