Rescued!

Don't you just hate it when a card has gone well during creation only to be ruined at the last moment!

I felt that this one was fine until I stamped the sentiment in my MISTI. Someone once gave me a tip that to make the magnets easier to handle, a cover of Washi tape made them easier to handle. Sadly one of the magnets had got  something on it which transferred to the bottom corner of the card. I'm not really sure what it was but it was indelible. My answer to the problem was to trim the top panel quite drastically from its original size. I think it still just about works.

Inspired by the Ombre challenge at CAS Mix Up I made this one for the Challenge  at Just US Girls.

I even went as far as using similar colours to those in the prompt.

The stamp is from Papertrey Ink, inked with Versamark, sprinkled with three shades of WOW embossing powder and heat set.

The sentiment from Clearly Besotted was stamped with Stampin' Up, Night of Navy ink. The butterfly dies are from Simon Says Stamp.

Here is my second rescue of the day!

I was going to cut out this AI image with a rectangle Framelit die, but somehow the die must have shifted just a tad as I began to wind it through my Big Shot so that the fire extinguisher ended up right at the edge of the cut out and was totally unbalanced. The remedy was to cut the whole thing out with scissors, smoothing the edges with an embossing tool to give  a better finish and mounting  it on dimensional pads. I think in fact that this was a better treatment than the one I originally planned. The sentiment which was part of the original Framelit diecut was just re-cut with a little, stitched, rounded corner, square die.

It's for the challenge at CAS on Friday - People

Watercolour

I really enjoyed the watercolour classes on my recent Cunard cruise. Here I used a technique which I learned there. It was to make a background wash, by having the paper at an angle and drawing the fairly wet brush across, using the drip line of one row to begin the next one. I changed from using Intense blue to Ultramarine, gradually adding more and more water to give the Ombre look, which is the challenge this time at CAS Mix Up.

I die cut the Sizzix 'Peace' sentiment and layered it three times to give some additional dimension. The star is a triple layered die cut from Memory Box and the the 'ON EARTH' part of the sentiment was stamped and embossed in silver  from a Papertrey Ink stamp set. A few gems finished the card.

It's also for the CAS Watercolour challenge which this time has the theme SOMETHING BLUE.

CASology Calm

Metal leaf

Some time ago I bought a couple of packs of hessian (burlap to those of you on t'other side of the pond) and somehow they have miraculously disappeared...how could somethings as large as that make themselves invisible? I can understand how a pokey tool and the die letter K  could have gone AWOL, they are much smaller...anyway I bought another pack and this is the first card to utilise it!

The leaf was cut with a die from Impression Obsession from a piece of craft foil. It began life coloured red, but I used a few other alcohol inks and some blending solution on it to get this effect which I rather like. The dies emboss veins on the leaves too which is really realistic.

The sentiment is cut from a die by Penny Black.

It's for the challenge at Just Us Girls

It's also for the 'Thanks' challenge at AAA cards

The challenge at Addicted to CAS is to use the ombre technique. 

Here I used a few shades of Distress Ink applied with sponge daubers.

The die cut scene is from Impression Obsession and the sentiment from Find It Trading Yvonne Creations.

It was actually made using up some ovals left over from some thank you cards which I made for my son and DIL. 

Their precious, long awaited daughter arrived in August and they have been overwhelmed by the generosity of colleagues, friends and family and have lots of thank you cards to send. This is one of the latest set of thank you cards I have made for them.

This gorgeous picture of Cleo was taken by a professional photographer and I adore it.The thank you is from a die by Penny Black and the rest of the wording is computer generated.

I'm still working on finding uses for all the other ovals cut to make the apertures!

Craft Stamper Blog Challenge

There 's a new challenge over at the Craft Stamper Magazine Blog.

This time it's to use the OMBRE technique. I believe that this means a gradual change of colour throughout the card. I chose to work with shades of grey.

The stamps are from Penny Black.

I merely masked a section of the card and then clear embossed the flowers before adding areas of colour using both sponge daubers and ink duster brushes.

When I was happy with the shading, I shadow stamped the image again using a deep grey. To add just a little interest I stamped some splatters from the SU Gorgeous Grunge set in white and shades of grey.

I removed any ink from the white flowers with a tissue to allow the colour to pop.

The sentiment completed the card.

Why not give this challenge a try!