CCM 51 Butterflies

This fortnight’s challenge at Crafty Cardmakers is Butterflies, chosen by the lovely Melly.

We are sponsored by and they are offering a prize of £10 to use in their store.

Ironically I had just done a card for Lexi and I had chosen a butterfly for that one. Perhaps I should have tried a sneaky and combined two DT challenges in one post! But as I love butterflies I have made a nice fresh card for this challenge.

My image, sentiment and indeed BP are all from Elusive Images, the paper being part of the Graphicus Guild welcome pack.

For the image I started with a blank sheet of card and ink dusted some Big N Juicy Inks onto it. I then stamped the gorgeous and huge (6”) butterfly onto my ink dusted background with versamark and then embossed it with Sheena’s Wow sparkle powder in purple. I distressed the edges of the card with a pair of scissors and embossed them with a combination of the purple Wow powders and a sparkly blue (the same two colours I used on the sentiment stamp). The lace ribbon I dyed with the same Inkpad using both the pinky/purple and blue/green shades.

The flower is from HOTP, lovely organza petals layered up to make a flower and the centre is actually a snowflake brad, but who would know, well you all do now, lol, cos I told you. All the swirly/branch embellishments are cut with various Marianne dies.

I’m entering this into:-

Clear It Out – Anything Goes (Flowers, had for a year or more, the lace for even longer and I cannot even remember how old the paper is!)

Craft Us Crazy - #13 Anything Goes

Crafts and Me - #44 Add A Flower

DYSU - #29 wings

Flutterby Wednesday - #163 Open challenge

Little Claire’s Designs - #11 Things With Wings

Paper Cutz - #101 Anything Goes

Shopping Our Stash – #9 Technique Turn Back (I haven’t stamped and NOT coloured in ages, and I haven’t used this stamp for months)

Simon Says Stamp and Show – Anything Goes

Stamp Something - Embellished

 

Lexi’s Creations 45 A Shaped Card

It’s challenge time again at Lexi’s Creations and this time we would like to see your shaped cards.

We are once again sponsored by who are offering a 5 pack of promarkers as the prize.

So onto my card.

I have recently received one of the gorgeous Cheery Lynn Dies, and the largest one in the set is a perfect size for making a card, so I used it to make this easel card.

First though I printed Lexi’s image of the Fairydust Butterflies image and then trimmed it out in my BS.

I did the same with some basic grey paper to match and the sentiment is also from Fairydust Crafts.

The image was coloured with my promarkers.

I edged the top and bottom layers of the easel with cosmic shimmer glitter, and also the nestie mat I cut for the sentiment.

Flowers from my stash and the bow beneath the large flower is from a bath scrunchy/puff.

I’m entering this into the following:-

Craft Us Crazy - #13 Anything Goes

Crafts 4 Eternity – #29 Shaped Cards

Divas By Design - #6 Pastels

DYSU - #29 Wings

Flutterby Wednesday - #163 Open, but use Butterfly/Fairy/Angel

Forever Friends – Pastel Colours

Happileigh Scrappin’ – #32 Shaped Card

Just Some Lines – Easel Card

My Time to Craft - #149 Citrus Colours

Paper Playtime - #51 Digi Monday with a Summer theme

Stamp Something – Embellished

Dream Valley #12 Surprise

This fortnight at Dream Valley we want to see a surprise element on your card. A hidden flap, a pop up, something hidden …. if you pop on over to the blog you will find some links to tutorials for various ‘surprise’ ideas for your creations.

We are sponsored by with a $10 gift certificate for their store, where you will find lots of lovely Digis to choose from.

So onto my Surprise card.

I started with some paper from a freebie stack I got with a Craft Magazine. One of the prettiest freebies I have seen in ages, all the papers co-ordinated so beautifully together. Having distressed the edge I layered this onto some DCWV textured card. I cut a large white mat with a Marianne die and from the same set I cut a co-ordinating paper from the stack.

My image is from Crafters Companion’s Humphrey range. Isn’t she just too cute?!? I coloured her with promarkers, and trimmed her out with the smallest of the set of Marianne Dies.

I stuck the whole matted image slightly off centre, leaving an area unglued for my surprise. This was created with another Marianne die and a sentiment stamp which went with the floral theme of the card.

I plaited together a long length of three pastel satin ribbons and framed the corner of the card with it. And the flower was made up of various petals from my stash and some gem pics, hat pins and a habib pin.

Why not pop on over to Dream Valley and show us your surprise!

I am entering this into the following challenges:-

Charisma Cardz Challenges - #29 Sunshine colours

Craft Us Crazy – #13 Anything Goes

Crafts and Me - #44 Add a Flower

Crafty Ann’s Challenge Blog - #45 Embossing (lots of dry embossed areas on the die cuts)

Kaboodle Doodle - #76 Embossing (lots of dry embossed areas on the die cuts)

Paper Cutz Challenge - #101 Anything Goes

Papertake Weekly – Getting Cute

Pattie’s Creations - #26 Glitter or Bling

Stampin’ For the Weekend - #13 Paws for Thought – Anything with 4 legs (elephants have 4 legs, even cute ones)

Totally Gorjuss - #90 Punch or Die

 

CCM #50 One Layer Card

This fortnight at Crafty Cardmakers we are after your one layer cards. This is so not my style, as whilst I don’t put as much on as some other folks I find that a card with nothing added looks naked, so this was a real challenge for me. Anyhow this is what I came up with.

I masked out a rectangle on a 7x5 scalloped card blank and then ink dusted some Big N Juicy ink into it. I then stamped this lovely Kanban stamp into the inked area, and embossed it. I then bleached out the lady and the flowers.

I coloured in the bleached out areas with Cosmic Shimmer paints and used an embossing pen to go around the outside edge of the design to give it the illusion of being matted onto the card.

I was going to leave it like the pic below, but decided that even if I couldn’t embellish it it needed something, so I practised with scrap paper, a lot of scrap paper, until I could get it where I wanted it and printed the sentiment onto it to finish it off. Obviously it would have made more sense to start with the sentiment, but who needs safe! I like crafting without a parachute. I did consider safmat, but even though that blends into the background really well I figured it was slightly cheating as it was not exactly one layer, lolI’m really sorry but I seem to have managed to create TWO blurred pics! LOL

By the way, the mess in the corner was where I forgot to put the inkduster away!!!

Don’t forget to stop by the blog as my fellow teamies have come up with some fabulous designs.

Dream Valley Challenges #11 Summer Theme

Our Challenge for you this fortnight over at Dream Valley is to create something with a ‘Summer’ theme. A bit difficult here in the UK as all we seem to have is rain, rain and more rain at the moment. Either that or it’s too hot to breathe.

Anyhow I remembered these lovely Mo Manning images that I have and decided to make a beach scene with them using Paint.Net and it’s fabulous ease of merging images.I printed the scene onto watercolour card and coloured it in with Lyra Aquacolours.

 

The cloudy sky and sun were created with DIs. It is matted onto some DCWV Perfect Posies papers and finished off with some ribbon, cute little sea themed embellishments and a sentiment printed onto safmat.

Just to show the irony of the theme, here is the first pic I took of my finished card showing raindrops at my window! Summer, Pah!!

I chose the font ‘Old Dreadful' for the sentiment on purpose as it had this funky little thing where the dots at the end of the word ‘comes’ turned into eyes looking towards the right, the same direction roughly that the little lad is looking towards the sun. Also in the word Summer the U looked like a big surf wave, and the other letters looked like some animals you might see in a zoo.

    

I’m entering this into the following:-

2 Sisters Challenge Blog – #47 Summer Time Fun

Card Makin’ Mamas - #24 Summertime

Crafty Calendar Challenge – July - Under the Sea or Water themed

Crafty Purple Frog – Summer Fun

Crazy 4 Challenges – #95 Summer themed card

Mami Doodles - #30 At The Beach

Samuel Taylors Crafts – July - Summery Theme

Stampin’ B’s – 118 Beach Scene to Include Sand (real or imagined)

The Stamping Boutique - #10 Summer Scene

Totally Gorjuss - #88 Summertime

Totally Papercrafts - #74 The Beach

Wee Memories – Summertime

ABC Birthday Blog Hop and a DT Call

Good morning. Today we are celebrating The ABC Challenge’s third Birthday with a Blog Hop.
We are also having a Design Team call so please make sure you go on over to the main blog and check out the details for entering.
You should have reached me from Sari’s Blog. If not, you can start the hop at Vicky’s Blog or indeed the ABC Challenge blog. Our challenge for the hop is Y is for yesterday. My creation reminds me of my youth, a long, long time ago. Not that I ever had a pet duck, lol, but I can recall sitting on the bridge at the ford and dangling my feet in the water.
On to our blog hop.
In order to qualify for a prize, you must comment on all the hop stops you visit, all prizes will be drawn at random from all the qualifying entrants.
Here are all the hop stops in order
1 - Vicky
2 - Clare (Distressed miss)
3 - Sue C
4 - Hanna
5 - Emma
6 - Cecilia
7 - Gro
8 - Sari
9 - Lin
10 - Jackie
11 - Kendra
12- Angelique
13- Karli
14- Suzanne T
15 - Lols
16 - Ali
17 - Sandie
18 - Cathy
My prize is 5 digi downloads courtesy of   

I have used two of Di’s gorgeous Digis in my card. Firstly Lou with Duck and I have merged her onto the Bridge Background, using Paint.Net.
My image was coloured with prismas and OMS.
The BPs are Basic Grey, the raffia ribbon from Bunny Zoe, and the vintage seam binding from Ebay. The flowers are mainly from Wild Orchid Crafts. The butterflies I trimmed from some lovely ribbon, and the two little gem designs anchoring the ends of the seam binding are from my stash.
Next stop on the hop is
Jackie
Don’t forget to leave a comment at every stop to be in with a chance of winning the prizes on offer.
I am entering this into the following:-
A Spoonfull of Sugar - #159 Sewing
Bearly Mine - #14 Anything Goes
Craft Room Challenge – Summer Birthdays
Craft Your Passion – Anything Goes
Creative Craft Challenges – Pretty Blossoms
Karen’s Doodles – More Than One Image
KB Cute Monday - #20 Anything Goes
Ladybug Crafts Ink TLT - #35 Summer Birthdays
Ooh La La Creations - #83 Summer Flowers
Party Time Tuesdays - #23 Square Cards
Sentimental Sundays – # 62 Anything Goes
The Emerald Faerie Garden - #4 All Things Girly
Try It On Tuesday – Flower Power
Wee Memories - #61 Summertime

The Spotlight Challenge #49 Masking

This week over on The Spotlight Challenge we would like to see masking on your creations.

We have a fab prize on offer of this gorgeous Lemon Shortbread stamp courtesy of Crafts & Me.

This challenge is hosted by Jack and this is her description of what she would like to see.

SPOTLIGHT ON MASKING-
Its my turn to set the challenge this fortnight and I'd like to see you using masking - This can be using a bought mask (or stencil), making your own, stamping your main image and masking over it before you do your background, using torn paper as a mask, but NOT a picture of a mask. I'd also like a short explanation of how you used your mask.

So onto my card.

Sorry about the poor quality of the pic!

I started with a blank piece of white card and stamp the LOTV couple onto it. Having made a mask of them I then covered them and stamped the Cuddly Buddly church. I also made a mask of that and then stamped the larger of the trees just behind the church.

I did a sort of reverse mask for the sun by punching out a circle and overlaying the paper with the hole and then pouncing through it.

The sky was done with Broken China DI and the other background with a couple of toning colours from the same Kaleidoscope ink pad which I used to stamp the trees. Finally I coloured in the couple and church with promarkers.

I’m entering this into the following:-

Craft Your Passion – #65 Anything Goes

Cupcake Craft Challenges – Single Layer Cards

Kaboodle Doodles - #74 Celebrations

KB Cute Monday – #20 Anything Goes

Paper Creator’s Crafts - #2 Special Occasion

Pollycraft - #100 Celebrations

Quirky Crafts - #14 No Patterned Papers

Sentimental Sundays #62 Anything Goes

Top Tip Tuesday – #41 Wedding or Anniversary