Melissa, a tribute

Just over a fortnight ago, I was checking my phone for messages as my husband and I travelled home over the Pennine hills. We'd visited our son, the OH had checked in at the office and I'd been for some crafty fun with my bestie. Just as we dropped down into Lancashire, I checked one particular message that left me shocked and disbelieving, one of my STAMPloration teammates, Melissa, MainesLanes, had passed away.

Unlike many of my DT teammates, I had actually met Melissa and her lovely family at the HLS retreat in Swindon in 2016.
Melissa was then living in Germany with her forces husband Chris and family and was looking forward to returning to Maine in the near future. They had driven enmasse, including their house rabbit, to meet up with everyone in Swindon for a weekend of crafty fun before heading off for a sightseeing holiday.
From that brief meeting it was evident that she had a wonderful and supportive family and I was so pleased to hear that she had recently, finally made it back to Maine, where they were in the process of setting up a small holding.

Many of you may know her from her blog Honey Bee Lane and her stints on various challenge blogs, AAA, HLS, as well as the STAMPlorations MM team.

She was in her prime and finally back in Maine living her dream, which is why I was so shocked when I read Shery's news.

Melissa loved butterflies, so Shery decided that our tribute to her should be themed along those lines, in a celebration of her life.

Here is my tribute.

If you would like to celebrate Melissa's life with us, you would be very welcome to add your project to the STAMPlorations post.

All details of how you can participate are on the STAMPlorations blog here.

Penguin Tag Christmas

Hi and welcome to a post to announce the start of a brand new challenge over at ATSM.

Here's my inspiration for you.

Our theme this week is -

My mojo fled out the window this week, I started with a stinker of a cold a week ago and am finding it difficult to throw off, so I went looking for inspiration out there in blogland.

So after checking out a few challenges, I came up with the above card.

The start was the layout at Sketch Saturday followed closely by the girls at LIM wanting tags. CAS Christmas wanted birds so that sent me hunting through my stash. It was a toss up between penguins and owls and eventually I went with this little chap from MFT.

I started by cutting a tag with my Poppy Stamps Stitched Main Street tag die set from a panel of card. I then embossed the panel less the tag with an EF of unknown origin. The space left by the tag was filled with a scrap of DP from the stash before the panel was attached to a matching base card.

On a scrap of card, the fire and penguin were stamped, coloured with Copics and then fussy cut.

To finish a small silver twine bow and sentiment were added to the tag before adding to the card at a jaunty angle and adding in the fussy cut elements.

So what will your project be, we'd love to see it in the gallery, but if you need more inspiration the DT have more ideas for you here.

Joining in over at:-

    

   

                                                  Christmas

Fooling the eye with Uniko's Christmas Pop

Hi peeps.

Today sees the start of a brand new challenge at Cardz4Guyz -

TRIANGLES

I went with a Christmas theme!

Using Uniko's Christmas Pop stamp set and some rainbow coloured inks makes this OL card, really quick and simple. Your eye is fooled into thinking that these simple triangles are trees by the addition of a star atop and the fact that we assume that Christmas trees are roughly this shape!

More details on the stamp set and ink colours can be found on the Uniko blog.

More triangle inspiration from the DT can be found on the Cardz4Guyz challenge blog.

Joining in over at:-

CASe the card at LIM

Hi folks. Back again with a card I made at the weekend for a DT post but decided that it didn't fulfil the brief. So I'm sharing it today instead.

It's a very CAS card based on the fab card over at Less is More by the GD Rebecca.

Her's is a birthday card but the colours shouted Christmas to me.

I started by cutting out the SEASON'S from a STAMPlorations Season's Greetings die and trimmed the extra bits away. I started here as I wanted to see how to place the stamped elements of the design. 

Using the pine branch stamp from a Cardio branch set, I stamped three of them, embossing with sparkly gold EP around the small greetings from Uniko, stamped in matching red ink.The Season's die cut was popped up on a red fun foam die cut layer, a few gold sequins complete. 

Very quick and very CAS!

I'm joining in over at:-

   

                                                       AG

V is for  Very Quick

Welcome Baby

Hi and welcome to  post to announce the start of a brand new challenge at ATSM.

Here's my inspiration card.

This week our challenge is to -

So we want to see you colouring in some way or another. Make your mark with pencils, pens, sponges, watercolours, inks, etc.

To be honest I made a card then realised it only had stamping on it so made another with a little bit of colouring as well as stamping!

I was inspired by the photo over at Fusion, especially the flower draped letters.

I used my Altenew alphabet dies to cut out the letters, from a panel of white card, then I popped them back into the panel ready to add some colour. I found some tiny flowers from my stash and went ahead and stamped them with Altenew's Puffy Heart and Purple Wine ink. The tiny leaf stems were stamped with Altenew Olive and Bamboo ink. Some buds were stamped in Memento Daffodil before I went in with my Copic markers to give a little bit of shape and definition as well as adding stems, flower centers and tiny blossom with more Copic markers.

The pink frame was cut with a Sugar Pea die from the same white card then inked with the Puffy Heart ink and a blending tool. Must admit I thought it would be easier to apply and I found it difficult to blend, unlike DI or DOx, perhaps it was my cardstock. Anyway I persevered before adding a panel cut from more white and stamping the sentiment from Mama Elephant. 

The die cut letters were then removed from the panel and glued carefully under the sentiment. 

I had run out of baby cards and as my kids have friends of that age I needed some more from the stash. I did think I could add the baby's name under when I needed it.

OK, that's it from me but please check out the rest of the team here.

Joining in over at:-

Pastel Thanks

Evening peeps.

It's the start of a new month so it means a new challenge over at HLS CAS.

Here is my card for your inspiration.

This month our theme is -

There are lots of way to use vellum in your card designs but for mine I went with a die cut panel that overlays a coloured base card. My card is one of some MB ones I won ages ago.

Vellum is tricky to adhere so if it is a large panel as here, you need to keep the glue under your elements or use specialist glue dots as I did here. My spray of flowers uses HLS Doodled Blooms stamp set, white heat embossed on white card, then coloured with Zig marker pens, before fussy cutting them out. To anchor the spray, I used some die cut zigzag strips and heat embossed a greeting from the same set.

OK, that's it from me. Check out the vellum inspired gallery from the rest of the DT for more fab takes on the theme. 

We'd love to see your vellum creations in the gallery over at HLS, so why not join us this month? 

Joining in over at:-

CUTplorations' challenge is back

We're back with the first of the new season's challenges over at STAMPlorations.

Today sees the start of the latest challenge at CUTplorations. Things are a little different this year as we will only be having one post a month for each of the STAMPlorations challenges followed by a general reminder post mid month. 

So here is my seasonal take on this month's inspiration pic.

image source: Ilaria Bagnasco

To start, I took my Thankful and Blessed stamp set and created the layout using fussy cut masks along the way. The image was then coloured with Copic markers and my panel cut with the middle die from the Crazy-Double-Running-Stitch-Rectangle-Nesting-Dies set and the sentiment, Thankful-Word-Die, was cut from the panel. I cut a few more of the THANKFUL from scrap card, glued 2 to the back of the one cut from the original panel. On the back of the die cut rectangle, I laid some double sided tape across the back of the opening, then flipped it over and placed a third thankful in the gap, I was then able to place the tiny bits left over from the original thankful back. The layered sentiment was then glued on top. The whole panel was then attached to a white base card on pads to finish.
OK, that's all from me but we'd love to see what you will make, so why not link up your project for the chance to win. All Ts and Cs can be found on the STAMPlorations blog here.

Joining in over at:-


Die cut, pumpkin, green

     
Autumn Glory                                                 Autumn /Fall