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!