Get Well

I seem to have been gadding all around the world this year.

 In January we went to Florida and the Caribbean, in March we cruised from Singapore to Cape Town followed by a few days in Victoria Falls.

In July we had a two week cruise in the Mediterranean which included a fabulous excursion to the opera in Verona. 

Here I am at the old city of Mdina in Malta

Having returned home for 4 days we went off again, this time to Bratislava with the Bath Choral Society. Soon we'll be off to Devon for the weekend and then to Spain in August. It's not surprising that I haven't had a lot of time for card making!

This card is for the CAS challenge at Happy Little Stampers, where the focus is flower!

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CREATE SOMETHING CLEAN AND SIMPLE FOR OUR FOLLOWERS

Our winner for this challenge will receive a $20 coupon to spend at the shop! Check out all the details HERE.

For my card I used a Memory Box corner die and a Sizzix flower die, cut from a piece of card coloured with the shaving foam technique.

You can see a demo here

The sentiment is from HLS Doodled Flowers.

All the colours of the rainbow

I've been lucky again! This time I was asked to do a Guest Designer spot for AAA Cards after winning the embossing challenge!

The theme for this challenge is 

Rainbow

For my card I decided to use Brushos once more. The colours are so vibrant!

I began by spraying a piece of card with starch and then tapping some of the powders onto it in a rainbow of colours. I then placed a scrunched up piece of cling film over the top and left it to dry for a while. It leaves a really pretty effect on the card. I learned this technique on the Happy Little Stampers' Retreat in Swindon last year.

Having got the piece of prettily coloured card, I had to decide what to do with it and I thought the colours looked great peeping through this Sizzix die-cut.

I added a couple of little butterflies from Penny Black, sprayed with iridescent twinkle (more rainbow colours) and a 'hugs' sentiment from Cutplorations, also sprayed and double layered.

I had fun making this one!

BBQ Man

This is the card I made for my husband's birthday as he really fancies himself as a bit of a BBQ expert!

We have several barbies in our garden, one which looks pretty much like this one, plus a smoker, a gas barbie and a chiminea. He began his association with them when we lived in the USA many years ago and his enthusiasm hasn't waned in the interim.

For this card I used a stamp from Hobbycraft, (I bought a whole set just for this stamp!) I coloured it with watercolour pencils and a water brush, but I wanted to get the sheen of the real barbie and wondered how to achieve it. What I came up with in the end was to put a little Versamark reinker onto a craft mat and used it to paint over the image using a fine brush, I simply sprinkled over some clear embossing powder and heated it. Bingo... a shiny BBQ!

The sentiment is from Happy Little Stampers!

The challenge  for the Happy Little Stampers CAS  this time is Birthday!

Our winner for this challenge will receive a $20 coupon to spend at the shop! Check out all the details HERE.

Patterned paper

When I saw that  the challenge at CASual Fridays was to use patterned paper, I was delighted to think that I could use some of the stacks of patterned paper which have been sitting in my drawers for years. 

When I first starting crafting, I tried everything... all styles, all genres... until I realised that my own particular style was clean and simple! By then I had accumulated heaps of stuff, now obsolete in my craft room.

 Here I used Sizzix butterflies and a Sizzix embossing folder with a sentiment which was a freebie from a magazine I believe. The bodies of the butterflies are from a Memory Box die.

It's still possible to keep things CAS even with patterned paper in the mix!