Die-cutting

Magnolia Colours

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Hello everyone. I hope you are all well. It looks like a late evening posting for me today. I have been playing with colours and different stamps in my craft room, and forgot what time it was. Time flying and having fun comes to mind…..

This card is inspired by the colours from Color Throwdown – raspberry pink, yellow, and green. I wanted to use the Magnolia stamp set from Altenew, but didn’t know if magnolia’s come in these colours…..I did an internet search, and they do come in yellow, but I couldn’t find any with a raspberry heart or dark shading. So – I did it anyway! You know me, throwing away the rules…..

I stamped the flower in Versafine black onyx – as always – then stamped the base main magnolia layer in ‘Tiara’ from Catherine Pooler, adding some raspberry colour to the base, and slightly drawing it out with my watercolour brush. The green is ‘Grass Skirt’ from Catherine Pooler, drawing out the base green for a lighter touch, then adding directly to the image for the darker shading.

The branch is coloured with an Inktense brown pencil – one of the ‘allowed’ neutral colours – then used the matching dies to cut the image out.

I then stamped a third generation of the raspberry colour using the Altenew Hexagon stamp for a very, very light background, (I promise it is there and the raspberry colour)stuck my flower to it, then used my wonky rectangles from MFT.

The sentiment stamped in the same green, as opposed to my usual black, for a more muted look, so that it didn’t take away from the main image too much.

I shall be entering this card into the following challenges:

Color Throwdown – raspberry pink, yellow, green

Crafty Sentiments Designs – anything goes

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – anything goes

Hello Sunshine Flowers

Hi everyone. A later posting today, as it took me so long to sort out the placement of this flower and leaves. I had an idea in my head, but just couldn’t get it right. It seems to be a running theme with me these days – taking ages to plan my layout…..

This card has been inspired by the colours from Just Add Ink, and the sketch from CAS(E) this Sketch.

I used my Altenew stamp and die set ‘Hello Sunshine’, stamping the flower in black on some Whisper White cardstock, but the leaves in a softer grey. I don’t have the Smokey Slate from Stampin Up, so used Evening Grey from Altenew. I thought the leaves would be too stark if stamped in black, and I wanted a softer look for them.

The flower I stamped in black, and coloured all of them in Lemon Lime Twist, using my water brush on the ink pad casing. I must say, this is now one of my favourite colours. I love it. It comes a very close second to the Catherine Pooler ‘Lime Rickey’ ink – love them both.

The sentiment is from Altenew – Wood Pallet Background. I was going to use the wood pallet, but I used my We R Memory Keepers next level embossing folder instead, to give a trellis look. (I need to move away from the trellis look, I think!)

I stamped the banner in Crumb Cake, as well as the sentiment, and cut it out. And – no die cut for this! All my own snappy scissor work……. 🙂

The base card is Crumb Cake, layered with the Whisper White embossed layer, the sentiment added with 3D glue gel, and the flower and leaves stuck behind this.

So – Whisper white is used for the stamping and the embossed layer, Lemon Lime Twist for the colouring, Crumb Cake for the base card, and Evening Grey instead of Smoky Slate for the outline of the leaves.

Challenges I will be entering:

CAS(E) This Sketch – sketch

Just Add Ink – colour combination

QKR Stampede – anything goes

 

 

?Pizza

I’m having a little titter to myself as I post this card. I can’t believe I’m actually posting it, but it’s brought me some giggles. I am sure from the title of the post that you can see what the theme of the challenge is that I made this card for……..

The cue card is from Casology – ‘Pizza‘. So, I don’t have any pizza stamps or dies, I don’t have anything I could turn my mind to for a real pizza, or anything I could turn use to even come close to representing a pizza. I have been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and was at a total loss.

Until I was driving to work yesterday, was stopped at some traffic lights in Sheffield – outside a Dominoes Pizza place.

I immediately started giggling. I am sure the car in front must have thought I was a complete nutter! Then I thought – why not? It is following the theme of the challenge, Dominoes Pizza is international……….so here you are.

The actual domino took more thought……eventually I die cut two squares using my Stampin Up ‘Stitched Shapes Framelits’, then wondered how I was going to do the dots. I looked at my hole punch – not quite right. I looked at my Crop-a-dile – too small. I looked at my punches from Stampin Up – nothing seemed quite right.

So, while I kept thinking, I decided to tidy my craft table, and to put some things away. I always seem to have lots of stamps and dies just sitting there……anyone else do that? So – putting some of my stuff away, I came across a stamp set from Altenew ‘Simple Flowers’. Guess what – there are a couple of small round dots in that set.

Here we go – I took one of the dots, stamped it in my Ranger Perfect Medium, heat embossed with white opaque powder – and ended up with what you see above. I stuck both the squares down flat with some of my Tombow glue…….

I’m still giggling. We are supposed to have fun when we craft, aren’t we? I think this takes it to another level, though!

What do you think? Outside the box or what? (Pizza box, of course)

 

Red, white, and blue sketch

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Hi there. I’m still in quite a patriotic mood today. I made an earlier blog posting with colours of England, and decided to make another card with the colours from the good old Union Jack. I am aware there are lots and lots of countries with red, white, and blue on their flag, so instead of going down the St George Cross route, I followed the sketch from CAS(E) this Sketch.

The three colours were die cut from Lawn Fawn ‘Road Border’ and stuck down to a smaller card than usual, keeping a wider bit to the left, and narrowing down to the right – all set at a nice jaunty angle – as per the sketch. The strips were only 6 inches long, and I was putting them at an angle, so I had to go with the smaller size card.

The sentiment is from a Catherine Pooler set from the Foundations box, and I angled each word slightly on my block to give a more rounded look to them so they looked like they were following the shape of the strips. Actually, that bit took longer than the rest!

I only had a short time to play tonight, as one of my puddy tats has hurt his leg, and I had to take him to the vets – thank goodness not serious. As he is almost 7kgs (Yep!!), he has probably strained his shoulder jumping down from somewhere. You can see a picture if him on a previous blog post – Spring Flowers + failed feline photo bomb from April 19th. He also has a brother just as gorgeous – I may be biased!

I shall also be entering this card into the following challenges:

Cards In Envy – patriotic – red, white, blue

Createalicious challenge – anything goes with option for red, white, blue

Addicted to Stamps and More – Clean And Simple

 

 

three more colours

Good evening all. I have been playing – just a little – with my new purchase from Seven Hills Crafts – Mama Elephant ‘Little Girl Agenda’. I have so many ideas on how to use this set, and this is the first one come to fruition.

This card was inspired by the colours from CAS Colours and Sketches. I don’t have the exact colours mentioned – dapper denim, metallic copper, peekaboo peach – but I raided my Stampin Up markers to see what would come nearest. I hope they are kinda the same colours.

I started with a blue base card – from Creative Expressions. I find their foundations card is lovely to work with, whether it is die-cutting or stamping. I stamped and heat embossed a little saying from an Altenew stamp set, obviously that is the copper part of the challenge. Who knew when I did my recent copper embossing card that this colour would come up again so soon? It was still sat on my craft table!

The little girl I stamped with Versafine black onyx, let it dry, then coloured with me markers, and used the matching die-set to cut her out.

Now – it was my choice to only colour the balloons. Here’s my thought process……As the card base is so dark, and I had coloured the balloons already, I wanted the little girl to stand out. If I used the same challenge colours, I think she would have ended up a lost little girl. So – kept her white, no colouring. I think she stands out more by doing this? Do you agree? Let me know, I’ll be interested in what you think…..

I did try to photograph her outside, and tried my utmost to show the embossing on the words, but it didn’t quite work out well, but it was the best I could do…..It also decided to throw some rain down. It is still very warm, but dull and quite muggy here in Chesterfield, UK. Don’t tell anyone – but I think we need a ‘right good’ storm.

On another note, I see there are people playing along with the Inkspirational Challenge, for which I was guest designer for current challenge. Head along and have a go. It’s a gorgeous colourful inspirational photo…..

Here are the challenges I will be entering with this card:

CAS Colours and Sketches – dapper denim, metallic copper, peekaboo peach 

Inspiration Destination – anything goes

Creates and Makes – anything goes

A Bit More Time to Craft – anything goes

 

 

 

 

Two-fer

Morning all. Today I shall be posting two cards, as I am not sure if I can post anything else during the week. I have a few days in London on business, but it is up-in-the-air how many days, and how long for. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, sometimes.

This first card is obviously monochrome, and in my favourite colours. Black is a colour, right? Whether it is for the stamping, or for the sentiment, I do like using black on my cards somewhere – unless the card is sweet and cute – then I have to resist the instinct! However, I can still stamp the outline in black, can’t I?

I used the Birch press layering dies again, cut all three layers in black, with a white base card. The sentiment is a stamp from an Altenew stamp set, cut out with the Lawn Fawn wonky rectangles die set.

This second card is using my Brushos – I bought some new colours last week – and a stamp from Visible Image. I stamped and embossed the face and whiskers and heat set with black, then used the resist technique and my Brushos. Can you believe this Brusho is the black. Only the black. No other colour added………what a true burst of colour in what is called ‘black’. How amazing is that?

I then added some green to the eyes, and went over some of the white areas in the eyes with a white gel pen to bring a little more life to them.

I shall be entering the black and white card into the following challenges:

Creatalicious challenges – favourite colour

Allsorts Challenge – use two or more dies (used 4)

I shall be entering the cat card into the following challenges:

Just Us Girls – use powdered dyes

 

 

 

 

Colourful inspiration

Good evening all. For today’s card I have been playing with loads and loads of inks. Can you tell? I have been ink blending and creating Brusho backgrounds, and die cutting. Quite a bit of playing and fun I had.

For the base card, I used a piece of Crafters Companion water-colour card, and blended colours from Lawn Fawn. These inks are wonderful and blend very, very nicely. I will definitely use them again for this technique. I also did some water splashes to create some added interest to the background.

I actually tried to emulate the colours from the Daring Cardmakers challenge with the middle bottom image being of what I saw as sea and sun-setting sky.

You had to use three elements from these pictures, so I continued to create another ink-blending background, from which I cut small strips – to match the top middle picture, and laid those down in a criss-cross pattern just off to one side.

The third element I used were the flowers. Well, I couldn’t just put one or two on, could I? I started by creating a Brusho background with one of the blue colours, added some yellow, added some purple. I just kept adding until I liked the colours.

I then stamped the flowers from the Altenew ‘Adore You’ stamp set onto that background with Versafine Black Onyx and die cut them with the matching stamp set.

I glued everything down flat, and I used a glue I haven’t used before but bought at Doncaster Dome craft show this past weekend – Tombow multipurpose liquid glue. My goodness that stuff is strong, isn’t it? It may take over from my usual favourite glue from Creative Expressions – Cosmic Shimmer. I really like the Tombow….

I will be entering this card into the following challenges:

Daring Cardmakers – June Elemental challenge

Crazy 4 Challenges – at least three of something (strips, flowers)

 

Love is all around

I’ve gone all ‘lovey dovey’ with this card, haven’t I? The inspirations for this card was from Just Us Girls challenge, and Cardz 4 Galz. I tried to emulate the hearts design, and whilst I was looking at that I was singing (in my head, don’t worry about it raining all day tomorrow!) ‘Love is all around’ by Wet, Wet, Wet. Even now, I know all the words. I have just done a quick Google – and it was released in 1995! 1995! Good grief. 22 years ago. Doesn’t time fly?

For this card, I used Centura Pearl card stock for all the die-cutting, as well as the base card. The embossed layer is a Spellbinders M-Bossability folder ‘Hearts’ I have had for many years, and is a go-to folder for the more romantic cards make – weddings etc. On one side you can emboss the smaller hearts background, and the other side is the dotty hearts background. A very versatile and useful folder.

The hearts are from a Sue Wilson fillables collection, a range of three heart dies and inners – ‘Jewelled,’ ‘Laced’, and ‘Fluttering’. I have mixed and matched all three of them to create each of the hearts.

I attached the three hearts with some Pinflair glue Gel, as I like to move it around when I have it on the card, and attached the single heart with some foam pads, as I knew exactly where I wanted that to be.

I will be entering one of these cards into the following challenges:

Just Us Girls – photo inspiration

Cardz 4 Galz – inspired by a song

Die Cuttin Divas – anything goes

Watercooler Wednesday challenges – anything goes