Sent with love

Hi, how are you? Are you pleased that there is going to be a lifting of lockdown restrictions or worried that its all come a little too soon. I must say I'm a little on the fence with this. I can see it from both sides, but I do think that there is at last a light at the end of the tunnel as vaccinations proceed at a pace.

Anyway as we are still in lockdown I have been getting crafty for crafty sake and made a card to enter in a few challenges and not just for a DT commitment.

I made this card for a number of challenges, Less is More is still celebrating 10yrs and want to see OL and flowers, whilst AAA would like us to follow their sketch and JUGS want rainbow colours.

So with a nod to all three this is what I came up with using a LOTV stamp from long ago.

Stamped in Altenew's Pure Graphite and heat embossed with clear EP, I coloured it with a selection of bright rainbow colours using my Zig watercolour brushmarkers. To add a bit of extra without loosing the OL, I embossed a scalloped frame and then added the heat embossed LOTV sentiment in the same way as the outlined vase of flowers. The vase reminds me of one I actually own and is currently say on my hall table with a few supermarket spray chrysanths.

Simples, if a little fiddly to paint!

Keep safe out there and keep crafting.

Joining in over at:-

Brusho and Sympathy

Good morning.

Time for a new challenge over at Cardz4Guyz. This time we've chosen -

THINKING OF YOU

Sympathy cards spring to mind with this prompt but I'm sure there are other interpretations you'll come up with. Some people find masculine cards difficult and I think sympathy ones doubly so. For my take, I kept it CAS, my fall back state and used masculine colours.

I'm determined to use my odds and ends up so that I don't run out of card stock before I can get to the stationers, so I found this aperture panel in my bits box and cut the MB Fresh Foliage from some more matching white scrap. I had to go through quite a bit of white scrap, there are lots of whites out there, before I found a piece that matched! 

The background panel is a scrap of card coloured with Brusho crystals in Violet and Turquoise. I just love how the colour bursts from the dry powder when you add water. I think I added too much water and most of the colours blended together but they do blend beautifully too!

I popped the die cut sprig behind the aperture then added foam pads before adding to the coloured base. My sentiment from Uniko, was stamped with Altenew's Pure Graphite, heat embossed with clear gloss EP, then trimmed and added to my card.

A quick, simple design using scraps from my box of bits. Hopefully I wont need it in the near future but its there in the made cards if I should.

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

Have a Choccie-tastic Easter

 Evening all.

Well I've had the first of my Covid vaccinations so fingers crossed that I don't get any side effects. It was incredibly well organised, no waiting even though  I was a tad early. The only hold up was a bleeding needle site which took awhile to stop but all OK after that, even the sun was shining and the snowdrops on the verge were in bloom. We're both back sometime in May, all being well.

Anyway, over at Less is More it's their 10th birthday with Chocolate as their colour theme and as I haven't joined in for ages, I thought I would. Less is More was one of the sites that proved to me that I didn't need to slather the layers and embellishments on my cards to make a striking design, can't believe its been going 10 years, thanks for all the inspiration.

 I couldn't immediately think of what to do but after a root through the stash I came across a set of stamps I bought from a bargain bin in The Range ages ago, with cute Forever Friends bears and Easter Eggs. Well I didn't go with the egg part but the sentiment was perfect, so I teamed it with a homemade chocolate bar instead. Here it is -

The dark chocolate bar was made with some scraps of brown card die cut with a couple of small square dies and then edged with Hickory Smoke DI,  layered up on pads and glued to a panel of matching card. The finished 'bar' was wrapped in foil and the outer sleeve made by making a thin box from some pretty Spring like DP and stamping the sentiment on it with Memento Ground Espresso ink. I tore away most of the box and ripped the foil before peeling it back. The 'opened' bar was then stuck katy cornered on an off white base card. Hope there's enough chocolate on show!

Whether we see anyone at Easter this year is in the lap of Boris but perhaps it might find its way by post if not. I did find the chocolate bunnies and small eggs from last year at the back of the larder cupboard this aft, they may find their way into my tum, well I wouldn't want to give old chocolate to the kiddies, now would I.

I'm linking up at:-

 

Color Hues #12

Good afternoon. 

I took the OH for his first Covid-19 jab this morning, the vaccination site was a few miles away but plenty of parking and lots of helpful stewards pointing the way. No hanging around around here with under the 65's, I got the call Monday afternoon and appointment booked for less than 48 hours later, so I'm off tomorrow. Hopefully there'll be no side effects and the second jab will come around sooner than we think. 

Anyway, as we are over halfway through February and rushing on towards March, it's time for another challenge at Color Hues.

Here is my take on the new colours.

I must admit to having some difficulty deciding where peach stops and orange begins, so I hope I've hit the right mix of peachy tones in this no line watercoloured bloom. Peach to me is a mix of pinky oranges with a hint of yellow, just as in a real peach!

To start, I took a panel of MM paper and stamped this fab Uniko peony bloom in Altenew's Morning Frost, before using a combination of Dried Marigold, Spiced Marmalade and Abandoned Coral to paint each individual petal, adding some Chipped Sapphire as cast shadow. For the leaves I used the same Chipped Sapphire as well as Mowed Lawn and Crushed Olive.

I fussy cut the bloom and then created the background from the greens that were left on my palette, smooshing them onto a panel of card a few times, drying between each smoosh. 

The peony was popped up on pads over the trimmed down smooshed panel and a black sentiment strip added. My completed panel was then adhered to an A6 base card and a few green and gold PPP sequins added.

Where will you go with the colours? So far you've amazed us with your creativity and made life very difficult to choose our winners! There's more fab colour inspiration by the rest of the DT, over on the Color Hues blog just in case you do need some inspiration.

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:-