I splashed out on your birthday

Evening peeps, happy Valentines day! 

There's a lot of love floating around blogland at the mo but in the brand new challenge over at Perfectly CAS we've side stepped the love theme and gone for something completely different. 

Here is my inspiration -

- on the theme of

A very QCAS card, using a freebie die and sentiment that both came with a mag!

White embossed stamped sentiment and white die cut splash on turquoise, what else is there to say really. 

I kept the design CAS by keeping the design to the corner of my card base, placing the sentiment close to the main element and a plain and simple background.

How will you play it? We'd love to see. If you need a little bit more inspiration please check out the rest of the DT here.

I'd like to join in over at:-

Skating Fun

Morning all.

It's time for a brand new challenge over at Cardz4Guyz and the theme chosen by Helen is right up my street -

CAS

You all know I'm a clean and simple girl and the CAS style is perfect for making masculine cards!

Here is another one for the Christmas stash with my take on the theme.

My starting points were the challenges at CAS Christmas, Dogs and or Cats, still trying to keep the flow of Christmas cards coming, and CAS Mix Up, stencil heat embossing. 

Max would never forgive me for going down the cat route, so I hunted out the doggy images from my Christmas stash, finally settling on this LOTV image of Patch the dog, skating with his rabbit friend, who I trimmed off for the purposes of this card. After colouring with my Copics, I fussy cut him out added some Wink of Stella to the "ice" and set him to one side to dry.

The back panel of falling snow was made by using embossing paste over a freebie falling snow stencil on a panel of white card, which I then heat embossed with a holographic EP to get just a little twinkle, well it is for a bloke when all said and done! I was unsure as to my layout to start with, so after a quick whizz through my old designs I decided to stick with one of my tried and tested layouts. I chose kraft as the base, its more masculine I think, and popped the panels and Patch on pads over the embossed background. (White space on a CAS card doesn't mean you can't use coloured backgrounds.) A white heat embossed sentiment from Altenew completes. I trimmed the completed panel to leave a small border when it was attached to an A6 kraft base card.

If you are new to the CAS style then here are a few pointers

 

Keep the image to 1/3rd of your card front

Keep embellishments and layers to a minimum

Ensure there is lots of "white" space to your design

Remember LESS is MORE

Finally make sure its MASCULINE!

Hope that helps, but why not check out what the rest of the team have come up with here, then dip your toes into CAS!

I'm joining in over at:-

With all my Heart

Evening all. 

It's time for new challenge from HLS CAS and this month "Love is in The Air".

Here is my take using an IO die, Heart of Hearts.

I'm playing with those strips of scrap again, with a selection of pinks and reds stuck to a panel of copy paper to create a rough ombre pattern, then added to my base card under my die cut heart.

After cutting the heart from textured linen card, I cut it again from red fun foam and glued the two together, adding the sentiment from Uniko along the edge of the heart. The trimmed down panel was then glued over the base card so that the gradient of strips showed through.

So what will you come up with, we'd love to see your interpretation but please keep it CAS!

If you need some more inspiration, you can check out the rest of the team here.

I'm joining in over at :-

Happy 9th Birthday Uniko

Good morning, it's party time!

Uniko is celebrating its 9th Birthday today. I take my hat off to Bev for managing to keep the brand fresh all by herself, as well as being mom to two very active boys, especially over the last year! I haven't been on the team for all that time but I have been an admirer from the moment I found the designs.

A birthday wouldn't be a birthday without a party, now would it? Over the years its become a bit of a tradition to hold a linky party to celebrate.

To join in all you have to do is simply create a birthday card, any theme, any style and using any product you like and link it up via the linky on the Uniko site. You don't have to have a blog to enter, you can link your card from your Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or like with all challenges, you can email Bev your entry.

You don't have to use Uniko products, but we'd love to see you using your Uniko stash (including Uniko Digital Freebies via the link on the blog or ones from Magazine Features), there's an extra opportunity to win a prize if you do.

So here is my birthday card to get the party started.

To start my design, I took a panel of MM paper and heat embossed in white, a row of 9 candles from the Big n Bold Wish stamp set.

Each candle was then coloured in rainbow colour order, using Zig markers. The flames were coloured  and a warm glow added with a wash of yellows. The rest of the panel was finished with a wash of Salty Ocean DI and dark blue Zig pen towards the bottom.

The sentiment, from Birthday Sentiments, stamped with Altenew's Pure Graphite ink, was then embossed with clear gloss EP. Using an MFT stitched rectangle, I die cut the painted panel and mounted it flat on to an A6 side fold note card from my stash.

There are some more fab birthday cards by the Brand Ambassadors over on the Uniko blog. Why not check them out and leave some love along the way for the chance to win a prize!

Bev
Carol 
Hannelie

Izzy 

Jane 
Julie -that's me

Rahmat

Sarah
Wiebke 

Need a little more incentive to join in on the fun? How about some prizes.

• Main winner chosen by the DT - £25 eGift Certificate
• Random Uniko stamps winner - In stock clear stamp set of winners choosing (any value)
• Top 5 chosen by DT - In Stock £5 clear stamp set of winners choosing
• Two randomly selected comments from the Design Team Hop - In stock £5 clear stamp set of winners choosing

That's a total of NINE chances to win! 

Winners will be announced Sunday 7th March 2021 along with all the other 9th Birthday Celebration Winners.

Why not take advantage of this fabulous discount code too! The code celebrate9 is valid for the whole month of February 2021 and can be used on any order placed, even if you place multiple orders during the month!

So what's stopping you? 

Don't forget to leave a comment before you leave, you might miss out on a prize!

Happy Hopping!

I'm joining in over at:-

die-cut/ embossing/ blue

   

Color Hues#11- Always and Forever

Afternoon, is it February already? Well as it's the first of the month it's time for a new colour combo at Color Hues. We've gone for a romantic colourway this month of Valentine's Day. Here is my take.

I've made quite a few cards using strips of card as backgrounds but for this card I made them the star of the show! I'd seen this card by Norine Borys and thought the black outline together with the striped

die cut was very striking so decided to make my take on it using the challenge colours.

I used Altenew's Hibiscus stamp set, it is a big bold outline stamp set, perfect for the background. After stamping and masking the different elements to create my spray, I went to work on my scrap box. As I've had a lot of time on my hands recently, I decided to have a clear out and tidy my bits and bobs. I also wanted to use some of them up and the striped backgrounds are a perfect way. You can buy dies to do the job but I just eyeballed it. The 1/4" strips were glued to a scrap of copy paper before lining up the Tall Alphabet Dies from Altenew onto my panel. I tried my best to line them up so that the lines of the strips followed the horizontal. When cut out, I placed them above a sentiment strip stamped with Always and Forever from Uniko's Always and Forever set. The result, I feel, is quite romantic without being too mushy!

So for more red and pink inspiration please check out the rest of the girls over at the Color Hues blog, then why not join in?

I'm joining in over at :-

Used fussy cut masks to create the spray