My final week with the girls at JUGS

Morning all.

This is the last of my early morning posts as my stint as GD over at JUGS has come to a close. Thanks for asking me girls, it's been a blast.

So without further ado, here is my final card for your inspiration.

Our theme for this week is -

My stripes are stamped using Uniko's Background Blocks Stripes and Altenew Silver Stone ink. The rose is also Altenew, Rose Flurries. The pieces were die cut from white card then coloured with Copic markers, BG10, BG01 and BG05 for the flower and YG61, 63 and YG 17 for the leaves. The detail on the leaves was also Copic marker, YG 67. The sentiment from Sugar Pea was stamped and embossed with white EP and the die cut, also from Sugar Pea was cut from a scrap of the same white card as the base. The design was completed with a few tiny PPP sequins.

So that's it from me but please check out the girls at JUGS for more stripe inspired projects.

Joining in over at:-

   

Copper tints

Morning all.

The forecast for the whole of this week has been for sunny days followed by clear crisp evenings. so hopefully the hedgerows may soon be turning their thoughts to shedding leaves and producing the glorious colours of autumn. So far the hedgerows are rather green, except for the berries.

So here at Cardz4Guyz our thoughts are also turning to autumn for this fortnight's challenge -

AUTUMN / FALL LEAVES

For my interpretation I sort of turned it on it's head!

I went with the coppery tones of autumn and a silhouetted leafy branch.

CAS on Friday want cards made with copper, black and white, so that was my starting point.

Copper in cards reminded me of my bloggy friend Loll who loves to use it in hers, so this is a homage to her in a way.

I don't have any copper metal sheet but I do have loads of foil, some alcohol inks and some Inka gold copper wax.

To start I covered a panel of card with foil and added coppery tones of Copic reinker. When dry, I added some of the wax before running it through the Big Shot with a CC textured bark EF.

The top panel was cut with an Avery Elle die but for some reason my 'copper' panel was a tad too small for the opening. So I used a smaller rectangle die from MFT to cut another frame. This time it looked too plain, so I placed the second under the first and made a recessed frame for my black die cut leaf spray. 

To the bottom right of the frame, I embossed an LOTV sentiment with copper EP and mounted the frame onto a white base card.

I used a SU thinlet to cut the leaf spray from black card and fun foam, glued them together, but where the leaflets sit on the frame, I cut that bit of foam away, then added the whole spray to the opening.

OK, that's it from me but please check out the rest of the team here and why not prove to yourself that making cards for the men in your life is not as difficult as you think.

I'd like to join in over at:-

Copper - black and white

Autumn Trees

Good morning.
I'm here bright and early with my penultimate card as GD at JUGS.
Here's my inspiration for you for this week.

This week it is the Photo inspiration showing some wonderful autumn trees, from which I took my inspiration.



You could of course use what ever you want from this autumnal pic.

I had a trawl through my stash for inspiration and came across this tree stamp in a bag of red rubber ones I picked up at Port Sunlight a couple of years ago in a bargain bucket. They could be from Chocolate Baroque or Crafty Individuals! Anyway I chose this stand of trees and decided to use the inking with markers technique I used on my lily card here.
I chose a panel of rough watercolour paper for this as I was going to add quite a bit of water and the undulations in the paper add to the overall effect. Although an unmounted stamp, it's red rubber so I had to attach it temporarily to my MISTI with a Pritt stick before I went ahead and inked it up.

Using an assortment of autumnal coloured Zig Markers, I scribbled over the trees and then lightly spritzed them before stamping. To move the colour around more I went in with a waterbrush and blended the colour, right up to the edges.
When still damp but not wet I added yellow ochre to my stamp with a Zig, and stamped again. The colour bled slightly but retained enough definition, especially around the edges. To complete I inked up with olive green marker and repeated. For shadow and more definition in places I went in with a mid grey green brush straight onto the image, leaving gaps to give a more realistic look, to suggest foliage in front of the branches. .

My frame was cut using an MFT die and the sentiment, LOTV, was stamped with Altenew Moss ink.
The frame was popped up on fun foam over the trees before being glued to a matching square base card.

So, please check out the girls over at JUGS and join us. What in the photo will inspire you?

Joining in over at:-

    


My choice - Die Cuts and Watercolour

Uniko challenge

Morning peeps.
The year is whizzing by and it's time for a brand new challenge over at Uniko.
This time we have a really simple theme with a little twist. Here's my take.

Can you guess the theme? It's -

For my inspiration, I was drawn to the colour of the leaves in this glorious pic.
After such a hot summer the leaves are just turning crispy and missing out on the glorious colour changes we normally see, though there are plenty of berries in the hedgerows. The rowans, hollies and hawthorns are laden with bright red berries so from a distance you get a shimmer of red over the whole hedge. The fieldfares, thrushes, blackbirds and others will have a feast! Conkers were raining down on Wednesday with the very strong winds courtesy of Storm Ali and so was the beech mast. In fact some landed on my windscreen as I drove to Sainsbugs and an acorn or some such landed with a fair old ping on the card roof too!

Anyway back to the card. I started by dripping some Copic refill ink onto Yupo paper and left it to dry. Think I was a little too generous with the ink as it left ridges on the panel as it dried.
When dry, I used the Nature's Treasures II stencil with Dreamweaver gold embossing paste to create my  pattern. It took awhile as I had to leave each leaf stalk time to dry, if the stencil comes into contact with the paste when even damp it lifts it off. It did happen to me but I managed to hide the offending boo boo under the sentiment strip! I even quite liked how the texture showed through from the background panel in the end.

As I said earlier my gold embossed sentiment strip, using So Much, was laid across the completed panel, carefully masking my 'tiny' error!

My second card uses the same stencil but this time I used DOx ink in Spiced Marmalade, Fossilized Amber and Abandoned Coral, to colour a white panel. The Camouflaged HELLO was cut from the inked panel and again from brown fun foam before replacing all the bits back into the spaces on the panel after the Beautiful script was stamped. A few sequins complete the card. Very simple to do.

OK, that's it from me but please check out the team here as well as our GD for the month, the wonderfully talented Hannelie at Desert Diva

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You have until midnight GMT on Friday 26th October to enter and the winner will be announced on Friday 2nd November, 8.00am GMT

Check out the Uniko blog for all the Ts and Cs.

I'd like to join in over at:-

  
Hope stencils apply too!

Using markers to stamp

Hi and welcome to a post to announce the start of a brand new challenge over at ATSM.
Here is my card for your inspiration.

This week our theme is-

Now you may at first glance wonder where I'm coming from. The overall impression of this montage are shades of green and blue, so where do orange flowers come in? Well look closely at the top right hand pic and you can see a bunch of orange flowers in a vase against a splattery blue picture in a frame!

I know, I was going to go with the lime green and turquoise vibe but I wanted to use a flower stamp for the challenge over at CAS Mixed Media and once I'd spied the orange my eyes just kept heading there!

The stamp is a NEBUS STAMPlorations one featuring lilies. The stamp reminded me of some day lilies we had in our old garden years ago. They were a lovely shade of orange so I had to go with them.

On a piece of white MM paper, I position the clean stamp on the panel and closed the MISTI, then using an orange Zig marker I inked the large bloom and stamped. It was rather tricky but I got most of the image on my panel so I could use a waterbrush to move the colour over the petals. I repeated the process for all the flowers and then the leaves. I wasn't satisfied with the pale green colour so added some darker green to the stamp and repeated. When almost dry I inked the leaves and parts of the flowers with an Olive Green Zig marker and stamped in the detail.
Masking off the flowers I then splattered two shades of blue Zig over the die cut panel. Think I went a bit mad but there you are, can't take it off again! I mounted the panel on somefun foam and then onto a 5 x 7 base card and stamped the HLS sentiment in Olive Grove Memento and embossed it with Semi dull EP.

OK, that's all from me but please check out the rest of the DT and join in.

Joining in over at:-


My choices Die cut, embossed sentiment, watercolour

Uniko Blog Hop, revisiting all over stamps and stencils

Over at Uniko on non - release months like this, Bev and the Design Team look back at a previously released product and give it some more love together with a Blog hop and GIVEAWAY!

Usually it's just one product that was released the previous year or a once favourite that hasn't seen much air time. However, this time Bev couldn't decide on the product, so as a team we randomly selected a stamp set and then went a little polka dot crazy and added in some popular sentiment sets too!

I went totally polka dot crazy with this card for my daughter's Brother in Law's forthcoming nuptials in the Big Apple. She's not big on flowers, so requested something that was more suitable for an urban style wedding.

On an A6 panel of white I inked through the stencil in an arc with a Versamark pad, before embossing with silver EP. I then moved the stencil around and repeated, 1st with Silver Pearl EP, then Hologram Sparkle EP and finally with Memento London Fog. The sentiment from Birthday Wishes was also stamped in the grey ink but embossed with a clear EP. 

I wanted to have a hint to the NY event, so added a skyline with 3 strips of a die cut in shades of grey card that matched the confetti effect of the stencilling.

My finished panel was trimmed and then added to another of silver glitter paper, before beiging glued to a 5 x 7 white base card.

My second card uses the two Simply Said Blocks sets for an all over background pattern.

Using Autumnal colours I stamped my brick background using 5 of the blocks, Thanks. Thank You, Hello, Smile and Just a Note. The thanks was then cut from the finished panel with an alphabet die and again from brown fun foam. Before replacing the thanks into the die cuts, I stamped the 'You're Awesome' in Brown and heat embossed it with clear EP. The stamped die cuts were glued onto the foam ones then replaced into the spaces. The whole lot was mounted onto a white basecard, 

You don't have to use the thanks idea, different blocks would work just as well with a different die cut word or phrase.

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

Bev
Carol 

Izzy 

Jane 
Julie - that's me
Linda

Lindsey

Rahmat
Wiebke 

Comment on your way around for the chance to win a Uniko £20 eGift Certificate, you have until midnight BST Saturday 22nd Sept 2018 to comment.

I'm joining in over at:-

Went with the orangey colours from the photo

Something beginning with B

Bricks, blocks and brown

Guesting over at LIM

Morning again friends.

I'm back to share a card I made for today's new challenge over at Less is More where I'm guesting.

Can you guess the theme?

Well it's one layer week and the theme is:-

Oh no I hear you cry, but hold on. OLcards just need a bit of planning and are really no harder than other kinds, so go on have a go!

I started by deciding on my layout on a piece of scrap paper before going ahead with the real thing.

I went with Altenew Amazing You as well as their September colour challenge colours.

Instead of using black ink to stamp, I went with Memento London Fog, embossed with WOW Semi dull EP as I wanted to use watercolours, masking with fussy cut Post it masks as I went.

My card is just bog standard premium card and is fine for watercolouring so long as you don't over work it. If you do, it becomes all rough and messy as the fibers breakdown with too much water.

I chose to work with DIs for this, basically because as I was too lazy to ferret out my watercolour pans from the bottom of the drawer! The blooms were coloured with Wilted Violet and Picked Raspberry and the leaves with a mix of Mowed Lawn, Twisted Citron and Peeled Paint.

I wanted a fairly airy sentiment so went with a Marion Emberson one from Personal Impressions, stamped in black.

So what will you come up with, check out the rest of the LIM ladies here for some fab OL inspiration.

Joining in over at:-

Flowers

       

Congrats to you both

Morning and welcome to my 3rd post as GD over at JUGS.

Here's my card for you for this week's colour challenge.

I chose green for my optional colour.

My son is of an age when his friends and colleagues are getting married so it's been Mum, have you got a card ...... .

Well, I decided to use that request as my inspiration using the colours of the challenge, my extra colour had to be green for the foliage. 

After a traumatic wait for my Concord and 9th prize and almost £15 in import VAT and handling, I thought I better use it! As it was from a guy, I thought I would keep it pretty simple with just a few PPP sequins added.

The background was stamped on white using Memento London Fog and trimmed down to fit. On a separate scrap of card I stamped just one of the bouquets and die cut it before stamping in the foliage and flowers. A separate die cut flower was cut and stamped with Abandoned Coral DOx 1st and 2nd generation and some extra green ferny branches coloured with Altenew's Parrot and Olive and added to the bouquet.

The sentiment panel was stamped with a greeting from HLS in London Fog and a XCut Congrats coloured with the same Abandoned Coral. I decided to pop the finished die cut up on fun foam for added dimension.

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

It's a busy day here on my blog, so I'll be back again in a few hours with some more inspiration.

Joining in over at:-

AG

Sailing by to wish you ...........

Morning all.

It's time for a brand new challenge over at Cardz4Guyz.

This week our there is:-

ALL AT SEA

Here is my take on it.

I used the sketch at AAA and the Woodware set Sailing By.

With a small black ink pad, I inked the lighthouse part of the large stamp and stamped on white card, then coloured with Copics and a little white gel pen for the waves.

My porthole was made using two Avery Elle Double pierced circle dies and matching white card, glued over the trimmed down image. A few shaped, punched circles added to the porthole effect.

The sentiment is also from the set but as I only wanted the words not the frame and knot, I used my Zig pens to ink up the words before stamping onto a 5 x 5 white base card. My porthole, popped up on pads was then attached.

So what will you come up with?

Go on have a go, making masculine cards isn't that difficult, honestly! Keeping it CAS is a great way to make a masculine card.

Check out the DT here for more sea inspired cards.

Joining in over at :-

     

Stretching your dies

Afternoon peeps.

I was lucky enough to win a gift voucher in Altenew's July Challenge and I bought the Fantasy Florals dies. I must admit it was a hard decision as to which items to put in my basket but decided on die cuts as they can be so versatile. 

Instead of cutting out the separate sections of the flower from card I used kraft foam and turned them into stamps!

Here is what I ended up with.

After stamping the base shape, using Memento Angel Pink, I added the 2nd with 2nd generation Rose Bud and the final layer was stamped with Rose Bud, just as it comes. I quite like the blotchy look of the large leaf clusters which I stamped with Altenew Olive with some hand drawn veining using Moss. It was missing something so using a couple of stamps that came free in a mag, I added 3 single leaves and a thank you from the same set. To finish, I added some splatter in the same colours, masking off the flower and leaves with die cut Post its.

What do you think? Can you tell it's not a proper stamp? The flower turned out better than the leaves but overall I think it worked.

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Focusing on the grateful for what makes us happy section

Make it Feminine