Christmas Bling

During the past week or so I have been playing with glitter card and paper, glittery Christmas ribbon from the garden centre, die-cut snowflakes and snowflake ornaments from the garden centre. Some of the snowflakes are fairly heavy so I have been using Pinflair glue gel for strength.

The little robin is also on ribbon, just not glittery.

May 2008

Here are some cards from May 2008

An experiment with using a piece of purple parchment, I am not sure that would be something I will repeat.

A pretty decoupage card using a design from Crafty Nikki.

The butterfly card is a design by Christine Coleman.

Just fiddling about pricking and snipping then added a piece of Dufex decoupage.

Still ploughing through April 2008

I am beginning to wonder if I got any sleep this month as I certainly appear to have been prolific. These are just some of the parchment cards, I was also making other cards to give myself a break.

First half of April 2008

I appear to have done a fair amount of iris folding during this time but still managed to turn out some parchment cards during this time.

The dates for these cards are 1st, 3rd, 9th and 15th April.

Some other cards of the same era

Looking back through my scans I see that I also went through an 'oriental' stage around the same time and here are a few non-parchment cards made in March 2008, some 'iris folding' was also a favourite at this time.

Finishing off March 2008's parchment cards

If nothing else I was enthusiastic about parching as the number of cards produced at this time appears to reflect. I must confess that I frequently worked until 3am, in fact I still do.

The two with the coloured flowers are a Christine Coleman pattern and the colouring was done with polychromos pencils.

Decoupaged flower is in Duflex.

Dates are 22nd, 24th, 27th, 29th and 30th March.

Mid March 2008

Moving forward, I obviously got the taste for 'pricking and snipping' and I must say that this is still my favourite part of parching. I still like that pansy card but those fuchsias leave a lot to be desired! Did I really produce those two openwork cards after less than two months, wow, I am impressing myself!

These are dated 11th, 14th, 15th and 16th March.

Early March 2008

The scrolled ones with the butterflies was fun to do back then, again perhaps I ought to try it again now that I have some experience.

The dates of these cards were 3th, 8th, 9th and 10th March.

February 2008

Looking back I realise that I was ambitious.

The dates for these pieces are the 7th, 10th, 12th, 23 and 26th February so the last two are after a month of parching. They are not perfect but I was new to it, and keen.

January 2008

Still back in January 2008, the frame was my next effort and I rather stupidly stuck the decoupage onto the wrong side of the parchment, a valuable lesson. I still like the blue one, perhaps I will look out the pattern and make it again but hopefully making a better job of it.

Going back in time

I have just been looking back at scans of some of my work and since I have shown one of my first attempts at 'normal' cardmaking I suppose I might as well go the whole hog and show my first attempt at parchment craft too, I am not proud of it (now) but I did send it to someone rather than bin it so obviously back then I was pleased with it. As I recall I made a hash of the border so cut out the centre of the piece and stuck it to a card.

Those of you who have Christine Colemans's CDs will recognise it as being one of the beginner pieces. I see from the date of the scan that this was made on 20 January 2008.

More parchment pieces

The top card is one that I started before going to Paignton and finished after I arrived home, the second is another piece started in Paignton and finished later. The flowers and vase were done by painting with Sakura Stardust pens.