Less is More meets Muse

Good morning all.

I meant to post this yesterday but time just flew away! (The winds were quite strong here last night but happily not as bad as in Scotland and the North of England.)

As the title of this posts suggests, it's a fusion of two challenges, Muse and Less is More.

This is the Muse card from Vicki Dutcher.

I was inspired by the central words, dots aperture, gold and the colours, well pretty much everything really! 

When I first saw this Muse card I thought I knew what I was doing as I have this MB die but then I thought that the word love deserved a heart, and my large LOVE die didn't really fit the opening of the circle burst.

I embossed a panel of white card then inked it in Festive Berries DI before cutting out the large love word, then cut out the heart using my Little B hearts die. I searched the stash for some gold sequins but couldn't find any, could have sworn I had some left over from Nich's dancing costume making days! Anyway, I improvised with some shaped gold mirror card tiny punched circles. I was going to pop the panel on white but tried it on black and it was a much richer effect so stuck with that and added a white die cut 'you' from a Spellbinders set.

As I said at the beginning the card was also inspired by the colour challenge at 

Less is More - Black, metallic and one other, this being red!

OK, that's about it. I should take Max out for a walk soon before that wind gets up some more and blows us up the drive!

Leaves @Cards und More

Good morning bloggers
Its been a whole month since my last post for Cards und More so it must be a month since we came back from our jollies, The weather here has certainly turned autumnal it chucked it down yesterday and with the wind from the east there was a definite chill in the air.
This time the challenge for you is to create something with the theme of

LEAVES

Well as the drive will testify, there are plenty of those on the ground at the moment but I suppose your project doesn't have to be autumnal in colour so long as there is some stamping and leaves visible.
Here is my card for your inspiration

Yep, you've guessed it, I've got the Brushos out again. Well actually I didn't as there was plenty of card left from my last couple of plays! See here and here.
I used a new die for this wreath Sizzix Holiday Foliage to cut out the oak leaves from the Brusho panel and the berries from red card. I used a beech leaf punch for the green ones.
I stamped some kraft paper with my SU woodgrain stamp in Versamark then heat embossed in clear and mounted it over a panel of Brusho coloured card. I added some vanilla twine and a die cut sentiment from Spellbinders to finish it off before mounting on an off white A6 base.

OK that's about it for the moment, so please check out the rest of the DTs inspiration and join us over at Cards und More.

I shall enter the following challenges -

Time Out Challenges- Case this card

I took inspiration from the colours and the leaves as well as the thank you.

Alphabet Challenge - Round or Rectangle (I did both!)
Clear it Out Challenge - Theme -Thanksgiving  Stash - Twine

See you back here in an hour for another new challenge, bye for now.

Autumn Chrysanths

Evening all, round two.

We went to the local garage to look at some vintage cars this lunchtime, mainly for a trip down memory lane and to see the chimney sweeps pride and joy.

Yep, there was a Ford Anglia with it's cut in back window, just like the one I had to push when it wouldn't start on cold mornings. 

Dad steering, me pushing hoping I wouldn't be late for school! 

No Ban the Bomb Cortinas for Al but there was a Ford Capri JPS special just like the one we went away for the weekend to Scotland in, with our next door neighbours the year after we got married. Also on the forecourt were assorted other Fords as well as Vauxhalls including the Viva model my friend Ali had at school. There were also some really vintage cars as well as scooters and motorbikes, even  a little red bubblecar! Anyway enough of the nostalgia, back to the craftroom.

Challenges are coming together for me at the moment, so although I had ideas for my MUSE entry this week I have been able to tweek it to include a couple of other challenges.

This is my card inspired by Marion Vagg's Muse card.

Other challenges include

and

All the looking back reminded me of my Father in law's and Dad's penchant for growing Chrysanthemums and Dahlias in their retirement, so this was another inspiration for my card.

Love the yellow and golds of these large blousey flowers, even if they did get earwigs in, just like the roses in the Curtain Call pic and you can't get more fussy cut than these flowers either for the AAA challenge!

I couldn't decide what greeting to include but in the end went with this Spellbinders die cut.

I used a Sizzix Original Daisy die which I cut from two shades of the two colours in copy paper, then layered up and curled. The leaves are also Sizzix from a stamp and cut set which I bought a while ago and not used NBUS, according to the wonderful Darnell. She has been running her #2 NBUS inspired challenge so I may enter this there as well as option 4, none of the above!

OK that's about it folks and thanks for stopping to the end!

ATSM 2nd birthday

Good afternoon peeps.

It's a glorious day again here, too hot for me at the moment, I'm not one who loves to be out soaking up the rays. So just taking a few minutes to post while the heats at it's worst.

Over at Addicted to Stamps and More it's their second birthday and 100th challenge, woohoo and a round of applause to Kylie and the rest of the team. It's a great challenge and I always try to take part if I can. This week it's a photo inspiration:-

I have been studying this for awhile, then along came this weeks challenge at Less is More . This week they are challenging us to use -

WATERCOLOUR

Well I just couldn't refuse to take part and after playing around I decided to combine the two challenges and came up with this card.

What you may say has it to do with watercolour, well if you look closely at the rainbow panel you will see a subtle pattern. This was created by spritzing a Happy Birthday definition stamp with water then laying the inked panel, made by blending DIs, on top and pressing down then gently removing it and leaving to dry. The water acts as a bleaching agent and removes the ink to leave the interesting pattern. I tried using acrylic stamps with this technique but it wasn't as successful as the rubber stamp. 

The panel was laid down on an A6 black base card and then I used a Memory Box 'Fresh Foliage' diecut and Spellbinders D-Lites sentiment 1 Best Wishes in white card on top.

OK, that's about it. Hope you can join in over at ATSM for their birthday celebrations.

You still have time to enter the Anniversary Challenge over at Cardz4Guyz.

Shine

Afternoon peeps. 

Well after last night's downpour the sun is shining so it seems appropriate that the latest cue word at CASology is  

SHINE. 

Well as my daughter's friends and relations are having babies left right and center I thought I ought to make a few more baby cards as my stock is empty! So taking my cue from the lovely Gay's creation, I went with a v. CAS design using my new Spellbinders greeting die and some holographic card in blue I've had since the year dot. It's a tricky thing to use as I mentioned to Gay, so definately less is more! I tried to create a border like her card but the card I had wasn't large enough and when I cut strips off to make one the surface peeled off, so I left it plain and raised it on pads instead.

The sentiment is from Personal Impressions stamped in Memento London Fog.

Well that's it, clean and v simple!

Hope the rain stays away! 

I shall also enter it in these challenges:-
Sweet Stampin Challenge - Baby