Creative Card Making with Jennie

Hello everyone! Jennie here sharing the creative card making tutorial with you this month.

As our theme this month is Rustic Charm I decided to collect some "rustic" elements for my card. I didn't set out to make this particular design but used my "finds" to detail and design my card.

I found some great hessian pieces - paper and real! and little bits of lace and cork .....

... which all got stuck down in layers.

So here is how it all came together.

It was finding this hessian piece of paper in my stash which got me started on the Rustic Charm theme. I had no idea it was there and the edges were a bit tatty so it has been "around" for a while. I managed to cut it into a 5.5" x 5.5" piece which I thought would look good layered onto a piece of ivory card measuring 5.75" x 5.75" and then onto a kraft 6" x 6" base.

I decided to add a little more hessian. This was very difficult to cut straight !!! and I realised too that it would be difficult to glue. So I decided to stitch the edges of the card and catch it along the straight edges. Just enough to hold it in place.

I felt it all needed brightening a little so added the little ivory doily to match the layered card.

I find it is always best to get the base card stuck together at this stage - once the card starts to get decorated it is then very difficult to get it on to the base card.

Next up came a piece of cork which I also found in my bits box. There was enough (just!) to cut it using the Tim Holtz Trellis Die. 

This is one of my favourite dies for cards - it is so lovely and airy and just adds a wonderful vertical element to a card without being overbearing.

Next came a tiny little bit of lace. You can see the glue still wet here and I don't normally wait for anything to dry as it means I can lift things to snuggle other embellishments underneath. Once dry it is not possible to do that.

Muslin and some tea dyed ribbon came next. Sometimes a bow is too much, so by tyeing a knot in the middle of the ribbon this allows it to lie in a "bow" shape without all the bulk.

Finally I added a sentiment under the handmade rose .......

..... and tucked a stamped butterfly in behind the flower and muslin.

Finished! Relatively quickly and easy to put together with stash I already had.

I normally keep a bunch of handmade flowers and stamped butterflies ready for cards which saves a lot of time.

Thank you for joining me today and don't forget that there is still time to join us in our challenge RUSTIC CHARM. You can get all the details here.

Jennie x

Rustic Charm bag for a tag tutorial

Hello lovely visitors, this is Astrid, sharing a little tutorial with you on how to create a bag, or rather pocket (I just liked the fact that bag and tag rhyme), but really it's a pocket for a tag. Such a pocket has many uses, it can stand by itself, be part of a journal, become a gift holder, or be part of a gift for a penfriend, as my original for our rustic charm challenge was.
Here's a little reminder of what the original looked like:

The tutorial is for the pocket you see on the left.
Here goes:
1. I started with a piece of coffee dyed  A4 card, and with a pencil marked around the tag to determine the size, making sure to allow for plenty of space for tabs to glue and to sew around without making it too tight.

2. Cut to size as marked, then fold in about 3/4" from the bottom and the same from one side, then fold  in half and then cut to the shape following the steps as shown in the photos below. With these simple steps you can create pockets to any size without the need of expensive dies!

step 1  fold 3/4" from bottom and one side

step two cut away on one side up to the fold at the bottom

step 3 mitre the flaps as shown.What you see in the last two photos are the in- and outsides of your pocket.

3.  Cut a notch with a circle punch, you can also emboss either along one side as I did, or anywhere obviously, but do that before gluing it together and then sewing around it if you like that effect. I did the embossing as an after thought to match it with my tag, and it worked, but it would be better I think to do it before.

4. Time to decorate. I chose matching colours to go with my tag in a mix of normal and oxide Distress Inks.Using both blending tools and just spritzing and dipping.

5. To go with the theme of the challenge I chose to embellish with some flower die cuts, also coloured with Oxide Inks, as shown below, and one of the Tim Holtz charms plus a few other bits and pieces..

6. I cut the flowers from kraft card, which can be coloured beautifully with Oxide Inks. I found the best way was to squoosh them on the white Tim craft mat, spritz with water and then use a refillable water brush.

And here the finished pocket, with the tag tucked inside.

 I'll put a few more close up photos below, but as you can see I also added some lace,  an element cut with one of the Tim Holtz 3D Cut and Emboss folders, some computer generated words and the charm I mentioned with some paper glued behind.

Well, that's it, a pretty simple project, but fun to do and it has many uses, which is always a good thing in my book.

On my own blog there are a few more examples of what you can do with little bags like this, and there are also some freebies you can use to decorate if you like such things.

Thank you for visiting and if you have not done so yet, there is still plenty of time to join in our Rustic Charm challenge, we would love to see what you come up with for that.

Happy crafting and stay safe!

Astrid xxx

Pinworthy Winners for Beautiful Blooms

Hello and welcome to our Pinworthy Winners Post for last month's challenge which was Beautiful Blooms. Thank you for all your beautiful entries - we always appreciate every one and thank you for taking part.

There were SO many wonderful entries that it has been difficult for the Creative Guides and myself to narrow it down to just three entries for our Pinworthy title. In no particular order here are the three which showed beautiful and unique creativity:

Hazel Agnew

A fabulous journal page with a most glorious iridescent glow.

Irina Rakovets

Three beautiful ATCS with hand embroidered flowers echoing the cardstock 

flowers used in the layered ATC.

Jarka Ef

Beautiful handmade blooms adorning this layered card.

Congratulations! I will be sending you your Pinworthy badge to display on your blogs shortly and we will be pinning your fabulous entries to the Vintage Journey Pinworthy board on Pinterest.

There is still plenty of time to enter our current challenge which is RUSTIC CHARM. You can find all the details HERE along with some fabulous inspiration from the Creative Guides. 

Also don't forget to check back next Friday as Astrid (our host for the current challenge) will be sharing a tutorial and there will be also be a creative card making tutorial the following week.

Thank you so much for joining us in our challenges and following our Creative Guides.  We look forward to seeing what you create this month.

Have a great weekend!

Jennie and the Creative Guides

Rustic Charm

Hello everyone and welcome! Happy June to you all and I hope you get to enjoy lots of Sunshine, even if you happen to live in the Southern Hemisphere.

This is Astrid, your host for this our 90th challenge, just where has the time gone....

But here we are, and I hope that you are all happy and healthy.

So our theme this month is Rustic Charm, and this is what we would like you to do with it:

Rustic describes a design that is natural, rough, aged and casual. We would love to see you create a project using these elements: think nature inspired textures and simple and earthy colours. Rust and textures, or indeed anything related that your imagination can come up with. Just remember to create your project in one of our preferred styles: vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

Well, I hope you like what we have in store for you, and there is certainly plenty of inspiration here


Astrid

Some of you may remember the tag I made for our tag challenge last week. For our June challenge I made a matching pocket and folder to hold the tag. It will be a gift for a penfriend. I will do a tutorial here on the blog of how it all came together soon, meanwhile, if you want to see more photos, just visit my blog

Jo

I had so much fun creating this rustic page for Astrid's challenge. I thoroughly enjoyed making the wood effect background and also this happy bear from my new Tim Holtz Theodore Thinlet set really makes me smile! To find out how it came together please pop over to my blog Let's Art Journal.

Ann

I'd created a decoration for Astrid's fabulous theme. I use natural colors and materials to show the "Rustic Charm". Please join me for a brief tutorial on my blog.

S@ndy

For this great challenge I decided to do something a little different. I made some cute and fun vintage vignettes using projector slides. I hope to see you over at my blog where I have a video showing just how I made them.

Barbara

Thanks to Astrid for this wonderful theme! I made a tiny birdhouse by creating faux wood with stencils and colors. If you want to read the tutorial I will wait for you on my Blog Yayascrap & more.

Alison

I've been doing some altering for Astrid's lovely theme, converting some cheap shiny plastic plant pots into weathered rustic stonewear.  Do come over to Words and Pictures if you'd like to see how I did it... and also to see them with their plants happily in place.

Toni

For Astrid's fabulous challenge, I've constructed a little rustic notebook, filled with coffee dyed paper. If you'd like to see how it came together, please hop over to my Artistic Craft Dabbler blog, with this link

Well, I hope you agree with me that the sheer variation of styles and projects here is inspiring, and of course we all hope you will join us for the challenge this month. We would love to see what you create.

Thanks for coming by and happy creating!
Astrid and the creative team

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter