Sparkle and Shimmer

Good afternoon folks.

It's Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK and of course it's been raining, so I have had a fabulous excuse to retreat to my craft room and play. Al is busy crafting some speaker boxes for our son who is creating his own cinema experience in his lounge, built in speakers for surround sound, drop down projector and screen, so after a little bit of fettling in the house I sat down this aft to play too.

Seeking inspiration I came across this week's challenge at Muse. Now I haven't played there for quite some time for one reason or another but as it's Ardyth's 50th birthday, Happy Birthday Ardyth, I thought I would join in.

She's asking us to CASE one of her cards as a twist to the normal Muse so I went for a look on her fabulous blog and then came up with this.

I used this card as my inspiration plus the latest challenges at Paper Players and Less is More.

I've noticed that Ardyth likes to use square card bases but I must admit to using the rectangular format so my frame is a nod to this, it also matches the sketch at Paper Players! I used the same Altenew Beautiful Days set and the silver, white, blue colours but used the shimmer effect I saw Jennifer McGuire use here. I've wanted to try this shimmer technique for awhile and as the challenge at LiM is Shimmer I thought why not.

So that's about it from me folks. Hope the weather improves as we are getting a visit from our Grandson soon.

I'd like to join in over at:-

CASing Ardyth

     

Love is like a butterfly

Good morning, hope I find you well.

Over at Cardz4Galz we have a brand new challenge for you. Our theme for you this time is to make a project -

INSPIRED BY A SONG

Here is my card.

I saw the challenges over at Paper Players and Stamping Sensations and the song - Love is like a butterfly wouldn't stop buzzing around my head!

It was used in one of my fave sitcoms of the late 70's early eighties as their theme tune, Butterflies staring Wendy Craig as well as the Dolly original.

I borrowed this SU butterfly from my bestie Di to make a card for my daughter who loves these colours and butterflies. 

To start, I stamped the butterfly at a jaunty angle on a white card panel, then embossed it in silver. I then placed a rectangular die cut over and traced around it with a pencil, then trimmed the parts that I wanted to extend over the die cut rectangle. This allowed me to work these parts over the top of the die so that when cut they would remain intact. Once done I washed in some DIs in Salty Ocean and Wilted Violet and stamped the greeting. The completed panel was popped up on pads.

Please check out the rest of the DT here and why not join in, we'd love to see what you come up with.

I'd like to join in over at -

    

                                                    Butterflies, fairies, fantasy

Joy to the world

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

Here's my inspiration card.

This is because the latest challenge is -

I know my daughter hates it when I post a Christmas card so early in the year but it does mean I'm not madly making them at the last minute in November and December! I think it is a particular good idea this year as I think I may be a little busy towards the end of this year, wink, wink.

To inspire me I had a root through some ideas I'd saved awhile back and saw a card using a monochrome snowflake bauble on grey here. Loved the tone on tone effect with the contrast sentiment.

I've had this freebie bauble die for quite awhile awaiting the perfect opportunity. This was it and I decided to go with a navy option with white and silver accents.

To start I cut a panel of navy card with a MFT blueprints die and then the bauble with snowflake pattern in the same blue card and black fun foam. I glued the two together to get the dimension then added some fine silver chord from the stash and the die cut JOY (a Tim Holtz alphabet strip from Sizzix). I added an extra silver die cut snowflake to finish. The sentiment is from Uniko and was stamped and embossed with white EP. The bauble was attached to the blue panel and a bow from the same chord finished it off. The blue panel was then popped up on a panel of fun foam over a white base.

For more holiday inspiration check out the rest of the team here.

Joining in over at:-

K - Keep it Simple

Precipitation

(snowflake on Joy and bauble)

No option this time

Urban Graffiti

Morning all.

Just popping by to let you know that there is a brand new challenge starting over at Cardz4Guyz.

We are running our challenges on a two weekly basis over the summer so hope you've been waiting for a new one to start. Our new theme is -

FAVOURITE COLOUR COMBO

Now I don't really have a go to combo for my masculine cards, I tend to take inspiration from around the challenge blog community, but when I saw that the latest colour challenge at JUGS was navy, turquoise and lime green I was away. I love this cool, crisp combo and together with the urban theme at Inkspirational, I came up with this card.

  

When I saw the theme at Ink, I immediately thought of graffiti and then skyscrapers, but I just kept with just the graffiti element for this. There are lots of graffiti style cards around on Pinterest such as here, I even made this one awhile back using the same stamp set from Woodware. This time I used my Tim Holtz Sizzix wall EF instead of the stencil to create the background.

After stamping and colouring with Copics, I doodled some of my own graffiti with a white gel pen and a black outliner, then added a sentiment and some splodges of ink and some arrows before wiping the front of my EF with Hickory Smoke DI and running it through the BigShot. Carefully removing the panel I trimmed the embossed panel and mounted it onto navy card before mounting on a plain white base card.

For more inspiration check out the rest of the DT here and why not share your favourite colour combo with us this fortnight.

I'd like to join in over at:-

   

A Warm Snuggly Quilt

Good morning all.
I'm here bright and breezy on a Saturday morning to share a card I made for Less is More.
I was honoured to be their April winner and the girls asked me to GD this week.
Here is my card.

Can you guess this week's theme? It is -

I was thinking of going down the hexagonal shaped card route at first but in the end went with this quilt design. I'm really a novice when it comes to quilting, I do enjoy making the designs up but I've kept the finished products to simple cushion covers. I have a half made bean bag cover in the cupboard that was supposed to be for my Grandson but I couldn't figure how to finish it! I blame it all on my bestie Di who got me into quilting after she took it up when she retired and gave me some of her patterns and now my stash of fabric is nearly as big as my stash of DP. It's a good job the quilt shop closed in town and is now a 20 minute car journey away!

Anyway, to make a quilt you cut up fabric into geometric shapes and then reassemble into patterns and as the cue word over at CASology is warm, the two things together sparked this idea.

I started by cutting a panel from off white card using a Port Sunny purchase from MFT to create my quilt shape, then cut the stitched panel from the center using another MFT Blueprints die. I kept the colourway simple, using the warm colours, orange, red and yellow, seen in Time Out's challenge and cut the shapes out of scrap, replacing the pieces flat into the panel. The sentiment, stamped in brown, is from a Christmas set but I think works well here. A quick and simple card that can be made in lots of different colours.

Please check out the rest of the LIMettes here for more fabulous geometric inspiration.

I'd like to join in over at:-

Love the design but it was the colours that stuck in my mind

Homemade embossing plate

Good afternoon folks.

The contractors have FINISHED, whoo who!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The last of the machines went this morning. I haven't been out yet to see what the drive is like but to give them credit they had replaced ALL the broken fence posts, even if some had rotted before they came. At lunch there was still a trench from the road to our pond that they cut for drainage and the track had some interesting things poking out, such as screws, glass, ceramic tile and metal spokes which I removed but at least they are not here. Al is keeping the odd bit of evidence close to his chest, not sure what he's going to do with it now. I hope that the house hasn't suffered from the vibrating roller as sometimes my feet were buzzing with the vibrations as I sat here typing!

Anyway it's time to remind you that there is still time left to enter this month's sketch/theme challenge over at STAMPlorations. Here is my inspiration for you.

This time as well as using the sketch I also used the theme of Alphabet. 

It's all down to you, choose one or the other or like me both.

I was struggling with the theme as I don't have many stamps that are alphabets but then I decided to make my own embossing plate using various alphabets and word dies (eg Warm Winter Wishes, amazing) in my stash.

To start I chose a variety of fonts and cut a random number of words and letters from scraps of white card. The words were cut up so that I could use the single letters, then with the alphabet die cuts I arranged then on a A6 piece of card, a bit like in the sketch. When glued and dry, I made a sandwich of plate, embossing mat, card panel, embossing plate (textured face down) and finally my 2nd plate. After running that through my Big Shot I had an embossed panel I could use but decided that the contrast under the stamped flowers was a bit too subtle so inked over with some weathered Wood DI.

On a separate panel, I stamped and embossed in white the flower from the Bloom Sketches set and watercoloured them with my Zig Clean Colour Brush pens. To make the top panels I drew a line where I wanted the embossed panel to show and trimmed the middle away. I then popped these up on pads and added the silver letters, cut using Magical and wonderful dies. I used the M from Magical and the u and w from the other, turning the w to make an m.

That's it from me, but please check out the rest of the team here where you'll also find all the Ts and Cs.

Don't forget you can get 20% discount when you order anything from the shop by quoting my discount code.

I'd like to join in over at:-

    

LIM meets Paper Players

Evening all.

It's been a bit wet here today so my veg patch has taken a back seat. At least I managed to get my spuds planted as Al managed to finish filling the latest of my raised beds on Friday. I can't really complain as the soil was quite parched. Anyway as I had a few moments to myself I decided to join in over at a couple of challenges with this card.

Over at LiM, they want to see one layer cards using circles and/or stripes and PP want us to use red, orange, turquoise and orange. I saw this card on Pinterest and decided I liked the look of it but after looking in my stash for some circle stamps I could only find a couple so I decided to use a stencil and draw them. I also liked the idea of making them look like they were popped up off the front as in the original but keep it one layer. 

I've done similar designs with balloons, first using die cuts then using stamps so this was along the same lines but this time I added some shadows  to the right of the coloured circles with Copic pens to give a 3D effect. The colours I used were the nearest match in Copics to the PP ones.

The sentiment is from a free set in a mag.

The weather looks a bit wet tomorrow so I suppose I better get some housework done while I can. :( 

Joining in over at:-

     

16/5 Sorry, it appears it is spots and stripes!                                                   

Magical Birthday Wishes

Good morning  folks.

I'm back online thank goodness!

The contractors struck again late on Thursday as they were putting their machines away for the night. Somehow they managed to pull the telephone line down that runs across the drive! They appear to be in the final throws of their work and were resurfacing the drive at long last and the arm of one of the diggers caught in the wire! We have telephone and internet connection over that so we were incommunicado for quite some time! Anyway it appears we are now back thanks to the prompt attention of BT.

Today, I'm popping by to share a card I made as GD over at Challenge Up your Life.

This time their theme is -

BLOSSOM

I was asked to GD for this challenge as I'd previously won their colour challenge with this card, but here is the one I made for this challenge.

I've made quite a few blossom cards over the last few years, mainly using die cuts, so for this I used a couple of the tiny flowers from Altenew's Vintage Flowers set. I'd seen a fab card on Pinterest here that set me off along this route. I loved the gold embossing but I preferred to use a more realistic pink colour. 

Using Memento Rich Cocoa, I inked the stem up them removed a lot of the ink to leave a paler but textured branch on the die cut panel. The blossom images were then stamped first in Memento Angel Pink, the details in Rose Bud 2nd generation and then the centers in just Rose Bud. I managed to loose one of the really tiny centers of one of the small flowers, so had to substitute that with a Zig marker pen!

The magical die cut is from STAMPlorations and the stamped sentiment is Wplus9 stamped in Rich Cocoa. I also added a few extra branches with a brown Zig Marker.

OK, that's about it from me, please visit the CUYL blog to check out the DT's inspiration

Joining in over at:-

     

   

No toppings this time!                                                     

E is for

Morning all.

Just stopping by to announce the start of a new challenge over at the Alphabet Blog Challenge.

This time it is 

E for ENCHANTED CREATURES

Not really my thing but there were some free stamps in  Creative Stamper this month that just fit the bill! So here is my enchanted creature, a unicorn.

After stamping and colouring with Copics, I fussy cut the unicorn and mounted him on a layered cloud over a smooshed panel. I made the panel a while ago by adding some platinum Inka Gold wax to a craft mat along with some DI and spritzing with water, then dragging a piece of watercolour paper through it, gives a lovely shimmery look to the finished panel. The sentiment was stamped and embossed with white and holographic EP.

Check out the rest of the DT here for more enchanted inspiration.

Joining in over at:-

Fantasy



Fantasy

Caseing Karen

Morning all.

Over at Cardz4Galz it's time for a brand new challenge.

This time would like you to -

ADD SOME TEXTURE

There are lots of ways to do that, embossing folders, embellishments, textured ribbon etc.

For mine I kept it very CAS, using my favourite linen textured card, a pleated background and a stitched frame.

I took my inspiration from the Flower challenge where they are asking you to CASE a DT member. I chose Karen as I was intrigued by her background panel. As she did, I inked an acrylic block with DI and dragged it down the white card panel before folding it to get the pleated effect. The colour looks a little bleached out here but is much more textured in real life! The only suitable flower die I had was this Memory Box poppy one which I trimmed down and popped it between the panel and a stitched frame. The sentiment was from Altenew's Extra Special set.

For more textured inspiration check out the rest of the girls here.

Joining in over at:-

Port Sunlight Goodies

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

This week it is our Anything Goes challenge.

Here is my inspiration card for you based on a couple of ongoing challenges.

I used a couple of my recent purchases from my trip to the stamping festival at Port Sunlight, from Uniko and Altenew. I was rather peeved at first when the one stall I really wanted to visit was absent due to illness but I did find a fab new one to me where I managed to get a couple of Altenew sets and some dies so it wasn't all bad! I managed a sneek peek at the new release from Uniko before I left home, so Bev was next on my list to visit. I bought a couple of background stamps and the lovely lily  set but for this decided to use the Adore You for the flowers and the Halftone Background Blocks. 

I stamped the background in Memento London Fog and stamped and embossed in white on vellum and white card the leaves and flowers. The flowers I coloured with my Zig pens but I left the leaves plain before fussy cutting them out and arranging over the panel. The sentiment is from another PS purchase Altenew's Extra Special stamped in the same grey and embossed in clear EP on a little strip and placed under the flowers. 

For more inspiration please pop along to the blog and check out the rest of the DT.

I'd like to join in over at:-

     

Go Wild!

Good morning and welcome. 

The week has whizzed by and it's time for a brand new challenge over at Cardz4Guyz. This is the last of our weekly challenges for the moment as we are going two weekly over the summer period. 

This week we would like to see your projects on the theme of 

JUNGLE FUN

Here is my card for your inspiration.

For this my starting point was a stamp set I got free with Papercraft Essentials a couple of months back.

I started by stamping out a couple of the vines in two shades of green and the cheeky monkey, which I coloured with Copics and fussy cut them out. The greenery I stamped, coloured with Copics and fussy cut from a variety of stamps in the stash and added some die cuts from green card scraps as well. The banner was stamped with a couple of stamps from the set too.

To assemble I started by embossing a panel of kraft card, then inked a panel with Broken China DI and a cloud mask to suggest sky and die cut a frame from green, assembling the foliage on top followed by the banner.

OK, that's it from me, see you in a fortnight for our next challenge and winners post here.

I'd like to join in over at:-





Anything Goes