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Hello Friend

Hello once again. The Alphabet Challenge has started a new challenge, our leader Caz is hosting, and she has a colour mood board for you to base your creations on. Here is the board:

Here is my card:

I chose to make the background the darker grey to highlight the pink of the flowers, and the lighter grey of the vase.

I dry embossed the background panel with a Spellbinders embossing folder, and die cut the vase and foliage from various colours of Concord & 9th card stock using Spellbinders die sets.

Once the flowers were layered together, and the vase adhered with 3D foam, I arranged them as you see. It usually takes me a while to figure out arrangements like this, so this actually took longer than die cutting and gluing….

Once arranged to my liking, I used glue and little pieces of 3D foam, then added a previously foiled sentiment.

Some pink pearls added to the flower centres and the background for extra interest and dimension.

I hope you can come and join us with creations for which the mood board colours are most prominent – neutrals can be added too.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

A Perfect Time To Craft – anything goes

Crafts Galore – anything goes

Ellibelle’s Corner – anything goes

Here Is A Place To Start – anything goes

Triple B – birds and/or butterflies and/or blooms

Tic Tac Toe – middle row – free, layers, flowers

Double D challenge – basket and/or posies

Beautiful Blossoms – flowers

Celebrate Onesie

Doesn’t time fly? It seems to have been a while since I posted, so I will try and correct that over the coming days. The post today is to share a card for the new challenge at Cardz 4 Galz. Billie A is hosting and she has chosen the theme of ‘For a baby’. Here is my card:

I don’t make baby cards at all, but this die set was from an online event run by Scrapbook and Cards Today in February of this year.

I first chose to make a blue card and started with a blue card base. Onto that I layered a cover plate die.

The onesie was die cut, then ink blended over the top to create the star detail. The frog was die cut and adhered.

The word was die cut several times and stacked for dimension, then all glued together.

I hope you can come and join us with your baby themed creations. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Stencil Fun – use a stencil – option of shades of blue taken

Here Is A Place To Start – anything goes

Tic Tac Toe – middle column – die cuts, free, any sentiment

Lil Patch Of Crafty Friends – anything goes

Ally’s Angels – anything goes

Soak Up The Sun

Hello once again. The Alphabet Challenge has reached the letter ‘H‘, and Helen has chosen the theme of:

H is for Holidays – summer or Christmas in July

Here is my card:

This die set and stencil were part of a virtual class hosted by Spellbinders, and I thought would suit the summer theme for this challenge. Though we haven’t had much of a summer in the UK, and it is still raining, it did give ne hope that we could have some warmer weather soon……

The background is ink blending through the stencil, a rainbow kinda look using only three colours of ink, but ensuring they overlapped to create a five colour look. This panel was cut down a little and glued straight to the 5×7 inch card base.

The elements for the glass and scene were die cut and glued down, and the umbrella and cherries and added. That’s why I chose a larger card base, as I wanted to get the height for the added elements.

I tried the glass against the background panel, and felt it got lost in the colours, so I added a plain white oval.

The sentiment was stamped then die cut using a stitched rectangle.

I hope you can come and join us with your holiday themed creations – summer or Christmas in July. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Creative Knockouts – summer fun

Just Us Girls – summertime

Lil Patch Of Crafty Friends – anything goes

A Perfect Time To Craft – anything goes

Crafts Galore – anything goes

Stencil Fun – use a stencil – option of shades of blue

Here Is A Place To Start – anything goes

Shades Of Blue

Johanna is hosting the new challenge at Cardz 4 Galz, and she has chosen the theme of ‘Shades Of Blue‘. Here is my card:

Using a newer die set from Spellbinders, I created the openings using 4 different shades of blue card stock. There are a few of similar tunnel die sets from Spellbinders, this one is ‘Cloud Tunnel’.

It is very easy to place the dies in different positions on each piece of card to create the size and shape of the opening, and also the create as much or as little of each layer showing as you please.

The second darkest blue I layered with 3D foam, but the other layers were glued flat to each other.

The moon and stars are also from the same dies set, and I stamped an appropriate sentiment on the front piece.

I hope you can come and join with your creations following our theme. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

AAA Colourful Challenge – colour board – mainly blue

Lil Patch Of Crafty Friends – anything goes

A Perfect Time To Craft – anything goes

Crafts Galore – anything goes

Here Is A Place To start – anything goes

Love To Craft – anything goes

ABC ‘N’ and ‘O’

Hello everyone. The ABC Christmas Challenge has reached the letters ‘N’ and ‘O’, Fabiola is the host this time round and the Christmas themes are:

‘N’ for No Stamping and ‘O’ for Off The Edge’

I went with the no stamping option. Here is my card:

I am sure you all know by now that I am a Spellbinders fanatic, and this card was created using one of their die sets and one of their embossing folders.

The background was embossed and then a darker blue ink blended around the outside edges to create a halo effect.

The baubles were all die cut, and all those little pieces of white and blue were die cut and inlaid back into their little places – a fiddly job, but I treated as a therapeutic endeavour.

I also used some white glitter card stock for some portions of the die cuts.

The sentiment is from a previous hot foiling session.

I hope you can come and join us with your Christmas creations following one or both of our two themes. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

AAA Colourful Challenge – mainly blue colour board

A Perfect Time To Craft – anything goes

Sparkles Forum Christmas – handmade ornament or ornament card

Christmas Crafts All Year Round – anything goes Christmas

Merry Little Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

Christmas (or not) Bingo – column ‘I’ – free, embossing (wet or dry), glitter (glitter card)

Flowers, Hares, and a Bird

Hello everyone. Whilst I was watching the England football this evening, I decided to create something using techniques and mediums I rarely – if at all – use. Like most of us, I have them, but am unsure of how to use them, so today I just went with it to create this collage mixed media panel:

The starting off point was the image in the centre. This is actually a layering washi tape from ‘AALL and Create’. I have never seen these before, and one of my go-to shops showcased them recently – so I bought a few different ones to try.

This is the ‘Sunflower and Hares’ washi, and I layered it onto some Distress Kraft Heavy stock and cut it down into a square.

Now to play with ‘stuff’…..I took a spare piece of white card stock and some Tim Holtz papers and went to town. Using the vintage collage medium to give a sepia tone, I created layers on the background.

I then took an Indigo Blu red rubber stamp and Archival ink to stamp partial images over the dried collage. I created a brown stencil paste using Altenew embossing paste and brown Impasto acrylic paint, a Tim Holtz stencil, and added detail to the background.

When the paste had dried, I took some gold wax and rubbed it over the top – I wanted some vintage yellow to somewhat match the sunflowers.

I then added some green die cut leaves I had laying around on my desk, covered them with the vintage distress collage medium to tone down the green a little,

Once all that was dry, I added the square with the images with the other collage medium, then found some light brown paper flowers, adding some of the gold wax to the petals, and stuck them down as you see.

As I was putting some of the papers away, a strip dropped out ‘Made in England‘ so I added that to the bottom.

Here are the products I used, and you can see the roll of washi tape off to the side:

All-in-all, a fun but messy creation. I still have no idea what I’m doing – but I did enjoy the process.

Here is a picture of the washi tape just attached to white card stock and the image the four layers create, ready for making into a card:

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More – make your mark

Ally’s Angels – anything goes

Creative Fingers – anything goes

Inkspirational – stencils – option to use paste taken

We Love 2 Create – anything goes mixed media

2 Crafty Critter Crazies – anything goes with a critter

Crafty Animals – anything goes with an animal

Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge – anything goes mixed media

Triple B – birds and/or butterflies and/or blooms

You Are Simply Amazing

Hello everyone. Some crafty time yesterday created this card for a few challenges:

The background panel is a turnabout stamp from Concord & 9th. It was one of the many, many items received as part of their ‘Summer Camp’ virtual weekend. They always provide such a great number of items for this weekend event – and so many ‘camp counsellors’ which I know I regard in high esteem and watch many of their YouTube channels.

The first thing I did was the turnabout panel, using the colour scheme from the current Color Throwdown challenge. I used Concord & 9th inks, and their turnabout jig – which also came with the event – then cut that down to slightly smaller than an A2 card base.

I then stamped and die cut the separate flowers and leaves, and die cut ‘Jumbo Butterfly‘ from The Greetery, using the matching stencils to ink blend the colours on it.

The sentiment is also from the same event, and stamped into an oval, die cut from a Gina K Designs master layouts die set.

The oval was attached with 3D foam, the flowers and leaves added, then the butterfly, and some iridescent gem for the centre of the flowers – and some down towards the bottom right.

The gems are from Spellbinders, and reflect the colours around them.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Color Throwdown – pink, green, purple

Lil Red Wagon – layer it up

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – anything goes

Cupcake Inspirations – anything goes

Ally’s Angels – anything goes

Beautiful Blossoms – flowers

Quadruple Celebrations

Hello once again. The Alphabet Challenge has reached the letter ‘G’, and Veronika has chosen the theme of:

‘G’ is for Gentlemen – create something masculine’

Here are my cards:

I don’t create masculine cards very often, and for this challenge I decided to use the ‘Create In Quads – Hexagon‘ layering stencil set from Taylored Expressions.

If you haven’t used them before, these are an ingenious way of creating four card panels by using four layering stencils.

I chose a more masculine colour scheme for the layers and varied the orientation and sentiments placed on each of the four panels.

I hope you can come and join us with your masculine creations. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Avenue 613 Create – anything goes – option for the guys taken

Stencil Fun – use stencils – option of birthday taken

Paper Minutes – use stencils

Cup Cake Inspirations – anything goes

Lil Patch Of Crafty Friends – anything goes

Ally’s Angels – anything goes

We’ve Got Chemistry….

Hello everyone. There is a new challenge just started at Cardz 4 Galz, and Dawn has chosen the theme of

‘Inspired by a book’

Here is my card:

I was inspired by the book ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde‘ by Robert Louis Stevenson. I had just received these products from Spellbinders for the propagation virtual class. I felt the test tubes and test tube stand were perfect.

The background is a previously created panel using water and alcohol inks. here is my original post using this technique.

For this background I also used an embossing folder to create a bubble effect/

The stand was die cut and assembled, and I did use some grey Distress inks to darken some of the angles.

The test tubes and markings were die cut, and I also found some ink smooshed and splattered backgrounds in yellow, green and pink which I thought would look good to depict that a chemical reactions were happening in them.

I hope you can come and join us with your creations inspired by a book. xx

I shall be entering the following challenegs:

Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge – anything goes mixed media (inks, oxides, alcohol inks, white acrylic paint)

Cup Cake Inspirations – anything goes

Lil Patch Of Crafty Friends – anything goes

Addicted To Stamps and More – make your mark

Ally’s Angels – anything goes

CYHTP – embossing folder – option of sports not taken

Ellibelle’s Corner – anything goes

You Bring Colour To My World

Hello. I have created a fun and colourful card to share today:

I die cut the brush elements from a Taylored Expressions set, and assembled them. Card stock is from Concord * 9th and Heffy Doodle.

The background panel was die cut using an old Catherine Pooler postage die, and dry embossed using a Stampin’ Up embossing folder – an oldie but a goodie……

The splats are from a Tim Holtz die set – a little trimming here and there for them to fit where I wanted them.

As I decided to use the same brown for the background panel as I had used for the brush handle, I ink blended a darker brown onto the handles to make them stand out a little more.