Adventures in Nuvo: Mousse

Hello there and thanks for stopping by, I really appreciate the lovely people that visit my blog and leave comments, sometimes I forget to say so which is very remise of me, so I thought I'd correct that before I say anything else. 😀

I did manage to sort out the stuff that was blocking access to my work desk, which means that I've been able to sit there and get my craft on, I've been playing with Nuvo Mousse thanks to a fab video tutorial that my friend Jennifer Kray did via a Facebook Live.

She gave some brilliant tips for using the mousse including one I'd tried before, when I tried it I coloured first then embossed, but Jen's technique involved embossing first and then adding the mousse with a smoothie. Jen used a couple of embossing folders but the one that blew me away was the example Jen did using her We Are Memory Keepers Next Level Geometric embossing folder, I don't own any of the WAMK's folders yet but I now have my eye on a few, thanks Jen 😛 I do have some 3D embossing folders, a couple by Sizzix including the 'Woven' one above and the 'Leaves' one below both are by Lynda Kanase for Sizzix.

I do have a selection of Crafters Companion 3D folders as well and I'm waiting for a the new Botanical 3D Tim Holtz folder to arrive, can't wait either, my Nuvo mousses have gone a little stiffer than when I first bought them and Jen showed us how to revive them.

I got a 2.5 litre bottle of de-ionised water from Wilkinson's for the princely sum of £1.25 a real bargain, its in the section where they have the stuff for cars if anybody is interested.

My camera isn't picking up the subtle changes in colour, I used 3 different colours of Nuvo Mousse to create the background, I think some highlights of gold would have been perfect but I don't have that colour yet, its on my list of things to acquire now 😉

On both of my cards I used a My Favorite Things border die from their 'Scallop Basic Edges 2' set, I just bent it round the embossed panel and held it in place with a couple of small pieces of washi tape before I glued the panel to my card base.

The Hello topper is done using a set of dies I picked up on Ebay a while back, both of the hello toppers were made from the cards we were sent at Christmas by friends and family, they look fab from this side but the reverse of them which nobody sees you can tell that the toppers are recycled, but nobody sees the back of them once they are glued on right?

The set has a matching stamp and if you use it the O is more clearly defined, I used a variety of inks on the backs of the cards, the foil and glitter ones were die cut from cards that had glitter and foiled sections on them. I did find that some types of card didn't take to ink so readily if you look at the blue 'Hello' I used a Hero Arts Ombre Ink which is a dye based ink, on the glossy card the ink went on splotchy, I was going to throw it away but I left it to dry and discovered I liked the mottled effect that it made and to anyone looking they'd think it was intentional, it was a happy accident 😂

I used distress oxides as well and added some water to create splashes, some inks didn't work very well and in the end I stuck to oxides and dye based inks, any pigment inks I tried just refused to dry, I think thats because most of the recycled cardstock is coated some how which makes it repel certain forms of ink. I ended up making about 30 of these from the Xmas cards and I'm down to my last 6 now. It's a good way of recycling cards, I have some birthday cards that I need to do the same with, some of them will even make toppers for other cards as well. I'm off to make a birthday card for my Sister-In-Law now and then to make a start on the annual christmas card pile, making some for the Cats Protection to sell as well so I need to make lots!  Enjoy the rest of the day and thanks for stopping by :)

Stash & Craft Room Catch Up

I've been acquiring some new goodies, some I've bought, some were subscription gifts and I've even won a prize from taking part in a Facebook competition run by Making Cards magazine more about that below, but I thought I'd have a quick catch up on my craft area. Si has put me another light in, its a temporary fix, he's recycled a lamp and attached it to the ceiling, it plugs in to the mains and I have a smart bulb in it so I can turn it off and on with my voice and alter the brightness which is brilliant.

I still have to label all the Oxide Inks I have in the rack that my niece and nephews got me for Christmas, I better get my skates on as I expect the next batch of Oxide colours will be announced very soon. My stash is continuing to expand, but my aquisitions are a lot less frequent than they were before Miserly March. I'm spending less than I did before and trying my hardest to use what I have in before I buy something new, don't get me wrong, there are still LOTS of things that I want, but I'm learning that their is a difference between want and need.

Over the past few months I've added the Tonic Nuvo Diamond Inks to my ink collection and recently collected all the Tonic Alcohol Pens, I've yet to properly play with both items to know how much I like them, and whether I think they are better than promarkers or not. I have to learn to just try 1 or 2 of a set and work with them before I buy the whole set, these save money to buy the whole set deals look worthwhile initially but if you don't use the whole set because you can't get on with it, its wasted money! The only other major purchase I've made is a Tim Holtz Glass Media Mat which is due at the end of June, fingers crossed.

Until this weekend, there hasn't been much crafting time recently, we got a new RPG game that both of us are loving playing, its another of those games where I get to run round collecting herbs and making potions and remedies and Si can do all the fighting and hunter gatherer stuff that he likes to do, its kept us both sane recently. Being ill, and more problems with the neighbour means we've now had to convert part of my craft room into a TV area to escape the noise from the neighbours music, when its bad we just can't sit in the front room the music vibrates through the sofa and drowns out the TV, when its very bad we can't even sit in our makeshift TV room (my craft room) on the other side of the house with the TV turned up full!

We've tried to resolve the issue, we've talked to her, I've gone round sobbing asking her to please stop, Si has been confrontational, we've got the noise people and council involved, it goes quiet for a while and then it starts again. This has been going on for 10 years now and its having a huge impact on my mental health, if I could afford it I'd move, but we can't so here we have to stay. Most days I spend all day in this little room and at times I sit with headphones on playing my own kind of music to drown out the reggae stuff from next door with its thumping bass or I end up a blubbing wreck. The TV area addition has meant that stuff I usually store on or near the bed has had to be stored on my craft desk and the area in front of it so I haven't been able to get at my desk to play. I'm scheduled to try and sort it out this weekend and move things so that crafting can happen, fingers crossed.

Sorry for the moan above, now back to crafting, it did feel good to be able to get it off my chest though so thanks for reading/listening. 💓
I started collecting Tim Holtz Distress Markers around October last year a couple here and there, until that point I thought I didn't need them, but after watching some techniques on You Tube and on other peoples blogs I decided that indeed I did.

I picked up about 20 pens for around £1.50 each when Craft Barn began their closing down sale last month and found a few more colours on other sites for around £1.75 each. So currently I have 40 of the colours with 21 left to add, I'm buying them a few at a time and should have the whole set by Xmas, the crafty magpie in me wants to go buy the whole collection but I know I can't afford that at the moment so I'll have to get then a few at a time.

Whilst I was ill last month Simon surprised me with some trays that stack together to store my Distress Markers in. Currently I have 7 of them but he's going to 3D print me enough to hold all the pens for when I have them all. He designed the trays and printed them, he's a star and his creation really cheered me up when I was feeling ill. His genius creation makes storing the pens and accessing them very easy and as a bonus they are stored in the correct position so that they don't dry out. With the racks, Zig brush holder, wreath stamper templates and other goodies Si has made for me, my craft working space is slowly getting a bright plastic look, its a bit mis matched colourwise but its certainly easier to store things and it makes me smile knowing that my fella created them for me.

The bundle above arrived recently, its the recent subscription 'gift' for taking out a years subscription to Making Cards Magazine. I was absolutely amazed at this bargain, the years subscription (13 issues) cost me £49.99 the WOW goodies are valued at just under £45 which means I get 13 issues of the magazine delivered to my door for less than £5!!! I've been wanting to try out the WOW embossing pad and pen for a while, the embossing powders I've used for a while and highly recommend. I now have an extra heat gun so if I ever had a craft night with friends I don't have to share lol! That said my 14 year old neice is is coming to stay with us soon and I've promised to show her some card making techniques which I'm looking foreward to so much.

This weekend saw another first, I discovered that there was a card making group occuring locally a few months ago, I finally got the courage to contact the lady to find out more, she replied but I chickened out, when the neighbour 'kicks off' my anxiety kicks up, its never gone away since 2010 but I can usually supress it, when it takes over I won't go out, the smallest thing upsets me, I stress, worry and avoid the world. Anyway, Tracey, the lady that runs the class contacted me to say she was having an open day and would I like to go, idiot me thought I'd missed it already.

Turns out I hadn't so I decided to go along, on Saturday morning my anxiety kicked in big time, I was about to go out and meet people I didn't know. The weird thing is if Simon is with me I'm fine, alone I'm a basket case, Si wasn't going to be there, and I knew I would be alone. I tried an assortment of ways of wiggling out of going, in the car on the way there my stomach was doing flips and my heart was racing. I told Si and he said basically I had my mobile if I wasn't happy he'd come back and get me, having lived in Derby now for almost 16 years and having no friends the rational part of me wants to get out there, so I did it.

I had a really nice time, I made a make and take card and picked up some water based markers for £1 each, there was coffee cake, craft bingo and lots of chat, although this time I didn't really say much because I didn't really know anybody. The 2 hours I was there felt like a lot longer, in a good way, yes I was nervous as hell and my stomach was in knots but the ladies were all so friendly and it helped that I could escape in to some colouring and creating so the focus was outside of me. My colouring isn't that brillaint because I didn't take my close up glasses, so I couldn't see the details, but it came out fine.

I'm looking forward to going to a more classes in the future, but have to admit that I'm a little concerned that the classes are Stampin Up based and my curbing spending head is worried she'll get tempted to spend what she doesn't have, but hopefully it won't be an issue. Well that's all for now, next time I'll share some cards I've been making, I actually got time yesterday to make not 1, not 2 but 3 cards and dabble with some new ideas for using products I have in inspired by my friend Jennifer Kray.

A Coffee Break Full of Beans

I hope you're all well? I've been absent from the blogosphere for a couple of weeks because I developed an inner ear infection, no idea why or how it occured, I've never had one in my life before and hope to never get one again. It was nasty, messed with my balance, made me feel dizzy and nauseous, for the first 3 days I stayed in bed because moving around made me feel horrendous. I couldn't craft, I did try once but the dizziness got the better of me so I gave up.

Being poorly means that I haven't been able to get around to making all the projects I wanted to make. So I'm only just getting round to playing with some items I've recently bought and freebies from card mags. I'll catch up but I'll still be a bit behind crafting because I've started decorating now I'm feeling better :) We've finally got all the money together and the supplies to decorate the bathroom 😵

So I'm busily stripping off the old paper and working on getting everything ready for hubby to give me a hand with the papering and some of the painting (my arms aren't long enough to reach the ceiling over the bath lol!) I can't wait for it to be finished, new carpet tiles and I'm going to have a go at dyeing our existing towels from pink to purple and maybe decorate them with some ribbon or something?!

The two cards I'm sharing today were made using the "Coffee Break" freebies that came with Issue 177 of Simply Cards & Papercraft. The set included a stencil, stamps and dies to cut the lid for the coffee cup, a tag, small heart and some steam curls that I haven't got round to using yet.

I used the little coffee bean stamp with 3 different colours of Altenew inks from aptly their 'Coffee Break' ink cube set and stamped them in my stamping platform using the 6" template. I then made a circular mask and used some Scattered Straw Distress Ink to make the background for the cups, giving the inked circle a spritz of water and blotting it off after 30 seconds to lift some of the ink.

The coffee cups I stamped and fussy cut as close to the edge as I could get and if I do say so myself my fussy cutting is getting better 😊 Once cut out I used a blending tool and some Tea Dye Distress Ink to colour the cups and edged around the cup with a black Promarker to finish the edge off. The piece that looks like a corrugated card cup holder is another of the stamps in the set which I cut out after stamping. This time I used versmark ink and some gold embossing powder to stamp the image and when I'd worked the magic with the embossing gun, I coloured between the embossed lines with a Distress Marker in Gathered Twigs, then buffed the embossed area to remove any ink.

I cut some tags and cup lids from scraps of white card using the free dies and a couple of hearts from some scraps of red card. I made a circular card from 2 pieces of brown card and folded one in half to be the base and glue my coffee bean panel to the other then glued that to the base piece. Before I attached the coffee cups to the panel I tied some brown embroidery thread to the tags and used a pokey tool to pierce the top of the cup underneath where the lid would be and pushed the other end of the thread through and used some washing tape to hold it in place on the back of the card.

Next I layered the two finished cups on top of each other on the panel using 3D foam pads, I popped a few small 3D pads under the tags to hold them away from the card and give them some dimension. The final touch for the circular card was to add the red hearts and I gave the a coat of Tonic Crystal Glaze to make them shine.

I was so pleased with the way the first card turned out that I did the same thing for this card, this is just a 4" x 4" texture card blank, I used the leafy stencil that came with the set with some Pine Needles Distress Ink. Again I fussy cut the coffee cup out but this time I didn't use the die cut lid instead I used some Distress Markers to colour the lid.

I colour the cup with Mowed Lawn Distress Ink after masking off the lid with a little washy tape, I did a water spritz again because I love the effect it gives. I used some Memento 'Cottage Ivy' Ink to stamp the leafy folder and added some clear embossing to it to make it shine.

You can see more clearly on this card how I pierced the cup to pop the thread through for the tag. I decided this card was lacking something as it neared completion so I cut a few strips of green glitter card and added them above and below the stencilled area. I see this one more as a Green Tea or Green Smoothie kind of card so I'm going to make some in different colours pinks for a Strawberry Milk Shake, a Blueberry Smoothie and find some fruity sentiments to go with them.  There is most certainly lots of scope for these freebies and they can be used to make cards for the men folk as well! More from me soon I now have a date with my bed, its taken 2 days to write this post, guess my head is still a little fuzzy. Enjoy the weekend, I hope it send you sunshine and crafting time 😀

Purple Hi-Top Boots Card

I made this card for my niece for her 14th birthday, hard to believe that she is growing so fast, it doesn't seem but a moment since I held her in my arms the day she was born, time goes by so very quickly!

My niece isn't a pink girlie, girl so pink, lipstick and tu-tu frills for a card for her would go down like a lead balloon, she's what would have been called a Tom Boy in my day, but I'm not sure that's politically correct these days. She loves Batman, anime, bacon, chocolate, and the colour purple!

I like to think she gets the love of anime from me, and I may have helped influence her love of purple along with her Mum. I watch her and see a few other things that are me in her, she plays Skyrim like her auntie does, we like some of the same music and has my sense of humour, watch out world lol!

I was a bit of a Tom Boy when I was younger and I'm not a huge fan of pinks and princess colours. Still today, I'm more comfortable in jeans, t-shirt and a pair of hi-tops than skirts, dresses and high-heels. When I was my nieces age, I wore hi-tops all the time, but back then they were called baseball boots and I had several pairs in nice bright colours. So when I saw the My Favorite Things 'All Star High Tops Die-namics' die I couldn't resist it, partly nostalgia and partly forming an idea for my nieces card. Although I think it would work equally well for a card for a teenage boy if you change the colours and background to something more grungy or gamey, although that would work for girls as well in my world.

The die is fabulous, but putting those eyelets in can be a little fiddly, in the end I hit on the idea of using my pokey tool as a positioner. First dab some glue on the back of your hand, skeewer the eyelet on your pokey tool or something that is thin enough to go through the eyelet hole. Add a dab of glue then holding the boot piece with one hand, position the eyelet around the hole using the pokey tool and press down.

I was amazed at how quickly I got through the job once I'd hit on that method of adding the eyelets, the rest of the pieces layered together very quickly. I did try to use some thread to make laces but I couldn't get it through the holes in the boot without it fraying and looking messy.

I made this one a an easel card using black card and used the same purple glitter card I cut the boots from from some of the mats and layers. I cut several silver stars and slightly larger stars out of black card to mat the silver stars on to and used them as simple embellishments for the card.

The happy birthday sentiment is cut using a Sue Wilson 'Scripted Happy Birthday' die from the same 'Nebula Purple' Tonic Studios Craft Perfect Glitter Card that I used for the mats and layers and boots. I love Tonic glitter card, it die cuts like a dream, it doesn't shed its glitter like some types of card and the range of colours are so rich and lush! I'm delighted to say that my neice loved her card, it always makes me smile when I make something that makes someone else happy, it makes it all worthwhile.

A Wreath of Paws

I made this card recently to send to a lady who is also a little bit of a crazy cat lady as part of a Happy Post mail swap that is run on the Creative Minds - Kind Hearts group and I'm thrilled to say she loved it. The wreath was stamped using the 5" Wreath Builder Template that Si made for me, if you are interested in owning a set of your own then you can find more details on my Facebook page 😁

I used Ranger Dye Ink Pads in Raspberry Sorbet, Grape Soda and Lavender Field colours to stamp the paws using stamps from Hobbycraft and My Favorite Things. The template makes it so easy to stamp any stamp you wish and quickly build it in to a wreath shape which can then form a background or be an actual focal point.

The image was stamped and die cut using the My Favorite Things 'Best Friends' set, I love the set more cards to come using the set very soon. The sentiment also comes from the set and uts very true 😻 I coloured the image using Prismacolor Pencils and blended them with gamsol, my shading is still a work in progress but I can see the improvement everytime I colour, lots more practice needed but I'll get there 😊

I used dies from the Wonky Stitches range available from Craft Stash to edge the paw panel and cut the sentiment panel, the only other addition was a few Clear Iridescent Jewels from Lucy's Cards to add a bit of interest. I'd seen a few of the American crafters use this gems like Jennifer McGuire, so I was thrilled to discover that the company is in the UK and postage is only £1! Lucy does lots of sequins, glitter, confetti, pearls and more in some gorgeous colours.

I added some shimmer with a Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle pen to the large paws and the little girls dress. To finish I mounted the white panel on to a piece of purple metallic card and then attached that to a homemade card blank I'd created using a piece of Lavender Centura Pearl cardstock, really pleased with the way this one turned out and tonight I'm off to my local cats protection to show the ladies at their Craft and ChAT group how to stamp and colour images like these 😺😻🙀

Bee Happy, Create Impossible Cards!

There is a new craze doing the rounds in the card making world currently for something called an Impossible Card. The irony is its really very, very simple and uses a single piece of card to make the card base.

I've seen designs that use USA A2 Size (4¼ x 5½), USA A6 (4½ x 6¼), 5" x 7" and a 6" square design and a few variations in between this website has templates for all the above, the ones I've made so far are both 5 x 7 because it was really easy to to mark it all out.

When you see an impossible card your first reaction is WOW how is that possible, the mind makes you think that the card must have been made using two pieces of card, but also makes you think its a single piece and has an optical illusion effect. The catrd is based on something called a Hyper Card, that was originally posted by a company called Bicycle who make playing cards.

To make my card I followed a YouTube tutorial by Sam from Mixed Up Craft, I actually found her tutorial and blog thanks to a lady who is a member of one of the same craft groups as me, I really couldn't believe how easy it was to make one of these cards and I'll be making more in the future. It's another card that will fold flat, so if you don't put much on in the at of embellishments, you can send your card as a large letter and save postage.

I made the "Home Sweet Home" card first and I got myself in to a bit of a pickle, I couldn't get the flap the card fold created to stand upright. No matter what I did it fell forward or backward 😕 There are 3 possibilities for the problem...

1) The cardstock weight was not strong enough, I used cardstock  that was only 160gsm and was therefore probably not strong enough to take the weight of the topper?

2) The topper I attached was too heavy for the flap. That said I tried adding a piece to the back of the flap but it didn't help stablise it.

3) I didn't fold the flap correctly. In  the demo video Sam folds in one direction half way, turns the piece over and folds the other side of the flap from the outside to the centre in the other direction. When I made the first card I turned the flap over and folded it all the same way.

When I made the 'Bee Happy' card I followed the steps and folded and creased in the same way that Sam did and my flap stood up perfectly and held the topper without falling over. I like the colours and image of the 'Home Sweet Home' card and didn't want to bin it so I made a couple of little hinges to glue to the back, this created the stability that the topper needed to stand upright. Whilst it wrecks the "How did they do that illusion?", it does mean that I can still use the card and didn't have to throw it away.

The bee topper and papers were from a "Making Cards for Boys" CD that came free with Making Cards Magazine in March 2017, I'd printed these off when I made the Colourful Monster cards back in February but the right idea to use them hadn't hit me.

I thought that the images would be good for an impossible card. I decided to add some Tonic Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the honey jar to make it look more glass jar like and I love the effect that the glaze created.

The topper and papers for the "Home Sweet Home" card are from a Crafters Companion "Makey Bakey Mice" CD and were printed off a while back, again waiting for the right project to come along. I decided against adding a sentiment to this card because the topper already had a sentiment on it.

I made the paper flowers from a leftover piece of the backing paper and a scrap from making the base card using the Card Making Magic Die Set 'Layered Florals' and finished the centres off with some 'English Mustard' Nuvo Drops. In hindsight, it would probably been better to use some distress ink to define the edges of the flowers after shaping them, but I was a little too eager to finish the card and by the time I thought about inking, I'd already stuck the flowers and leaves down. Below is the video I used to make the cards.

In other news a lovely card making thing happened this week, I've finally found a group of ladies that live locally that meet a few times a month to craft, chat and eat cake! I'll be going along to meet them and craft along with them on the 11th May, the lady that organises the events is a Stampin Up demonstrater, but she is foremost a crafter who it seems loves getting together with others to share the joy of crafting, I'm looking forward to it and getting together with other crafters to share inspiration. That's all for now, I'm off to work on a few more impossible cards, these cards are so impossibly I hope you have a go if you haven't already.