Thank you for your kindness

Do you ever get those times when you know you have something that you need to use, but don't quite know where to look or how to find it?

When I saw the challenge from Just US Girls

...I knew that I must have a stamp which mentioned kindness, but it took me quite a while to find this one from SSS. It actually came with a variety of 'thanks' stamps but I preferred to use a die which said 'thank you'!

The music manuscript paper which I used for the large leaves was from a scan I took of a very old book of contralto songs, (selected by Madame Clara Butt, so that kinda dates it) which turned out to be a mistake for the card it was planned for. However I found a use for it with this card. The paper is considerably yellowed with age, but I think my printer added a little to that.

I die-cut the skinny frame and then tore a piece of mulberry paper to go behind it, adding the sprigs of leaves and finally stamping the sentiment. I thought a few random pearls wouldn't go amiss so I added a few of those.

 

Thinking of you

Here's another attempt for the challenge at CAS Mix Up to print using die cuts.

Congrats and many thanks again on your special celebration, it's quite a milestone!

Here I used some either Poppy Stamps or Memory Box leaf dies  (not exactly sure which). I slopped a little Peeled Paint  and |Forest Moss Distress Oxide Inks onto the cuts, and spritzed both  the paper and the die cuts with water before taking a print.

The panel was cut with an MFT fishtail die, cut part way from both ends to make it rectangular rather than have the pennant shape. The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted.

Addicted to Stamps and more Die-cuts Stencils

SU Only Leaves

I came across a challenge blog today... as you do when hopping from creation to creation... which is for Stampin' Up products only and their theme this week is leaves. Well this was right up my street as I love leaf images and I love Stampin' Up, so here is a CAS card using the  French Foliage set, which I have to admit is one of my all time favourite stamp sets.
The squares were cut with Nesties and mounted on a rectangle the exact width of the card which was hand embossed both above and below the panel. The card was similarly treated either side of the ribbon.
I'm just about to cut my husband's hair... we must have saved so much cash over the years by my ministrations in this department... all the more for my stash fund!
SU Only Challenges - Leaves

Autumn

Here's another of the cards I like to make messing about with inks and embossing powder.
The stamp set I used is French Foliage by Stampin' Up.
I began with the splodges which I stamped with Versamark and embossed with clear EP, then came the sponging using Adirondack Cranberry and Caramel Inks, followed by the stamping of the leaves and text in a variety of autumnal coloured inks.
I then chopped the square panel into 4 smaller squares, inked the edges of each and mounted them on a couple of backing sheets. I decided to add one wayward leaf, just floating off the square.
I love these colours.
Today I have a touch of vertigo... I tried to do the Epley manoeuvre myself and made it worse, so I'm off to see the doctor this afternoon.
Crazy 4 Challenges (I don't really do Halloween, so this is Autumn)
House of Gilli - Fall
Woodware USA - Fall
Crafty Catz - Autumn

CASE...Copy And Selectively Edit?

This week on "Less is More" one of Blogland's shining star crafters submitted a fabulous card which I just had to CASE.
She and I have the same taste in stamps I think, as French Foliage from Stampin' UP is a firm favourite of us both. Her name is Vicky, I'm sure lots of you visit her already and you can see her card here.
Her blog is full of inspirational ideas and we can all learn so much from her.
I hope you don't mind me case-ing your fabulous card Vicky!
The tiny tags are Cuttlebug and the heart is SU. The sentiment is from Hobby Art.
Little Red Wagon - Use Die-cuts

One Layer for "Less is More"

I really like this colour combination... Stampin' Up's Baja Breeze plus some of the neutral shades... Sahara Sand , Crumb Cake and Soft Suede. You can see how I achieved this in one layer on the "Less is More" Blog. Needless to say, I got into a bit of a pickle on some of the preparatory attempts, the most annoying of which was spoiling practically finished cards with inky fingers... having only just washed my hands! I also wrecked another at the very last moment when adding the sentiment.

I tried to resurrect some of the images I'd done to make into non-one layer cards, but then I stuck one image on upside down.

This may look reasonable to you, but there is some music manuscript stamped in gold on this and if you were to look really closely you'd see it was upside down... plus I made it with the darker shade of ink at the bottom. These two are simply cut out and stuck on to look like the first card but are not in fact one layer! I used a little embossing powder on these, plus it's smoother card so the overall effect is shinier.

For this one I used 4 different clear cling stamps (a present some time ago from my bloggy friend Victoria, thanks again Victoria) and a couple of Embosslits butterflies, gently twinkled.
The theme this week at "Less is More" is In the Frame... there must be loads of ways of interpreting it, this last card uses an image from our sponsor at "Less is More" this month... Arielle of the Wax Fruit company and she has lots of images in or partly in frames...why don't you take a look and do come and join us in our challenge.

This last one is also for the CAS challenge at the Stampotique challenge blog this time.