August 2017 – Elisabeth Hogarth Designs

Hello again.

The weather has been drizzly and damp here so I have had the perfect excuse to retreat to my craftroom. I decided to try out the Julie Loves Patchwork kit which has some beautiful designs and colours in.

My Mama was a very skilled craftswoman and quilting was one of her favourite crafts. Using some of her Patchwork design books I put together some patterns of my own.

To create the triangles for these cards I cut 1.5" squares and then cut them on the diagonal. My spacial awareness isn't the greatest so I had to refer to Mama's pattern and keep turning the triangles but I got there in the end !

The stamps in the Julie Loves Patchwork are very usable particularly the hexagons. My favourites though are the buttons. Later on I realised that I could stamp them directly onto the Candi.

On this next card, I worked with rectangular strips. I laid three strips horizontally and the next three vertically. The different patterns of the paper all work beautifully together.

Back to the triangles on this one. I felt like I was in a maths lesson at school – where I ask the children – how many shapes can you make with one triangle ?

I rediscovered some needlework toppers from The Works which finished off the corner of the card perfectly.

The trick to this card is to mark a pencil border and then work inwards. I also liked the effect of the Sparkles glitter along the white lines between the pattern.

The starting point for these tent cards was an embossing folder that I bought yonks ago because I liked the sewing stands on it. I embossed it with several different colours and built the card up from there.

I blended mix of antique linen and pink on the embossed card and the middle linen band. The tag was then stamped on and the card was finished off with the button candis that I mentioned earlier.

This yellow version worked well with a simple white top layer that I edged at the top with a measuring tape washi ( it's amazing what you can find in your craft stash ). I also cut down one of the hexagonal toppers to give me the LOVE wording which I then glittered up.

Last but not least I used an orange embossed card. I then inked it up with more orange ink just to deepen the shade.
The flowers also came in the Julie Loves Patchwork kit. I curled and shaped the petals and completed the middle of each with a centre coil. Throughout each of these cards I added sequins and tiny buttons which I think finish them off so well.

As with all the Julie Loves kits you can probably see that I move from one design to another. So far with this particular kit I have made 18 cards with only 5 sheets of paper and a few toppers. Imagine how many more cards I could end up with!

Much love x Elisabeth x

Hello again

I had a great time working with the Kimono papers (take a look at my blog Three Little Maids) so I decided to see what could happen if I incorporated the new Reveal It's.

I literally swooshed the brilliant Tim Holtz Oxides over the magical card and buffed it up. I used Fossilised Amber on the background card and the topper. It's a very useful trick to co-ordinate the look of a card. I wanted the topper to pop out so I mounted it onto black card. Personally I like black and yellow together. All that was left to do was paper punch a few blossom shaped flowers from scraps of Kimono paper and add a few gold pearl drops.

Again I created my own background colour using Wilted Violet. I then cut the card into 3 panels and stuck it down onto a 6 x 6 card. The card toppers are very sweet and I added to this one further by stamping small leaves and blossom flowers around the edge. I layered this up onto a die cut circle from the papers. I love the little punched flowers so added them to this card too along with a mix of ribbons.

This time I used red ink ( Fired Brick) synonymous with Japan. I blended the ink over the reveal it topper and the magical lanterns appeared. The same ink was then used on the matching blossom designed background. I layered up on black card again and die cut some matching flowers. This time I added a red flower sequin to the centre. Nuvo drops (Red Berry) were added to finish the card off

Last but not least I worked with Broken China. I inked and cut 3 panels again to create the background. The geisha girl toppers are adorable and don't need much to improve them but I did highlight them with a little sparkles. I cut an old sentiment tag to produce the three words. I'm sure you can see that I used the trademark flowers (which I cut from the left over from the sentiment tag) and added a matching butterfly to finish off.