Stencil it – I dare you!

Happy Friday crafty friends! I hope you’re having a good week. It’s time for another Daring Cardmakers Challenge and this week Nat is our host. As the title of this post suggests, this week’s challenge is all about stencils. She would like you to use stencils on your card this week, whether in the form of:

• Stamp + stencil + die combos
• Stand-alone stencils for ink blending, texture paste, and other media
• Layered stencils to create colourful backgrounds
• And if you don’t yet have any stencils in your stash, you can create your own masks/stencils with your existing die collection, or even some free-hand cutting for fun edges

For my project I used a Tim Holtz tartan stencil and some pixie powders to create my background paper. This is one of my favourite ways to use stencils. I taped the stencil onto some white card on my glass mat and then lightly sprinkled some pixie powders (I used three colours) across the stencil. I then lightly sprayed water until the powders had been activated but not too much water that you lose the details of the stencil. I then carefully peeled off the stencil and turned it over onto another a blank piece of card and press it with some kitchen roll to create a negative print of the stencil. Once it’s dried I cut a square panel which I mounted onto a black layer and a blue layer to complement the colours I used.

I then added a Tim Holtz modern flower die cut (layered with gold and black) and added some gold nuvo drops to finish it off.

I hope you will hop on over to the Daring Cardmakers Challenge blog and share your makes too, there is some beautiful cards from the design team to get you started if you need a wee bit of inspiration.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Daring Cardmakers Challenge – Midsummer

Hi crafty friends did you know that it is Midsummer’s day,  a day to appreciate all the gifts that nature provides.  This week I am hosting the Daring Cardmaker’s challenge and I dare you to make a card inspired by Midsummer.  Share your appreciation of nature and maybe even include some natural elements e.g. pressed flowers, leaf prints.

I started with some ferns I picked from the garden as I wanted to have a play with my gelli plate. I’m very much a novice with gel printing so I went very basic and added some paint to the plate before laying on with fern leaves.

It was very much a trial and error session but I tried just the leaf silhouette (as above in the picture).

Then I lifted another print once I had taken the leaves off. This gave a bit more of the leaf detail but felt a bit messy!

Then I tried a second print by removing the leaves and adding another layer of paint before lifting a print. The leaves were pretty much overwhelmed by the second coat of paint.

I tried then adding a layer of paint before putting the painty ferns back on with the painty side up.

I like this version best I think, the fern detail came out (as long as the paint was still wet enough) and the background colour didn’t overwhelm the leaves.

I then had a rummage for some pressed flowers which I had made last summer (must grab some more this year!)

To make my card I cut some panels of my gelli prints added some black cardstock to give some contrast and then used one of my yellow daisy type flowers. The sentiment is from a craftstash stamp set designed by the lovely Ashley (Paper and Twine on YouTube) who won Card maker of the Year in 2021.

To finish off the card I added some nuvo drops in green.

I hope you will hop over and join in with our nature themed challenge, I’m sure you will have some very creative ideas for our theme. Now I’m off to add another pile of gel printed papers to my stash (can you see how this pile will still be there long after I have left this life…. in fact the pile could crush me and be the cause of my death!!) Have a wonderful Midummers day, I hope the sun is shining for you 🙂

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Home comforts – I dare you!

Happy Friday crafty friends. Today Dawn is hosting our Daring Cardmakers Challenge and she is an expat living in France missing some things from home e.g. Cadbury chocolate, Yorkshire tea and oxo cubes. So she is challenging us all to feature a card with something that you would miss if you lived in another country, what reminds you of home. It might not even be food. Dawn still can’t get used to seeing yellow post boxes and post vans.

I am Scottish and I took quite a while to narrow down what my home comfort would be, in the end I settled on Irn Bru and Tunnocks Tea Cakes! Irn Bru is reported to outsell Coca Cola in Scotland (unlike most countries where it is the top seller) and is know as Scotland’s other national drink. It’s bright orange and was my go to hangover cure in my student days! The tea cakes are delicious, a biscuit base with marshmallow on top and coated in chocolate. You can also find all sorts of gifts with the Tunnocks designs from trays, cushion covers to a woolly hat that makes your head look like a tea cake with a pom pom on top! So I popped to our village shop and bought these for my hubby and I to enjoy.

Once I had enjoyed them I used the packaging for my card. I smoothed out the foil from the tea cake and glued it onto some card stock.

I cut open the Irn Bru can and washed it off before embossing it with a Sizzix embossing folder. I then cut out some of the different elements before layering them up with black card, the tea cake wrapper and some red tartan patterned paper. To finish off my card I added a torn square of music paper and the word home mounted on the foil wrapper again.

I also was left with a few other toppers to use in other projects.

Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope you liked my project and I’d love to know if you have tried either of these treats and where in the world you are from.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

The Time of Your Life – I dare you!

Happy Friday crafty friends! I hope you are ready for another Daring Cardmakers Challenge. Enfys is our host this week and in honour of Queen Elizabeth II celebrating her 96th birthday this week she has challenged us to make something to celebrate the Golden Oldies. You could celebrate older friends and relations, or maybe go Vintage for your inspiration. Or perhaps even make a card to say
Happy Birthday Ma’am!

I decided to go with a bit of a retro theme for the baby boomers as I recently bought a fun stamp set on Ebay. It doesn’t have a brand or even a name but I think it’s so fun!

Firstly I created a flower power background with some floral stamps and the 60s circles stamp in the ebay set. I then added the 60s dancers in black ink and made a black border. The finishing touch was to add a cheeky sentiment from the Lol Clearly Besotted stamp set (I’ve had it in my stash for years but I think they have had similar sets more recently.

These stamps are so fun I couldn’t stop there so I also made some twinchies for each of the decades. If you are new to twinchies they are similar to Artist Trading Cards but they measure 2 x 2 inches and they are great fun to add into happy mail or for swapping with fellow crafters.

I hope that my retro dancers made you smile today! If they did please leave me a comment or a like, it really makes my day.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (aka Ginger Ninja Crafts!)

Chocolate heaven – I dare you!

Happy Friday everyone, I hope you are having a good day. It’s a holiday weekend for us for Easter so we are enjoying some relaxation and time off and of course some chocolate! Kathy is hosting our challenge this week over at the Daring Cardmakers Challenge and she would like you to create “Chocolate Heaven” on your cards! So indulge yourself  a little this week! Kathy would love to see all sorts of chocolatey treats – chocolate cakes, chocolate colours,  velvety drinking chocolate, a tempting box of chocolates….
Whatever you fancy!

Here is my project, please don’t forget to hop on over to the Daring cardmakers challenge blog and see what the rest of the design team have made and share your chocolate themed cards!

Thanks for stopping by the Ginger Ninja Crafts blog, I hope to see you again soon!

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

April Elemental Challenge – Daring Cardmakers Challenge

It’s my turn to host the Daring Cardmakers Challenge and it’s an elemental challenge which means you have to pick three (or more) elements from these pictures to inspire your card.

I had great fun searching for images to use and from the above selection I used the bunny, the little yellow flowers, the eggs and the pinks/purples colours.

I hope you will hop on over to the challenge blog and see the other DT makes and why not share your card too?

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Making fancy fold or interactive cards

Happy hump day crafty friends! I hope you are all doing well. We have gone from warm sunny weather on Monday to snow falling and the heating back on today! It’s still good crafting weather at least! I’m sharing some fancy fold cards today I made for a YouTube card challenge. The challenge is to make three interactive or shaped cards (one on camera) and tag 2 other crafters. I will link my video at the end of this post but I thought a blog would be helpful to share my process for the 2 cards I made off camera.

I’m definitely no expert when it comes to fancy fold cards and these are at the basic end of the scale but if you are new to these cards then hopefully this post will help you to create your own version. The first card I made is a Joy Fold card (no idea where the name came from!). This is the card

These are the measurements I used.

I started with navy card cut and scored as per the above measurements.

I cut my patterned papers (see above measurements) and glued onto my two navy pieces.

Then I glued the back of the sunflower piece onto the larger base card as follows.

The only thing left to do was add the decoration and a space to write a message.

The second card I made was a twisted easel card, this one was definitely much easier. I took a 12.5 x 12.5 cm card base and score a diagonal from corner to corner on one side of the card base. This creates your twised easel. Then I decorated it with some patterned papers and fussy cut elements.

My final card which I made on video was a double easel card.

These are the pieces you need to cut.

Then you need to score the first two pieces as follows.

To see how I decorated the double easel card and find out more about the challenge watch my latest video.

I hope you enjoyed my fun fold cards today, do you have a favourite fancy folded or interactive card to make? Please let me know in the comments and if you have a video or blog post let me know so I can check it out and have a go! Thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you again very soon!

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

The Early Bird Catches the Worm – I Dare You!

Happy Friday crafty friends! How are you all doing this week? It’s been a lovely sunny week and my husband was using up the last of his annual leave so we have been enjoying the weather with a little trip to the beach, our first braai of the year and getting a few jobs done in the garden. I can’t believe it’s Friday again already but it is and so it’s time for our new Daring Cardmakers Challenge. Miri is hosting us the week and she has set our theme as “The Early Bird Catches the Worm”, “

Miri says she is not an early bird, but is looking forward to waking up to glorious morning sunshine. So this week you can use a sunrise, birds or worms 😉 on your cards or anything related to the saying.

I have recently been obsessed with watching Lavinia Stamps tutorials and I thought I could try to recreate a sunrise for this week’s challenge. I started with painting the background with watercolours on watercolour paper. I used a circle stencil and some moonlight white ink to create a sun. Then I added the corresponding circle mask and brushed some ink (mustard seed) out from the edges to give a subtle effect of sun rays. I then added some splatters of white paint.

Once the background was dry I stamped some foliage at the bottom using memento dew drop inks in rich cocoa, cottage ivy and tuxedo black. I stamped the fairy wuith versafine Clair ink in nocturne. Once the inks were all completely dry I went in with a white gel pen to add a few highlights and a sparkle gel pen to add some sparkle to her wings and to create some sparkles around her in the sky.

So my version is the early fairy catches the sun sparkles!

I added a black matt behind the scene and then popped it on a square card base with a few nuvo drops. I couldn’t decide what sentiment to add so I left a space that I can add one at a future date.

It’s nothing compared to some of the Lavinia works of art I’ve seen but I quite like it and I’ll definitely play with more backgrounds. I hope you will hop on over and see what the other design team members have been making, they are a very talented group of crafters.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Hello Spring – I dare you!

Hi crafty friends, I’m later than usual with my Daring Cardmakers weekly post but better late than never! This week we are hosted by Shabneez who has dared us to celebrate the arrival of spring with cards featuring anything related to the season be it lambs, rabbits, daffodils, tulips etc. 

I love seeing the spring flowers popping up and I think tulips are my favourites if I had to pick! I used a little tulip die set from Crafter’s Companion. The paper I used was some scrap which I had brayered off the spare ink while I was playing with my gel plate. I added a little die cut tartan bow and layered them on a scripty stamped panel. The finishing touches were a sentiment and a few nuvo drops in complementary colours.

I can’t wait to see your lovely spring themed cards and I hope you will check out my design team colleagues makes over on the Daring Cardmakers Challenge blog, they are a talented bunch of crafters! Thanks so much for visiting the Ginger Ninja Crafts blog, hope to see you again soon!

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Daring Cardmakers Challenge – For Ukraine

Happy Friday crafty friends, I hope you are all safe and well in these worrying times. This week at the Daring Cardmakers Challenge we wanted to acknowledge the awful situation in Ukraine. To show our support we are making cards using blue and yellow colours, sunflowers and hope.

I used some distress spray sprays to create a background (Mermaid Lagoon and Mustard Seed). The sunflower stamp is from the lovely Julie Hickey designs. I added a little embossed panel for the sunflower to sit and a sentiment.

I got a little carried away with my backgrounds and decided to make some ATC coins to pop into happy mail. The backgrounds were made with brusho powders (cobalt blue and yellow) and various stencils. The edge is heat embossed in a copper embossing powder. I added a Crafters Companion sunflower and a printed hashtag.

I can’t wait to see all your lovely makes. Thanks so much for visiting the Ginger Ninja Crafts blog, I hope to see you again soon.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx