Happy St George's Day!

Hi Everyone. Did you know that Today is our national day (in England)..? Me either... Shameful!!
We are more likely to celebrate the Irish St Patrick's Day with a few pints of the "Black Stuff" I.E Guinness, or the 4th of July with a BBQ than to celebrate our Englishness..So when asked for some St George's Day invitations by someone who couldn't find anything suitable in the shops, this is what I came up with.I cut out a body image from the Paper Dolls cartridge at 4 1/2" using my Cricut machine. I tend to use the Cricut card stock pack when using the Paper Doll's cartridge as the Pastels set is the only range I find with a decent skin tone shade in it.
I also cut out the body image using the blackout function on Black card and the hair,and then stuck all of the images together.I then cut out the Knight's Armor and helmet, again @ 4 1/2" this time in Silver Mirror card to give a realistic Armor effect. and stuck these ontop of the body image.I then cut out a Dragon from the Pagoda cartridge @ 3". The Dragon image on the Paper Dolls cartridge was a little too cutsie for what I had in mind and the more aggressive looking Dragon on the Pagoda cartridge was going to work much better.I cut two strips of Red Mirror card 1 1/2" wide for my Cross of St George and stuck them to a White piece for card to form the English flag,and then I attached my images.The letters were cut from Plantain Schoolbook @ 1/2" using the shadow function.
So, all the invitations done and sent out, I'm off to the party in my Japanese car and to drink Belgian Beer... Not at the same time I might add.. Japanese car and Belgian Beer, Oh this England eh!!!
Have a great Day.
See you soon.
Pinnacles.

Now don't be Koi!!

Hi Everyone.. Phew!! what a week so far.. The lead up to Pinnacle Crafts Club Members Weekend is always a little bit frantic.. Getting the shop stocked, orders marked off and everything ship shape for a smooth discount weekend.. Well it's almost here, in fact the last one of the year! So if you are coming along we all look forward to seeing you.. That said, amongst the general running of the shop, teaching, serving, orders etc I have still found a "brief" moment to craft!!
I think I'm all Christmas'd out for the time being. So I fancied ringing the changes a bit for this project.. So out came my trusty Cricut.
I cut 3 Koi images at 3" from the Pagoda Cartridge using some great new patterned mirror card we have in stock. I then cut out corresponding images on plain mirror card using the Blackout function.and then layered the pieces together.I then cut out a 7" Square from Winter Woodland Cartridge, I used the Centre Point function to cut out an inner Square at 5" which left me with the frame I wanted.. The idea being to make a pond for the Koi..
I wanted to make the edge of the pond a bit more interesting, so I embossed around the frame using the Glitter Girls Elegance and Fantasy Embossing Board.To add the element of water I randomly applied Pool & Stream Alcohol Inks to a piece of Acetate.I also cut a piece of heavy glittered card stock to size, this I will use as the base to the pond!
Now I have all of my elements for the card I'm ready to rock and roll and assemble it.I added a strip of double sided foam tape to the under side of the embossed piece of card stock and a double layer of foam tape to the Acetate, this was to give a bit more dimension to the finished card.
Position the Koi images onto the Glitter card stock and the mount the Acetate and frame on top of each other.. How good does this look??
I would have been happy to leave it there and use it potentially as a picture, but in the end decided to mount it onto a card. Keep it simple I thought! But a simple card was exactly that.. too simple.. It just needed a little something..
So with my trusty new corner punch I punched the Two outer corners with the wings of the punch open..
Did you know that you can punch the corners of the card next to the spine without punching all the way through both sides of the card??! Well here's how...
Open just one of the wings and buff it to the edge of your card. Halfway down the side of the punch is a little notch. Line this up with the spine of the card and punch.. Hey! it just cuts on one side of the card. Cool eh!!? Repeat this on the other corner...Simple, but effective..
I also added a few Lilly pads, which were cut from the Pagoda Cartridge at 1" Real Dial Size, these were randomly applied to the picture which was then mounted onto the punched card... A little closer so you can hopefully see the full effect.. If not it's on display in the shop, so if you are in for the massive 30% Club Members Discount over the weekend you can see it for real...

Thanks for checking us out..
See you soon
Pinnacles......