Love is in the air

This sweet little image is a freebie from A Day for Daisies for us to use should we wish to enter their Valentine-y challenge.. which I do!

It's simply coloured with Mirage pens with a little added Glamour Dust. The sentiment is computer generated . The hug and kiss are from a Cuttlebug die.

Speaking of which... it's the challenge from Addicted to CAS this time!

So it's for that too!

This is for the challenge at Colours and Sketches, where the colours are

I used a couple of new acquisitions.. Stamps from Stampin' Up... Chalk Lines and Kinda Eclectic together with a die from Simon Says Stamp.
We're off to a Come and Sing this evening. We'll be singing Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen; it's a fund raising function in aid of Countess Mountbatten hospices in memory of a friend of ours.

Lucky Dip at Less is More

The challenge at Less is More this week is entitled Little Ones

There are a few ways of interpreting this theme and it will be interesting to see what appears in our gallery.

Here is a Welcome to the world card for a little one. The tiny shoes are from a Joy Craft die, the tag and the welcome word are from Paper Smooches.

Here's a variation using a Papertrey Ink Giraffe stamp and die.

                                 

Here are a couple of pictures of a card I made with lots of little hearts streaming from an envelope.

The envelope was made from Spellbinders Labels die... I thought it made a great envelope.

Here's how I made it!

I think it's great to exploit the resources we already have and make them do more than originally intended.

More die cutting here, but just as the manufacturers intended this time. Shoes - Joy Craft, baby - Simon Say Stamp, Congratulations - Tattered Lace.

As always, I add double sided tape to the reverse of the card before cutting fiddly shapes... it makes adhering them so much easier.

Simple Birthday!

Three stamps and a die cut... and that's it!

Sentiment from Winnie and Walter and little pussy cat from Stampin' UP!

It's for CASology's birthday challenge!

I Love you

Here's a card for the Card Concept challenge on Love!

I used my new stamp from Stampin' Up.  I just used two of the stamp layers and then dragged out some colour with a water brush.

The sentiment is from the Big and Bold series from Winnie and Walter.

The embossing folder is Adagio from Couture Creations.

Valentine

I wanted to make some Valentine cards to take to my choir and was trying to think of something a little different. I came up with the idea of triple embossing, something I have done many times in the past but always with a deeply etched stamp. This time I used an embossing folder!

Details of the process are in this video.

The tiny hearts are embossed from a Stampin' Up tiny stamp from the confetti set. The scalloped edge is from a Lawn Fawn die, the frilly heart is Simon Says Stamp and the sentiment from a Winnie and Walter Big and Bold set.

The Card Concept Challenge has a Love theme so this is for that.

Timeout has the challenge, Valentine's Day with the optional twist of hearts... there are quite a few hearts here!

Super Sketches

There are a couple of challenges at the moment with simply terrific sketches which have really fired my enthusiasm.

These are Freshly Made Sketches and CASe this Sketch

I have already made cards for each of these challenges already but here are a couple more.

This is  for CASe this Sketch

I think it's a terrific sketch. I used Memory Box Butterflies, cut from a piece of card which I inked with Distress Inks and water,allowed to dry, then over stamped with gold embossed flowers, which I'd  added a little more colour to.

I also stamped the flowers onto the black panel and clear embossed. This doesn't show up too well on this picture but it does add a little interest to the card itself without detracting attention from the butterflies themselves.

It's also for CASology's Friend Challenge

Again I stamped the black card with flowers and clear embossed them. The sentiment from Clearly Besotted is cut from the same piece of water-coloured card as the previous card. It's the larger version of the same Memory Box butterfly, this time with its filigree overlay added.

Freshly Made Sketches

What a great sketch, I'm sure I'll be using this one many times in future!

Less is More has a sketch!

Here is a simple interpretation of the sketch. The vertical panel was cut with a SSS stitched die, reduced in size to much skinnier proportions. The heart is also from Simon Says Stamp and the butterfly is from Memory Box.

This is another card using the same die as an earlier card.

Here is a little video showing how I made it, with apologies for forgetting to turn the image the right way up!

I hope you like it!

This one is straying a little from the sketch but I couldn't bear to cut dowm the vertical panel any more... I just love the colours in the background.

It was made with Weathered Wood, Peeled Paint and Forest Moss Distress ink refills dabbed onto my glass mat, spritzed with water and then dabbed with absorbent card and left a while for the colours to be absorbed by the card. When dry, it was overprinted  with black ink and then other images embossed in gold. The butterfly is from Memory Box and the sentiment from Wplus9.

Case these flowers

As soon as I saw this sketch from CASe this Sketch this week, I just loved it.

Trying to make it work with what I had in mind was another matter. I knew I wanted to inlay the dies and slice through them to have a positive and negative effect, but working out how to cut them and  keep the fiddly bits from going AWOL and match the positive and negative sides was not as straightforward as I had imagined. However I managed to do it, but after selecting the sentiment I wanted to balance the sketch, I somehow managed to get a smear of ink in the bottom right hand corner... hence the extra daisy! Actually I think it balances the card quite well, as I managed to finish up with the flowers a little higher than I ideally would have liked.

Anyway I was pleased with the end result.

I'm off to the theatre this evening to see To Kill a mocking bird in Chichester Festival Theatre. I'm really looking forward to it!

A little adapting

I was looking through my Bloglovin email this morning when I spotted this card from Lisa (I'm in Haven) 

I just loved what she had done with her die. My immediate thought was, I NEED that die, but then a thought struck me that I might be able to use a die I already had and had hardly used instead.

It's  this Memory Box buckle die.

So I die-cut four of them, then cut out the smaller petally bits and placed them slightly offset on top of each other. The centre is the smallest Die-namics pierced circle.

Thanks Lisa I may get more miles out of this die now!

The embossing folder is Adagio from Couture Creations and the sentiment is computer generated in KG Defying Gravity font.

Challenges Freshly Made Sketches                             

CASology - Friend  

Now I have given this card to her I can tell you that it's for my friend Anne's (Stargroves) birthday, which is TODAY and it's special one too!

Real Quickie

This is a really quick tip for you, whilst I'm trying to get the better of You Tube technology!

You probably know this already, but for those who haven't seen it before, it's a really useful tip which I discovered quite some time ago, but use ALL the time.

I hope you find it useful!
For larger dies, I either add tape in several strips in order to cover the required area, or use  double sided adhesive in sheet form. I can buy that at The Range stores.

A couple of cards

I have realised that I really like these Big and Bold sentiment stamps from Winnie and Walter. The large words have such a super flourish which is contrasted so well by the plain type of the smaller words.

The Paper Players' challenge this time is all about sentiments so I thought this would be fine for that.

The little butterfly is a new Memory Box acquisition and the flourish stamp is an old one from Stampin' Up.

For this card I began with this rather elaborate sketch from Seize the Birthday and tried to make it CAS. I was inspired by Hannelie's DT example on their blog. 

I have rotated the sketch and made it mostly white. The base layer is cut three times with a Memory box border die. The sentiment panel is an adapted Dienamics pierced die and the heart from Lil Inkers.

The sentiment is from another set in the Big and Bold series from Winnie and Walter. The tiny tag is from Lili of the Valley!

Sunday morning

What nicer way to spend Sunday morning than fiddling around in my craft room!

One card appeared and here it is.

For this I took inspiration from the Fusion Challenge, taking elements from both the sketch and the picture.

The hearts are from Little B dies,, the floral backdrop is from a Poppy Stamp die and the sentiment from Winnie and Walter stamps. 

It's another card for the Colours and Sketches  challenge this week, which is one of my favourite colour combos.

It's also for the Love and Friendship challenge at Uniko Studio

This uses the same floral die, with some letters from the largest Alpha set I own, I think it's Quickutz, now discontinued.

This is over the Sheena Douglass splat embossing folder with a Winnie and Walter sentiment. I'm not sure what I think about this one.

I took the sketch from Case this Sketch

Just waiting for my son to arrive with his dear little hound,,, isn't she the sweetest!

This is Minnie!

Friends

The challenge at "Less is More" this week is entitled Friends.

Here are the cards I made for it!

Lots of you know how much I like chicken images and this one from the Rubber Stamp Gallery arrived today. Is this chicken cool or what?!

I'm also adding this to Darnell's NBUS challenge together with Casology's challenge which is running alongside it! It's also for this Colours and Sketches challenge

Here are some ladies from the Art Impression 'Girlfriends' series of images. I love them! The sentiment is computer generated and printed directly into the card base. The image, coloured with Mirage Pens, was cut with a stitched rectangle die from Simon Says Stamp... adjusted slightly to fit the image and the card base.

These Penny Black ducks are obviously feeling friendly. Details of how it was done are on the LIM blog!

I am linking this to the Love and Friendship challenge at Uniko Studio

Speaking of friends, I paid a visit to my friend and fellow designer Anne's new home last week. She has done an amazing job especially as she was downsizing. Sorting her crafting space was a matter of priority, it looks amazing!

I shall have to go again and join her for a crafting session!

Distress Inks Colour Chart... continued

Following my post yesterday, I decided that the colours would be best arranged in families so I adapted the chart the reflect this. It's easier to compare the shades when they are nearer to each other.

Here's the image for you, should you fancy using it!

Distress Ink Colour Chart

I was looking on the web for a new colour chart for my Distress inks, but couldn't spot one with all 48 colours on it, so I made one for myself.

I added them in alphabetical order, but may do another in colour families so that colours would be easier to compare.

 I stamped with colours with a Clearly Besotted hexagon stamp.

Do take this chart if you would like one.

A few cards

I started playing around with some Distress inks  and re-inkers yesterday andgot rather mucky fingers into the bargain, but it was fun.

Here are some of the cards I made.

For this one I spritzed the watercolour paper with water before stamping the Papertrey Ink images with Peeled Paint Distress ink. I re-stamped a couple of times without re-inking to get the lighter shades. When the paper was dry I stamped again to get a clearer image.

Then I used a Stampin' Up Gorgeous Grunge splat stamp in Tattered Rose ink. 

The butterfly is Memory Box and the sentiment is a double stack from part of  Poppy Stamps - Jumbled Birthday.

It's for Happy Little Stampers Watercolouring  Challenge.

Here I squiggled three shades of  Distress Re-inkers onto my glass mat and spritzed them with water.

(Peeled Paint, Weathered Wood and Antique Linen)

I then laid my piece of watercolour paper on the top and allowed the ink to soak in a little. I filled in any un-inked areas by just re-dabbing the paper  into the ink.

I dried it with my heat gun and then stamped the plant images with Versamark embossing in gold and platinum.

The panel was cut with a SSS Stitched rectangle die and the sentiment from Tattered Lace and the leaves from Wplus9 cut from golf mirri card and mounted over the panel.

I took the sketch from Case this Sketch

More Peeled Paint ink here, with the same Papertrey Ink stamp and a similar process as the first card.

I think the happy die is from Simon Says Stamp.  The birthday die is from Papertrey Ink.
I think all of these cards fit with the watercolouring challenge at Happy Little Stampers. I don't know how to add more cards from the same post to one challenge, unless I do a link to my entire blog as well as a specific one! Hey Ho!

Finally a card in a different colour!

This is for the Muse challenge and here is Vicki's inspiration card.

It will soon be time to put a chicken in the oven for the Sunday Roast, so I'd better get my skates on.

We sang in a Come and Sing performance of Haydn's Creation last night with my choir. It was super... so was the curry afterwards!