Marie Antoniette, Nature Notes, St Valentine & Japanese Cards

Having  a ball with Marie  Antoinette.

Ira at my DT,,,,did this True Play of Art ,so directly from her blog: +Marie Antoinette is completely prepared for the ball. Her lady in waiting has just completed her Royal Hairness's, uh, I mean her Royal Highness's silk handbag and the ball dance cards have all been issued as well. Silk, ribbons, lace, sequins, a bracelet and ornaments (gifts from both my dear friends Ros and Odetta) have all been hand sewn into this purse. You can miss this amazing creation working with "Vintage French Postcards" by Nicecrane Designs.

Royal Highness's silk handbag by Ira

Some Close Up Views (Handbag)

And ...what about these stunning Dance Ball Cards?

"- The following texts were printed on the dance cards by using the 1610 Cancellaresca font:

"Marie Antoinette, Reine de France et de Navarre""Cordialement, Marie Antoinette"

 - The beautiful images are from Nicecrane Designs: 

Click on the image to get a larger view....(you must watch it)

Enjoy these Close Up Views:

- The back of the cards:

And here is my French Postcards Sheet:

GET VINTAGE FRENCH POSTCARDS

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Retro Valentine Card  ( by Jenny)

Jenny at my DT was working hard to offer you some of the best creation I have seen on this week.:

Our Creative Corner are so excited to be working with Nicecrane Designs, who supply the most fantastic range of reasonably priced digital images to suit every taste.

I went very retro with this card and chose to work with three of the Valentines collections;

Be My Valentine CS

Romantic Valentine Collection I

Romantic Valentine Collection II

I love the seasonal collage papers that are part of the Idea-ology range and realised that by combining my own choice of images from these digital collections I could create my own bespoke background. If you haven't tried something like this before it is pretty easy. You can resize the images and insert them next to each other on a blank page.

Just like those bespoke papers, I wanted a more vintage feel. By brushing Antique Linen Distress Stain to the background, drying it thoroughly, sanding it lightly and applying Walnut Stain Distress Ink to the edges the separate images blended beautifully.

If you are going to layer elements onto a background it is always a good idea to trace around the main shape so you can work out where to place everything underneath it. This also helps if, as in this case, you want to apply stencilling and spritzing with inks and paints. I used white to do both and add some contrast to the background/foreground.

I was careful to choose card colours that coordinated with the main colours in the background images. It's one of my 'design principles' - complicated background, simple foreground. The heart was coloured with Red Geranium Archival Ink before being covered in clear Rock Candy Crackle Paint and a thin layer of Matte Multi-Medium.

It always makes a difference to add Walnut Stain Distress Ink to the edge of every element, taking away that harsh white colour. The ink also helped to highlight the embossed areas. And with a sentiment added, matting the background gave the card a frame.

I really hope you enjoyed this Sponsor Spotlight. There will be two more this month featuring Nicecrane Designs, hosted by Astrid and Laura.And don't forget to join us for this month's 'A three colour challenge'. You could be picked as one of our Top 3, or even become our Top Talent with the opportunity to showcase your work here at Our Creative Corner. One of our lucky entrants will even be picked at random to receive a wonderful prize, kindly donated by Nicecrane Designs.

But That is not all,,,,,Jenny also did this
another stunning creation

Everyone. It's time for this month's Our Creative Corner challenge, and I'm the host!

This time the challenge is to use only shades of blue, brown and purple/plum - no black lines, even on your stamped or digital images!!!

You can definitely use stamped or digital images if you want to, but you must change the colour of the lines in your image to a shade of brown, blue or purple. White is acceptable as a base, for example a white card blank, but shouldn't be a main colour. Anyone submitting projects containing anything other than blues, browns and purples/plums will immediately be disqualified to make it fair to the other entrants.

And this month we are pleased to announce that one randomly drawn entrant will win a prize from our generous sponsor Nicecrane Designs.

Colour is an important part of the creative process for me. I will often start by choosing the colour palette for a project before finalising the design, and as time has gone on I've learned to try to limit the colours to a maximum of three.
This works for me and I'm excited to see if it is equally successful for you.

A useful tip for those who have never changed the colour of the lines on their digital images; this is easy if you use one of those image or photo manipulation programs available for free on the internet. They will contain transformation tools that make everything sepia, for example. Go on, give it a go. We'd love to see your tags, ATC's, cards, canvases, journalling, 3D art, etc.

As well as sticking to the colour palette for this challenge, I wanted to show that it is possible to use digital images without having those harsh black lines. And just wait 'til you hear what I printed the main image onto!

Let's start by identifying this beautiful digital image. It is a Nicecrane Designs image from the set 'Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady'. I opened it in my photo editing software and used a setting which transformed the black into sepia (the heads of the birds are actually dark brown but seems to look black here despite my best efforts using the camera).

So what did I print this image onto? A piece of Tim Holtz Idea-Ology paper stash 'French Industrial' paper! It takes ink beautifully and there's no reason why you can't use it in the same way you would any other blank card.

Using a fine paint brush, Distress Inks and water I 'painted' over the image to add more colour. This is great as it makes you look like a real artist.

A coordinating shade of brown Distress Ink was blended on the edges of the card to finish this base layer.

The frame was created by layering the mauve textured card underneath a mirror card filigree piece, altered with alcohol inks. The base layer of this frame helped to bring out the colour of the flowers.

The stamped bird at the bottom of the frame is in fact a different species, but by using a similar colour palette/pattern to that used on the others it blended rather well. The die cut branches were useful both for providing a perch and for adding interest around the sentiment.

As mentioned at the beginning, I tend to choose a set of colours towards the beginning of a project and stick with it. This does take some of the time out of the decision making process which can hamper the completion of projects. So, for example, I grabbed Seedless Preserves, Coffee Archival and Antique Linen for the sentiment strip, knowing those colours would work perfectly with the rest of the design.

GET  HERE NATURE NOTES OF AND
EDWARDIAN LADY DSL

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Working with Colorful Geishas

I must tell you now Ginny at Maxam Made is now on my DT,,,,,so I asked her to work with my Japanese Collections and other ones,,,and here is her first stunning work,,,,,,woww,wow,wos,,,,.Welcome on board Ginny.....you deserve it.........my friend..

Ginny is show ing you what she did with a roll:

One Caveat: there is nothing scientific about my process and I am sure that anyone who can and have the patience to measure could find a better way!

One large roll of wrap on sale for $2.50

First I take out the card board support paper. This is easily done by jogging the paper, then you just pull it out.

Next I measure the roll and cut every 6 inches (30 inch roll yield 5 segments)

I do this because I pretty much only make cards and nothing bigger than a 5x7 so this will yield an adequate backing size for any of my cards.

With the cardboard support insert gone, a good pair of scissors has no problem making this cut.

Next I open the roll up a little bit and cut a straight line through the mini roll. The smallest piece on the inside is still more than large enough for and A2 background size paper. Each tube gave me 11 sheets. totaling 55 background papers.

Now these will need to be flattened, I just stick the whole pill under a ferw books and leave tehm there for a week, this presses them out beautifully.

And here is a card I made with the background paper I just cut!!This beautiful design is from Nicecrane 

Designs.  

I'm very excited to have joined a new design team! The company and store is called Nicecrane Designs. Nicecrane has a wonderful store and blog to which I will provide links to towards the end of the post. What I love about Nicecrane are the beautiful fine art images in a broad spectrum of styles. There are Children's illustrators, Japanese Masters, Art deco, Digital papers and backgrounds, stamps, ATC's - some colored and some waiting for you to add your personal touch! There are book marks and templates and all kinds of ideas! This is a fine art catalog made available in digital stamps!

I've been ordering from Nicecrane for while and I have never had one problem with the images! They are high quality digitals done in 300 dpi, made resizable to fit your crafting needs! Just browsing the online store is an event!!

Over the weekend I made this birthday card: using the Colorful Geisha II set I had hoped to have a few more sample made for you for today, but yesterdays' snow storm here interrupted those plans!!

Isn't she beautiful!!! She is printed on a "laid" finish paper I added a little diamond glitter to her hair ornaments and had this card done in 10 minutes!

There are so many images to choose from you won't know where to stop especially since they are very affordable!!

Stunning Japanese Card by Ginny

I hope this inspires you to look at your wrapping paper stash in a different light! 

You can`t miss the complete set:

GET COLORFUL GEISHAS VOL I

GET COLORFUL GEISHAS VOL II

Thanks a million to Jenny, Ira and Ginny,,,,,and I hope these 

incredible works to be a real inspiration for you,,,,