Daisy

Yesterday the postman brought me three new sets of wildflower dies from Sizzix. I already had one set which I have used mainly as silhouettes, but these are larger stems and seemed to cry out for a little colouring. Here I obliged by sloshing around a little watercolour. The vellum behind the aperture was embossed with an old Cuttlebug folder which has been a favourite for a long time. The framed sentiment die was purchased from Amazon recently, I sloshed a little watercolour on that too!

The stitched dies are American and unfortunately the two countries don't share the same paper sizes, so although the larger of the two used here fits the width of a British card, it's too short for the height of the card.  I know that some Brit crafters just shorten their card bases, but I prefer to lengthen the die cut. I do this by starting with a piece of card the same size as the card front. I fit the die to one end of the card, partially cut from that end, turn the card around, move the die along to fit to the other end of the card matching the stitch notches,  and then do another partial cut from that end to make the two cuts meet. I make squares into rectangles, rectangles into squares, extend or shorten die cuts to fit around sentiments and all sorts of stuff like that.

 The Flower challenge 

Inkspirational - Use Your Stash

Simon Says Stamp - No Stamps Allowed

CAS on Friday - Vellum

Initial

It's sometimes quite difficult to come up with an idea for a commission card when you have no idea about the intended recipient, as in this case. All I knew was the lady's name... Marie.

I decided to go with what I thought was a safe option... an initial.

I cut out a large M on my Portrait from silver card, together with its offset image in plain white hammered card. The foliage is a pair of symmetrical garland diecuts which I simply snipped into two pieces to lay over the letter and added a few flat backed pearls randomly over the letter. The two mounts are cut with Framelits dies one using the right side and the other using the back of the hammered card. 

I hope that both the 'commissionee' and the recipient will be pleased.

Some time ago I made some of these cards for a friend to give to her Goddaughters, the Mum then commissioned one for herself and one for her husband and she had them all mounted into shadow boxes to display on her wall. I guess she was pleased!!

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - No Stamps Allowed 

Monochrome

 Here is a little card for a few challenges!

This little cutie is from  Furry Friends by Avery Elle. The die cut sentiment is from Cutplorations. I simply embossed with lower panel with an EF from Cuttlebug and coloured the image with Promarkers before cutting out and mounting on a few dimensional dots. 

Easy Peasy!

Stamp Ink Paper - Monochromatic

The Male Room - Anything Goes (NO designer paper)

Casology - Furbaby

CASe This Sketch

I look after my littlest grandchild each Thursday... she is two and a half and loves to dance so this coming week I am going to start to take her to  baby ballet! She is going to have a three week trial to see if she likes it.... I'll let you know how she gets on!

More Triple Embossing

Whilst I was doing a little triple embossing the other day I decided to use a few other die cuts and stamps.

My Sizzix leaf was cut and triple embossed in black EP, then a few shades of Perfect Pearls added over a layer of Versamark. After reheating I stamped into the molten liquid really heavily with a Large Tim Holtz stamp inked with Brilliance gold ink.

The background grid stencil was made by cutting a piece of vellum with a Memory Box Distressed Collage die. I placed the stencil over a piece of card and tapped out  few grains of Dark Brown and White Brushos before spritzing with water and dabbing dry with a paper towel. The berry spray die was the least fussy of the ones in my die store but I'm not exactly sure of its origin, I know I had to add two shims before it cut cleanly. I have quite a few of these kind of dies, I guess I'm attracted to them ...(berries not ones which need to have a shim)!

The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted, stamped with SU Chocolate Chip ink to match the dark brown card Base.

It's for a few challenges

CAS Stencil Challenge - Use Powdered Inks

CAS Mix Up Challenge - Dimensional Die Cuts

Addicted to CAS - Grid

It was fun making this card, I need to try to use lighter colours on the die cuts next time!

Big Bold Sentiment

For the second challenge of LIM's birthday month it's time for a one layer card with the Focus on the Sentiment.

Rummaging through my Stampin' Up sets of stamps, (whilst searching for something else, which I still haven't located) I came across this stamp. It's from a set with the title as on this sentiment...' Love you much'. I wanted to have the flower part coloured and the rest of the sentiment in black, so rather than try to ink all of the stamp with markers, I popped it in the microwave for a few seconds to loosen it from the wood block so that I could use it in my MISTI, and thereby stamp it in 2 takes. I coloured the stem and the flower with SU markers and stamped it, then cleaned that off and inked the rest of the image with Versafine Onyx Black ink...  the stray bits of ink on the stem were wiped away with a Q tip and then it was stamped for a second time. 

All I did after that was to colour in the LOVE part with a Wisp of Stella pen in Silver.

It's simplicity itself, and as February is the month of love, what could be better!

It's been great fun being back at Less is More and thanks once more to the terrific bunch of girls continuing the tradition!

Dimensional die cuts

The challenge at CAS Mix Up is to add some dimension to die cuts.

Here I cut a couple of butterflies in very thick card with some Bigz Movers and Shakers dies, I then triple embossed them in Black EP adding some Perfect Pearls powders over a layer of Versamark. Next I reheated the butterflies to make the powder molten once more and stamped with a Tim Holtz stamp with Brilliance Gold ink.

There really is some pretty texture on this butterfly, the sheen is lovely in the light. I embossed a little foliage behind the peek a boo die cut window and added a sentiment from Clearly Besotted.

Peace

The theme at Happy Little Stampers Christmas challenge this time is to incorporate stars as the added twist.

The 'peace' is from a die by Papertrey, layered using both colours of card.

The Christmas tree frame I believe is from Memory Box although I can't seem to find it anywhere online at the moment so I can only assume that it is no longer available. Likewise the tiny stars.. they are on a die with rows of tiny stars. I add some double sided tape to the back of the card before die-cutting and so all I have to do it remove the backing with a pokey tool and pop the stars in place on my project.

Easy Peasy!

CAS Christmas Challenge - Peace

Friends

I feel really privileged to have made so many friends through crafting... some of whom I have actually managed to meet IRL. This is a card for one of them!

It's my DT card for Happy Little Stampers CAS Challenge this time around and it couldn't be much more simple. I believe that the sentiment die here is an old one from Spellbinder and the stitched flower from Memory Box. I simply coloured the places behind the apertures with alcohol markers (on a separate piece of card so that the ink didn't show through to the inside of the card) and popped the front panel onto dimensional pads.

I hope my friend knows how much I treasure our friendship... I'm sure she does!

8 Years of Less is More

Would you believe that it's eight years since Mandi and I started the challenge blog "Less is More".

Both of us loved the Clean and Simple genre and there was practically nothing by way of challenges for this style of card to be found in Blogland. 

Lots of people were afraid of 'white space' and it was a journey of trepidation for many crafters, but today the genre is firmly established and for me it is still the most beautiful. 

We established many firsts with our challenge... as there were only 2 of us, submitters wouldn't receive many comments if left to us... so we asked that contributors to comment on each other's blogs... a trend that had been widely copied and enjoyed. We started giving tutorials for various techniques and this idea can now also be seen by others. 

Since I stepped back from running the Blog I have been delighted that others have come forward to continue the work which gives me enormous pleasure, it feels so good to see that the traditions are continuing.

The card I have made for this birthday celebration is an echo of that very first challenge. It was also a colour challenge and  I used wellies for that one too! Here is my card from 2011!

Such was the interest in CAS cards in those early days, with little choice of CAS challenges, that there were literally hundreds of submissions every week and Mandi and I used to comment on every one... quite a challenge in itself!

My card this time is a simply bunch of die-cuts with a computer generated sentiment.

The boots were cut from shiny blue card with the yellow die cut stars added afterwards. The sun is actually supposed to be a flower die but looked about right and was just the right size to peek out behind the cloud.

I have been searching to try to find out the make of the die-cuts but my filing system leaves much to be desired and at the moment the various makes of them escapes me!

I am delighted to have been invited to join in with LIM once more... long may it continue!