Sending Love

Here is yet another new die from Simply Graphic. I think these blooms are SO cool! I think that the trickiest part of this card was getting the apertures lined up and spaced evenly! I used a ruler to get them square to the front panel die, but they kept just shifting slightly, not helped by the fact that my Big Shot plates are very warped. In the end rather than using tape to secure the little dies in place, I covered them with a piece of Press 'n' Seal, which worked brilliantly! I cut a second set of heads for the flowers to stack on top so that it would add a little dimension and coloured them with Distress Oxide ink in Spun Sugar for the base coat, then stamped some speckles and added a little shading in Worn Lipstick. The leaf die is another from Simply Graphic... (I had a lovely parcel of goodies delivered yesterday) I left some of the leaf parts in and  took others out!

The sentiment is from Sugar Pea Designs. It took about 4 tries to get it right... the first one wasn't cut centrally (I had to shorten the die cut a little), then when is was cut centrally I realised that it was too dark in Worn Lipstick, so I did it again in Spun Sugar!

AAA Cards Flowers

Time out - Inspiration - Spring

Ellibelle's Crafty Wednesday CAS Challenge

CAS on Friday - Flowers

 

All Square

I love square cards, but somehow it seems a little wasteful. I cut my card blanks from sheets of A4 which is roughly 8.25ins  x 11.75ins. I use the card folded in half widthways and cut to a square. There is always a strip left... I have a drawer full of strips and seldom get to use all of them! If I cut rectangular cards I can get two cards from one sheet of A4.

The  challenge at Just US Girls is to make a square card and use at least one additional square.

I began by cutting a square from a piece of card that I had smooshed some colours onto, I think it was Brushos but the scrap had been in my left overs drawer for ages so I'm not 100%positive that this is what I did! When I get messy with lots of colours, I take prints on lots of pieces of card and keep them filed away in colour coded drawers until I find a use for them.

Next, I die-cut two, square frame, flower dies and layered them to add definition, and adhered them over the coloured square. I flooded the tile with Nuvo Crystal Glaze and added some gems which had been self adhesive at one time, but which has lost their 'stickability'. This seemed like a good way to use them!

I die cut two additional pieces of card, from scraps, to mount the tile onto.

The flower die and the diagonal slashed die are from Pink Fresh Studios and the stitched one from SSS.

This is one of my scraps' drawers, you can see the piece of card which I cut the base square for this card from and I'm too mean to throw the rest away!

I hope everyone is staying safe through these extraordinary times, I really hope that people will heed the Government's pleas to stay home this coming holiday weekend, although for people without their own outdoor space it must be very difficult. 

Take care everyone!

Cherry Blossom

Earlier this year we were lucky enough to take a fabulous cruise on Cunard's Queen Elizabeth. We began in Japan just in time to see the cherry blossom, particularly in the north of the country. It was truly spectacular.

This was in Aomori.

As a tribute I got this die of cherry blossom by Alexandra Renke, which I coloured with Distress inks.

It's a simple card, but colouring die cuts has been fun. There'll probably be more to follow!

The Flower Challenge has the theme of Your Favourite Flower... that is such a hard choice as I love so many, but cherry blossom being a sign of Spring, is certainly one of my favourites.

Lots of squares

Happy Sunday to you all!

Here is a simple card, made after watching a video of Jennifer McGuire using watercolour backgrounds. For this one I used some pan watercolours onto wet watercolour paper and watched the transformation as the colours mixed ad mingled. Jennifer was using liquid colours but this seemed to work quite well too. 

I used a SSS daisy die surrounded by a Framelit square die-cut, which in turn was on a larger Framelit square, which was mounted within an MFT debossed pierced square. The card itself is square of course and although it has a few layers it is still very much CAS. I added a few tiny pearls to the centre of the flower.

I thought I would enter it in the challenge at Your Next Stamp, a blog I have only just come across. The challenge this time is Lots of Squares!

I thought of putting  a sentiment on the front but decided to stamp inside instead, as I thought that a sentiment either stamped directly on the card or on a label would interfere with clean the lines of the design.

New Die

Just recently I received a new bunch of dies from SImon Says Stamp and I simply love this daisy!( I seem to be doing lots of daisies recently...It's my granddaughter Daisy's last day in Primary School today so maybe I have her on my mind!)

I simply cut it together with a square Framelit die and put a little print from a stencil behind it. I think the delicacy of the print suits the delicacy of the flower. The ink is very shimmery as I added some Inka Gold paste to the mix for the print. The sentiment from Hero Arts is stamped with Brilliance Ink in Pearlescent Sky Blue.

It's for a couple of challenges.

AAA Cards

CASology

 

I have to say that the Shimmer in this card is rather subtle, merely because there's not a lot of it!!

Just one image!

I just came across this Sheena Douglass stamp which had been sitting forgotten in a storage box for many a year and I really love daisies... it may have another outing very soon! I coloured it with watercolour pencils and a water brush. The sentiment is from Alley Way stamps and is a great reassuring statement. I didn't want the image to feel too harsh so instead of stamping in black I used SU's Basic Gray!

AAA Cards has this challenge!

Here is a card for the challenge at Christmas Kickstart where the challenge is to have Festive Things with wings!

This little Penguin from Poppy Stamps is wearing his Santa hat and looks pretty festive! He was coloured with Copics and I added a little Fun Flock to his pom pom and hat band. The sentiment is from Penny Black. The dies used are from MFT.

We'll be picking up our grandkids from school today at the beginning of their summer holiday. They will be staying with us for a few days  and then later in the holiday they'll be back again for a longer spell! We used to take them on 'Mysteries'  ... an outing which would be a surprise, but after taking them  to somewhere that they were not too keen on, I decided that they will have to do the research and find out where they would like to go... so now we go on 'Discoveries'!

Snippets

It's difficult to see from this picture but the ink of the sentiment and the ribbon are in a deep shade of purple... chosen to tie in with the lilac of the spotty paper. Just about everything in this card has been in my craft room for years. When I first started crafting, I used lots of papers. some of which I printed myself as here. This is from the remains of a sheet from Pink Petticoat.It was curled up at the edges and stained with ink in places but for a couple of die cuts it looks pretty good. The ribbon has been sculling around for years and I think it actually came from a box of chocolates. The dies are from Sizzix and the sentiment from Clearly Besotted. The ink used for the sentiment is Concord Crush from Stampin' Up.

I based it on the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches

Papercraft Challenges - CAS

Craft Rocket Challenges - Flowers

The Flower Challenge - Anything Goes

Tulips

There's something about monochrome cards which I find rather pleasing. This is simplicity itself. I stamped an Impression Background Manuscript stamp in Soft Slate, to pop a section behind this circular aperture. I cut the flower dies in two shades of card and inserted the cut outs of the grey card into the white frames, Just for the heck of it I put just one white insert into the larger flower. Actually I couldn't find the grey bit amongst all the detritus on the floor and on my desk, I could easily have cut another but in fact I quite like the look. The sentiment is from Personal Impressions, stamped with a slightly darker grey than the background stamp (to give a little more definition) and cut with an extended  pennant die, with the tails cut off one end.

Just us Girls - Use a Background Stamp

The Flower Challenge - Anything Goes

A second Guest Designer card for CAS Mix Up

There's still time to join in with the challenge at CAS MIX UP which this time is to ink up your stamps with Markers.

For this second card I used a stamp which I've had for quite some time and absolutely love... from Unity. It's useful for lots of different techniques from emboss resist and alcohol lifting,  to silhouettes, gilding and heat embossing.

I again used Stampin' Up markers to colour both the stamp and the sentiment, therefore making sure that the colour of the image and the sentiment matched perfectly.  I went over the petals with a itlle clear Wink of Stella to add a touch of twinkle. Once stamped the image was cut out with a Framelits die, extending it just slightly to fit the image.

Guest Spot

I was  very kindly asked by Bonnie and Loll if I would do a Guest Designer spot on their  CAS Mix Up Challenge. I was fortunate enough to be a Top Pick in one of their challenges... hence the invitation.

As you may see the challenge is to use markers to ink up stamps. You can get some great results with this technique and use different colours on one stamp. The other good thing is that you can ink up a sentiment in exactly the right colour to match with those used on the image.

My card uses stamps from Hero Arts, inked with Stampin' Up Markers. I did have to huff over the stamps a bit I had used several pens for each stamp and the first ones used had a little time to dry out. Bonnie gave me the tip of using my MISTI which would have meant that I could have added the colours one at a time, stamping each time with the stamp in the exact same spot and alleviating the need for huffing!

Here is the link to the challenge CAS MIX UP Ink with Markers

The 'outside in' frame was made with SSS stitched squares and the sentiment is from Lili of the Valley. So my three criteria are stamping, die cutting and inking with markers... with a little fussy cutting thrown in for good measure.

The joy of these challenges, put together by Bonnie and Loll, is that they stimulate loads of different techniques with links to lots of examples of how they can be done if you are unsure!

It's great fun, so do join in!