Lucky Dip week at "Less is More"

This week at "Less is More" we have a Lucky Dip week with a special Guest Designer. We have Rebecca (Melly Moo) as our Guest and the theme is 2 legs or 4!

I have one in each category for you today!

The little bird is from A Day for Daisies, coloured with watercolour pencils and a water brush.

It has a simple frame from SSS dies and a computer generated sentiment.

This little four legged creature is from Clearly Besotted, stamped with Ranger Java Bean dye ink  and die cut with its matching die.

The stitched dies are again from Simon Says Stamp and the tree from MFT, with an embossed sky from Stampin' Up.

My daughter-in-law is the chair of a really worthy charity called Petals, which offers counselling for trauma or loss during pregnancy and birth. Having benefited from their services is the past, it is very close to her heart. She wanted to be involved with me to devise a Thank you card to send to donors of substantial amounts to her charity... we spent the afternoon playing around yesterday... we're getting there but it's not sorted just yet,,..so watch this space!

If anyone feels they would like to contribute to this incredibly worthwhile service, I have added a link, just click here to go to their site.

As promised here it is. This is the card I finished up making!

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.

A second black and white card

I seem to be in Black and White mode today. Here is my second card This time for Seize the Sketch.

It's quite an interesting sketch I think and for it I used lots if scraps.

I found this embossed piece of card from a Nellie's Choice folder and made its mount from a scrap piece of card from my Portrait cutting machine. (There are sword shaped holes in the black mount!) The butterfly is stamped and die-cut with a Clearly Besotted set and the sentiment from a Tattered Lace die.

My nails have been breaking madly recently, maybe related to the fact that I've returned to Slimming World in order to lose some cruise pounds! My diet contains fat less fat and I think this has an effect! I'm off to have them manicured and painted with a shellac polish! Maybe that will protect them a little.

I'm not fat!

This card is very much in the vein of the one I posted yesterday, however when I saw Dawn French's post on Facebook with this sentiment I just had to make another card to use it.

This time I just embossed the centre section of the card, by replacing one of my Cuttlebug B plates for a couple of strips of thick cardboard under the band I wanted to emboss. I edged this with a couple of hand scored lines.

The image is unmistakeably Penny Black called 'Quack?', which I coloured with Spectrum Noir pens.

I added the sentiment directly to the cardstock using Dina's Handwriting font.

I used this sketch from CAS(e) this Sketch.

My version is certainly VERY CAS!

At Dynamic Duos the colours this week are Basic Grey plus a colour of our choice.

Here I have used So Saffron, with images and sentiment  from Clearly Besotted. Once more the embossing is from Cuttlebug's Chicken Wire EF.

In fact either card could be submitted for either challenge!

Not a great day for cricket

Today we are going to a Members' lunch at Hampshire Cricket Club with a groups of friends. It should be fun although the weather is not exactly what I would call 'cricket weather'...ie clear skies and warm sunshine. My fleece will probably be in evidence and probably a scarf or two and by the look of things at the moment umbrellas may also be the order of the day!

Any how here is a card for the first challenge at Clearly Besotted with the wonderful option of Anything Goes!

These are truly wonderful stamps and work well with just about all ink types. I wish Stephanie continued success and always need to buy more with each new release. By the look of her website many others think the same thing as she has difficulty in keeping up with demand. Good for her and good for us too!

Hi Honey

A package of stamps and dies from Clearly Besotted arrived today and I couldn't wait to play with some of them.

Amongst my haul was this pack of hexagon stamps and the matching dies. I looked for a scrap of Designer paper to match with them and downloaded some from Pink Petticoat. I already had the PP bee image. River Rock ink from Stampin' Up matched the paper perfectly and so this card came into being.

As luck would have it the challenge at CASology this week is hexagons... so there you go, job done!

I'm off to my daughter's tomorrow to look after my grandson who has conjunctivitis and can't go to Nursery. I'll be staying over until Saturday, to babysit on Friday evening... good old Granny!

Choo Choo!

I was playing around with some Clearly Besotted stamps and this card emerged.

It's such a cute little train and I had to practise stamping accurately onto the die-cut, I'm not sure if there's a real knack to this, but I'm not terribly expert at it I must say.

The paper is from Pink Petticoat and the sentiment from Stampin' Up.

It kinda fits with the challenge from CASology where the theme is travel... well sort of... trains travel don't they... and this is for someone just starting out on the journey of life!

Less is More Colours!

How the weeks roll by and it's time for another colour challenge at "Less is More".

This time it's LIME and BLACK

I really like this combo and I used stamps from the Sponsor for this month which is Stephanie from Clearly Besotted Stamps.

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This is simply a little stamping, a little die-cutting and a lot of mounting. The colours really please me!

More Clearly Besotted stamps here... a fragment from Beethoven's 5th Symphony and a lovely leaf spray. The sentiment is from Hero Arts.

We have been spending a little time at our son's in Bury St Edmunds. Yesterday we visited the Moyse's Hall Museum, something we have intended doing ever since our son moved here after graduating as a medical doctor several years ago. It was a great visit and there were some very interesting exhibits... including a few gruesome ones!

Today a visit to Southwold is planned, it should be fun!

Next Saturday of course, I should be at Ally Pally for the Craft Show. I hope to see some of you there!