I found this digi image at Squigglefly and couldn’t resist. It is coloured with copics and cut with Spellbinders Deckled Rectangles and mounted onto black cardstock. The background is some DSP of the world, layered with Crumb Cake cardstock embossed with Cuttlebugs Diamond Plate embossing folder, while the strip over that is the same card stock but I used a direct to paper technique with Momentos Tuxedo Black ink and embossed with Cuttlebugs Herringbone folder to make it resembloe tire tracks.

I found these images by accident and I had to resize and adjust to make them work. I think they were originally for a wedding but I knew Hubby would love the joke. the ring fingers are cut out with the rings showing through the holes.

The card base is Wisteria Wonder cardstock and the darker purple is Concord Crush (now retired) The images are coloured with copics. I have used Spellbinders M-bossabilities         EL-012 to emboss the background. These are very cool as you get two different embossing designs in one folder. This is a tri-fold card so the them runs though all three layers.

]]> http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2013/03/22/anniversary-funny/feed/ 0 http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2013/03/16/kelley-is-30/ http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2013/03/16/kelley-is-30/#comments Sat, 16 Mar 2013 04:05:33 +0000 admin http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/?p=328 Continue reading →]]> Today Kelley is 30, she has been dreading this day for so long, but she will discover that 30 is not so bad.

We had a wonderful day where I took her out of a day of girlie pampering. We went to brunch, had our hair done, did some shopping and even got our nails done. She came back looking and feeling fabulous

Kelley has worked really hard and has lost over 20kg in the months leading up to her birthday, and this gave me the inspiration for her card.

Of course it had to involve cake. This is a tri-fold card. The background is clear imbossed with French Filigree background stamp by Stampin Up and thin inked with Wisteria Wonder ink. To finish the background I just used the same ink and the Polka Dot background stamp.

The background and the ribbon were continued right through the whole card. The Image is a digistamp from Bugaboo stamps coloured with copics.

 She got quite a chuckle out of this card so it was a hit.

Once again I got landed with making the cake. Kelley likes things fairly plain so I decided on a present cake.

The flavour in the bottom was chocolate and the top was carrot – her favourite

One day I might have to learn how to do the cakes properly.

She had a wonderful weekend with a lunch on the day, followed by a surprise day out the next day where Kelley and I took her to paint some ceramics and then she visited her relatives in Auckland.

She likes to paint so I used that as the theme for her cake and came up with an artists palate. This is what I ended up with.

It was a very hot and humid day so I had a bit of trouble with the fondant sweating and falling apart but over all it worked out well and she loved her cake.

This year I went to the craft shop especially to get a chess pieces punch to make his card out of. When we checked the punches they were all sticking and on closer inspection the pieces were actually quite small.

I decided to get a chess stamp instead, and the lady told me that it was cheaper to buy the card kit which contained the stamp, than to just get the stamp by itself. Go figure.

A friend of mine gave some some black glittery embossing powder, which is kind of like the black version of iridescent Ice embossing powder. So I used both of these and then covered them with glossy accents to make the chess board tiles.

The two chess pieces were just embossed with plain black and white on the opposite colour paper, and the little stamped pawn is stamped with whisper white onto glossy silver card stock.

Bevan is a chess geek so I know he will be happy with this, and surprised as I haven’t yet told him I bought a chess stamp.

He also loves his burgers and fries, so I decided to make his cake as a burger and fries.

With Bevan’s favourite cake being banana, that is what the bun is made out of with chocolate cake for the patty. The lettuce and cheese is coloured moulded white chocolate, and the dressing is just butter icing.The tomato sauce was raspberry gel icing and the fries and tomatoes were butter cookies.

It looked great and everyone who saw it loved it.

Copic markers have only been here for a short time, and we can only get the ciao markers here, which of course means that most of the colours are still unavailable to us. On top of that they are very expensive and there has been talk of price increases coming soon. This is bad news for someone like me, with a limited budget and still at the beginning of my copic collection.

I decided to look around as some of the other brands and see if something would feel like a fit for me. After much search in the web I decided to try out the Spectrum Noir markers to see it I liked them. I went into it with a very open mind as reviews had some people loving them and others saying they would rather stay with their copics as they did not like the Specrum Noir markers at all.

So I took the plunge and invested my birthday money into three packs of markers. Now my first comparison between copics and Spectrum Noirs. I do like the way the packs give you six blendable pens right off the bat. However I can see how this could be frustrating for someone who just wanted one or two shades because they have a lot of other alcohol markers already. For me with not too many copics this was not an issue so I am happy to buy the packs, it takes the guess work out of which colours to by.I think down the line a bit further I may be frustrated about having to buy the reinkers in packs. but right now it is not an issue.

On the other hand with the copics I get the shades I want for the a particular project and then I have them, the packs didn””t work for me so I prefer to buy my copics as individual pens. I cannot get he reinkers here, but I can send them in to get them refilled if I need to. The advantage there is if I do not use a marker much then I never have to get it refilled. The disadvantage is that I have to send them away, so I would be looking a week without that marker if I ever have to refill them.

Moving on I ordered the markers online on Sunday, and they arrived yesterday(Wednesday), so that was not too bad for mail order. I ordered three packs, the essentials, the pale hues and the warm greys. I didn””t buy colours that I already had in the copics, instead filling in some gaps that I wanted.

It is always exciting to get new things, and these markers were no exception. I am not going to go into the obvious differences between the two brands as there is a lot of that information out there already, What is important is the whole colouring/blending thing, after all that is why we use alcohol markers in the first place.

I stamped the same image on the same card stock and used c1, c3, and c5 in the copic markers on one image then BG1, BG2 and BG4 in the Spectrum Noir. These are both greys but one is a cool grey and the other is a warm grey. Both images were given a shadow outline using the c0 copic marker since this is something I often do with my images anyway.

So first off, I will say that the different markers do require slightly different techniques due to the differences in there nibs. I have had more practice with my copics, but I am still very much a beginner with all the alcohol markers so there is a lot of room for improvement. I will also say that the image is used is quite small being only about and inch high.

I managed to get both images to blend although I seemed to have to spend more time with the copics to get the blending to happen. The Spectrum Noir markers are quite wet so when you layer the shades they almost blend themselves, the down side to this is that you have to be careful at the edges because it may bleed a bit. I did not have any trouble with the copics bleeding, but I had to work a lot harder get the blending happening. I also did have a play with some browns and combining both brands, and it seemed to work just fine. I just had to make sure that I had colour shades close to each other.

My personal opinion is that if you have already invested a lot of money into copics and are happy with your images, you might as well stick to them as you will not gain anything with the other markers. If on the other hand you are new to alcohol markers and do not have a large disposable budget, then certainly at half the price per marker, the Spectrum Noir will do the job with no bigger of a learning curve.

So what will I do now that I have some of each. Well because of the problems getting the copics colours, I plan to continue to use both. Because of the price, I will over time get the rest of the Spectrum Noir markers and then I can fill in my shadings with the copics. Since I can use both together I think this will give me many more options that just using one brand. Of course I might have a different answer if I had been able to choose between all of the copic colours.

]]> http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2012/10/04/test-run-on-alcohol-markers/feed/ 0 http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2012/08/09/new-crafting-things/ http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2012/08/09/new-crafting-things/#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 06:02:33 +0000 admin http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/?p=220 Continue reading →]]> Today was my birthday. Among other things I got some wonderful new card making things.

The two butterfly stamps and the butterfly punch are about to be deleted from Stampin Up and since I use alot of butterflies in my card making I decided to put them on my order list before they are gone forever. Lucky for me I have a wonderful husband who went ahead and got them for me for my birthday, along with the Beautiful Butterflies Bigz die.

I was especially pleased with this starter kit for parchment craft. I love the beautiful cards I have seen made in this style, and have been talking about giving it a go for sometime now. I suspect that it is not as easy as it looks but we will see. Now that I have something to start with I will be able to find out for myself.

After having gifted me with all the rest of the kits for my gingerbread house, I was not expecting anything more from Maureen, so I was surprised when this arrived in the mail

This was definately my laugh for the day, I have lots of ideas to use this stamp  for her birthday card next month.

So now that I have been completely spoiled I will let you all know how I fair on the parchment crafting, since I am coming into it as a complete and clueless beginner.

Again I coloured it with my copics and cut out the man so that I could pop it up a bit. The background is done with Tim Holtz distress inks, Bundled Sage, Walnut Stain and Stormy Sky.

The little sign and the stamp at the bottom were both in the same set. On the inside I found a digi stamp with a funny saying about fishing, and used the same distress inks to colour it.

Very simple but it seems to work for me.

I decided to make an effort and so I made a card for the day. I had an idea of cutting out a heart and having a key in it, so that is what I wanted to do. It took some thinking but I did manage to get the heart cut out. I used Stampin Up”s concord crush cardstock as the card was for my husband so I didn”t want to use any pink. I also like the purple with the red.

The card needed some balance on the inside so I added a few little touches to ensure that it would stand up nicely. When I first started I couldn”t get a nice key so only had a great big heavy on that I was struggling with. When I stumbled on this smaller key I knew it was the answer to my balance problem.

To keep the whole thing closed I added a body band with yet more hearts. Now this may have been a bit of overkill but it was only on for a short amount of time and so served its purpose.

So there it is, my card for my valentine.

]]> http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2012/02/14/happy-valentines-day/feed/ 0 http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2011/12/14/christmas-card-for-2011/ http://www.dreamcrafts.co.nz/2011/12/14/christmas-card-for-2011/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:01:02 +0000 admin http://www.dreamdolls.co.nz/?p=155 Continue reading →]]> This year I decided to make just one christmas card for everyone. I started early so that I would have time to trial a few designs if need be.

Sammie had wanted a stamp of santa in his sleigh with the reindeer last year, and I had managed to get one after christmas, so I tried out a card with it.

I began by stamping the image with black embossing powder which was coloured with a blender pen after all the background was coloured.

I used a mask to make the moon and inked the outside using Tim Holtz Weathered wood and Stormy Sky distress inks. This gave me just the right blend of blue grey for a night sky. The moon is inked in Stampin”””” Up Barely Banana which is a retired colour, but again just the right shade.

After all the inking I sprayed the top with Dazzling Diamonds glimmer mist for a bit of sparkle, before assembling the whole thing.

This was the first card that I tried out, and we liked it so much that it was the one we used. Made trialing very easy as there was only one. I ended up having to make 50 of them this year, the inking of the background took the most time, but I think the results were worth it.