Casual Friday's flowers

Here is a simple card for the challenge at Casual Fridays which this week is flowers or trees.

The stamp is a flat stamp inked with SU Markers and is from Local King. The sentiment is from Paper Make Up.

The image panel is simply hand embossed on the edges using a score board and embossing stylus, mounted on a similarly treated piece of pink card.

Our son was visiting briefly this weekend as he was attending an NHS sailing Regatta out of Port Solent. He was a token GP trainee on a boat full of orthopaedic and plastic surgeons and had great fun.They were fourth in one race (out of about 30 boats) and had rather good fun during the apres sail!

The weather was too bad to sail back from Cowes today and they returned on the car ferry!

A Sketch for "Less is More"

We have a couple of sketches to choose from at "Less is More" this week. They are similar except for the shape of the central panel.

                    

I bought the stamps from which this tree image comes at Ally Pally. The set is called Wild Trees by Stampology and the images are all rather quirky. The text stamp is from Stampin' Up and the sentiment by Kaisercraft.

The large butterfly is from a Spellbinders die and the small one is from a Marianne Creatables set.

 Mandi made a card some weeks ago that I loved and this is a case of it... I love the small flowers she added  on her card to the butterfly shape.

Details of this triple embossed card are on the LIM blog!

This is a case of another wonderful crafter's work. Birgit in Sweden does the most amazing work! I took the idea of adding dimension by superimposing small tiles of part of the image over the base layer.

I have now achieved my 3 stone weight loss and I feel as though I can see the end in sight even though it may take several more months. I want to lose another 14 lbs then I should be in the healthy zone for my height! I have rather more skin that I really need, but I'd rather have that than surplus fat!

LIM is Charming

"Less is More" is sponsored this month by Ribbon Girl and they sell some fabulous charms, so here are a couple of cards sporting them.

I love the gentle, natural colours achieved by pressing leaves and flowers between pieces of card and running them through my Cuttlebug machine.

I heat embossed the heart charm with gold embossing powder as I only had silver coloured charms and the colours of this oval panel were more suited to gold tones. 

I think that the little sentiment stamps, when embossed look a bit like gold ingots. They were in my £5 grab bag of about 40 Rubbernecker stamps from Ally Pally.
There's another card using my pressed flowers and leaves technique in the post below this... you can see it just here.

Clean and Simple is such a fab genre for baby cards... but then I'm one of the old fashioned breed that likes to see newborns in white and pastel colours rather than denim and trendy togs.

Details of this one are on the LIM blog.

I tend to forget about my border embossing folders I think I should use them more often!

Shabby Chic meets CAS

I made the paper for the oval and the flowers in this card by squishing flowers and leaves from the garden between 2 sheets of card and running them through my Cuttlebug.

I love the gentle effect and subtle colours... decidedly shabby chic.

The branch is made from my recent Memory Box acquisition. I think it's a beautiful die and works well used horizontally or vertically. The flowers are made from a Woodware punch.

The grey panel has been embossed with a Cuttlebug  leafy branch embossing folder.

The sentiment is from Gina K's botanicals set.

This one pleases me!

Charisma Cardz - Shabby Chic

Little dog

This is another of the stamps I bought at the NEC for less than £1.

What a cutie he is too! I think it's from Rubber Stampede. I believe the sentiment is from Personal Impressions and the embossing folder is from Stampin' Up.

I'm so close to having lost 3 stones... just another half pound to go, but we'll be eating out a few times between now and the weekend, so hitting this particular target is going to prove quite difficult... but there's always next week.

 Craft Catz - Animals

Wild Bird

I thought I'd enter a couple of challenges, something I don't often have time to do these days it seems.
This is a digi image from a Day for Daisies... I love the quirkiness of the images. Those who know me well, will wonder why this branch isn't attached to something... a tree, the side of the page, etc., but it has twiddles at both ends so maybe the bird is carrying it (albeit rather large for him).
It has a simple masked and ink dusted background with a few over printed leaves from SU's Confetti set. The sentiment is from Kaisercraft and there's a bit of a Gina K text stamp on the left hand side.
Simples!
A Day for Daisies - Put a feather on it
The ABC Challenge - Neutrals
Just us girls - Technique challenge - Sponging a Layer

What a delightful day!

Yesterday was a first for me!

It was the first time that I had been to a craft show at Alexandra Palace and the first time that I had met in person, several LIMettes... namely, Gay, Val, Vicky, Jenny and Sylvie (she's missing from this picture sadly).Gay and I braved the idiosyncrasies of the Sat Nav to get there and back and we had an amazing day! The show was fine but the best bit was meeting all these lovely ladies.

This is what found its way home with me...all the unmounted stamps on the right of the picture were in a Grab bag pack from Rubberneckers for £5! A bit of a lucky dip, but there are some super stamps amongst them.
It was such fun, an experience I shall look forward to repeating!

Doodle-oodle-oo

My preparation time for this week's LIM challenge, which was destined for Friday, was cut very short this week when my daughter rang to ask if I could meet her in Swindon to do some shopping at the outlet there. She wanted to get a couple of outfits for upcoming weddings. She bought two fabulous dresses from L K Bennett and looked gorgeous in both of them (size 6). I managed to pick up a  a pair of gold sandals, a fab summer dress and shrug, crop trousers and cardie, plus a blazer, a reefer jacket and shorts for my husband. Great shopping.
However I seemed totally lacking in inspiration when I got down to making my card for the One Layer doodling challenge at "Less is More".
I played around for quite a while trying to add a few squiggles to stamps until I came across this Mackintosh type roses stamp. The stamp is just the flower heads, so I added the stems and leaves and dotty bits.

The sentiment is from Gina K Designs Botanicals set.

 

This was my first attempt, which I'm not too pleased with but I was getting desperate! The doodled bit is the trail between the ladybird to the damselfly or whatever it is.

Tomorrow I shall be going to the craft show at Alexandra Palace with Gay (mustavcoffee) and hopefully meeting up with some more LIMette chums... Jenny, Vicky and Sylvie, what fun! Is anyone else going?

Retro Sketches

I found a challenge called Retro Sketches... I haven't been keen on following sketches of late as many seem totally over the top as far as components are concerned, but this one appealed to my CAS style.

 I decided to use some of the Stampin' Up DP which Mandi gave me recently, to mount the central panel.

 It was quite a job to find a blue ink which matched the paper, so the image was inked with a couple of different inks to tone in with the paper... it almost works!

I embossed the top layer with what I think may be a Sizzix embossing folder decorated with palest blue pearls.

The tag was made with a Spellbinder die which I extended slightly to fit the Kaisercraft sentiment. The flower, which has an edging of Glamour Dust, is superimposed by a Memory Box Fuchsia die cut. 

I do find getting a decent image of a mainly white card quite tricky, this is about the best that Picasa could do with it!

Feeling Green

On Tuesday we went to visit our daughter in Bath and to babysit Daisy for a while, whilst our daughter did some interviews. It turned into something a little more complex! There was a call from the Nursery to say that Seb was not well and had been sick so I went to pick him up and take him home. 

Having been ill, the Nursery would not allow him  back for 48 hours after symptoms had subsided and Libby needed to go to work the next day. The result was that we decided to bring both children back home here with us for a couple of nights. It's lovely having them, but oh so tiring!

The door to my craft room remained shut tight for that time, I don't need a fourteen month old getting in there and creating havoc, however when Seb was napping Daisy enjoyed making some cards for her mummy and daddy!

The challenge at "Less is More" this week is to use 3 shades of green, I quite enjoyed messing around with this one. This has a gently ink dusted background using Pear Pizzazz and River Rock inks, overstamped with an Inkylicious and an Indigo Blu stamp using Pear Pizzaz ink The different shades were achieved by using the different techniques... dusting and stamping. The butterfly was inked and then twinkled with Glamour Dust. The image has been popped up on dimensional pads.

This Penny Black stamp was inked with SU Pear Pizzazz ink and then shaded with SU Marker Pens in Old Olive and Always Artichoke to add definition to the stamped image.

Details of this one are on the "Less is More" Blog. It utilises the fab Eucalyptus leaf stamp which I picked up for less than a £1 at the NEC.

It has fabulous detail on it and by using different shades of ink, it enhances the effect of the texture!

The last one for this week has three Hero Arts Apples in one of my favourite layouts!

Once more, details of colours used are on the LIM blog.

Do join our challenge this week, I'm sure there are lots of ways to use three shades of green!