Peel Offs - Using the waste

Ok so. I had a single sheet of seaside peel off motifs in silver. As you saw yesterday I, finally, years afterI actually did the motifs,used the 'positive' stickers by sticking them onto card and fussy cutting around them (erk it was thick and hard to cut, I suggest you use paper!) then using sticky foam pads to raise them from the background surface of the card. And entered the Less is More blog Week 291 Challenge (see yesterday's post for info about that.)

Last night I got a bit of tired toddlerism and then insomnia - couldn't settle to anything. So I decided to just look at the remaining bits of sticky silver pieces on the sheet and have a think about how they could be used. I have lost the fine motor skills I used to have, so sticking them onto paper or card and fussy cutting them was not viable, but I was a bit scared of just sticking them straight onto the background card. However, I followed Clementine Paddleford's excellent advice - 'never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be' (which is something I saw on FaceBook this week incorporated into a poem by Sarah McMane in a post by A Mighty Girl that someone shared) - and manned up.

Peel Offs - lots of peel offs

Less Is More Week 291 - Challenge - Use a Sticker

So, years ago (yeah the old refrain 'before I got this ill') I went to a place called The Craft Barn, I think it was somewhere in Kent? Anyway they had loads of demos going on around the village, and one of them was using coloured paper or card behind a peel off and fussy cutting the excess away before you then apply it to a card as an embellishment. I was very taken by this technique. [Edited: Eeeh, having a blog with tags is useful! I picked the 'peels offs' tag to see how I'd used them before and realised that the Craft Barn is in Surrey, and still exists, and the demonstrator lady was Helen Meighan, back in 2009. Who has a company called Helidot. If you google her, you can see she does a lot of fussy cutting with peel offs and I think they look great! Cos let's face it, it's hard to make them look good sometimes!]

And being me, did loads & loads of the fussy cutting bit (with card that frankly was a bit too thick and therefore painful on the digits). And filed them away in a box and never used them. Every so often I pull out the (large) collection of peeloffs and think 'hmmm, I remember this was going to be that, and someone did a great thing with this', then I put it away again cos it all feels a bit too daunting.

No idea who did the PeelOff sheet there's no brand but it's sheet 118. All from the same single sheet, and there's still more cards - about 3 or 4 I can do from it. All on 6 inch square white card blanks, with a 6" square of coloured background card stuck on (double sided tape). All the peel off seaside images are up on little foam squares, the sentiments are straight onto the background. Sentiments are (large ones) from Francoise Collection (?) sheet 3538 and (small ones) from StarForm NL sheet 343.

However, wombling around the web I found this blog LESS IS MORE, who do a challenge once a week. Which is more achievable than daily challenges like the one I used to do! And this week 291 challenge is to do a card with a sticker or peel off. Marvellous!  I rather like this blog - it challenges you to do a minimalist but impactful card with lots of 'white space' or in my case, lots of empty funkily coloured space....

It's not easy to do photography from one's bed with a barely charged up tablet. So oops - the colours are bright turquoise for the seaside motifs, and bright pink, red, blue etc for the backgrounds.

So, I got today's carer to heave a few boxes around, rummaged to locate the already created peel off embellishments and also locate some already created card blanks in funky colours and TA DA!!!!! I have 7 new cards to send. Which is fortunate cos I have committed to sending cards (one or two a month) to fellow Severe ME/CFS sufferers via the 25% Charity (as in 25% of ME/CFS sufferers are severe) and the labels for that dropped through my letterbox this week. So that's that fixed, I feel a sense of creativeness and achievement, AND it's decluttering and stash busting cos they're going to be leaving the house quite soon. Hurrah!

365 Cards - Day 72 - Musical Notes

More catchup, this time to have musical notes in the card. It's a rather naff peel-off that I was hoping might be less naff with coloured card pieced behind it. I was wrong, but hey, one more challenge down!

365 Cards Day 12 Moving House

Well, this is still a challenge from back in March, but we're moving forwards! The challenge was to do a card for moving house. So here it is. I'm trying some experiments with peel-offs to see if the traditional gold ones are as unprepossessing as they look on the sheet... This one is probably the most traditional style sheet I've bought, and I've come to the conclusion that it's hard to get them to look anything other than twee. But they were in the sale and I'm persevering...

Anyway I used layers & layers of the Letraset Promarker Saffron pen to give the cottage some depth of colour & variation of tone, and also to colour the middle mat. It's a bit more vibrantly orange in real life and is 4"x5".

PS I've just reread the challenge and I have an horrible feeling you were supposed to use a sentiment on the theme of moving house. Oops again! Maybe I need to actually read the challenge before doing these catchups and not just work off my 'one word' list of missed challenges?

365 Cards - Day 147 - Scraplift

And yet more CatchUp (the last of the 5 from a single Little Claire Peel Off Stickers sheet). The challenge was to scraplift someone else's card. I got this idea watching Helen Meighan's demonstration at The Craft Barn Lingfield Surrey this weekend. It's not exactly a card she did there, more of an homage! Anyway, donkey and crib backed with buff card, star backed with yellow, matted onto russet and then black card - all from offcuts from Puffin Crafts, except the yellow which is ancient yellow stock from a WHSmith pack from about 9 years ago.

365 Cards - Day 119 - Silhouette

Still more catchup. This is no4 of the cards from the Little Claire PeelOff sheet. This is the bits that were left over when I took away the outline used for Day 147. It wasn't very clear so I outlined it in black pen but the pens I have aren't great and bled a bit. So a great idea, but the actuality isn't so marvellous (hence I'm not doing the other leftover sihouettes until I've got a pen that doesn't bleed!) Then the border is snow from the same sheet, corners and infill bits.

365 Cards - Day 24 - Nature

More CatchUp using the Little Claire Peel-Off sheet (Card no3) - the theme is nature and I suspect it was supposed to be real nature ie a photo, but nevermind! This one was quite complicated, I stuck red card underneath the scarf and nose and green card under the trees and buff card under the fawn's body. which took ages to trim down and get right. Then matted it onto dark chocolate brown and the same red as the scarf. Holly leaves are same green card. The bits I didn't manage to trim very well I darkened with a black pen to tidy it up.

365 Cards - Day 21 - Lean on Me

Another CatchUp using Peel-Off Stickers (Little Claire). I think this is 3 bears in Santa hats which appear to be leaning on each other. Job done! I used a piece of buff card under the Peel-Off and then coloured in the 3 bears and their hats with Letraset ProMarkers (Red, Cocoa, Cinnamon and Sandstone) which made their hat bands and bobbles sufficiently light not to need whitening. Lots of ProMarker layers though. And matted it up on buff again then russet then black. Again it's 4"x5".

365 Cards - Day 18 - Green

Catch up time again. I went to The Craft Barn's demonstration weekend (Lingfield Surrey) and was inspired by Helen Meighan's Peel-Off Sticker demonstration. Her technique, at least the one she was demonstrating was to stick the Peel-Off to coloured paper and then fussy cut around it and then glue it onto the card stock. This 4"x5" card is one of 5 I've made today out of a single sheet of Peel-Off stickers from Little Claire. There's probably bits for another 2 cards of the same size plus oddments left over but I'm saving those for another day.

Anyway, this is a late entry for Day 18 using predominantly green. Which sort of fits, as in of the colour there is there, most of it is green! The coloured card used with the Peel-Offs is part of a bargain pack of off-cut card from Puffin Crafts in East Dulwich.