Very Funny

Here's the third of the chicken stamps which Mandi gave me. These girls really rock I reckon and they do make me smile! They're out to party that's for sure.
I decided to add the sentiment 'Honey... it's 5 o'clock somewhere.' However, I don't think they really need an excuse to have a cocktail!
I stamped them in Stazon and coloured them with Distress Inks using a limited colour palette. I decided as they were out on the razzle that I would twinkle some of their garments and accessories with Glamour Dust, but should have waited for the glue to dry before taking a picture of it.
The theme at My Time to Craft  this week is something 'Very Funny' ... these chickens amuse me I must say.
Cheers!
Penny Black - One for the Girlies

Pick A Square - Less is More

If you hop over to the Challenge at "Less is More" this week you will see that the recipe you have to follow today is to choose one of the squares from the diagram in which to place your image.
I have chosen the bottom left, as you can see. The image may overflow slightly but it must be obvious which is  the chosen square.
This card uses a technique whereby the stamp is inked and then tapped with a marker in a contrasting colour, before being stamped onto the card. I used a SU Baja Blue inkpad and a grey Docrafts marker. I did just huff on the stamp a time or two before stamping to ensure that the first colour hadn't dried out too much whilst I was adding the second colour.
I rather like the mottled effect.
I added the sentiment to which I had given the a similar treatment, positioning it with my Lego Corner and acetate. (There's a tutorial on the "Less is More" Blog for this).
With just a touch of Glamour Dust added to the blossoms the card was complete.

This card uses the same portion of the card as the first one, but  SU's Sail Away was simply stamped with Midnight Blue Stazon and sponged with SU Bashful Blue and Baja Breeze inks, having previously masked  the sails. The small sentiment from Silhouette Sentiments was added using the same method as above.
I do hope you'll join in the fun with all the other LIMettes at "Less is More" this week... which square will you pick?

Use a die-cut

A friend at my choir asked me to make a card for another friend who had been the secretary of our choir for several years before moving away from the area. Naturally she wanted to have a card with a musical theme.
I began by choosing the small manuscript stamp and then decided to use a musical font for part of the sentiment. Her name is written using Amadeus with Andalus for the printing and Passions Conflict for the script.
As the challenge at My Time to Craft this week is to use a die cut, I thought that these two dies from Marianne's Creatables fitted the bill. The butterfly has been embossed and twinkled with Glamour Dust and embellished with a few gems. The paper is Harlequin from Pink Petticoat.
Have a good day!

"Less is More" - Butterflies

Our theme this week at "Less is More" is Butterflies!
What could be simpler, you say? Each time I begin to think about what to do for a challenge that we have set ourselves, it still takes me ages to come up with an idea.
Anyway this one started from the stamp. I stamped it in various ways and then decided that I was going to stamp with black Archival ink and then emboss it with Holographic Embossing Powder. It gives a super shimmer. I filled in the gaps left in the stamping with a green Sakura glaze pen which I then glittered with Glamour Dust. Both butterflies are on the same stamp but as I wanted them in s different arrangement I cut them out.
The sentiment is one I've had for ages, and is set on the wood mount at the craziest of angles and so I need to use a stamp positioner in order to get it anywhere near straight. After stamping, I cut it out and embossed it with a Nestie  and then using sponge daubers, applied the Mellow Moss and Bashful blue for the  representation of  the grass and the sky. The few bits of greenery are from an Inkylicious stamp using Pear Pizzaz ink. I find this kind of card really satisfying to make, I hope that whomever eventually receives it also enjoys it.
Have a wonderful week... I intend to!

Kissing Just us Girls!

Just us Girls is asking for kissing with a twist... what's that? I hear you say... in fact it's just that. The kissing technique is where you ink up a plain stamp and then press another inked stamp onto it using a contrasting colour, before stamping onto the card.. The 'twist' this time comes from the fact that the second stamp is not merely pressed onto the first, but twisted too.
On this card you can see the panel I started with was inked in Baja Breeze, and then the little flower from the  SU Simply the Best set was stamped in Crumb Cake both straight and twisted.
Once prepared I then huffed a little onto the stamp to ensure that the first ink I used hadn't dried out too much and stamped directly onto my card.
After making this backdrop, I added a few butterflies from the SU Embosslits Beautiful Wings, complete with a few appropriately sized pearls, finally adding the sentiment also from Simply The Best.
The sun is shining and I'm off for a spot more retail therapy this afternoon.

Toybox Treasures

For this week's challenge at My Time to Craft, the theme is Toy box Treasures. I don't expect there can be many toy boxes without a teddy and this little sweetie from PSX looks so cuddly.
I chose to make a New Baby card adding the sentiment using the Sizzix Wallflower set of alpha dies.
One little tip I've picked up along the way, is to stick some double sided tape on the back of the card before running it through the Cuttlebug, so that all I have to do once the letters are cut, is to peel and stick.
I stamped him in Memento, Rich Cocoa ink and added some colour with Copics.
A narrow ribbon bow softened the look of the Nestie die cut squares.
Have a great day!
Allsorts  - Teddy Bears Picnic

Clean and Simple Penny Black

I bought this Penny Black stamp in Farnborough at the last Make It show. I'm really fond of poppies and I love script stamps, so this was a real winner in my eyes.
Here I coloured it in shades of red and grey using Distress Inks. Simply mounted with a Personal Impressions sentiment on a simple ribbon treatment, it's a clean and simple card.
We had lunch with friends today at local hotel and it was lovely... no clearing up either!
Penny Black - Clean and Simple
Delightful - Flowers
Creative Card Crew - May Flowers
Everybody Art - Flowers

Baker's Twine

Baker's twine seems to be the flavour of the month at the moment! Here I have used some on this card which will fit with the challenge at Casual Fridays, as it has a button too!
The button element reminded me of the RAF emblem once I had assembled it... it's just the choice of colour I suppose. The base is from a Stampin' up scalloped punch surmounted with a little circle from a Marianne's die.
The sentiment is a cheap clear one from Studio g, I rather like it! The paper is from Pink Petticoat and the edge made with a Martha Stewart punch.
The design didn't start out quite like this but somehow I got a smudge on the card and my first attempt at stamping the sentiment was an unmitigated failure, so the central panel was positioned so as to cover the mishaps  up. This is what evolved after that.
I got a new phone today and it's taking me ages to sort out how to use the thing. Each subsequent model seems to be more complicated than the last.

Less is More - One Layer Card - Embossing

What a roller coaster of a couple of days we've had!
Blogger wobbling and then falling off the edge, I haven't really known if I was coming or going! Let's hope that this week will be better!
My lovely friend Mandi had to come to the mainland today and so we had chance to have lunch together, it was lovely to see her again so soon after the last time, albeit briefly.
Here is my card for the challenge at "Less is More" this week, which is for a one layer card using some form of embossing.
I decided to stamp the images with SU ink and emboss with clear embossing powder. The trees and frame are from Artemio, the bird from Inkylicious and the sentiment  from Hero Arts.
Do look on the "Less is More" blog for more details of how I got to this final process.
A friend asked me to make some chair backs for her as they've just bought some new furniture... I ought to try and do it before we have lunch with them on Sunday... maybe later today!

More Chicks

I just love these chickens... another stamp from my wonderful friend Mandi... she is SO kind to me I can't tell you how grateful I am to her!
There was a sentiment above the chickens heads which said clickety clack or words to that effect but I masked it out with sticky tape whilst I inked the stamp and then pulled it off before making the impression!
My home grown sentiment reads,'If I knit fast enough, will it count as aerobic exercise?'
I kinda stretched the Spellbinder's tag to make it fit around my sentiment... you can see how I do it a couple of posts back.
Don't you you just love these chickens too!
Stamp by Penny Black

20th Anniversary Card

A friend asked me to make an anniversary card for her sister and brother-in-law. Apparently 20 years ago they eloped and the family were done out of a 'do' , so now after 20 years have elapsed, they are finally having the celebration.
I was asked specifically to use the colours black, gold and ivory, so here it is.
Pink Petticoat paper Cuttlebug heart and a computer generated sentiment. The bit of embellishment was from some gift wrapping which I salvaged and has been sitting in a drawer for quite some time.
My friend was pleased... so, so was I!
Woodware Stamps - Wedding or Anniversary

Senior moments

This is my card for the challenge this week at My Time to Craft.... something that completely slipped my mind until a short time ago! (Senior moment)
The theme is to use scallops, so I was playing around with my Nesties to try to make them fit this rather elongated shaped stamp from Stampin' Up.
After stamping I cut around one end of the image with a long (but not long enough) Nestie rectangle, running the die through almost to the end of the die, but not quite... and then winding back again.

I then took the die off the card and turned it around and placed the die around the other end of the image, lining up the die with the previous die-cuts.

I rolled it through the machine just far enough to meet where it had previously been cut and then wound it back again!

Here you can see that the die-cut is much longer than the original die!

I then repeated the process with the scalloped die, ensuring that the scallops were aligned when I cut the second half.
I like messing around with things like this!

Chicks!

Following my visit to Mandi on the Isle of Wight on Wednesday, I once more I returned home with more than I took. This stamp was among the things she gave me. I love chickens... I also bought a primitive wooden chicken which is now residing on my kitchen windowsill.
I love the expressions on these girls' faces and I know how some of them feel!
The challenge at Crafty Catz is to use a quotation.
This one I think, has been attributed to Joan Rivers... if she didn't say it, it is the sort of thing that she would say. It reads, "If God wanted us to bend down, he'd put diamonds on the floor".
Simply coloured with Distress inks with a monochrome palette, it makes me smile!

Clean and Simple FTL 139

This card follows the sketch from Clean and Simple Stamping FTL 139, although to my mind rather a lot of the card is layered with no white space... maybe I misinterpreted the sketch and should have left the area around the outside of the central section blank. However I do think that the SU papers are pretty and I haven't used any DP on a card for a while it seems.
The sweet little twinkled butterflies are from Marianne's Creatables and the sentiment is from Hero Arts.
I really like the colour combination of this card!

Distressed Penny Black

I love messing about with ink and stamps like this.
I made this card with this week's Penny Black challenge in mind.
For this Emboss Resist card I used a stamp called Golden Leaves from Penny Black. I used SU Sahara Sand, Crumb Cake and Baja Breeze inks for the sponging and Stazon Dove Grey for the overprinting.
The sentiment is also Penny Black and the couple of little swallows are from an Inkylicious clear stamp set.
It was fun!
Penny Black-Distressing
2 Sisters - Distressing

White on White

Well it's Saturday and that can only mean one thing... time for another  challenge from "Less is More".

This week it's another colour challenge and Mandi and I chose 'White on White'. Each of us loves this colour choice for cards and can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.

The sponsor for this month's challenge is Paper Garden Projects and I used a dogwood image from the Spring Trees set. The dogwood is the state flower in Virginia, where I lived for three years when our son was tiny, and so I've had a soft spot for it ever since.

This card uses a Marianne Creatables die for the large circle and a Cuttlebug die for the tag. The embossing is from Cuttlebug and I've added a quick tutorial on the LIM blog on how to emboss a piece of card wider than the actual folder itself.

DO join in the fun this week, even if you haven't played along with us before!

Today it's raining, I must say that the gardens need it desperately, it's a pity that it doesn't rain just during the hours of darkness then we could wake up to a fresh green world... and not get soaked trying to get anywhere!

Stamp Something - Use a Digi
Art Impressions - Bling, Glitter and Sparkle

Here is an award I have been honoured with recently  from Massofhair
Thanks so much for your kindness!

CAS-ual Friday

There's a new blog on the block called CAS-ual Friday, a challenge for Clean and Simple Cards... a bit like "Less is More" ...couldn't possibly be just like it, now could it, we are rather unique, don't you think?
If I understand the challenge correctly it should have some text on it somewhere fairly prominently!
Here I have two hearts punched with a Stampin' Up heart punch and using the heart stamp from the Sale-a-Bration  Punch Bunch set.
One, I overstamped on top the computer generated sentiment and the other is plain, but both are covered with text.
The card is simplicity itself with just a little dry embossing behind the sentiment panel.
Stamps and fun - Hearts
Crafty Creations - Anniversary
Creative Inspirations - Embossing

Emboss Resist

I made a card a couple of weeks ago using this technique and and it really is good fun.
Here I did a second resist embossing after my first inking, and so got a few extra shades of green. I also over stamped the whole 9 yards with some second impression Olive Green Stazon for a further bit of texture.
A couple of flutterbies, a sentiment and a bit of Copic coloured ribbon... and Bob, as they say, is your uncle!
I have green fingers now... maybe I should go and do some gardening!
Just US Girls  -Emboss Resist

Red and White

At My Time to Craft this week the theme is red and white.
I began by trying to make a very different card, but found problems with some of the stamps I was hoping to use, got covered in red ink and finally gave up and made this card which caused me no stress whatsoever!
It's mainly Cuttlebug... the' thanks' and the flower are from a duo cut and emboss set... I think that the embossing folder which went with the die is similar to the flower... but I'm not really sure.
The heart embossing folder came from a different duo set, but has been SO useful... it's perfect for so many occasions.
I have raised the topper into dimensionals to give a little relief... but am always really wary of making cards too fat these days because of postal charges.
Do join in with our challenge, we'd love to see what you create.
I went to watch Hampshire play Surrey in a Pro 40 cricket match yesterday.. it got quite chilly... and Hampshire lost.. again! Oh Dear!
Here's another red and white card I made today!
This is a bit more fun!