Paper Anniversary

A friend from my choir asked me to make a card for his daughter's first wedding anniversary. It doesn't seem a moment since I made their wedding card. 

Here I decided to use some newsprint washi for the top layer of some layered die-cuts, the first anniversary usually being interpreted as the paper anniversary. I clear embossed some SSS background hearts and added a Stampin' Up butterfly in bright pink.

The die cuts are a mix of Tattered Lace (anniversary), Wplus9 (happy) and Memory Box (everything else).

I love tulips

I seem to have a lot of images of tulips, (I do love them) and here is another, this one from Penny Black. It's simply coloured with Copics and mounted on a SSS stitched rectangle accompanied by a sentiment from Avery Elle.

It's for the challenge at Just us Girls

I seem to have a had a rush of commissions this week, I'd better get on with them!

Muse Inspiration Designer

I was delighted to be asked to provide the inspiration for the challenge at

  Muse

Here I began by spritzing a piece of card with water and then dropping Spun Sugar and Festive Berries Distress inks onto it. I also tapped a little mica powder onto the wet surface. When dry, I stamped the Stamploration flowers with Versamark and embossed them in gold. I added more deep red ink to the petals and then added Glossy Accents to the centres and tipped micro beads into the liquid glue. I thought his looked a little insipid, so I added some Gold Aqua Tint ink to them and dropped a few spots onto the remainder of the background. The panel was cut with a Simon Says Stamp stitched rectangle die and mounted on a dry embossed black layer, similarly cut.

The Memory Box dragonfly was cut from gold textured paper plus a second layer of wings from vellum, which I dry embossed to add a little veining and then inked with gold ink.

The sentiment is from Tattered Lace.

It will be so interesting to see the various interpretations of this Muse card!

I shall look forward to visiting everyone!

The recipe at "Less is More" this week is to include a tag on your creation.

Here's a dear little bunny from Mama Elephant, coloured 

with alcohol pens and twinkled with Glamour Dust. 

The tag is from LOTV and the embossing folder is an A4 size 

from Creative Expressions.

A larger tag here with a super butterfly from Indigo Blu. It stamps very well with Distress Ink. Here I used Tumbled Glass and Mermaid Lagoon. The splats are from Paper Artsy and Stampin' Up and the sentiment from Penny Black!

The ribbon just happened to match perfectly, , otherwise I would have coloured some with the Distress Ink!

Blue Tulips?

I decided to combine a couple of challenges, the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches and the colours from Colour Q

                                  

The green bands look quite a lot darker in this picture than in reality, in fact it looks more like the colours the leaves of the tulips on the card itself.

The image is from Penny Black and the sentiment from Simon Says Stamp.

Today is lovely and sunny, I should attempt some gardening!

Ombre

The cue word at CASology this week is OMBRE.

It's not long since I discovered what this actually meant. I suppose new words come into every day parlance on a regular basis, it's just a question of keeping up with them all.

I thought it a good opportunity to have some practice with my Chameleon pens. I must confess that I haven't used them a great deal since purchasing them and I really should use them more.

The images are from Penny black and the paper from Pink Petticoat with a Lil Inkers scalloped border.

It's also the colour scheme for Color Throwdown and I love it!

Simon Says Stamp - Clean and Simple

Muse butterfly

The Muse card at the moment is of a super die cut butterfly.

 Here it is... 

I decided to use a piece of card which I had coloured by squishing some flowers through my Cuttlebug. In fact, in the piece I used, you can actually see the shape of the petunia which met its end this way!

From this, I die-cut the butterfly and then from the remaining piece die-cut the rectangle to surround it.

I stamped the sentiment from LOTV  in a sympathetic colour and twinkled the butterfly with a little Glamour Dust. I like the contrast in texture between the hammered card base and the flat coloured piece.

I made a second card with a slightly different method, colouring a piece of card with Aqua Tint inks and then stamping some foliage in black and embossing it in gold. The butterfly is merely die-cut and attached over the panel.

Here the sentiment is from a Tattered Lace die.

The butterfly is from Memory Box.

Male

It's funny how things crop up. I hadn't come across the challenge at the Male Room until I received a comment from one of the MR DT commenting on another challenge card I had made, mistakenly thanking me for joining the Male Room challenge... so I checked it out and here I am joining in for real!

Their challenge this time is to include letters and / or numbers. This one has both in fact as each tile has a score on it too.

Just think, in Scrabble letters, my husband is just approaching 13!

He doesn't check out my blog so I'm safe in posting this ahead of his birthday!

The design was created in Word using SCRAMBLE MIXED font and a whole bunch of text boxes!

The dry embossing is Couture Creations, Adagio and the heart banner from Simon Says Stamp.

I hope he likes it when the time comes!

Yum!

It's odd how different stimuli spark ideas. When I saw that the challenge at Just us Girls was these colours, I immediately thought of these stamps from Unity.

It also fits with the cue word from CASology

...plus the Picture Inspiration from Addicted to Stamps .

A hint of colour from the flowers, the colours of the clocks on the wall and the criss cross design on the table top!

I'm not sure of the make of the embossing folder, but it's quite a large one  about 5"x7".

The image was coloured with a variety of alcohol pens, and cut out before mounting on a rectangle cut with a SSS stitched rectangle. The sentiment panel was cut with a Lil Inkers die.

Up up and away!

The theme at "Less is More" this week is 

Up up and away!

What comes to your mind with those words?

For me it will always be balloons, but it could be a variety of things...fairies, planes, and things that are carried along on the breeze.

This is a Woodware stamp set, perfect for paper piecing... here I used Cuddly Buddly papers.

Here is a little Day for Daisies fairy who is decidedly on her way up and away!

I must apologise about the picture, my phone is a bit hit and miss or should I say, my ability to use it to take pictures is a little hit and miss!

The sentiment is computer generated.

Color Throwdown

Here is a card for a couple of challenges!

I used a sketch and a set of colours and this is what emerged.

            

The colours are from Color Throwdown and the sketch from Freshly Made sketches

I used a background stamp from WOW embossed with three different embossing powders, Antigua Breeze and Regular Olive powders from WOW and Frayed Burlap distress embossing powder from Ranger.

The die cut frames are a mix of Lil Inkers and Simon Says Stamp, the sentiment from Tattered Lace and the butterfly from Memory Box.

In fact the green looks a lot darker in this picture than it really is, this is the second picture I took but it still seems a little dark despite a little jiggery pokery in Picasa.

Tall and skinny

I saw two challenges which I knew I wanted to combine. I knew I wanted to include this bunny, I knew I wanted to include this tree, but it took quite a while to get to this stage.

So the challenges are 

 & 

Color Q                              Seize the Birthday  Tall and Skinny

This card really is skinny only 7.5 cm wide (3ins) x 21cms  long (8.25 ins).

The background stamp is from Kaisercraft, the tree and the bird from Memory Box and the bunny (die and stamp) from Clearly Besotted.

I made the aperture by narrowing a SSS stitched rectangle die, but it was a little too long for the tree, so I added a little snowy hill from SSS to fill the gap.

The sentiment is from and old set of Cuttlebug Alpha dies.

The stamping was done is Basic Gray ink.

Rain or Shine

Here is a card I made this morning whilst trying to keep out of the way of the bathroom fitters. We had a steam cubicle fitted some years ago when we had our bathrooms refurbished, but the Italian manufacturer went out of  business and when it went wrong, it couldn't be serviced... so we now have a new shower!

Speaking of which

...here it is!

It is also the cue word at Addicted to CAS 

The sentiment and umbrella  are from Clearly Besotted and the raindrops from Memory Box (I think).

CAS on Sunday has the challenge  entitled GOLD, so there's a bit of that on my card too! The sentiment is embossed in gold which sadly doesn't show up too well in the picture.

Now all we have to do is pay for the shower!

Missing Mojo

I have been trying to get some cards made but the success rate has been rather low! I have a couple here which sort of do something but there are so many incarnations in the bin!

This one is for the sketch at Happy Little Stampers and is a fairly literal translation of it as you can see.

I stamped the sentiment is Versamark and embossed in white (the clear version didn't fare so well). After this I applied drops of Aqua Tint Inks with a fairly large watercolour brush, which I spritzed with water to allow the colours to bleed into each other and the surrounding card.

The panel was then mounted on some toning card and die cut with the holes.

I kind of mis-recalled a sketch for this one... I omitted a fundamental element of it and then, because of the image I had chosen, couldn't manage to add that element to the card, so I'll have to start again with that challenge. This is however for the challenge at Casology - News, the Springtime challenge from AAA cards and Addicted to Stamps Clean and Simple. The stamp is from Stampin' Up.   

               

Time Out with Kim

The current Challenge at Time Out is to take inspiration from a card by the talented Kim!

Here is my card taken from this inspiration

It's a fairly close 'take off'. I stamped the  Stamploration flowers with Versamark and embossed in white. I then coloured them with pink and yellow watercolour pencils over a white base layer, (I believe it's called the Black Magic technique) adding a little Glamour Dust at the end.

The sentiment is part of the 'Pawesome' die from SSS with the 'p' removed and a little twinkle added!

One Layer Splatters

The challenge at "Less is More" this week is for a One Layer card to include Splatters.

I just have a couple of cards for you this week. I have been visiting my grandchildren and they will staying with us this weekend... it's cuts down craft time considerably!

Here is the owl from Tim Holtz Bird Crazy set, coloured with a variety of alcohol pens and  surrounded by some Paper Artsy splats. The sentiment is from Woodware.

Here I used spritzing and stamping to make the splatters, then over stamped with a leaf  stamp and  the sentiment from Stampin' Up's  Kinda Eclectic set.

Here are a couple of pictures of our visit to Bath. My daughter leading my Granddaughter's pony and me with my grandson. 

Here I am with my 4 year old grandson Sebby. His mount had the unlikely name of 'Turbo'! It was a lovely day!

I hope you have a great week!

Happy Birthday!

I think that this little owl from Sizzix is a real sweetie! I popped him onto a Memory Box tree turned horizontally  to make a branch!

The sentiment is a mix of Paptertrey Ink (birthday) and Memory Box  (happy). I mixed the cases of the individual MB letters, which match in quite well with PTI word.

I inked a few of the die-cut pieces to soften the edges and added some googly eyes. The dry embossing on the black panel was my bargain from the NEC... less than £1 . I think it's Papermania.

It's for the challenge at Seize the Birthday!

Also for Paper Players to 'die' for!

Take it Make it and Happy Little Stampers

Over on the Craft Stamper Magazine blog there's a new challenge!

April Challenge:

'Take A Technique: Colour' 

Nothing dark, monochrome or grungy please, we want bright, vibrant and cheerful! You don't HAVE to use every single colour of the rainbow all at once...but maybe lots of them?!

So....lets see how creative you lot are...get your stamps out and share your journal pages, layouts, 3D assemblage or whatever else takes your fancy!

This was the card I made to join the blog DT!

It was made with Distress Inks daubed through a stencil!

The sentiment is a mixture of part of a Kaisercraft stamp and the happy word from Winnie and Walter.

As I used a stencil I'm adding it to the challenge at Happy Little Stampers

Predominantly black

Happy Easter everyone!

This is a strange challenge at Less is More this week. It's a colour challenge and it's predominantly black. Should be fun to see what emerges.

This one has a Memory Box cat and Couture Creations embossing folder, with a Lili of the Valley tag.

A simple die cut card using newsprint on black 'whitespace'!

The tree is from Memory Box, the bunny from Clearly Besotted (with whiskers cut from a Simon Says Stamp bare tree branch), 'Love' from Sizzix and the 'moon' from a Spellbinders circle. I really don't know what the bobtail die is but I thought it was perfect.

This is a very simple one... Lil Inkers stitched dies, framing a Memory Box group of deer and a Spellbinder tag.

More die cutting, this time Memory box for the keyboard, Spellbinders Tag and ovals, SSS Stitched rectangle with a Penny Black Sentiment.