Tuesday, 3 October 2023

Autumnal Birthday Wishes

Good morning folks. I'm off shortly to a craft course over at fabulous garden near us. I've been to look around the Dorothy Clive gardens before, they are famous for azaleas in spring and acers in autumn, but never to take part in a craft class. I just found it advertised on the local town FB group last week and thought I'd see if there were any places left, luckily there were. As I said earlier, they are famous for the show of autumnal colour from their acer collection which is rather appropriate as the new challenge at Cardz4Guyz is:-

Autumn/Fall Colours - Shades of Brown 

Here's what I came up with based on a new to me technique I came across at the Group of Seven Cardmakers.

It also happens that over at JUGS it's their CASE a DT member week and I chose Bobby who used a similar technique to the girls at G7 Cardmakers.

For my card, I used a freebie EF and some Altenew inks which I smooshed onto a panel of MM paper. When dry I embossed the panel but I forgot to ink the EF with black ink before!! No worries, I replaced it into the now inked folder and embossed. The coverage was a bit patchy so repeated the process a couple of times. It was only after I'd trimmed my panel down that I realised that the black embossing was in a slightly different place to the original embossing, but I quite like the subtle embossing in the darker areas!

After the panel was trimmed down and glued to a cream base card, a sentiment strip cut from the same card using a Uniko sentiment and Altenew Mangrove Root ink was added.

So where will this new theme take you? We'd love to see your takes over in our gallery. There is more inspiration from the rest of the DT over on the C4G blog here.

Joining in over at:-



Autumn leaves, trees and berries

Monday, 2 October 2023

A Pile of Fun

Good evening.
As it's the beginning of a new month things are busy in my craft room. Tonight I'm sharing a card for the new October challenge at HLS Birthday using a fun MFT stamp set Piles of Fun.




My A6 kraft base was stamped all over with the leaf stamps in Altenew Sea Forest ink and the cute hedgie and leaf pile stamped onto some Copic friendly card, coloured with Copics and fussy cut.
The arched frame is MFT as is the sentiment banner, greeting stamped in the same Altenew Sea Forest. The reason I used a banner is because the text is slightly too large to be stamped directly onto my arched frame. The final component is a background panel of white inked with Mustard Seed and Spiced Marmalade DI. 
To assemble, I attached my pile of leaves to the back of the frame and added the whole lot with pads to my inked background, adding the hedgy on pads too. This was then added flat to my stamped, kraft base.
That's about it from me but there's lots more birthday inspiration over on the HLS Birthday page from the other members of the DT.

Joining in over at:-

Favourite Harvest Colours

I'm in agreement with Annette, Orange and Gold with the occasional hit of crimson are the colours of autumn, the leaves turning from green to yellow, gold and orange before they fall to the ground. Who doesn't love kicking through the crispy leaves in autumn?

Uniko October Release Sneak Peeks

Good morning and what better way to start off a new week and month, than with some new release sneak peeks from Uniko? 

First up a new addition to the Big n Bold sentiment series, one that will work by itself or even in combination with other previously released sets for more options. Perfect for the current autumn season and upcoming Thanksgiving holiday in the US.

Continuing the autumnal theme, this stamp set is another in the Serenade series.




How about a few snowflakes for those Christmas and winter projects, this one is another in the Framed series.





Finally for this release, how about a new floral.




So what do you think? We'd love to know what you are excited to see in action. Bev'll be back tomorrow with the first of the product introductions and hopefully the Uniko Brand Ambassadors and I will be joining in for our traditional Release Day Blog Hop at the end of the week.

All the products will be available 9am GMT Saturday 7th October 2023. 

Sunday, 1 October 2023

Color Hues #73

Good afternoon folks. 
It's now October, can you believe it, autumn is definitely here, I had my flu jab yesterday too. Anyway 1st of the month means it's time for a new colour combo from Color Hues
This time we are looking for the colours of Coral and Blue. Here's my take using Uniko's Pure Floral - Gerbera and an Altenew texture plate.
 

 It doesn't matter what blue you use so I went with a piece of dark blue I found in my stash and a couple of Altenew inks, Coral Berry and Coral Bliss, to paint the gold embossed gerbera.


Each element was stamped and embossed with gold EP before I squished the ink pads onto a large acrylic block to use as watercolours. This time I didn't use watercolour paper as I wasn't flooding the paper with water just ordinary white card, not my best Copic card as the paint would just puddle on the smooth surface!
I first added a pale wash over each petal and then added some darker shadows before using a fine brush to add veins to the petals once the first layer was dry.
I fussy cut the bloom and 3 leaves arranging them onto a panel of card I'd preciously stamped and embossed with a sentiment and run through my Big Shot with the coverplate. This was then added to a matching blue base card.

So where will you go with these new Color Hues colours? The team have some fab inspiration so why not check them out here if you need more inspiration? We also have THREE GDs this time too, Fran, Trina, and Jolanda, so don't forget to visit them too.

Tuesday, 19 September 2023

A Rainbow of Stars

Good morning and welcome to a post for the new challenge at Cardz4Guyz.
This time our theme is:-

STARS

Christmas or otherwise this is quite a broad theme. I had lots of ideas but I kept coming back to a card I remember by my old Uniko buddie Sarah, (Sazzle Dazzle). It also appealed to me because I knew a certain grandson would love it too!


I chose a rainbow of inks from my Altenew selection and went ahead to stamp the large stars onto a panel of A6 white card, infilling the gaps with a few smaller stars in black, all the stars are from Uniko's Background Builder Seeing Stars stamp set.  Once I had covered enough of the panel, I stamped a Wplus9 happy and fussy cut it out. I do have the die cut but it isn't the same as the stamp and anyway I wanted a white border around the text. The birthday from the same Wplus9 set was stamped on a scrap of red and embossed with white EP. All the elements of the sentiment were then added to my panel with foam tape.

So where will you go with this new theme? Just keep it suitable for a male and you've cracked it but if you need more inspiration check out the rest of the team here.

Joining in over at:-


Wk 746 Masculine

Monday, 18 September 2023

Uniko Brand Ambassador Inspiration

Morning all. 
I'm up over at Uniko with a little bit of Christmas card inspiration using the Season Of Beauty stamp set.


All the details are on the Uniko blog here.