Always in our thoughts

I just saw a sketch which really appealed to me at Colours and Sketches

I love the gentle inky look to it even though it's really only a diagram, but I wondered if that was the effect that the artist was thinking of when drawing it.

SO.... I found a scrap of foam sponge and simply dabbed a background with Pumice Stone Distress Oxide ink, I then used the same ink to stamp some splatters and a couple of leaf sprays from Clearly Besotted, which I cut with the matching die.

The sentiment is from Avery Elle.

 

Merry Christmas

I had some new stamps to play with today and this cheery bear was one of them. He's from MFT and I also availed myself of the set of matching dies. The trees are from a Poppy Stamps set, but I cut those out by hand... the sentiment is from Memory Box and the few tiny stars are from a freebie set.

I simply die cut the hillside, coloured in the images with Copic pens and added a little Glamour Dust. A few of the elements are popped onto foam tape.

Christmas Card Throwdown

The Holly and Ivy challenge - Anything Goes

Christmas with the Cuties - Clean and Simple

Merry Little Christmas - Anything Goes

 

Sending Smiles

The gals over at CAS Mix UP are celebrating their 5th Birthday! It's quite an achievement and the tremendous time and energy which goes into running such an enterprise does not go unnoticed. Thank you all so much.

The challenge this time is to print using die-cuts. 

I have been wanting this shade of Distress Oxide ink for quite some time and this Speckled Egg pad arrived yesterday. I decided to make a stamp from some Funky Foam, using a Memory Box butterfly die.

I used a cut out from the die to make the background, adding colour with a blending brush and spritzing with water. I inked my 'stamp' with Distress Oxide ink and then spritzed that with water before stamping, then misted the whole thing with water after stamping. The splatters were from an old SU stamp. The tiny butterflies were die cut from some unsuccessful attempts at the background butterflies.

Its's not quite the method indicated on the challenge blog but I think it probably still qualifies as water did come into the process quite a bit!

At the moment our kitchen is undergoing some plastering as part of the renovation and the internet is offline whilst he works around the outlets. However  just yesterday I discovered how to use my computer using the wifi from my phone! There's life in the old girl yet!

Just a note

This stamp and die set from Altenew is a recent acquisition. I saw some of the stamps on cards on various blogs and was immediately drawn to it. I don't think I've done enough colouring recently and it's something I really enjoy. I have bought many alcohol marker sets over the years and now lots are at the stage of drying up and it's  hard to decide what to do about replacement. I have sets of Mirage Pens, Copics, Promarkers, Spectrum Noir, Chamaeleon, some Stampin Up Markers and some old Dovecraft ones. I think I need to go through all of them and throw out the ones which have dried up and that I don't think I need. I do have some refills for some favourite Copic shades, but it's tricky to know what to do. I think my two favourites are Promarkers and Copics.

For this card I used Copics. I used the sketch from CASe this Sketch

Flowers for the Flower Challenge

A Dragonfly for CASology

AAA Cards Up to One Third

Lots of texture

Less is More this week has the challenges to add some texture whilst still keeping the card CAS.

This is a card with stamps made from funky foam cut with All Occasion Dies.

These particular dies are super for this technique as they are quite intricate and so make a good impression when cut and inked.

I simply stuck them onto an acrylic block with a glue stick, inked them and was away!

The impressions were clear heat embossed and a few splat stamps were added. Finally I used a regular cut from the die to add as an embellishment!
This is also for Addicted to Stamps - Anything Goes

When making some Thank you cards for a charity, I embossed the front of one card on the wrong side so cut it off to re-use, so here it is as the front panel of this card. The embossing folder is from Hobby Solutions. The butterfly is cut from some smooshed card with a die from All Occasions. The sentiment is from Penny Black.

This dinosaur is from Joanna Sheen, cut from a smooshed piece of card and inked around the edges afterwards!

The background is the debossed side from a Crafter's Companion EF and the sentiment from Taylored Expressions.