Hi everybody!! I'm oh so slowly getting back into the swing of things and creating the odd card. I've got so many new stamps/dies etc that I feel like I need a months holiday to have a chance to use them all!! Its a wonderful situation to be in though, considering I'm usually living vicariously through everyone else's crafting hauls....
The current theme for the Simon Says Stamp - Monday Challenge is 'Bright and Cheerful' so I thought it was a wonderful chance to create a card with an image I coloured a few weeks ago:
I am absolutely over the moon with how my stencil colours turned out!! I don't use stencils very often (they kind of scare me for some reason) so using all these colours was a bit of an experiment that paid off. It kind of reminds me of Japanese kimono fabric and I have a few other colour combo's in mind to try out as well.
I started off by stamping the pug from Funky Fossil Designs 'Pugs and Hugs' on white CS with Gina K Amalgam black ink. I coloured him with my Altenew Artist Markers and then fussy cut out.
The stencil (also from Funky Fossil Designs 'Round in Flowers') was held over the card front with washi tape. I gathered up different Distress Inks in blues, greens, pinks etc and their mini-blending foam rounds. I don't own any foam daubers so I pinch the round foam into a point and add different inks to the stencil, trying not to muddy the colours as I go.
Once I removed the stencil I put the pug on some foam tape. I then white heat embossed the sentiment (from the same stamp set) on black CS and put this on foam tape as well, along with some iridescent jewels from Pretty Pink Posh.
I've got so many more cards to share with you that I made before I went away last weekend, its just finding time to sit down and blog. At the moment I just don't seem to be able to find time at all to craft, nothing is different in my life but my list of things to do is ridiculously long. As usual I just need to put myself first every now and then and do what I love. Easier said than done......
I'm back!!! So sorry I've been away from blogging and card making for a while. I went to Auckland last Thursday morning till Sunday night (18th to 21st July) helping the Uniquely Creative store (from Australia) at their first ever SENZ (New Zealand craft show). It was only my second time going and it was AMAZING!! I was in charge of the 'make-n-take' table, teaching people to watercolour with different paints that they sell. It was so busy as the table was extremely popular. So many people fell in love with watercolouring and really loved my tips and tricks to help them with depth and shading. I felt like Kathy Racoosin!!!
I came back though to FIVE DAYS of laundry as everyone was sick and it rained the whole time I was away. It then carried on raining until yesterday (Friday) so not much work gardening for me but gave me a chance to sort out all the washing, get the house in order and go thru all the amazing things I purchased!! Now I'm finally ready to start creating again!
Two weeks ago I stayed at my Mum's for the weekend and made a huge amount of cards to take with me to Auckland and for challenges online. Unfortunately I've now missed most of the deadlines but not the one for the Poppystamps Challenge thank goodness because I really love the card, especially the little birdies:
I've used some very new and very old products in making this card. I find it very hard to move on my older stamps/dies because I still love them so much and think that I might need them someday!!
I started off by stamping the Poppystamps 'Flower Garden' background stamp (which I purchased with a voucher I won from a previous Poppystamps Challenge) in Versafine ink on white CS. I then die-cut it using my very old but still amazing Pretty Pink Posh 'Stitched Duo 2' dies. This was popped up on the card front with some foam tape.
I won the Poppystamps 'Whittle Birds' from one of their latest New Releases. I die-cut them 3x each from white CS and coloured with my Altenew Artist Markers and put them on foam tape, the larger ones being on a double amount to make them stand up more. All I had to do then was white heat emboss the sentiment (from the same PS 'Flower Garden' stamp set) on some black CS and put on foam tape.
I'm also going to join the AAA Birthday Challenge #3 where their theme is 'For the Girls, who I think would love these pastel coloured birdies.
I've still got so many cards to share with you, I need to go and mow my Mum's lawns and I'm only a quarter of the way through pruning back all my roses. Thank goodness its a gorgeous, sunny day so hopefully I can get thru all my jobs. Wish me luck!!
Hi everyone!! I've just come back from a weekend at my Mum's house, where MANY cards were made, lots of chocolate consumed and I'm nearly through Season 2 of Boston Legal on dvd....it was awesome!!! We also went to see the movie 'Crawl', a horror movie about alligators, which was real 'edge of your seat' stuff, highly recommend it!!
I'm popping in today to remind you all about our current theme at The Flower Challenge. Its all about 'Pretty Pastels' which I think is a huge favourite when it comes to colouring floral images. Being right in the middle of Winter there aren't many flowers around at the moment (although its been so warm, some roses are still going strong and even some tree's have started blossoming....), I can't wait for Spring to see all the flowering cherries start to bloom.
Our Sponsor for this challenge is Uniko and they are giving a stamp set to the winner. They have some gorgeous floral stamps, so would be so hard to pick just one!!
Since Uniko is our Sponsor, I decided to use their stamps (which I had in my stash) for my card design. The flower is from one of the very first Uniko stamp sets I purchased and its still fabulous, especially for colouring:
I've always loved light blue (especially Tiffany blue) and pairing it with a pink is such a sweet combo.
I started by stamping the flower image from Uniko 'Flower Power #2' with Versafine black ink on watercolour CS and immediately clear heat embossing with Simon Says Stamp 'Clear Embossing Powder'. I did this 10x!! I then watercoloured each flower with Catherine Pooler 'Fiesta Blue' ink, not worrying about getting it perfect. I did a soft colour layer first, dried the flowers with the heat gun and then went back in with the same colour but with less water to add some depth. Once they had dried I fussy cut them out.
For the background I wanted something 'pretty' and not too solid, so I stamped the Uniko 'Large Background: Scattered Polka Hearts' stamp on the card front using Catherine Pooler 'Be Mine' ink, stamping it twice for a darker hue.
To create the ring of flowers I die-cut a piece of grey CS with a Couture Creations circle die and added white foam behind it, adhering to the card front. I cut little squares of foam tape to put on the back of all the flowers and then set about layering them on each other around the edge of the circle. For the sentiment (from Uniquely Creative 'Beautiful Birthday Wishes') I stamped it on white CS with Versafine black ink and put on a double-layer of foam tape. And instead of sequins I glued clear jewels from Pretty Pink Posh in the middle of the flowers, with a smaller one by the sentiment.
You have until Thursday 25th July to link your projects to The Flower Challenge and if your needing any inspiration, pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team and our talented Guest Designer Michelle of Handmade by Michelle have created for you. Looking forward to seeing all your pastel gorgeousness in the Gallery!
The theme for the challenge is 'Ocean Waves' and I've already created one card using my new stamp set from Funky Fossil Designs but there is one more image in this set that I just had to share with you:
Years ago when I was pregnant with Phoebe, I was having terrible nightmares and my midwife suggested a technique for calming myself if I woke scared in the night. She said to go thru the alphabet and name an animal for each letter. She used it herself but she used to get frustrated because for years she could never think of one for the letter 'N'. I immediately said 'Narwhal' and she was blown away! Ever since then I've been fascinated by them and love seeing videos of them on YouTube. So I was so excited to see one in this set!
I started off by stamping the narwhal from the Funky Fossil Designs 'Whale of a Time' stamp set on white CS using Gina K Amalgam black ink. I coloured him with my Altenew Artist Markers and fussy cut out. I also cut a panel of dark grey CS and adhered to the card front.
On a piece of white CS I adhered the Uniquely Creative 'Ocean Waves' stencil with washi tape and used a mini-blending tool to randomly add colour with blue Distress Inks. Once I was happy I spread over a thin layer of Nuvo Glimmer Paste 'Moonstone'. I removed the stencil and wiped it straight away and dried the paste with my heat gun.
I put the glimmer panel on a piece of white foam and popped the narwhal on foam tape. The sentiment (from the same stamp set) was stamped with Versafine black ink on white CS and fussy cut out. I then glued it to some black CS and fussy cut out again. This was put on foam tape, along with some Neat and Tangled sequins. And I added some Glossy Accents to the narwhals eye for a bit of shine.
Right, better get this post linked up to the challenge before my time runs out and will be back here tomorrow with some more of my cards from the weekend!
A few weeks ago my lovely friend Sarah of Funky Fossil Designs sent me one of her new release stamp sets that I loved but because I had purchased two of the other sets she released, I couldn't afford to buy that one as well. It was such a wonderful, generous surprise and I coloured the images straight away. But of course I never found time to put them into a card till this past weekend:
Aren't these whales so amazing and I'm in love with their sketchy designs. I can see myself using them on many more cards, especially as I love sea animals!
I started off by stamping these whales from the Funky Fossil Designs 'Whale of a Time' stamp set on white CS using Gina K Amalgam Black ink, so I could colour them with my Altenew Artist Markers. I then fussy cut them out and added foam tape to the back.
To create a ocean-like background, I used a stencil from Uniquely Creative 'Ocean Waves' along with a mini-blending tool and array of blue Distress Inks. I used washi tape to hold it over the card front and just randomly blended the blues over the stencil until I was happy with the colours. All I had to do then was pop the whales on top. I stamped the sentiment (from the same stamp set) on a piece of white CS and put on foam tape, along with some blue sequins from Neat and Tangled.
I've got one more card to share with you for this challenge, using this same stamp set so better get a wriggle on before the time runs out. Why oh why do I always leave things to the last possible moment????....
I've been trying to colour a lot over the past few weeks to join in with The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge and wanted to colour some of new cute critters from the latest release. I realised how perfectly they fitted on one of the die-cuts, so I set about making two cards, one masculine and one feminine for pet/coffee loving friends:
Aren't these little critters adorable?!!! Love their size and shape, makes them really easy to colour and die-cut.
I started by stamping the cat and dog from the 'Little Huggables' stamp set with Gina K Amalgam black ink on white CS. That way I could colour them with my Altenew Artist Markers. I then die-cut them using the matching 'Little Critters Fri-Dies'.
As I wanted to make two cards, I die-cut the 'To-Go Cup Fri-Dies' with white CS for the base, then pink and blue for the wrap and lids. I die-cut each one twice and glued them together with Gina K Connect Glue to give them a bit more dimension and strength. I glued the cups together and popped the critters up on foam tape. I did the same with the cups on the card fronts.
I white heat embossed the sentiments (from the same Little Huggables stamp set) on black CS and put them on foam tape. I also glued on some iridescent jewels from Pretty Pink Posh and added some shimmer to the lids with a Spectrum Noir Shimmer Pen.
I can't wait to post these to some friends and I hope I've given you some ideas on how to use different stamps and dies together. If you haven't seen these products before and think you might purchase them, don't forget to use my special code to save yourself 15%!!
Thanks so much for stopping by and I'll be back at the end of the month with another CAS-ual Fridays Stamp project!
Hi everyone, hope your all having a wonderful week and have managed to squeeze some card making in somewhere..... The kids have started their two weeks of school holidays but I'm still gardening a few hours each day. Luckily we are finally up to Rose Pruning time, which I absolutely love, so the hours go by very quickly.
We have some words to inspire you for this challenge from Oscar Wilde. You could focus on one or more words, maybe how this phrase makes you feel or focus on the whole phrase itself....its totally up to you!!
We are very lucky to have Catherine Pooler as our Sponsor for this challenge. And they are giving a $25 gift voucher to the winner, talk about lucky!
They were also very generous with our Design Team and gave us vouchers to use in their store for this challenge. As I was focusing on the 'flowers' and 'happy' from the phrase, I purchased two floral sets which both feature on my card:
I've seen a few people using Catherine Pooler Inks to watercolour with and thought this was the perfect time to try them out. I was blown away with how they worked and how vibrant the colours are. Is there anything these inks can't do??
I started off by white heat embossing the 'Cottage Garden Background Stamp' on a piece of watercolour CS. I then used Catherine Pooler Inks - 'Coral Cabana', 'Aquatini', 'Be Mine', 'Grape Crush', 'Fiesta Blue' and 'Flirty Fuchsia' along with a small and medium brush to colour the flowers. My first layer of ink was put on with the larger brush, not worrying about going over the edges etc. The second and third layers were more precise and about adding darker details. As I don't have any green CP Inks, I also used Distress Inks 'Twisted Citron' and 'Mowed Lawn' to watercolour the leaves.
Once the panel was dry I cut it down to be slimmer than the card front and put on a piece of white foam. I die-cut a piece of light grey CS with a Couture Creations circle die and white heat embossed the sentiment from the 'Bloomin' Happy Stamp Set' and popped up on foam tape. I then finished off with some Neat and Tangled sequins.
I'm going to link this to the Stamplorations 'World Watercolour Month Challenge' on their blog. July is 'World Watercolour Month' and they are welcoming all watercolour projects to be linked up, with the chance of winning some prizes!
You have until Wednesday 17th July to link your projects to the TIME OUT Challenge and if your wanting some ideas, pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team and our talented Guest Designer Claire of Life on the Scrap Heap have created to inspire you. Look forward to seeing you in the Gallery!
Hi everyone, really hope your enjoying your weekend, especially those of you in the U.S. having an extra long holiday weekend!! I'm very excited today as I'm the Guest Designer for one of my favourite challenges AAA Card Challenges!!
I won a challenge back in May and was thrilled when I got the invitation. Since their challenges are all CAS (Clean and Simple) its one I've joined in a lot over the years, so feel honoured to be part of the team for this challenge.
And how fabulous that this challenge is all about 'Maxi White Space' with optional twist of 'Christmas in July'. I've mentioned a few times lately that I'm WAY BEHIND with my Christmas card stash, so I was very grateful for this one. And funnily enough I knew which stamp set I wanted to use straight away:
I don't use glitter on my cards very often but was dying to use some that I had received recently from Simon Says Stamp and it makes me wish we had snow at Christmas time...
I started by stamping the puppy and sled from Neat and Tangled 'Get Yeti' with Versafine ink on white CS and colouring with pencils. I fussy cut them out, glued the puppy on his sled with Gina K Connect Glue and added foam tape behind it.
For the snow I added a strip of double-sided tape across the card and rubbed on SSS 'Unicorn Dust' glitter all over it. All I had to do then was stamp the sentiment (from the same stamp set) with Versafine black ink and pop the puppy in place on the snow. Having all of this at the bottom of the card front leaves a HUGE amount of white space but it doesn't look out of place.
You have until Saturday 20th July to link your projects to the AAA Card Challenge and I definitely encourage you to pop over to the blog to see what their incredible Design Team have created to give you some ideas.
Thanks so much to the AAA team for having me and looking forward to seeing all your CAS cards in the Gallery!!
OMG its July!! Half of the year has disappeared, I still haven't started that diet that was going to happen on January 1st and have made hardly any Christmas cards to make sure I don't run out like last year.....the joys of being a big procrastinator!!
The one good thing about it being July though is that we have a new theme at The Flower Challenge!!
We are all about 'Pretty Pastels' this month, which is something I usually tend to do on my cards. I don't often use bright red, orange etc unless its needed for a particular challenge, so was looking forward to creating cards for this month.
We are very lucky to have Uniko Studio as our Sponsor this month and they are giving the winner of this challenge their choice of stamp set, so definitely a good incentive to join in!!
I tried very hard over the past few weeks to join in with The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge and was off to a roaring start but then life happened and I then had to colour New Release products that I can't show until next month, so I'm a bit disappointed. However, I did purchase some new stamps created by my friend Sarah of Funky Fossil Designs and loved colouring them in:
Isn't this stamp just heavenly??!!!!! Its so large which makes it perfect for a square card and its so gorgeous you don't need anything else!!
I started off by stamping the flowers from the Funky Fossil Design 'Beautiful Inside and Out' stamp set on white CS with Gina K Amalgam black ink. This way I was able to colour it using my Altenew Artist Markers. Once I had finished I realised that some of the black ink in the middle of the flower wasn't stamped enough, so I went over it with a fine, black gel pen and then ended up adding lots more of little black lines to the petals.
Next came the tricky part of fussy cutting it out but I just took my time and kept going over areas to try and get it as smooth as I could. I created a 5x5 inch card base but didn't want the image over white CS, so I cut a panel of light grey CS and adhered to the front. The flowers were then popped up on a piece of white foam and foam tape.
The sentiment (from the same stamp set) was stamped twice with Versafine black ink on white CS and immediately clear heat embossed. I did this twice to give it some dimension. I fussy cut around the words and put them on foam tape, along with some Neat and Tangled sequins.
You have until Thursday 25th July to link your projects to The Flower Challenge and if you need any help with ideas, pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team have created for you. We will be back on the 15th with some more cards to inspire you and I can't wait to see all the pastel goodness in the Gallery!!
