Happy birthday wild thing

Hi and welcome to a brand new challenge over at Cardz4Guyz.

For the next two weeks we would like to see your masculine projects on the theme of -

INTO THE WOODS

What will you make of that?

I had one or two ideas, trees are pretty obvious but what about their fruit, conkers etcetera or mushrooms or perhaps creatures you would find there.

In the end I came up with this card featuring trees and deer.

I'd seen this fab card awhile ago by the lovely Loll, I'm not stalking you Loll, honestly!. I loved the soft muted colours and the silhouetted deer but for my card I went with a more autumnal hue.

On a panel of watercolour paper I laid my TCW stencil and secured it at the top with masking tape before sprinkling Dk Brown Brusho over the top. Try not to get too much on the solid areas of the stencil as it is the exposed areas that will provide the gorgeous mottled background for your stencilled trees. Carefully spritz the whole panel with water and wait for the magic to happen. Don't leave it too long to remove the stencil or add too much water as it might bleed under where you don't want it!

I discovered Brusho many years ago and used it with my 7 -8 year olds in art class to make patterns on the autumn leaves they had painted. The look on their tiny faces when the Brusho crystals exploded over their images, the effects were always stunning and totally unpredictable. In fact my Dk Brown is left over from that period so is well over 15 yrs old! A little goes a long way.

 When dry, I cut a panel from it and added some IO die cut deer and some 'grass', made from some handmade Mulberry paper shot through with gold strands, which was torn to achieve an uneven edge. The sentiment from HLS, was stamped with Altenew Lava Rock ink and embossed with a semi dull EP.

Check out the Cardz4Guyz blog for for inspiration then why not join us?

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CAS or Fussy and Fancy
CAS everytime and especially for masculine cards, they need a bold image and very little in the way of embellishments.

Autumn

   
                                                        Hope the gold thread in the
                                                            Mulberry paper isn't too insignificant!
                                                      My choice is die cuts and Brusho

Christmas Baubles @ STAMPlorations

Hi and welcome.

Today sees the launch of a fab new stamp set from STAMPlorations just in time for those Christmas makes. Here are two cards made using the new fun Christmas Baubles set.

Isn't it fab, five gorgeous baubles, or Wesley bobs as a friend of mine calls them, sentiments, holly cluster and stars.

My first card uses three of the baubles and the fir branch from the earlier released Christmas Bell Medley set.

To create the foliage, I took my white base card and stamped around the top of it with the branch in DI, Mowed Lawn, before painting over it with water to soften. To add depth and before it dried, I repeated the stamping with more Mowed Lawn followed by DI Pine Needles. This was then left to dry completely and let the water do what it would!

On a scrap of card I stamped three of the baubles in Altenew's Pure Graphite, then quickly added WOW semi dull EP and heat set. This allowed me to colour them with my Zig water brush markers. I chose bright colours for an alternative to the traditional Christmas colours before fussy cutting. The yellow bauble had its bow cut away as I didn't want it on this occasion. They were then arranged below the branches and attached with pads and the sentiment was stamped and embossed in WOW platinum EP. Using a straightedge and black fineliner, I drew in the strings.

This design owes a lot to a card by the wonderful Loll Thompson here. Loll's uses a die cut bauble but mine uses another from the set, this time stamped and embossed with gold EP, coloured with Zigs, before being fussy cut.

The CUTplorations Season's Greetings sentiment was cut from gold mirror card and placed flat onto my base card. Before the glue was fully dry I slipped a strand of gold twine through the G and tied a bow and slipped the bauble under. A simple CAS card.

For more inspiration, check out the STAMPlorations blog here. 

As usual you can comment as you hop along for a chance to win the set for yourself!

All Ts and Cs are found here.

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Melissa, a tribute

Just over a fortnight ago, I was checking my phone for messages as my husband and I travelled home over the Pennine hills. We'd visited our son, the OH had checked in at the office and I'd been for some crafty fun with my bestie. Just as we dropped down into Lancashire, I checked one particular message that left me shocked and disbelieving, one of my STAMPloration teammates, Melissa, MainesLanes, had passed away.

Unlike many of my DT teammates, I had actually met Melissa and her lovely family at the HLS retreat in Swindon in 2016.
Melissa was then living in Germany with her forces husband Chris and family and was looking forward to returning to Maine in the near future. They had driven enmasse, including their house rabbit, to meet up with everyone in Swindon for a weekend of crafty fun before heading off for a sightseeing holiday.
From that brief meeting it was evident that she had a wonderful and supportive family and I was so pleased to hear that she had recently, finally made it back to Maine, where they were in the process of setting up a small holding.

Many of you may know her from her blog Honey Bee Lane and her stints on various challenge blogs, AAA, HLS, as well as the STAMPlorations MM team.

She was in her prime and finally back in Maine living her dream, which is why I was so shocked when I read Shery's news.

Melissa loved butterflies, so Shery decided that our tribute to her should be themed along those lines, in a celebration of her life.

Here is my tribute.

If you would like to celebrate Melissa's life with us, you would be very welcome to add your project to the STAMPlorations post.

All details of how you can participate are on the STAMPlorations blog here.

Penguin Tag Christmas

Hi and welcome to a post to announce the start of a brand new challenge over at ATSM.

Here's my inspiration for you.

Our theme this week is -

My mojo fled out the window this week, I started with a stinker of a cold a week ago and am finding it difficult to throw off, so I went looking for inspiration out there in blogland.

So after checking out a few challenges, I came up with the above card.

The start was the layout at Sketch Saturday followed closely by the girls at LIM wanting tags. CAS Christmas wanted birds so that sent me hunting through my stash. It was a toss up between penguins and owls and eventually I went with this little chap from MFT.

I started by cutting a tag with my Poppy Stamps Stitched Main Street tag die set from a panel of card. I then embossed the panel less the tag with an EF of unknown origin. The space left by the tag was filled with a scrap of DP from the stash before the panel was attached to a matching base card.

On a scrap of card, the fire and penguin were stamped, coloured with Copics and then fussy cut.

To finish a small silver twine bow and sentiment were added to the tag before adding to the card at a jaunty angle and adding in the fussy cut elements.

So what will your project be, we'd love to see it in the gallery, but if you need more inspiration the DT have more ideas for you here.

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                                                  Christmas

Fooling the eye with Uniko's Christmas Pop

Hi peeps.

Today sees the start of a brand new challenge at Cardz4Guyz -

TRIANGLES

I went with a Christmas theme!

Using Uniko's Christmas Pop stamp set and some rainbow coloured inks makes this OL card, really quick and simple. Your eye is fooled into thinking that these simple triangles are trees by the addition of a star atop and the fact that we assume that Christmas trees are roughly this shape!

More details on the stamp set and ink colours can be found on the Uniko blog.

More triangle inspiration from the DT can be found on the Cardz4Guyz challenge blog.

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CASe the card at LIM

Hi folks. Back again with a card I made at the weekend for a DT post but decided that it didn't fulfil the brief. So I'm sharing it today instead.

It's a very CAS card based on the fab card over at Less is More by the GD Rebecca.

Her's is a birthday card but the colours shouted Christmas to me.

I started by cutting out the SEASON'S from a STAMPlorations Season's Greetings die and trimmed the extra bits away. I started here as I wanted to see how to place the stamped elements of the design. 

Using the pine branch stamp from a Cardio branch set, I stamped three of them, embossing with sparkly gold EP around the small greetings from Uniko, stamped in matching red ink.The Season's die cut was popped up on a red fun foam die cut layer, a few gold sequins complete. 

Very quick and very CAS!

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                                                       AG

V is for  Very Quick

Welcome Baby

Hi and welcome to  post to announce the start of a brand new challenge at ATSM.

Here's my inspiration card.

This week our challenge is to -

So we want to see you colouring in some way or another. Make your mark with pencils, pens, sponges, watercolours, inks, etc.

To be honest I made a card then realised it only had stamping on it so made another with a little bit of colouring as well as stamping!

I was inspired by the photo over at Fusion, especially the flower draped letters.

I used my Altenew alphabet dies to cut out the letters, from a panel of white card, then I popped them back into the panel ready to add some colour. I found some tiny flowers from my stash and went ahead and stamped them with Altenew's Puffy Heart and Purple Wine ink. The tiny leaf stems were stamped with Altenew Olive and Bamboo ink. Some buds were stamped in Memento Daffodil before I went in with my Copic markers to give a little bit of shape and definition as well as adding stems, flower centers and tiny blossom with more Copic markers.

The pink frame was cut with a Sugar Pea die from the same white card then inked with the Puffy Heart ink and a blending tool. Must admit I thought it would be easier to apply and I found it difficult to blend, unlike DI or DOx, perhaps it was my cardstock. Anyway I persevered before adding a panel cut from more white and stamping the sentiment from Mama Elephant. 

The die cut letters were then removed from the panel and glued carefully under the sentiment. 

I had run out of baby cards and as my kids have friends of that age I needed some more from the stash. I did think I could add the baby's name under when I needed it.

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

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