Monday 18 April 2011

Spring is in the Air - An exercise in frugality!

Good Afternoon All,


I hope you all had a great weekend and have been enjoying some spring sunshine. It's been lovely here this morning but has now gone a bit overcast and cooler.

This card started with leftover gingham paper from a card, entitled Taking a Dip, I made earlier for my sister's birthday today. I'm trying to be frugal! Yes, I know, difficult, but surely not impossible :)

The yellow card base is from a pre-made pack bought cheaply from The Works - still being frugal! And the two complementary papers are from the Artsy Collage Textured Papers booklet by Hot Of The Press which I have had in my stash forever, ignored and forgotten. It was time to resurrect them - the frugal theme continues! I cut the papers using Kiwi Lane Tiny Sentiments templates - I don't use these often enough and yet I love the shapes you can get with them and the effects you can achieve.



The leaves were made with leftover green card cut to shape using Kiwi Lane Tiny Nature templates, stamped with VersaMark and heat embossed using Sheena's WOW embossing powder, Lime Light, then edged with Heat It Up silver embossing powder.

After several attempts at producing a butterfly this is the one that I liked the best. I began by stamping the butterfly (a free stamp from Craft Stamper magazine - still being frugal, you see) out in black ink onto a small piece of white card, cut it out, heat embossed it with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE) in platinum, then stamped again directly onto the UTEE. While it was still warm I shaped the wings a little. The topper is finished off with two pieces of pearly twigs - my pound shop find last year and a very economical purchase.


The sentiment topper is made using My Craft Studio Professional, a Bearly Mine Design digital paper, Spring Blossom 01 and a free sentiment from Sentiments4You. Inside and back are decorated to match.


Inside
 
Back

The final embellishment is some silver card candy. I'm really pleased with this card because I've been able to use up some bits and bobs leftover from previous projects, use the templates that I have had stashed away for some time, and try out a new technique with the UTEE too. Nothing new was purchased for the making of this card : )

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges.

Totally Paper Crafts: Springtime
Top Tip Tuesday: Spring has Sprung!
Rainbow Lady's Challenge: Springtime 

I spent the weekend visiting my daughter and family and popped into my sister's with her birthday present. She is 57 today and amazingly cheerful about it too! Well, she is still younger than me :) As a result, I've spend very little time here in the craft space and precious  little crafting has been going on over the last few days, so must crack on and see what I can accomplish this week.

Happy crafting to you all,

5 comments:

Mau xx said...

Great Card Elizabeth, its amazing just how much stuff we have isn't it. I keep finding things that I can't even remember buying, let alone had forgotten about...lol

kay said...

what a fabulous frugal card, i am most impressed and your butterfly is super,x

Rainbow Lady said...

Gorgeous card and I love 'the boss' too. Thanks for playing Love Cynthia x

starcyl said...

This is great and doesn't look like you are trying to be frugal. Thanks for joining us at Rainbow Lady's this week.
Jenny x

Vicky said...

Just stunning Elizabeth...and that butterfly is gorgeous hun..

thanks for joining us at totally papercrafts and good luck!

hugs Vicky xx