Crafty Catz Design Team Samples and a few challenges - 3

My third and final Crafty Catz design team card that I have entered for some challenges, well for now anyhow! ;-) This one I have only entered for two challenges.

This first one is for the Colour Create Challenge Blog - Mad as Hatters theme. They wanted you to use a white card and pick two colours from the fantastic Johnny Depp picture shown here, plus an optional extra of something from within that picture.

I chose the sort of orangey colour which makes up the hatters hat band and the yellow in the far outside tips of his bow tie. I also chose to represent the lace on his cuffs with a strip of glittered card made into a lace ribbon with a MS punch. The main colours are best shown on the sheet of DCWV shimmer card I used as the main background and the butterfly's colouring.

The second challenge I am entering with this is the Cuttlebog Spot, their challenge is to use embossing somewhere on your project, and they very generously stipulate that you do not need to use the bug to do so, so I used my bigshot and BS texture plate of happy birthday. The mat under the card ribbon is also embossed with butterflies but they got lost under the ribbon!

The butterfly was stamped onto white cardstock which I tinged with distress inks around the edge and it was coloured with my promarkers. I finished it off with a few orange gems down the butterfly's body to give it some dimension and just because I love all things shiney.

~ Lin ~

Crafty Catz Design Team Samples and a few challenges - 2

Another of my DT cards for Crafty Catz using her Dreamy Butterflies stamp sheet.

This one I am entering for the Challenge Up Your Life critter cratter and bling challenge, again, sorry, lol

I am also entering this one again for the Lexi's Creations - Something Old Challenge - the gilding flakes on the back of the butterflies I have had since Adam was a lad.

And Finally again, sorry Charisma Cardz Challenge - All About Bling - which I shall explain in a minute.

I had a great deal of fun with this card and copied a technique I saw just this week on Create and Craft TV. I think it was a show I recorded.

Anyhow the 'layered arches' mat was made by using cut n dry foam and splodging on randomly 4 different colours of Ranger Distress Inks. As this ink has a long open time it enables all sorts of lovely tricks. I then covered it completely in a gold coloured cosmic shimmer mica powder. Then I inked up the buttefly with a versamark inkpad and stamped it across the sheet. This had the effect of lifting the mica and leaving a buttefly image which was still sticky. To these butterflies I added a different mica colour in a sort of mauve shade. Then I cut it into a mat using the layered arches.

The background card has corners stamped from sort of wing flourishes also on the Dreamy Butterflies stamp sheet. Finally the top butterflies were stamped onto acetate which I hade made self adhesive as explained in my earlier post below this one, and then they were cut out and gilded. I stuck them down on the mat and added black gems to their bodies to give them a bit of added depth.

Sadly the photograph doesn't pick up the lovely way that this shimmers with the mica powders so I hope it still meets the 'bling' criteria! ~ Lin ~

Crafty Catz Design Team Samples and a few challenges - 1

Pamela from Crafty Catz sent me some gorgeous stamps and I have been beavering away making samples on her behalf for shows on Create and Craft TV. Of course, being me, how could I not enter a few challenges along the way.

The first four cards have all been made using her gorgeous new Dreamy Butterflies stamp sheet.

This one I am entering for the Challenge Up Your Life current challenge of Critter Cratters and Bling....... what a wonderful expression, Critter Cratters. I hope they consider butterflies to be critter cratters!

Also I am entering it in the By The Cute and Girly Challenge as it meets their criteria of old, new, borrowed, and blue, the new in this case being the stamps, and the MS layered arches punches which were used to make the background mat, it also meets the old criteria as the back mat with the little butterflies on it I bought at Newbury Stamp Show about 5 years ago. I remember I just had to have it, and shared a pack with a friend, I doubt if I have used more than three sheets from that pack!

Lexi's Creations have a theme of something old, and as I explained above the glitter sheet at the back of the card is very old.

Finally I am entering it into the Charisma Cardz Challenge, which is All About Bling.

The card was made with some lemon coloured 12x12 card sliced in half and folded down to a 6" square card, onto which went my lovely old glitter card from Newbury, the next layer is also glitter card from QVC I believe, it has a sort of cloud pattern on it and from that I made the layered arches mat. The next layer was a bodge it job. I didn't have any self adhesive acetate so I made my own. I stuck a sheet of acetate to a double sized adhesive sheet and on to that I stamped the butterfly in black stazon. I gradually peeled the backing of and added diagonal stripes of glitter in different colours. I love the flourishes within the wings of the butterfly, and throughly enjoyed using it.

By the skin of my teeth

Having been very lucky and won a gorgeous digi from Mo's Digital Challenge last week I couldn't resist entering again this week and it was in a similar vein to my last card with them, ie merging images.

Sadly, this week has been one of those that just keeps happening to me, if it can go wrong it will and so I have only just finished my card....... the daylight has gone here in the UK and my picture of my card is not the best lit one.

I merged both the boy and girl Bye-bye images riding away on their bikes and made it look as if the girl was ahead of the boy. Then it reminded me of me and my big Sister who I used to follow everywhere. So much so in fact that I almost lost a finger in the mechanism of a deckchair because she kept moving away and I kept getting up and moving my chair to be next to her. Finally I got fed up of getting out of the deckchair and tucking my hands under the bit where it folds back on itself I humped the whole thing, including me, along the ground in a sort of bouncing motion and suddenly. SNAPPPPPPPPP it closed on one of my hands and nearly took my ring finger of my right hand clean off.

So my little girl is complaining to her Mum to tell him to stop following her.

Coloured with promarkers, matted with nesties on some lovely Basic Grey origins paper, a couple of bright felt flowers and a butterfly completed the card.

Sure do hope I make it over to Mo in time to post this!!!!!!!! The clock is ticking.........

~ Lin ~

Biggest challenge ever

Well this week I have twenty three challenges. Wow, never managed so many before. But it was a little easier as lots of folks spotted the change in the weather and came up with the theme of Summer, one is a little out there in terms of whether or not it matches the theme, but the rest are in a similar vein.

So here goes

All these blogs have the theme of Summer:-

Cupcake Craft Challenges - summer delights
Everybody Art Challenge
Stampavie and More
Stampin For The Weekend - summer/travel
Raise The Bar - celebrate summer
Our Creative Corner - summer inspiration or what summer means to you
Paper Sundaes - summer fun

I used the sketch from Secret Crafter

Creative Inspirations have a beach theme

Order of the Opus Gluei - Life's a beach

Papertake Weekly's theme is Fun, Fun, Fun - what can be more fun than a day at the beach

Delightful Sketches are after texture and I hope I have achieved that with both the debossing on the background card and the little ocean embellishments

Tuesday Taggers - touchy feely texture with a prize on offer from Tanda Stamps

Meljen Designs require dry embossing, which is how I achieved the debossing on the background card, only back to front!

Oh, Alice! are after muchness! They want the heart of your stamping style. Mine is I guess the colouring. I like to use a variety of different methods for colouring, but since getting a full set of promarkers I have been lured into the promarker club and can't seem to pull away....... which reminds me I must revisit one of my other favourite styles soon.

Busy Beauties Creation Station a nice easy theme of Anything Goes

AIFactory again Anything Goes but with a punch!

Your Next Stamp wants a border punch and I used the layered arches stamp from MS to make the ribbon down the side.

Pixie Dust Studios - punch it out

Wee Memories also have a theme of Punch It

The Pink Elephant - 'Gotta Wear Shades' - use bright fun colours

Pile It On's theme is quirky and I think my little seahorses and fishes are quirky and I certainly piled it on so hope it qualifies

And finally my 'out there' theme

My Time to Craft are after 'Wild Thing' they want something that lives or grows in the wild. Sooooo I figured the ocean is wild to most of us, most of us never explore the deeps where exotic sea creatures live, sea horses flourish and there are shoals of neon coloured fish....... so my wild things are all the lovely ocean themed embellishments. These actually came from a children's beading set and oh what fun I have had with the various aspects of that kit. Revisting my childhood I guess.

The image is a combination of a couple of Magnolias from the Lazy Summer Days collection, coloured in with promarkers and the blue sky was dotted on with distress inks. The mat behind her is meant to represent the sun!

So there you have it, my 'biggest amount of challenges for one card' post to date..... and now you can all see what I spent my Sunday doing!

Happy Sunday evening everyone

~ Lin ~

Similar Challenges, different card

So here we go with some similar challenges but a different card! Again I used the 'no designer paper' theme of Cute Card Thursday this time with some paper I made myself. Firstly I used distressed inks to create a blue/green background which I then laid swirl masks over. I then went over the top of the masks with more distressed inks in wild honey and scattered straw leaving the original bluey green showing through where the masks had been. I also dripped some water on to move the ink around in some places.

This also, hopefully, meets the Oh, Alice! criteria of swirls again. I certainly got messy creating these ones.

The third challenge I have entered twice is DP2 Challenge - Mo's again with a babies theme, and again I combined more than one image. I used Lacie with Ice cream which I flipped so she was facing towards the second image which is Kai in flower hat. They both look to be enjoying a lovely sunny summer's day which leads me to the next challenge of 'summer delights' from Cupcake Craft Challenges. The idea was to create a project showing what summer means to you. For me summers in my youth were endless, and although I only have a sister, she and I would sit in the garden soaking up the sun playing in the sandpit and licking down lollies. Whenever the sun is on my face it transports me back to those long, lazy days of my youth.

Creative Inspirations wanted distressing on the project, so the edges of my hand made paper and the mat are torn and distressed. It got a little more distressed than I intended when the image got stuck to the mat (also hand designed with inks) in the wrong spot and I had to prize it free to reposition it, so it distressed the mat with a large chunk of surface paper torn off! LOL

My final challenge for this card is Buttons and Blooms from Secret Crafter. Whilst you are over there be sure and click on the blog header to refresh so you can look at the gorgeous new stamps she is showing. If you like Manga I am sure you will love these.

~ Lin ~

A new way of looking at Veggies

I have entered a couple of challenges more than once, with two cards with similar ideas. The first one is for

DP2 Challenge - Mo's which was to celebrate babies. I liked the idea of adding more than one of her gorgeous images together so I have put three of the 'Two' series of babies/toddlers on the same image because they epitomised a later challenge, which I will get to in a minute - all will be revealed, at least in my head it will!

The second concept on the card was not to use any designer papers, so I made my own! Or rather, I stamped directly onto a plain white card and used this as the background. This was required by Cute Card Thursday.

Oh, Alice! wanted swirls, which are all over the back of my 'make it yourself' paper and I did them in colours which I hope tone in with the image colouring

The final part of this card's challenge was for the Pile It On challenge blog which have 'Eat your veggies' as their theme and they have asked if you are going 'a bit out there' to explain. I only have one image, I think, that contains veggies and I really enjoyed their challenge last week so I put my thinking cap on and pondered what I could come up with, which is where Mo's badly behaved twos come into it. I have them all having a tantrum because Mummy said 'eat your veggies or you won't get any dessert' and being very badly behaved they are sulking, screaming and stomping because they hate veggies and want their puddings NOW!.

The card is a lot plainer than my normal style, but the image took up a large area of the card and it looked better, I thought, without too much on it.

The image was coloured with promarkers, the mat is punched with MS punches and the flowers are a combination of various paper petals put together to match the colour scheme.

~ Lin ~