Green grunge

Whoops, that G needs a bit of adjustment! An easy fix, fortunately. Lapse of concentration due to a late evening by the desk. Nice mix of grungy and geometrical papers. Quite the contrast to those all white cards I've done recently. :)

Scraps and PL

Just a clean and simple one today, for my father's birthday. These papers are somewhere between green and teal, which can be a tricky combo. Fortunately a mix of random scraps and some PL supplies did the job just right!

Enjoy the ride

I made this one for a colleague that started a new job. I often go for arrows as a symbol of moving on, or changing something in our lives. This isn't a topic that's extensively covered in scrapping or card making supplies, so I have to invent my own decorations...
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Those cork arrow stickers are lovely! I used some molding paste and a mask to add another three-dimensional aspect to the card.
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Forty

Like the previous card, this one is also clean and simple, but I much prefer this one. It's strange how something looks good and something not, but not being able to fully explain why... Anyway, this layout took a while to balance out, but I think the result is ok.

Shine on!

One of my colleagues has just left for a new job, and this card was made to wish her all the best on her new adventure. While this style is often my choice for men's cards, it also works well for a woman when the highly embellished flowery style seems too cute for her taste. I'd certainly love to receive a card like this, and I hope that goes for others too.

Celebrate

Another card for a man, I've had to do a few of these lately. Always challenging. This guy has more than a couple of cars in his garage, so the vintage car seemed like a nice choice for him. All paper except the kraft base and the green mat is Project Life supplies from various kits

Hooray!

Cards for men are always tricky, and I usually choose kraft for the card base. Then layering bold colours and patterns without too much fuss. Washi tape and a few accents are all that's needed. On my last scrapping fair I picked up a few Project Life supplies and I love using them on my cards!

Happy birthday!

More Project Life supplies in action! In fact, all paper except the kraft base is Project Life. I cut two of the biggest ones down a bit to fit my format, inked the edges and stuck the whole thing together. Easy peasy, and really fast. Again, these cards look better in real life than on this flat picture...

Project Life supplies used in a different way

Now this card doesn't look like much in this picture, I know. These simple cards are so much nicer in real life! You'll have to take my word for it, I guess. Just trust me. :) I recently bought some Project Life stuff, not because I have any intention of doing a Project Life, but because I liked the designs and realised they would be lovely on cards and in my regular photo album! So now I try to use them every chance I get.

Play!

I can't for the life of me remember who this was supposed to be for, but I think it was probably a man? Possibly a man. I think. I should probably start writing these things down.
That blotchy red-green tag was made by splashing two colours of Distress Stain on a non-stick baking sheet and patting the white tag into it. Adding some metallic stain, in this case silver, gives you a nice shine. I've made several tags, and it's a fun process. You haven't got much control over the result, so it's a case of getting messy and just experiment away.

A little prince

This card isn't nearly as askew as it seems. It was just the photographer that couldn't aim. Three pictures, one more tilted than the other... These simple cards don't usually photograph well, even if I manage to align the card with the viewfinder. They look better in person, and you'll just have to trust me on that one! ;)

A little baby girl

That leafy, vein-y, white thingy there was floating around my desk for weeks, trying to find its place on a card. It was failing miserably, until this card came together surprisingly quickly. It's for a colleague and her first baby. It's a girl! :)
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Footballer Frank turns Fifty

Frank likes football. Frank turns fifty. Footballer Frank must have a festive footballer's fiftieth birthday card!! Okay, enough now. :) Does football field corners even look remotely like this? I must admit I've skimped on the research. In fear of accidentally including colours from his team's worst enemy, thereby ruining his birthday all together (again neglecting that research), I restricted myself to grass green and neutral white. And aaaany minute now, someone will probably laugh maniacally and point out that there's at least five teams that wear green and white shirts. My apologies. Anyway. Happy birthday, Frank!

Someone turned 40 a while ago, apparently

I've made a couple of cards lately and haven't shared. Too busy looking at other people's work, I suppose? Here's a card I made one late evening, just in time as usual. I can't even remember who the recipient was - someone who turned 40, obviously. I think it was made for a guy? Oh well. Here it is, anyway. I like the rough, grunge-y style lately, but enjoy mixing it up with bold colours. Teal is awesome. :)

TARDIS phone cozy

My phone already had one cozy, but I couldn't resist making this one too... The design is subtle, but if you know your Doctor Who you might recognize it as the TARDIS!
There are lots of TARDIS cozies out there, but I wanted one that was more elegant, more stylish, and in a thinner yarn, and so decided to make up my own. Those who don’t watch Doctor Who (what?!?) will see this as abstract decoration, but I know better. ;)
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I found the bead in my stash and it's a perfect analogue to the TARDIS lamp! It’s attached to the back so it won’t scratch the screen - a loop on the front side closes the cozy and brings the bead forward.
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The seed stitch mimics the door panels and there is a slight hint of window frames and the famous sign in one panel. The effect is subtle, and that's what I wanted. Details on the construction can be found at my Ravelry project page as usual.

Playing with new materials!

Oh, the joy of brand new materials! That first attempt at a new technique! :) It brings a whole new excitement to the crafting of stuff, of all varieties. :) In this case, I've had a go at using Golden molding paste and a mask, and creating a slightly different style than usual. Fair warning: You're going to see more stuff like this. ;) It took a couple of tries to get it right, but the results, oh the results! Can you tell I'm excited about this one??
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The base of this card is a pattern paper that I whitewashed with Gesso and water to lighten the colour. A few sprays of green GlimmerMist brought it to the right colour. I then went crazy with two kinds of washi tape, tearing strips and layering them roughly along the diagonal. Some stamping here and there adds to the detail. And then I added the molding paste, and the stars aligned. The hardened paste has absorbed some of the colour of whatever medium it rests on, so parts of it are faintly green from the GlimmerMist, and some are tan from the stamping ink. The parts that sits on the washi tape are still crisp white. It all adds to the drama!
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Just look at the pop-up effect of that molding paste! So cool. :)
There are so many layers of mediums on those chipboard numbers that I can't really remember them all... What's visible now is white Crackle Paint that's tainted green and brown by the Distress Ink layer below. Pretty good in the end, but it took a few tries to get the right look.

Water bottle cozies

The coffee machine at work broke this summer. This wouldn't have been much of a problem, except that I relied on it to supply me with ice cold, filtrated water as well. With no replacement in sight and the tap water there pretty much undrinkable, I had to solve the problem myself. So I started freezing a half full bottle of water at home and bringing it to work.
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Now, this worked just fine, but I noticed a couple of things I knew I could find a solution to.
First: A bottle of ice water is, well, cold. No surprise there. Which made my fingers cold, which made my patients jump and twitch when I touched them, which, in turn, made taking x-rays of them a little bit tricky.
Second: If I left the bottle on a desk somewhere and didn't come back to it for an hour or so, it would collect quite an impressive puddle of condensed water. Which was merely inconvenient when the water dripped down my uniform making it half transparent, but really quite dangerous when the water gravitated towards electrical stuff (and that stuff's pretty much everywhere in a radiology ward).
Third: On hot days, there just wouldn't be enough ice to last the shift, even if I froze the bottle nearly full.
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The bottle cozy not only keeps the water cold for longer, but is also nice to the touch and completely eliminates condensation. I brought it along on a canoe trip this summer, and enjoyed ice cold lake water the whole day, to the slight envy of my friend. I made her and her husband one each for christmas. :) Also, my cousin got one, but I seem to have forgotten to photograph it... Not a very exciting object, I suppose. I've got two myself, one for the 0,7 litre Imsdal bottle, and one for the 0,5 litre bottle.
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How to make them, you ask? Well, it goes like this. Find a medium to thick yarn of 100% new wool, a hook that's one size smaller than recommended for the yarn. Make a tight spiral for the base, and just stop increasing when you start the wall. The cozy should be slightly wider and taller than your bottle (that's a precise technical measurement term, that). Hand felt in soapy water until snug (testing the fit regularly) and allow to dry on the bottle (refilling the bottle with warm water now and then speeds up that process). Ta-da, enjoy ice cold water anywhere. :) Ravelry links one, two, and three.
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Monstrosity

Having made one sensible and neutral (and boring?) card for my brother's 30th birthday, I decided to go nuts on the other. My parents gave the first one, and I figured I should be his crazy sister and give him this montrosity! :)

The picture doesn't show it very well, but the chipboard "30" is painted in crackle paint and rubbed with some white ink to lighten it a bit. The monster paper has some sparkle in it and the "hey!" is lifted with 3mm pads.

The Latte stack to the rescue - again

Wow, this was made a long time ago... It's for my brother's birthday, which is in October... Wow. Well, it's about time it made it to the blog then! :)

Clean and simple again, what else to do for a thirty year old man? The DCVW Latte stack has been my go-to stack in these cases for a while, the colours and patterns are so great. Not quite what I'd expect from the name, but I'm not the one to judge a stack by its cover. ;)

Finally, some grunge!

Ah, it's been too long. I love grunge, but for some reason don't do it often enough! The 60th birthday of a man is a good reason to grunge it up though. He likes bicycles and I actually managed to find some bicycle related papers! Add some gears, baker's twine, Scrapper's Floss, chipboard numbers and some other leftovers, brighten it with splatters of white Crackle Paint, and you've got a detailed, layered look that works on a man's card. In fact, I wouldn't mind recieving this myself, even though I'm neither 60 years old or a man. ;) But that's me, and I realise I'm surely a minority in the card making community in that respect. There's room for all! :)