It's about time!..

Hi everyone. Today is a very special friends Birthday. Mmmmmm, oh what card to make for her??? Well in fact not a card at all, more of a keep sake..
Many of you will know French Lin if you have visited the shop. Those of you who are unable to visit us may recall the card I made for her last Year?! A tough one to top I grant you! So, I decided to go in a completely different direction with this years offering.
As like me, and many of you, Lin enjoys getting down and dirty with a little bit of Ink, Tim Holtz style'ie.So that's the technique I decided to use for her.. There is a subtle hint to her age on the clock face! She is neither 16 nor half past One though!!!So if you fancy turning thisinto this, here's how....I started off by choosing my card stock for the clock face... I'd had my eye on this selection of Core'dinations card stock for a while, about time I took it out of the packaging me thinks! There were 20 sheets of card stock in Grey's, Black's & Tan's. All printed with different designs.And it was difficult to choose which one to use but I plum'pt for this one.The greatest thing about this kind of card stock is not only can you emboss it with your own embossing folders and then sand it to reveal your image, it is also already embossed!!A light sanding will reveal the embossing.So, I cut an 11" Circle from the Platin Schoolbook Cartridge using my Cricut.I then cut out another Circle, this time onto some much thicker card stock so I needed to use my Deep cut Blade and the Multi cut Function to cut through the card stock.And then stuck to two together to give the Grey card some stability.I then sanded the edges to give a little more distress.Now for the numbers. We have a great selection of wooden shapes in the shop and these 4cm wooded letters are great for your Scrapbooking pages. And at just 18pence each, Yes 18p!!! a bargain to boot...I coloured both sides and the edges of the numbers with Stormy Sky Distressing Inkand laid them onto the clock face to make sure that they fitted OK. You will notice that YES, some of the numbers are the wrong way round.. This was intentional, remember I was going for a Tim Holtz style'ie,have you seen the way he puts "2011" together?Time for some more distressing. I took a number and randomly applied a two way glue pen to it.Adding some Gold Leaf, or in this case Verdigris/Gold leafand then burnished the excess off.This was done with all of the numbers before they were adhered to the face of the clock with some Silicone Gel.I cut the hands of the clock from the Graphically Speaking Cricut Cartridge @ 4.5" using the Blackout function as the solid imageand layering the standard image on top to give dimension.In keeping with the distressing theme I then added some more of the leaf to the clock handsbefore positioning them onto the clock face.Now for the box. I took some packaging that some backing papers were delivered in,marked and cut out a frame.Popping the clock into it to check that it fit.
Now for the fun (if messy) bit, distressing the box.I painted the whole of the box in some metallic Green Acrylic paint and dried it with my heat gun.I then applied a generous amount of PVA Glueand spread it out with the best crafting tools I have, MY HANDS!!!Whilst the Glue is still wet, paint on your top layer of Acrylic Paint. I used Silver. Try not to push to hard, you want the paint to sit on top of the Glue, not in it.Whilst that area starts to dry, carry on with the rest of the box.What you will notice is that the paint starts to spilt from the Glue.And as the Glue dries clear it reveals the Green underneath, therefore distressing it. The reason this happens is because the Acrylic Paint dries faster than the Glue, so the wet Glue slips a little revealing the colour underneath...Whilst this was drying, and it took a while!! I prepared my Leaves & Flowers. I used the Tim Holtz Tattered Leaves Die. This can either be used in the Sizzix Big Shot Machine or the Cuttlebug. If you are using it through the Cuttlebug take away your A Plate and substitute it with the Die.Add your card stock and 2 B plates.Et Viola!!I then cut out several leaf/petal shapes from the Mother's Day Bouquet Cricut cartridge @ 1", curving them slightly to give them some dimension.I added the leaves to the now dry box frame with some Silicone Geland then positioned the petal shapes into the gelin a flower shapeadding a gem in the middle to hide the Gel.I randomly arranged these around the frame.Now for my sentiment. I printed my words on my PC and cut it to size... If you look closely I actually misspelled a word, which I touched up manually when I noticed! oooppps! I also cut a frame from the Tag', Bag's Boxes & More Cricut Cartridgeand layered the Two togetherbefore attaching it to the frame.Well, here's hoping Lin likes it and gets the T!m references...
Thanks for checking us out, see you soon.
Andy.

More Inspo....

Hi Blogland. Another Cuttlebug Spot Design Team Challenge for you today. Throughout January our themes have been "Inspiration".. Where do you get yours from?
Well, today we were asked to take inspiration from a magazine... You may recall our first challenge of the year was inspiration from a Book. I said at the time I don't really have the time to read, so therefore I have even less time to check out a magazine. Although I do occasionally flick through the Financial Times or the Independent Newspapers. Ok, more like the Sun or the News of the World!!
For this project I worked backwards. I knew what I wanted to do and use, so I therefore found an article from an on line magazine to match the inspiration...And here it is. The magazine was about gardens, and specifically gates!!.. Yeah! Not my cup of tea and doesn't exactly rock my world either, but it takes all sorts to make the world go round!!
And here is the project I came up with. It's a play on a New Home card I recently sent to a friend who has just moved..
And here's an "Andy" step by step for you if you fancy giving something similar a go..I started off by cutting out my Flower Shapes. I used a Marianne Designs Creatable Die (LR0128 Flower Fantasy). To cut these dies through the Cuttlebug you will need your A and B plates followed by your card stock and dies.Finishing of the "sandwich" with your C plate and pass through the machine.Once cut you are ready to emboss the image. Turn the dies over and place on top of an A and B plate.Add your "Tan" mat,and then this time another B plate. NOT a C plate as the "sandwich" will be too thick to go through the machine.Once embossed I coloured in the centre of each Flower using a Copic Pen (Lionet Gold Y28)and flicked the pen from the centre of the flower outwards.I then curved the petals of the flowers over the edge of my desk to add dimension.Added a foam pad to the centre of the larger flowerand popped the smaller one on top.Finishing off with a "blob" of Glossy Accents in the centre.Cool eh?!Now for the vine... You will need the Extra Long Cuttlebug plates to cut out this die fully, but if you are only going to use a bit of the die then the standard plates will be fine.
Again, to cut you will need your A and B platesfollowed by your card stock and diefinishing off with your C plate.To emboss the die, turn it over so the cutting side is facing upwards.Add your "Tan" mat and then your B plate.I used the No Shims Maxi mat as this is the one I had to hand at the timeand just did the process twice, but normally I would have used the larger 12" x 12" Tan mat which I could have cut to size.Et Viola!!Now for the brick wall.. This has proved a very popular Embossing Folder since I used it on my last project. It's a 5" x 7" Folder and at only £3.99 a bargain to boot!!
I coloured some light Cream card stock with Frayed Burlap Distressing Ink, popped it into the Embossing Folder and passed it through the Cuttlebug.I then went over the image with some Pumice Stone Distressing Ink to bring out the brick work patternand then cut the image to the size I needed.To give the brick wall a little bit of interest I punched an edge along the top using the Martha Stewart Double Arches Deep Edger Punch Around the Page Punch.I then added the wall images to my gate image. The gate was cut at 7.5" from the Ornamental Iron Cricut Cartridge.Time for the background.. I was struggling of bit with this one... But eventually came across some card stock from the Bird Song Collection from the current Do Crafts promotion Which fitted the theme perfectly.Unfortunately I had already opened up the 12" x 12" version before I realised that the images were repeated in the 8" x 8" version. However the 12" version had a large tree image printed on it which was better for the project. The scaled down 8" version I decided to use for the back of the card.So, I added the tree paper to the front of a side folding Easel Card (Instructions can be found here). Measured my gate and wall images against the front of the card and trimmed them to size.Added some hefty "blobs" of Silicone Gel to the backand mounted it to the base card.Whilst this was drying I mounted the 8" tree image onto some Gold Mirror cardand added it to the inside of the side folding easel card.I then added the Vineand the flowers as my easel card "Stopper".Finishing off with my "New Home" sentiment...And there you go... When it's closed,and open
Don't forget to pop on over to the Cuttlebug Spot to see what all the other Design Team Members have come up with for this weeks theme...
Have a great day and thanks for checking us out.
See you soon.
Andy..