Monday 31 January 2011

A silky smooth finish to the blog hop weekend

Well, the 'Life Is Sweet' blog hop proved to be a great success, thanks to excellent organisation by Sandy over at The Sweet Spot who master-minded it all!  Along with all my fellow 'hoppers' I'd like to say a big, big thank you to everyone who visited our blogs and left such encouraging comments ... and I'd especially like to welcome all the new Followers who have logged on to Quilliance after visiting this past weekend. I'm so glad to have you along for the ride!

In case you're still following the links for the Hop, you'll find the post I did for it here.

Meanwhile, the quilling goes on ... and I've got another Valentine's design to show you. The background for this one is a satin-effect heart which I managed to create in Photoshop Elements after following an excellent tutorial in the January 2011 edition of Papers and Pixels magazine.  (You can download the magazine via this link, and you'll find the tutorial on page 47). I was really pleased with the swirly effect, and I felt that it made the perfect background for some simple quilling. I made the rose by folding red and pink strips (glued together at one end) to create my favourite 'art deco' style type of bloom.  You simply fold the strips with your fingers instead of rolling them around a tool, and then let the resulting 'coil' relax into a loose curved-edge shape before trimming and gluing the ends. I was really pleased with the way the red and pink are offset by the magenta satin background, and used bright lime green for the leaves to make it all stand out.


Just before the blog hop began, I was honoured to receive 'The Love Blog' award from my friend Monica at Hand Made Cards With Love. Monica says that blogging is one of the best things that have happened to her, and she writes about her wonderful card projects with great enthusiasm. Do check out her blog to see her brilliant embossing and handmade flowers. And thank you, Monica, for the very kind words you said about me!

10 comments:

  1. Really pretty... I like the photo's swirled effect you mentioned - makes such a nice background for the little folded/rolled rose.

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  2. I love the pop of colour; makes it really stand out on the heart. The retro flower is adorable....going to have to try that technique too {getting lots of ideas from you, hope you don't mind}. I love photoshop too. I use it to edit the pictures on my memory card, to make my watermark and to add the text on my cards {so I use it a lot}.

    Thanks again
    Cheryl

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  3. another beautiful card. I don't know how you manage to keep coming up with the ideas.

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  4. Well, I guess Photoshop gets a lot of the credit for this one!!

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  5. Philippa,

    You are just so clever.
    I will be back.
    Teddie

    teddie_grams@hotmail.com

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  6. I've just fell in love with you rose:)))
    Suzana

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  7. Beautiful card.The mix of various forms is truly inspiring.

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  8. Teddie, Suzana and Sheetal - thank you! I'm so glad that you like my card!

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  9. Phillippa , I have spent a lot of time on your blog this week( so many great ideas) and tried to click on the link for the Photo shop tutorial. It is no longer available.. I will try to play around with my photoshop to see what I can do! Thanks for inspiring me to try new things! In fact, I would love for you to check out my latest experiment with using shaving cream and food coloring to add a different background on my quilled cards...http://jenster-notjustanothermom.blogspot.com/2012/09/decorated-cards-with-shaving-cream-and.html
    Keep up the great work and I can't wait to try the digital quilling as well!

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