Zig clean colour markers

Floral Spray Birthday

Hello there. Once again I am privileged to be Guest Designer on the Seize the Birthday challenge again.

This time the theme is ‘Birthday and Spring Flowers’. Here is my card:

For these flowers I stamped and heat embossed with white, and water-coloured using my Zigs. I went for soft colours, one colour of each, and just a little blending with water. I am really quite pleased with how these turned out as I haven’t water-coloured like this for ages.

I then used the matching dies – something Clearly Besotted have stopped doing now, but I’m glad I had them for this set of stamps.

As these were soft flowers, I went for a dramatic background – a grey cardstock using a Crafters Companion wood grain embossing folder on Concord & 9th Mushroom card stock. . The sentiment is from Stampin Up – stamped in mushroom ink – again from Concord & 9th, then die cut with a stitched oval.

Some little clear drop thingies – no idea what they’re called – and the card is done.

I hope you can come and join us – It would be great to see your there with your birthday spring floral creations. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Colour Crazy Challenge – anything goes with colouring

The Flower Challenge – flowers and pretty pastels

A Perfect Time To Craft – anything goes

Love To Craft Challenge – anything goes

Hootiful Christmas

A Christmas card featuring owls in their Christmas outfits:

This time I coloured all the images with Zig Clean Colour Brush pens – which I haven’t had out in absolutely ages – so I thought I’d give them a go.

The images from Clearly Besotted were stamped in Gina K amalgam ink – a brown colour this time – and then coloured with my Zigs – a couple of browns and a couple of greens.

I have no idea what water-colour card I used – but it started to ‘pill’ a little when I tried to blend, so I didn’t really do much blending, and just went very gentle – I must remember not to use this stash again!

Once coloured and die-cut with the matching dies, I added some glossy accents to the eyes, and left them to dry whilst putting together the rest of the card.

A slimline card using Pinkfresh Studio scalloped windows, and adding some white glitter card behind each window. When I added my owls for placement, I decided they looked a little lost, so I used Heffy Doodle ‘Hootiful’ stamp and die set for the tree stump and branch.

The sentiments are from two different sets – selective stamping with some masking of part of the whole sentiments, to create what I wanted.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

52CCT – Christmas using white, green, and brown

Watercooler Challenge – occasions

Fezziwigs Festive Frolics – anything goes festive

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Life Can Be Tough – But So Can You………

Hi there. I have made a card today just for the fun of it. I took inspiration from several challenges – but I wanted to create a fun and colourful card, with some inspiring words. Inspiring for me – and for everyone else.

I wanted to play around with colour, I wanted to play with some water-colouring, I wanted to just play. I didn’t want to particularly think about what I was creating. I knew I wanted to use this stamp set from Hero Arts, and I knew what sketch and colours I wanted to use – so I began.

I played, I water-coloured, I used colour, I used dies. No shading, no thinking about which way the light was coming from – just played………..and in the end I am pleased with what I created!

I stamped the turtle onto Arteza water-colour card in Altenew Obsidian ink, let it dry a little, then collected the four colours together I was using from the current challenge at Color Throwdown.

I did colour a turtle in pink – but didn’t like that, so here is what I did the second time around. I used a little water with each colour, to spread things around a little, and I’d forgotten how pigmented these zigs are……..

The stitched waves were pieces of card coloured again with zigs and die cut using a Lawn Fawn ‘stitched wavy borders’ die, and they remind me of some sea-weed drifting in the motion of the sea.

I have just receievd some Tracy Hey Designs stamp sets – and this sentiment was just sat there looking at me………………it’s almost as though I am saying this to myself – and saying this to others. I may have to use this sentiment again…….

So – a fairly basic yet colourful card, I enjoyed the process, and I’m already planning what to make tomorrow…..

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Color Throwdown – orange, pink, yellow, green

CAS(E) This Sketch – sketch

Hero Arts Challenge – self care

Addicted to CAS – CAS Animal

Happy Little Stampers watercolour challenge – water-colour atg with option of stars

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

Watercolour florals

Hello again. I have another card to share today, featuring water-colouring:

I stamped the Catherine Pooler ‘One in a million mom’ in the bottom corner of a piece of water-colour card, heat embossed, masked it, stamped again, and again a third time to fill in some gaps.

I then used two Catherine Pooler inks to water-colour the flowers and leaves, and added a grey Zig marker for some background. I did less watering down in the middle of each flower, to keep it a little darker, but generally just went for it.

I did originally have the grey going further out, and was going to attached the whole panel to a card front, but I didn’t like how it turned out. So – I took the matching die for the floral spray – then realised I had to do some clever partial die-cutting……nerves of steel today!!

Once I had decided where I wanted to image to be, I stamped and embossed the sentiment on the base card – as I said – nerves of steel!!

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Crazy for CAS – grey, aqua, peach

Lil Red Wagon – Flora

Case this Sketch – sketch

Crazy for CAS

CAS(E) this Sketch!

Colourful and blingy

Hello again. I have been playing with colours, and trying to create a scenic card, and a second card which made me smile as I was colouring it.

First is the scenic card:

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and a close-up of the silver bling:

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The base is water-colour card and blended blues from my Distress Oxide collection. I then took the die cut from Avery Elle ‘Let it Snow‘ and cut the little holes/stars into it. I then splashed it with Gansai Tambi ‘Starry Colours‘ for some extra shimmer.

The Santa Clause and Reindeer are from the same stamp set as the two critters – Lawn Fawn ‘Winter Skies‘, stamped in black and heat embossed.

The hills and little town are cut out of silver glitter card, and again cut using the hillside dies – both from Lawn Fawn – and layered out of sync – so they create some dimensional hills.

The two little critters are coloured with my Zigs, as are the trees.

The second card:

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This is a cheshire cat stamp from Visible Image. stamped first and masked off, then using a stencil to create a weird background…….then coloured with my Zigs.

This card will be entered into the following challenges:

Daring Cardmakers – pets

Time Out Challenges – colourful

The first scenic card will be entered into the following challenges:

Just Us Girls – celestial elements

52cct – Christmas and silver

I now have three days off work, and I plan to craft and craft and craft to get a substantial stock of Christmas cards – but as I have also received a bunch of the new Altenew stamps – there may be some general cards too…………you can’t have too many of them, either, can you?

A Tweet note

Here I have a one layer very clean and simple card following the colours and sketch layout of a couple of challenges:

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I used the MFT ‘A Tweet Hello’ stamp set and three of the little birdy images, stamped directly onto the card base, and coloured with my Zigs. I don’t have the exact Stampin Up colours named on the challenge, but I tried to match as best I could. The sentiment is from the same stamp set. (And…………no smudges. Yay!)

I had this set in mind as I have a colleague going through some exam issues at the moment, and I liked the sentiments.

The colours of the birds are from the current challenge at Just Add Ink, and the layout from the current sketch challenge at CASE(E) This Sketch.

Trying to photograph this card in the fading light was a challenge, but I had a little help:

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This is Rosie, otherwise known as Girly Girl or Fluffy One. It all depends on what we feel like calling her, and whether she is in an affectionate mood – or not! Having lost one of our two cats at 14 years of age earlier this year, we decided to obtain not one cat as companion for our main big boy – Spike – but two more cats. She has a brother Jim – …..Rosie and Jim. 12 years old from the Cat Protection League. I am sure he’ll appear in a card photo in the future……

🙂

Floral and space

Hello there. No – it isn’t a flower in space. I have two cards – one floral and one galaxy/space – to share with you today. Two completely different cards. I have been missing my florals, even though I have been having messy and Distress Oxide fun.

This first card:

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is quite a simple card – I think I might be getting there with this style – though it still scares me!

Having seen quite a few butterflies around the garden whilst I’ve off work the past few days, I took the Honey Doo ‘Butterfly Border‘ stamp and heat embossed into a piece of card using white embossing powder, then blended my Distress Oxides over it. The embossing resisted the colour. I used a couple of the orange and yellow oxides, to create a summer feel.

I then took the matching die and cut that out of a 6×6 inch piece of card, first working out where I wanted it to be, and ensuring I could match it up (!!) then adhered the stamped and inked piece behind it.

I was going to go with a coloured border around this piece, but I like just a slightly bigger white base instead, as I think more colour would detract from the main element.

The sentiment is from the Concord and 9th ‘Painted Rose’ die set. I love this font, and that the words are separate to place where ever you like. I die cut this twice in white card, then the third time was from another piece of card I used the same distress Oxides on, and layered them all together.

This card will be entered into the current challenge at The Paper Players – to use negative space on a clean and simple card, and the current challenge at Addicted to CAS – with the theme of Summertime.

This second card is completely different to enter the current challenge at Lil Red Wagon:

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The current theme is to use anything to do with space, aliens planets etc. I did a few galaxy backgrounds – getting inky and messy again – then looked for my alien stamps. I started stamping and colouring these little creatures, before my sister reminded me they were monsters and not aliens, from Hero Arts ‘Monster Greetings‘ stamp and die set.

To me they are aliens, so I used my artistic license and carried on using them. I went for strong and vibrant colours with my Zigs, so they would stand out from the background, and then stamped and embossed the greeting in white, from another stamp set – I can’t remember what the name or make of this is.

Otters and Christmas and Colours

Hello there. I am afraid I have been crafting…..and have produced several cards for several different challenges. There is a lot of inspiration out there at the moment, and whilst I have time to craft, I am enjoying using the themes and colours for these challenges.

The first card is using the MFT ‘Otterly Love You‘ set – again – as it was still out on my desk, and I thought I would get inky and messy, water-colouring and distressing.

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The layout is taken from the current MFT Sketch Challenge, and other than the Distress Oxides and the Zigs – a completely MFT card. I always want to do scenes but struggle with the organisation of the products, so a sketch like this is ideal – I can do little mini-scenes in each square.

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As you see, completely different to the card from yesterday, as I water-coloured the otters in several brown colours, then went back in with a clean water brush to remove part of the colour in the centre of each otter. The rocks and fish also come with that stamp and die set.

This card will also be entered into the current challenge at Moving Along With The Times, with the theme of wild animals.

This second card is completely different:

A simple card – sorry it’s black and gold again (last one, I promise) – and using the Altenew ‘Poinsettia and Pine‘ stamp and die set. The poinsettia stamped and heat embossed in gold, some gold embossing powder added to the gold layer below it to make it match, and the die cuts used were from Catherine Pooler.

This card will be entered into the current challenge at CAS Christmas Card Challenge – poinsettia as a theme – and the current challenge at CAS on Sunday – CAS Christmas in July.

My third and final card is an homage to Bev at Uniko. She has lost a fur baby recently, so it can’t be an easy time for her and her family, so a little support is appreciated, I’m sure.

Today she is hosting her third stamping retreat – a very busy lady! I have been to the previous two retreats and not able to make this one, but as I am using the colours from CAS Colours and Sketches – Bev and Uniko came straight to mind…….

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I use the challenge colours of Powder Pink for the Concord and 9th Sketched Stripes Background, the Lemon Lime Twist for the little leafy stamps you see, and as I don’t have Coastal Cabana, I used the Catherine Pooler Aquatini instead.

This is another kind of card I struggle with – one layer card. Why did I test myself again? The current challenge at Less Is More is for a one layer card and using stripes……they don’t make it easy, do they? 🙂

I hope you all have a great weekend……….I feel some more crafting coming on…..I hope hubby doesn’t want any tea today………

Gold and Blue birthday

Hi there. I have another floral card to share to day, but as I still had some black card-stock out from the card posted yesterday, I decided to keep going with the black and gold theme – but also added a few shades of blue.

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I stamped a Stamps By Me floral stamp onto water-colour card, and heat embossed in gold. Using my Zigs, and very little water, I coloured as you see, keeping the colours vibrant. The gold embossing resisted the colouring, and it also let me know the main places for the darker shades of blue.

I then used the matching die – one solid die, so quite difficult to place over the image centrally – maybe I;ll die cut first next time, or even emboss around first……hmmm – I think a little playing is coming on….. and then stuck this down onto some black card.

The frame is die cut using two sizes of Sue Wilson’s stitched rectangles. The sentiment is heat embossed in gold, and is from MFT.

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