By the River

Good morning. Are you looking forward to the Bank Holiday at the end if the week? It's taken me a little time to get my head around the new dates, being retired I no longer have work to hang my calendar on! I even thought it was Monday the other day when it was just Sunday! Anyway, hopefully we will be visited on BH Thursday by our new granddaughter and her parents and the sun will shine!

As it's Tuesday it's time for a new challenge at Cardz4Guyz. This week it was my choice and I went with:-

ON THE WATER

I thought there was plenty of scope there, boats, river or sea, wildlife or just messing about like the little guy in this card.

I used one of my earliest purchases from Lili of the Valley, By the River. He's an unmounted rubber stamp so to use him in my MISTI, I have to glue him to the plate with a touch of Pritt stick or the like.

After colouring him with Copics, I fussy cut him out and put him to one side.

To create the card, I used some A4 white card, made an A6 base card and used half of the leftover to create the top panel, which I die cut with a circle die to create the aperture.

Using my MFT cloud stencil and some ink already on my blue blending brush, I inked in the background onto the base card, careful not to take it right to the edge. 

The fussy cut image was then added to the top panel and the whole added to my inked base card. The Uniko sentiment was added to complete.

So where will the theme take you? I'd love to see your take in the gallery, there's plenty of inspiration over on the Cardz4Guyz blog page if you need it!

Joining in over at:-

A New Bundle of Joy

 I meant to share this card a while ago but never got around to it, so as I haven't shared anything for ages, I thought I would take the opportunity as it fits a few challenges out there.

It made for a work colleague of my OH and his partner, who is also my ex neighbours son and a close friend of my son.

I used a digi from Lili of the Valley called Clouds and some NitWits digital paper. I didn't want it to be too pretty pink so went with a bolder choice for the stripes. 

After colouring the printed panel with Copic markers, I added the die cut sentiment (STAMPlorations) which I coloured with marker to match the DP and stamped the greeting, an old one from Molly Bloom.

To give it a bit more dimension, I printed off the image again, this time onto copy paper, fussy cut the clouds, shaped them with a ball tool and added them over the original with foam tape.

Rather than cut the edges of the coloured panel, I cut some strips of matching card and die cut a scalloped edge, added some more Copic coloured strips in the same pink and butted these against the central panel over the top of the DP which I glued to an A5 base card.

Have a great rest of your weekend.

Joining in over at:-

Week 642–Special Anniversary challenge!

Spots and/or stripes

Digi and Die cuts

Hippo Hurray!!

Morning all, time for a new challenge at Cardz4Guyz, our new theme is:-

WILDLIFE

That's a pretty broad theme so it should be easy to come up with an idea, or not as I found!

It's so broad I couldn't decide which stamps to use, but in the end I plumped for the Paper Smooches Zoo Crew set. I did consider my MFT BirthYay set but as I'd used it twice recently I thought I better use another set! So here is my take on the theme.

I used a NBUS slimline die to cut the top panel. It's from Creative Expressions that I got for Christmas last year and not used to date. The die cut panel was attached to a white base card and the die cut sentiment from Hobbycraft, I think, added to the central opening. The top two panels were little scenes created by cutting out with the same die cut from a panel of a Gelli Plate experiment, adding punched grass, coloured with DI, a die cut cloud and a strip of the same Gelli plate panel cut freehand to represent the water for my croc and hippo to stand against. These, I stamped and coloured with Copic markers before fussy cutting out. The top and bottom apertures were filled with the little scenes and the croc and hippo added.

So where will the theme take you, as usual we'd love to see your takes.

There's plenty more masculine wildlife inspiration on the the Cardz4Guyz blog too.

Joining in over at:-

Color Hues #41

Afternoon all, time for a new colour combo at Color Hues. I must admit I did struggle at first to get inspiration for this combo but when that happens I have a trawl through my stash to see what pops out but this Stamping Bella Up Town Girl stamp was still on my desk from an earlier make and said ink me up again!

I found the right DP so I was off! Its much easier to match your colouring to the DP than the other way round, believe me.

I found the DP in my NitWits digi folder and thought the background would work well with the colours, however when I printed it out, my printer did a funny with the colour so it ended up a little bluer than in the screen view than I wanted. Anyway as I had already coloured my image with Copics and fussy cut her out I was stuck. Print another sheet or improvise. Well the next sheet was even worse no blue at all so I went back to the original and went over it with the palest aqua Copic marker I used for my image and Bob's your uncle, saves me right for not printing it off first!

 The central embossed panel was made using an EF from Hobbycraft, not sure of the make, perhaps it was an own brand and a scrap of linen effect card to match my base card. The sentiment banner is another scrap of the same linen effect but stamped on the reverse with a very old Personal Impressions stamp.

The card was assembled in a layout to match my scrap of embossed card, popping up the parcel heavy girl on pads.

So what will you make of the latest colour combo, the DT and our GD have some fabulous ideas if you need more inspiration here.

Joining in over at:-

Wishing You a Beautiful Day

Good evening folks. 

It's time for a brand new challenge at Perfectly CAS. Here's my take on the new cue word.

What's distressed about this design you may ask? Well I used Distress Inks to create the bouquet.

Using the colours at Altenew's latest challenge, I stamped the Vintage flower rose in no line technique with three shades of pink DI, the leaves in three shades of green DI and some die cut blossom which I coloured with Mustard Seed DI and shaded with a marker, blended with a little water. Once all my images for the spray were done, I die cut a circle of vellum and a white frame, which I used to hide the foam pads that attached the panel to the base card. 

The sentiment, from Altenew's In the Woodland was stamped with Versamark on the vellum panel and heat embossed with fine white EP. Here's a close up as it doesn't really show up in the main pic. I'm pleased that they have updated the sentiment from their Beautiful Day set as it always made me a bit twitchy. The 'wish you a beautiful day' sentiment is just so wrong grammatically, I added a 'To' freehand to be able to use it at all!!

The die cuts were arranged onto the vellum and card panel, then added to the card base with foam pads.

So where will the cue word take you? We'd love to see where your imagination goes. If you want more inspiration there's always plenty of ideas over on the Perfectly CAS blog.

Joining in over at:-

 

BA Inspiration for Uniko

 Good morning, time for a brand new challenge at Cardz4Guyz. This time our theme is:-

SOMETHING BEGINNING with D

Well I thought of Dad, dog, distressed, dandy but eventually went with Die Cuts.

I used a set of Speech bubble dies from Lawn Fawn (A little birdie told me) and sentiments from Uniko.

Using some scraps of bright coloured card, I cut a selection of bubbles and arranged them on my A6 black base card. When I was happy with the layout I glued the die cuts onto the base card except for the long blue one which I used to stamp my sentiment on. 

The sentiment is made up from a selection of sentiment stamps from Uniko sets which I stamped with Versamark and heat embossed with white EP.

I'd cut out quite a few extra die cuts that were not used for this card so I made another couple which I've shared over on the Uniko blog here.

So what D will you go with, there's lots of ideas from the DT over on the Cardz4Guyz blog if you need it.

Joining in over at:-

#192 Anything Goes

Off to One Side and One Layer

Good evening.

A new month is upon us and so it's time for a new challenge at HLS CAS. Here's my take on the new cue card.

I had a few different ideas, such as ink blending but went with Copic colouring where dimension is achieved through blending different shades of the same colours. Here I used some traditional Christmas colours which work well together. I also used the challenge at Less is More where they are in their one layer challenge as my inspiration.

My Stamping Bella Up Town Girl Giftabella was stamped to one side of an A6 panel of white card and then coloured with a mix of Red, green and golden yellow Copic markers. I doodled a frame using a black fine liner and stamped the Uniko sentiment with black Obsidian ink.

So where will the cue card take you? We'd love to see your takes in the gallery this month. For more 'blend' inspiration check out the rest of the team here.

I'd like to join in over at:-

Color Hues #40

Good afternoon. A new month, so a new colour combination at Color Hues. When I saw the latest colours I knew what I wanted to make.

Here's what I came up with using the new colour combo.

I used a Lili of the Valley digi for this card, just love their cute images. He's called Patchwork Hot Air Balloon and he's perfect for a baby card or a small person's birthday.

After printing him off, I coloured him with Copic markers and fussy cut him as my printer had done something weird with the printing, leaving a transfer of ink below the basket for some reason. I used shades of tan for the bear and blues for the balloon, along with some white gel pen.

I had some NitWits dotty blue paper which I used as a background for my white panel, from which I cut a couple of clouds. I also cut a small extra cloud from some scrap, along with an oval for my stamped Mama Elephant sentiment.

The base card was made from white linen effect card over which I added some of the dotty DP, leaving a gap at the top and bottom of the base card as my scrap of DP was just a tad too small. My top panel was added on pads, with the two die cut clouds added. The fussy cut bear was added and a couple of thin strips of card coloured with matching Copic marker were added above and below the white panel. Finally my sentiment was slipped under the basket and on a foam pad over the bottom of the card.

So where will our colours take you this time? If you need a little extra inspiration why not check out the rest of the team and our GD Shawna here.