Monday, 1 September 2025

Color Hues #117

Afternoon all.
Can you believe that it's already September?! Mind you it's looked a lot like autumn around here for a couple of weeks, the apples are ready for picking and the hedgerow trees are laden with berries. Anyway as it's the 1st of the month it must mean a new colour combo from Color Hues. Here's my take on an autumnal colourway.


To be fair this challenge crept up on me and I needed a quick make. Life has been hectic, our 17 month old washing machine did a weird thing, a full program but the washing was completely dry at the end! That was nearly 3 weeks ago, we've had one visit from the Bosch repair man but he couldn't fathom it out so another spare part ordered and he is due this morning to see if this works. He looked completely baffled when he left last time so I'm not holding my breath! I'd forgotten what hard work hand washing was!! Just the essentials, the linen basket is over flowing with towels and sheets which I couldn't do anything about.
 
Update - Washing machine now running but error lights flashing on dosage monitor!! :( 
Update update - Man coming on Thursday!!
Update - It was as I suspected, a loose cable after all the new parts were fitted, touch wood we are go!
5/9 Update - How wrong was I! New fault on the display now, engineer here Wednesday, I'm not a happy chappy. Good job it's still under warrenty!!

So back to my make. After a hunt through the stash I remembered this dahlia layering stamp set from Altenew and luckily it had an ideas leaflet in it too. These layering stamp sets are great for including shades of the same colour, hence perfect for a Color Hues challenge! I had my DIs out from a previous attempt on a card that ended up in the bin, so went with them, Dried Marigold, Spiced Marmalade, and Carved Pumpkin for the petals and Mowed Lawn and Twisted Citron for the leaves. A little bit of Vintage Photo was used for the center.
The set came with matching dies so no fussy cutting required. After die cutting, I assembled the spray and stamped a background with Uniko's Background Block Mid Century Linear in black. I didn't use the sentiment from the dahlia set but another Altenew one from I Adore You, white heat embossing on a black panel. A very quick and simple design with a little help from Altenew!

So where will the new colours take you? If you need some more inspiration please check out the rest of the team and our GD here. We'd love to see your takes in the gallery.

Joining in over at:-



Thursday, 28 August 2025

Final Week of Guesting at JUGS

 Afternoon, I'm here with a card made for my final week of guesting with the girls at JUGS. This week is stencil week and so I couldn't help myself and reached for the fab Christmas Layering Bauhaus Blocks stencil from Uniko. Then I thought why not combine it with the regular Layering Bauhaus Blocks set, win win in my view!


I've gone large for this card, a full A5 white base card with an A6 panel for the stencilling. 
To start I inked through the Christmas set onto the middle of my white A6 panel using Mowed Lawn, Candied Apple and Worn Lipstick Distress Inks, before filling in and around with a mix of the regular Bauhaus Stencil and Christmas one, keeping to the same colours. Just using these colours makes the standard stencil feel festive!

Once complete, the panel was trimmed to neaten up and double mounted onto some red and green card. A sentiment from one of my first ever Uniko purchases, not even sure of the name now but it's well used, was stamped with more Candied Apple and then embossed with clear super fine EP from WOW. I've learnt the hard way that stamping in a colour then adding clear EP is so much cleaner than using coloured EPs and easier on your pocket too!

So that's it, thanks to the girls at JUGS who've made me feel so welcome these past few weeks, as usual they have some fabulous ideas to inspire.
Looking forward to seeing you in the JUGS gallery.

Saturday, 23 August 2025

Uniko's VIP Facebook Challenge

 Morning all.

Since the11th of the month there's been a new challenge over on Uniko's FB VIP page. This time our theme is - 

ANYTHING GOES!

Here's my card using Originally Organic Flower Garden and a combination of Uniko sentiments.


I've used a mix of heat embossing and stamping with a water colour resist to create this little scene.
Looking forward to seeing your UNIKO products in the FBVIP gallery.

Joining in over at:-

Favourite colouring medium
For pretty floral scenes like this you can't beat watercolours. The soft blends you can achieve are perfect for backgrounds as well as the actual leaves and flowers, they create such an airy feel.

Thursday, 21 August 2025

Guesting at JUGS

Good afternoon, it's my 3rd week of guesting over at JUGS. It's Mood board week there and this is my take.





I focused on the blackboard and apple elements, creating this simple teacher thanks card. I know it's not the right time of year but it will come in for my Grandson next July!
I reached for my Clearly Besotted A Class Act stamp set, stamping one of the standing pupil characters along with the owl teacher, apple, the blackboard and sentiment.
After colouring with Copics, I then fussy cut out the elements, including the tiny apple! For the blackboard, I stamped the sentiment onto a piece of black card with Versamark and heat embossed with white EP. It was then trimmed down and added to the coloured easel over the top of the stamped board.
On a square panel I arranged the elements, sticking all but the owl flat and popping up her on some foam pads.
A small panel of yellow was added beneath the white square before adding to a small white square base card.

So how will you interpret the pic? As always the JUGS team have lots of fab ideas for you. Looking forward to seeing your makes in the gallery!

Joining in over at:-

Tuesday, 19 August 2025

Sailing By

Morning, time for a new challenge at Cardz4Guyz.
For the second of our now monthly challenges we would like to see your projects on the theme of:-

BOATS

I don't have too many boat images but I immediately thought of my cute little LOTV guy and his sailing boat.


This is another take on a Jill Foster sketch, using a Do Crafts EF,  a Memory Box happy die and the aforesaid LOTV Sailing By. 
After stamping the image, colouring with Copics and fussy cutting, I die cut the happy 3 times, colouring one layer with a matching Copic. I think it must have been a different card as it looks so much darker than the boy's shorts! I layered up the die cuts to give the happy a bit of extra dimension and strength and stamped a Uniko sentiment birthday onto a scrap of white card.
An A6 panel of white card was embossed with the EF, it reminds me of waves, which I then trimmed down and added to my white A6 base card. All the other elements were then glued on flat.

So that's all from me, but please visit the Cardz4Guyz blog to see what the rest of the team have come up with and then why not join in?