Glorious Gardenia

Good evening folks.
I'm here late evening here to announce the start of the latest challenge over at HLS Anything Goes with Dies.
Here is my card using one of my very favourite dies, MB's Glorious Gardenia.



Not  sure why I like it so much but it is my go to flower die. I've used it in all sorts of different ways, so perhaps it's because it so versatile! I only bought the outline die so The background was made by drawing around the leftover from the die cut, then fussy cutting it out of plain white card.
To get the colour on the die, I used my Zig brush pens to wash in some colour onto the petals with some shades of pink then the same with greens onto the leaves. The center of the flowers were glued to the base, leaving the leaves to hover over the backing.
On a separate white panel I washed some more of the pink colour in the shape of the design along with some splatter. A couple of sprigs of die cut Fresh Foliage and Grove Branch completed the sprig. A silver embossed tag from LOTV was slipped under the edge of the sprig and the trimmed panel attached to the base card.
So for more die cutting inspiration please check out the rest of the team here and we'd love to see you in this month's gallery.

I'd like to join in over at :-

    
Flowers                                     Favourite die

        

       

Celebrate, it's your birthday!

Oops, sorry my post went live before I realised!  Sorry if you visited and it wasn't up fully.

It's been a little hectic chez Beech this morning. First we had a phone call to say that my new car was ready, then as I was dashing off to the shops the construction crew had dug a huge trench over 3 feet deep up the side of the drive without notification then abandoned it without fencing it off!!!!!. It was  a very precarious journey I can tell you, especially when one of them tried to come down as I was debating how to negotiate it! Anyway I wasn't giving way and there was no way for me to go anyway. He finally reversed to the passing spot, giving me a not too friendly stare as I passed. So I was a little dubious about my return trip and as I feared the lane was impassable, a foot wide trench and contents blocking my way. After negotiating the trenches on foot, leaving my car and shopping in the passing place, I made my way to the contactors comfort wagon to give the site supervisor a piece of my mind. 

Well it's not blocked was the terse reply, I begged to differ and asked why we had not been informed, the site manager replied they had been told to keep it open so didn't need to! Still fuming I asked if he would at least see me through the works, which to be fair he did. As to my new car, well it won't be ready in time for collection today so it will have to be Monday, :( .

I think I deserve a little retail therapy and a catch up with friends at Port Sunlight HS festival tomorrow, so looking forward to it.

So back to business, excuses over.

Here is my inspiration for this month's new theme/sketch challenge at STAMPlorations. 

I've used the sketch here but can choose either or both.

To start I cut a strip of polka dot paper and cut some flowers out using one of the Trendy Spring Blooms dies but only cutting part of the paper away, replacing the outline into the space left as I wanted to use the negative space as part of the design. I'm sure I've seen a similar technique out there some where but can't find it again!

On some scrap card, I scribbled some Copic colour in shades of yellow and cut 3 circle centers and a 

 CUTplorations dies Celebrate from it. To complete I stamped the rest of the greeting from World Birthday Cakes on a strip of white card. The central panel was then popped up on pads and also the centers of the flowers and glued the die cut sentiment flat.

For more fab inspiration please check out the rest of the team here, where you'll also find all the Ts and Cs.

I'd like to join in over at:-

Circle, die-cut, flower

The circles are small hope they count!

Vintage Motor

Good morning folks.
Hope you all had a fab BH weekend.
The weather wasn't particularly BH friendly so I spent some time in the craftroom creating before trying to spot our Son whilst watching the Tour de Yorkshire cycle race. The race was due to pass by the village where we used to live and our son still does, so it was fun to try and spot the landmarks as the peloton whizzed by. Although he told us where he was standing we couldn't spot him, even on playback! The scenery was fab though and so were the crowds, fabulous to see the tour being so well supported. Shame the commentators hadn't been given the correct pronunciation of some of the place names, Holmfirth has a silent 'L'. It does sound funny when they give the climbs the prefix Cote de ... as well.

Anyway I managed to cobble together a card between ad breaks for this week's challenge at Cardz4Guyz.

INSPIRED BY A FILM, BOOK or PIECE of MUSIC

However you must say how you are inspired in your post.

I had a look through my stash of stamps to see what came to mind first settling on this

 NEBUS stamp set from LOTV. I think I bought it from Port Sunlight this time last year and this is it's first inking! I don't think they're are there this year though, they seem to be cutting back on shows and going digital, less stress I would think. It reminded me of the film 'Genevieve' about the vintage London to Brighton car rally. Genevieve being the name of the car!

I used a Sketch Saturday layout that I've used before and some map paper from an old road atlas. SATNAVs may be popular but I love an old fashioned map to look at, always have, in fact a friend used to call me JulieNAV when we went out in her car!

I started by cutting out the circles with a variety of dies for my top panel and then stamped the images with black Memento and embossing with clear EP. As I had used EP I decided to use my Zig Markers to colour the images for a change, adding a few white hi lights with a gel pen. After fussy cutting the images I glued the map paper onto my base card and popped my top panel up on pads. The images were then glued flat on the map paper. I also added some doodled borders to frame the apertures and added a sentiment from the same set.

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

I'd like to join in over at:-

5th Saturday free choice


Embossing (used clear EP over black outline stamping)


Embossing wet or dry (I used clear EP over black outline stamping)

A little something for you

Good morning folks.

It's been a bitter couple of days here, the sky was blue but so were my fingers! Still it allowed me not to feel guilty about abandoning my gardening for the warmth of the craft room!

I received some happy mail a couple of weeks ago, a few Stampingbella stamps. I've looked at them for awhile but have now caved in and indulged! You may have noticed a few popping up in the last few weeks! Love these Uptown girl images and as I had a card to make for the latest Card4Galz challenge I decided to use another one. This week our theme is -

USE A SHAPED CARD

I'm a bit of a stick in the mud and tend not to make cards other than A6 with the odd square one so this challenge certainly challenged me!

Anyway here's what I came up with.

I started off by trying to follow the layout at Sketch Saturday but in the end I thought I needed another band of colour across the bottom and the banners didn't fit with my choice of image. I suppose I was still influenced by it, my card just evolved! The DP is from NitWits, afraid I couldn't find enough of the right DP in the bits box so ended up printing a new sheet off. I did use some odds and ends for the banners though. 

My base card was made by folding an A4 piece of linen effect card in half then using a large Spellbinders die, I placed it so that 2 parts of the scallops were at the bottom and the left hand edge was just over the fold. This meant that when cut The card would still have a join and not fall apart. Don't worry if this happens to you as you can always glue the two sides together after putting a crease line about 1/2" from the left hand edge. You can find more details here about the two techniques.

After stamping and colouring with Copics I fussy cut the image and placed her over the central panel, slipping a couple of die cut DP banners and the sentiment banner underneath.

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

I'd like to join in over at:-

One for the girls

StampingBella

Posh has a present

Hi and welcome to a schedule post to tell you about the brand new challenge over at ATSM.
Here is my inspiration card.

This week it is our CAS challenge.

We've had a bit of a discussion behind the scenes about what is a clean and simple card and here are a few guidelines which may help you.



So with my card, one main focal point.
More than half 'white space'.
No embellishments.
With hindsight perhaps I should have done away with the pads but there're only 2 layers!
Hope this helps.

So down to details. I started by stamping my image from Stampingbella and colouring in her with Copics using the colour scheme over at CAS-ual Fridays. Then, using the sketch at CAS(e) this Sketch, I cut away 2/3rds of the card, leaving my image still attached. On a piece of scrap paper I inked through a STAMPlorations stencil with Chipped Sapphire DI to create the stripes. A plain piece of white card completes the layout. As it's a CAS card no further  embellishments were added, save for a stamped blue greeting that I embossed with clear EP.
For more fab inspiration, please check out the rest of the team here.

I'd like to join in over at -

The card by Hannelie really inspired this card