Month: September 2019

Pretty Bows

Hello there. There is a new challenge beginning at Cardz 4 Galz, and the theme this time is ‘Pretty Bows’. We would love to see your paper-crafting related projects with this theme.

We are also have a Design Team call – so if you can create a card every two weeks following a set theme, be able to comment on your allocated numbers in the entries – I usually comment more – and host a challenge or two, picking the spotlight winners – then please come along and submit your entry for consideration. I’m looking forward to seeing what you create, and looking forward to greeting a new teamie…… xxxx

Back to the current challenge. Here is my card:

I began with a lilac card layer using Sue Wilson Stitched Squares, cut a smaller square with one of the layers, and then die cut one of the verso layers from the tonic die set. The bows in this verso layer can be lifted for added dimension, as you can see from the close photo.

After cutting a couple more layers from the Tonic set, I created a lattice bow using the Spellbinders tiered Mulitloop Bows die set, using a gem brad to put the layers of the bow together, and added to the card as you see.

I decided not to put a sentiment on this card, and will instead use a verse or poem in the middle instead, as I feel this could be quite a generic card.

I hope you can visit the Cardz 4 Galz challenge and see the creations from the Design Team – and I also hope you can come and join us – I look froward to seeing what you create.

XX

Grey Bouquet

Hi again. I have a card to share today:

I used the Altenew ‘Hand Picked Bouquet‘ stamp set and a black ink for the outline, with three grey inks for the layering flowers.

The small leaves I coloured with Copics, the larger leaves I stamped the second layer only with a minty Altenew ink, then coloured that same area with the same Copic used on the small leaves.

The sentiment is also from Altenew.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Just Us Girls – white, shades of grey, mint green

Watercooler Challenge – occasions

Aud Sentiments Challenge – atg with sentiment

Simon says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – atg

Welcome to the Neighbourhood

Hello there. I know I’ve been absent for a little while. I lost my dad towards the end of August, and I have also had a week away on holiday in Turkey. I managed to schedule my Design team posts, but very little else.

I’m also what they call flexibly retired – which means I am only working two days a week now…….hopefully more time for crafting – as well as other things.

I have a Copic colouring class this coming Saturday with Faye-Wynn Jones – soooo looking forward to that. I have the three day Craftaganza in November with Crafters Companion, and a three day weekend with ‘the girls‘ in a holiday park in November too.

The builders have finished the bathroom, the decorator has finished the painting and decorating……….it has been full-on, I’ll tell you…..

This morning I created a card for the current challenge at Color Throwdown:

This is a fairly new stamp company based in the UK, Picture This – Creative Endeavours – and I have several set of their stamps, but haven’t found time to play with them until today, I thought I should, especially as I bought more when I went to the crafting Live show in Coventry last Sunday – courtesy of Thirsty Brush and Co and winning a couple of tickets on Instagram – bought more goodies……I am sure you will see them – gradually!

I saw the colours for this challenge, and thought of this set of houses…..

I stamped the image first, then again alongside – can you see where I did that? I don’t think I did too badly! The outlines are heat embossed in black, then I took the three other colours from the challenge and played with water-colouring the houses with my Zigs. The aqua is actually the Catherine Pooler ‘Aquatini‘, but the grey and cobalt blue are Zigs.

I did quite a rough water-colour technique, as I didn’t want the houses too perfect, or too neat and tidy, as I feel the stamp is quite sketchy. A little bit of a deeper colour to some areas, but generally played around.

The sentiment is from Concord and 9th ‘City Scapes‘ – the ‘welcome‘ die cut three times and layered, and the rest stamped onto the card itself.

Challengesd I shall be entering:

Color Throwdown – cobalt blue, aqua, grey, black

A Fishing Penguin

Hello there. A new challenge has begun at The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge. The theme is – anything goes as long as it’s Christmas. Here is my card for this challenge:

Whilst I was sorting my stuff out after the decorator had left, I came across a bunch of Tattered Lace magazines I have never even opened or looked at – from the first ever magazine they produced up to and including a Christmas Special which had this cute fishing penguin as a free die on the cover.

I may have put these to one side so I didn’t spoil the magazine by taking the dies off, or cutting into the papers in the middle of the magazine – but as they’ve been sitting there for years (I think this was from a 2016 Christmas Magazine) I thought I’d use them. No point hoarding – well, not for that long, anyway!

I die-cut the penguin out of a cream card stock – I didn’t want him to be too bright – and coloured his individual parts with Copics, adding some glitter to the hat brim and pom-pom. I also added a small piece of glitter card behind the swirls on his belly – but it’s not showing up very well, I’m afraid.

I was going to do some Distress Oxide blending for the background, but every Tattered Lace Magazine has some papers on the inside, so I used one of those paper scenes and cut to size, adding a stitched frame around it. I don’t use patterned papers very often – I seem to struggle putting them together and matching shapes, layers and hues – but with a scene paper like this – it seemed to work well.

The penguin is standing outside of the frame, and fishing into the bucket on the inside. The bucket is from MFT ‘Pet Perches‘ die set, and is supposed to be the bed for the pet – but I saw it as a bucket, especially when the die actually cuts into to ‘bed’ itself so I could slot the fish into it.

I hope you have time to join us for this challenge, and I look forward to seeing what you create. 🙂 🙂

Masculine Thanks

Hello there everyone. There is a new challenge starting at The Alphabet Challenge today. The letter is ‘M’ and we want to see your Masculine cards. Here is my card:

You may or may not realise that masculine cards are few and far between for me. I don’t know how to do them, and they aren’t a particular card I frequently make.

As Design Team member for this challenge, I knew I had to do some research – so I went to Pinterest, to YouTube, to Instagram – you name it – I went there. I came to the conclusion that geometric seems to be quite a popular male card layout – so I went with that one.

I hunted through my card stock and found some blue and maroon patterned card from Hunkydory – I’ve had this for quite a while – probably years – and so I decided to work with that. I cut the hexagons out on my Scan’n’cut from the two pieces of card – after playing around with sizing – then played with the pattern and layout.

The grid is from Waffle Flower, and cut into a piece of card which I would class as vanilla – but no clue where it came from and no idea how long I’ve had it – but I didn’t want white – and this seemed quite a good match for the blue and maroon.

The sentiment strip and sentiment itself is from the Concord and 9th Everyday Bouquet die set.

So – do masculine cards excite you? Do they scare you? They scare me – so this challenge was perfect for getting over the fear………I think! 🙂

I hope you can come and join us, and I look forward to seeing your take on the masculine theme.

Welcome Fall….

Hi everyone. There is a new challenge beginning at Cardz 4 Galz, and the theme this time round is ‘Welcome Autumn/Fall‘. In England it’s called Autumn, but as I have many stamps and dies from the USA – I have used stamps from my stash for the sentiment:

I started by die-cutting some bronze muted shiny card with the dies from Concord and 9th ‘Everyday Bouquet’ die set – the squares, the leaves – and then glued them dwon as you see. I did run the little die-cuts through my Xyron to get them sticky on the back.

Sometimes I let leaves and branches etc move around on my cards, but I wanted these to be stuck down – no idea why, I just thought it would look better. It’s strange how we sometimes go with an idea – with no thought process – maybe just a ‘gut feeling‘………..

I was going to emboss the sentiment, but decided to stamp in another brown, keeping the whole card quite simple – yet I feel it’s also quite elegant.

I hope you can come and join us with this theme, and I look forward to seeing your creations in our gallery. 🙂 🙂

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Allsorts Challenge – Autumn

Aud Sentiments – fall/autumn sentiment

Crafty Friends Challenge – Autumn Colours

MMM Challenge – use shapes on your card

All kinds of wonderful….

Hi there. I have created another card to share with you today:

I began by stamping the Altenew sunflowers in the yellow inks, with one of the colours being a mustard shade – I think!, then adding brown – as an added neutral – for the centre of the flowers.

The leaves were stamped in navy blue – just using the solid leaves and not the layering leaves. All these were cut with my scan’n’cut. (I did have to adjust the blade a little as the card I used was thicker – but I managed to sort it out….thank goodness!)

I then took the Honey Bee Hexagon cover plate dies, cut one layer in navy blue card, the second layer in a cream card, and the third layer in a coral card, and placing all as you see.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Color Throwdown – navy, mustard, coral, cream

Time Out Challenges – words inspiration (sun for the sunflower)

INTAAS – layer it up

Color Throwdown

TIME OUT Challenges

Simply a Beautiful day

Hello yet again. The painter has finished, the builders left a couple of weeks ago – I have my house back. Now trying to sort things out, including looking through my crafty stash – possibly to sell on – yet to be decided.

Here is a card I created yesterday – quite a clean and simple card, yet I feel quite effective:

I stamped the tree from Honey Bee Stamps – Birds and the Bees – and added some extra leaves in some places, then stamped the bee hive and several of the bees.

All these coloured with Copics – simple colouring, just a couple of shades of each colour.

The sentiment if from Altenew – Birch Land – and this stamp set has quite a few lovely sentiments which I must use more…………

A quick update about dad – still waiting to plan his funeral as he died in Germany – the international death certificate etc – but he is in UK now, so is mum, and my sister has come over from Canada to stay with her for a while…..definitely until after the funeral – which may not be for another 2-3 weeks. We just carry on, don’t we………….?

This is probably the reason why my sentiments over the past couple of weeks have been more generic, more of wishing people well….

I shall be entering the following challenges:

CAS Colours and Sketches – Garden Green, Soft Suede, Pumpkin Pie – trying to Copic match.

Crafty Sentiments Designs – anything goes

water-cooler Challenges – feminine

Colour Crazy Challenge – anything goes

Blue Bouquet

Hi there. I’ve been doing some water-colouring with the Arteza Real Brush Pens – one of those products I thought I’d try………..and loving the colours:

I first stamped the Waffle Flower Bouquet Builder 5 and embossed with gold, then took 4 or 5 of the blue Arteza pens and played around……. I also tried with black embossing, and white embossing – just so I could try the pens out and play around – but I liked the gold embossing the best.

I used the Waffle Flower micro grid as a background again, but this time left all the little squares inside – I only lost one of them (which is behind the flower), and then framed this with the Hero Arts Infinity Wood frame largest rectangle.

The sentiment is from Mama Elephant and stuck to the bottom of the card base.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Crafting Happiness Challenges – blue

Addicted to Stamps and More – make your mark

A Bit More Time To Craft – anything goes

The Flower Challenge – anything goes with flowers

Sparkle and Texture Christmas

Hi there. A new challenge has started at ABC Christmas Challenge. The letters this time are ‘S’ for Sparkle, and ‘T’ for Texture. Here is my take:

I die cut the Stamps By Me Bauble outline of of green shiny card, then the actual bauble inside from Crafters Companion glitter card, adhering them together.

The white piece of card is embossed using the We R Memory Keepers Next Level embossing folder called ‘Gemstone’. I liked the ‘fractured’ look of this folder, almost like ice crystals, I think.

The whole card is 5×7 inches, a size and shape I like to work with quite regularly.

The Altenew die-cut sentiment put to keep the card quite clean and simple. I was toying with the idea of putting some red on the berries, but I like this green look for the card, and adding another colour didn’t seem right.

I hope you can come and join us for this challenge, and I look forward to seeing your creations. Feel free to pop along to the challenge and see the other amazing creations from the Design Team. 🙂 🙂

Challenges I shall be entering:

Crafty Hazel nuts Christmas Challenge – atg Christmas with option of something beginning with ‘S’ (sparkle)

Simply Less Is More – CAS metallics

2 Sisters on the Blog – something beginning with ‘S’ (Sparkle)

Merry Little Christmas Challenge – atg Christmas