Less is More Sketch

There's just something about chickens!

For our sketch challenge at "Less is More" this week, I have chosen to make a primitive style card using Quickcutz dies, Coredinations card and a Stampin' Up sentiment. I think this chicken looks kinda funky.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I make cards using tiny die-cut pieces I invariably lose a vital part sometime in the process, which either seems to be lost forever or turns up in the most unlikely of places. When doing this project, one of the chicken's bodies went walkabout (without its legs). In the end I had to make another only to find the original a little later in my clear sentiments drawer. I always used to pop the 'bits' into a little box I had made, to try to keep them together, but that too seems to have gone walkabout!

The ribbon was rescued from a gift from my daughter-in-law and flattened using my hair straighteners.

Here are another couple of chickens who reside in my kitchen. The one which is hanging up was bought in the USA, when we went back and stayed with our ex-neighbours. We visited their beach house and there just happened to be a Craft Fair taking place that weekend... what luck.

This one looking out of my kitchen window, came from the Isle of Wight. I saw her in a shop when I was over with Mandi and just couldn't resist her. She was only £2.99, I thought that was a real bargain. She reminds me of the set of 3 fabulous Penny Black chicken stamps which Mandi gave me on this visit too!


We went to see Hampshire play Gloucestershire in a T20 cricket match last night at the Rose Bowl. Not only were we fortunate enough to see a game... the rain was threatening all evening, (it only stopped play briefly a couple of times), but Hampshire also managed to win the game.

White plus one other colour

When I received a set of stamps recently from Indigo Blu I was having a play around with them and came up with this card.
I stamped the lady and then masked her to fill in the background. She, the manuscript  and the sentiment come from the same set, but the other stamps I used are from different manufacturers. The tower and the script are from U Mount and I think that the postmark may be from the same travel set, or from SU French Foliage. They are fairly similar.
The challenge from Charisma Cardz this week it to use white plus one other colour. I hope this counts as I have distressed the white in this case and also applied the cracked glass technique using Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel. However it was so thick the 'glass' has sort of broken rather than merely being cracked!
There is a piece of black lace behind the left hand side of the image, although my photograph doesn't really show it too well and I think the sentiment is super.... so true too!

Chickens...again

The stamps which Mandi gave me of these fabulous chickens, have proved very popular and this card is in answer to a request from a friend of mine. Once more I've used what I believe to be a quote from Joan Rivers, which reads, ...if God wanted us to bend down, he'd put diamonds on the floor.

Gently coloured with Distress Inks it's the simplest of cards, but I must admit that these girls just make me smile!

Penny Black (from which make the stamp derives), want Pesky Critters as their theme this week, so here they are!

Last night I had to go for our three-yearly re-audition for my choir... I noticed as I was getting out of my new car that someone had scratched the bonnet (hood)... looked like a key had done it maybe... didn't make me too happy I can tell you!

Alphabet Challenge G

The Alphabet challenge this week is looking for a Get Well card... who wouldn't feel better after looking at this little chap.
Simply cut from a Sizzix die and mounted on Nesties, he's good to go!
The sentiment is a favourite of mine from Hero Arts.
Today I've got to go and pick up my husband when he takes his car in for servicing and tomorrow we're going to the races at Salisbury to celebrate his birthday. I hope the rain keeps off.

Another Saturday... so soon!

Saturdays seem to come around so quickly!
Yesterday we spent most of the day sitting in the rain, hoping to see a day's Test Match cricket at the Rose Bowl.
We had brilliant seats, just a the base of the staircase to the England dressing room, but sadly saw only about 2 hours play...a quite expensive two hours at that.
Equipped with two large umbrellas and dressed in many layers including a down jacket and a poncho we didn't really get too wet or cold (so much for flaming June) but were disappointed not to see too much play.

However, it's now Saturday once more and time for "Less is More". It seems like the phenomenon of its popularity continues with just under 300 entries again last week and there were some superb cards too.

This week our theme is MONOGRAM. 

I love making wedding cards with the couple's initials intertwined. I hand embossed them on my daughter's wedding stationery. You can see the embossing here if you zoom in.
This was how I got into card making in the first place and her stationery was my very first effort.
The card above is for my granddaughter Daisy, details are on the LIM blog.

This is another card for Daisy. For this one I printed a large letter D on the computer and cut it out to use the remainder as a mask in which to stamp my flowers. I used Baja Breeze and Almost Amethyst

This is my card for my son and daughter-in-law's anniversary which is fast approaching. They were married in his Cambridge college chapel (Gonville and Caius) and what a wonderful day that was. You can see the stationery I made for them here . The main feature of their invitations was the monogram of their initials.
I just realised that their last year's anniversary card also had their monogram on you can see it here.

There must be heaps of ways of utilising a monogram so do have a go and come and join us!

One Layer Wednesday

To use the colour palette of Yellow, Orange and Aqua as required for One Layer Wednesday this week was a real challenge for me. None of these colours is a particular favourite with me and to put them all together took a little thought to say the least.
This little masked and sponged square with the stamped bits and pieces is what I finally decided upon.
The butterfly and the grasses are from Indigo Blu and the splodges from SU French Foliage (I love that set). The sentiment is a little clear stamp from Studio G.
Anything Goes - Here Comes Summer
I finally finished my Retirement cards and delivered then this morning, here are another couple... they are huge... A4 size (8.25 x 11.75 inches approx) and quite a challenge to fill!

I hope there will be enough room for all the signatures!

Thanks

We had lunch with friends a short while ago and this was the card I sent to thank them. In fact there was an ulterior motive in making this as I wanted my friend to see this particular ribbon. She had asked me to make a wedding card for their son's wedding and I wondered if this colour ribbon would be suitable for it. In fact she said that she would prefer something a little more mauve. So the information gathering ploy worked. I was able to go ahead and make the Wedding card, with a slightly more mauve ribbon!
This was made by masking a circle in the centre of the card and over printing with one of my Pocket Silhouette stamps from Stampin' Up using  Rich Razzleberry ink, then adding the bow made with my bow maker.
Paper Pretties - Single Layer Card

Xtra Images

The theme at My Time to Craft this week is to use use more than one image on a card. Here I have used heaps for a Golden Wedding card request from someone from my choir.
I stamped lots of the images from the Stampin' Up I {Heart}Hearts set and embossed them in gold before cutting them out to mount randomly on an embossed panel. This is flanked by some gold card edged with a Martha Stewart border punch.
The personalised sentiment was computer generated using  Passions Conflict ROB and Andre Light SF fonts.
There is still a DT call going on so if you are interested do stop by and take a look.

One Layer for "Less is More"

I really like this colour combination... Stampin' Up's Baja Breeze plus some of the neutral shades... Sahara Sand , Crumb Cake and Soft Suede. You can see how I achieved this in one layer on the "Less is More" Blog. Needless to say, I got into a bit of a pickle on some of the preparatory attempts, the most annoying of which was spoiling practically finished cards with inky fingers... having only just washed my hands! I also wrecked another at the very last moment when adding the sentiment.

I tried to resurrect some of the images I'd done to make into non-one layer cards, but then I stuck one image on upside down.

This may look reasonable to you, but there is some music manuscript stamped in gold on this and if you were to look really closely you'd see it was upside down... plus I made it with the darker shade of ink at the bottom. These two are simply cut out and stuck on to look like the first card but are not in fact one layer! I used a little embossing powder on these, plus it's smoother card so the overall effect is shinier.

For this one I used 4 different clear cling stamps (a present some time ago from my bloggy friend Victoria, thanks again Victoria) and a couple of Embosslits butterflies, gently twinkled.
The theme this week at "Less is More" is In the Frame... there must be loads of ways of interpreting it, this last card uses an image from our sponsor at "Less is More" this month... Arielle of the Wax Fruit company and she has lots of images in or partly in frames...why don't you take a look and do come and join us in our challenge.

This last one is also for the CAS challenge at the Stampotique challenge blog this time.

How old?

At Charisma Cardz this week, they'd like to see a card with an age on it.
This was made following a request by a choir member for his wife. I had specific instructions to include two cats, one black and white and one ginger!
The lettering is from Cuttlbug's Olivia alphabet, the sentiment from Darkroom Door and I can't remember the make of the clear stamps that I used for the pussy cats... although I'm sure someone will tell me!
Have a great weekend... tomorrow is my grandson's baptism, so we'll be heading to Bath for that, keeping our fingers crossed for fine weather as they're hoping to have the party afterwards in their newly re-landscaped garden!

New Toy

I got a new toy today!
I traded in my old Fabia for a new Fabia. This is the third one I've had, but this time I went for an estate, it has a few gizmos that my old one didn't have, like cruise control and parking sensors, so I shall be having a play to find out how everything works very soon. It's a lovely colour... it's called rosso brunello...  and twinkles beautifully in the sunlight!
Lucky me!

Wildlife reserve

This week's challenge at My Time to Craft is entitled Wildlife reserve. When wondering how I would interpret it, this little lion die from Cuttlebug came into my mind. I haven't used it for ages and so decided to choose a couple on 'liony' colours of card from my stash to make him.
Having mounted him on a couple of Nestie die-cut squares, I made the band behind him, embossing a strip with a Stampin' Up Sizzix embossing folder.  I was amazed how much the piece of card was reduced in size by the embossing, it's really quite deep. In fact I had to trim a little from both the rust coloured piece and the card itself to make them line up. Note to self - remember to cut card slightly oversize before embossing with this folder in future!
I didn't have any matching ribbon and so I coloured a length of white grosgrain ribbon with a Copic marker to tine in with the colour scheme.
The sentiment is from a retired Sale-a-bration set from last year.
Clean and Simple.
There's a DT call at My Time to Craft this week, so if you're interested in joining us do pop along and send in your submission!

Simply Stampin'

I made a  card for this challenge the other day and forgot to photograph it before going to lunch with friends.
I think I must have popped it into my 'Cards for Sale' box and taken it with me as my friend needed to buy some more cards. I can only assume that she bought it along with 15 others, as when I came to look for it, it was nowhere to be seen.
Anyway here is Mark II.
I'm really fond of this particular sketch and use variances of it on many occasions.
The image is from Pocket Silhouettes, double stamped without re-inking, in Pear Pizzaz. The sentiment is from a Sale-a-bration set from last year... I can't remember the name at the moment I'll have to look on the box.
The colours are taken from CR84FN this week.
Simply Stampin' - Sketch
I have to rush off to Bath today to take a gazebo, a plug-in cool box and a folding table to my daughter's. My grandson's baptism is on Sunday and these items will be needed for the ensuing celebrations. We won't have time to take them on Sunday as the service is at 9.30am and we'll have to make an early start to get there anyway. I must be back for choir this evening as we have a concert very soon and I need all the practice I can get, one thing is in Russian and other in German, neither of which is my forte!

Retirement Cards

I have a friend who teaches in a secondary school and who is responsible for sourcing cards for members of staff for a variety of occasions. She has just asked me for 5 retirement cards for colleagues.
In the ordinary way this would have been fine fine except for the fact that she asked for these cards to be very large...A3 folded in half making A4 sized cards, which for me is very big!
I used a Bugaboo image of a teacher for this one... the joy of digital stamps being that they can be easily sized to fit whatever size card is required.
I actually used 2 sheets of A4 card and made a hinge to join the pieces together, adding the border punched edge with a contrasting layer underneath. The sentiment was computer generated and I drew the little apple to tie in with the image. It's coloured with Distress Inks and a length of ribbon was added as a finishing touch.
The layout is in line with the sketch challenge at the Clean and Simple Sunday Challenge.

Less is More - Monochrome Colour Challenge

For this week's challenge I decided to do an interpretation of my blog background as the subject for my card.
The stamp, as many of you will recognise is the freebie from Craft Stamper magazine,which is so redolent of the animated one I added to my blog from Blogamation.
The side panel was masked and sponged using Stampin' Up Sahara Sand ink before stamping with a bunch of stamps similar to the designs on my background. A script one from French Foliage, a flourish from Joie and a Music manuscript stamp I've had for yonks. I embossed some of the white ink with clear embossing powder and also sponged a little darker ink in places to add interest. Its all very random and is a technique I really enjoy doing.
The chandelier stamp itself plus the sentiment were stamped with Timber brown Stazon to ensure good coverage over the embossing.
DO join in the fun at "Less is More"... we had an amazing 325 entries last week, Mandi and I can scarcely believe the phenomenal support we're receiving for our challenge. If you haven't joined in as yet, maybe this week is the time to give it a try.
OLW 56 - Father's Day