Coffee and Cream Quilt

Ta dahhh! This is a picture of my first quilt, being held up by my kind, long-suffering husband and my ever-supportive though attention seeking dog. I finished this lap quilt in April but it has taken me awhile to get round to taking its portrait. I think it is called a post and rail quilt? I could be wrong there. Anyway, it is my first quilt and I love it. It has a wool centre and is just the right weight to have on my lap these cool winter in  Queensland evenings :)

I have kind of fallen in love with fabric all over again now that I have started to learn about quilting. I am even putting fabric on my handmade cards, like the ones we made in the June class I ran here at home:

This paper and fabric and embellishment range is the Twitterpated range from Stampin' Up! I can see it will only be a matter of time before I quilt some Stampin Up! fabric into something.

Stay tuned!

Special Birthday

Tonight we enjoyed some time with friends, one of whom was celebrating a special birthday. Now as this had to be a masculine card, I decided it was time to try out the sponged background techniques I have been reading abotu on Michelle Zindorf's blog. I didn't make a card exactly liek one of hers, but I sure studied her techniques! Lol!

I also chose out my The Open Sea stamp set to use as I like it so much. The ship kind of reminds me of a pirate ship for some reason, but that's another story :)

For the background I first sponged the sun colour in Daffodil delight. Then I masked off the sun area and continued to sponge around it to make the sky, in Bashful Blue, Baja Breeze and Night of Navy..
Then I masked off the sky, removed the sun mask and sponged a line of Night of Navy to form the horizon. The sea was sponged int he same colours as the sky but the waves were made with my white gel pen.

Then I stamped the ship in Versamark and Basic black, and embossed it with black embossing powder. The little birds were hand drawn with my black journaling pen. I added some brushed solver brads, mounted it on a split Top Note Night of Navy cardstock shape, and then made the little tag a punch, Teeny Tiny Sentiments, Versamark ink, black embossing powder and a journaling pen.

I hope you like it. I was happy with the result and want to play with some more sponged background techniques now.

PS: I made a tutorial about how to create a similar seascape background using Brayers over on PaperCraftCentral . Let me know if you make some cards using this technique!