CCM #215 At Least Two Dies or Punches

Our challenge at Crafty Cardmakers today is to use at least two dies or punches, or one of each.

My image is from a lush paper pad by Katy Sue from their Mermaids range, which I die cut with Sue Wilson’s new Festive Frames, Eve, die, that in turn was matted onto the outside die from the same set which I cut from plain white card.

The background was created with my favourite My Favourite Things stamp background, Whimsical Waves. I stamped it with versamark onto the same white card I die cut the outer frame from and embossed in clear powder. I then used a combination of Spectrum Sparkle and Tonic Aquaflow pens and a spritzer to create a underwater background. I fussy cut out the mermaid, sentiment and the three patterned fishes from the same pad as the original image. The two shimmery fish just peeking out from beneath the diecut frame, and the tiger shark are all tiny die cuts by Marianne Designs. I edged the background with a green copic marker to give the illusion of a thin mat, and decoupaged up the extra elements of the image. A sprinkling of glamour dust around the water elements of the image and the mermaids tail completed the design.

I have a second picture to show the shimmer, as it doesn’t show up well on the camera in the normal light!

I am entering this into:-

2 Crafty Critter Crazies - #16 Anything Goes with a Critter
Animals Friends - #64 July In or On The Water
Blank Page Muse - June: Let’s Go To The Beach
Card Mania - #106 Anything Goes
City Crafter - #418 Seaside
Classic Design Team - #27 Anything Goes
Crafty Friends - #87 Fairy And/Or Fantasy
Cupcake Inspirations - #449 Under The Sea
Kitty Bee Designs - #121 Under The Sea
Pause, Dream, Enjoy - #26 Mermaids

DV #182 All Things Bright and Beautiful

Welcome to Dream Valley’s challenge for the next two weeks, All Things Bright and Beautiful. Today’s challenge is just for fun, as there is no actual prize.

I started with a blank sheet of Clarity 7” Stencil card, and a blank sheet of Crafters Companion A4 black card, a sheet of scrap card., some Tim Holtz dies and some Spellbinders Border dies.

With the scrap card and border dies I cut two fancy edges, which I then taped down over the stencil card to create my own stencilled shape between 1/3 and half way up.

Using Distress Oxides I inked in between my two edges making my own stencilled shape.

Then I stamped some random stamps from Marianne’s texture range.

The little pot with the wildflower is from Tim Holtz, and was lurking in my spare diecuts box. I liked the plain black against the brightly coloured shape. I originally stamped the clarity Congratulations stamp directly onto the card but it fell off the block and made a mess, so I stamped a second time and faux matted it up by going around the trimmed out sentiment with black ink.

I’m entering this into:-

Addicted to Stamps - #297 Make Your Mark
Aud Sentimenys - #206 Anything Goes + A Sentiment
CAS-ual Fridays - #202 Inspiration Photo (the bright colours)
Crafting With An Attitude - #40 Anything Goes
Crafty Catz - #422 Anything Goes option Beautiful Blooms
Create a Smile - Moodboard (I chose the colour palette)
Create and Inspire - #75 Anything Goes
Dare2BArtzy - June: Bright Colours
Inkspirational - #163 Use Small Stamps
Less Is More - #374 Bits Box Items
Sheepski Designs - #15 Embellish It or CAS
Simon Says Wednesday - Bright and Cheerful
Simply Papercraft - #58 Anything Goes

CCM #214 Wet or Dry Embossing

Our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is Wet or Dry Embossing. You can enter any project you like, it doesn’t have to just be a card, as long as you have some wet or dry embossing on it somewhere.

I decided to go for both on my card.

My dry embossing is the white panel behind the die cut elements, it’s a Sue Wilson Pinpoint Embossing Folder called Cross Stitch.

My wet embossing is the flower design die cut. I stamped it in three different shades of Tonic Nuvo Inks, but because these dry fast and aren’t really suitable for embossing I decided to try to let those inks dry and them emboss over the top with versamark. Before the various stamping platforms were released (I have the Tim Holtz one), this would not really have been possible. But because I could leave my image exactly where it was and let it dry and then apply versamark to my stamp and restamp over the already coloured image it worked a treat. I was originally going to colour the flowers in but changed my mind as I liked the outline look instead.

The stamp has a matching die  and I used that to cut two green mirri shapes and then used the decorative element to that die to give a lovely lacey effect.

The centres of the dies are from Spellbinders, the two white centres, and the green mirri ones are from a Marianne die set.

The sentiment is, I think, Penny Black, but I couldn’t swear to it, lol.

I am entering this into:-

Allsorts - #472 Use At Least 2 Dies
Back To Basics and Beyond - #5 Heat Embossing
CCEE Stampers - #1824 Blooming Flowers
Color Throwdown - #497 (Couldn’t see that I had to use all four colours! If that’s not correct just delete me)
Crafty Calendar - June: Use 3 of Something
Creatalicious - #141 Anything Goes With Optional Flowers
Dragonfly Dreams - Anything Goes
Happy Little Stampers - June: Anything Goes With Dies
Heartful Stamping - Anything Goes + a Stamp
Just Add Ink - #413 Colour
Penny Black and More - June: In The Garden
The Crafty Addicts - #49 Say It With Flowers

DV #181 Add Some Bling

Today at Dream Valley we are sponsored by Dies to Die For with a lovely £15 voucher for the winner, and our challenge is to add some bling.

I started with a lovely new stamp from Craft Buddy’s Gem It range. I did think I didn’t like the idea of specific stamps designed to add gems to but this feather is just so ethereal I fell in love with it. As you can see I didn’t add gems to every little circle. I inked it up with Tonic’s Nuvo Hybrid ink in four different shades as I had intended originally to add some pixie powders to the background, but I loved it on just a plain background so I could have used different inks!

The image is matted onto purple mirri paper and then onto a green satin mirri card. The gems are coloured with copics to tone in with the Inkpad shades and the sentiment is cut from the same paper/card I used for the mats and layers. I used the fabulous Sticky Roll from Wild Spider to back the paper and make the sentiments sticky. I was concerned it might make these small sentiments more difficult to cut but they still cut like a dream and it was so easy to stick them down. No more messy glued fingers and blobs of glue appearing where I don’t want them!

A close up pic so you can see how ‘blingy’ it is.

I am entering this into:-

A Bit More Time to Craft - #69 Anything Goes
A Perfect Time to Craft - #06 Anything Goes
Classic Design Team Challenge - #26 Anything Goes
Crafts Galore Encore - June: Anything Goes
Dare 2B Artzy - June: Bright Colours
Eclectic Ellapu - June: Anything Goes
Heartful Stamping - June: Anything Goes and A Stamp
Love To Craft - #23 Anything Goes
SheepSki Designs - #15 Embellish It or CAS
Stamping Sensations - June: Anything Goes
The Color Sisters - #56 Colour Palette
The Corrosive Challenge - June: Anything Goes

DV #179 Summer Colours

Our challenge today at Dream Valley is Summer Colours. We are sponsored by Star Stampz.

At the time I was preparing this post it feels like Winter still here in Hampshire and I still have my heating on in early May!!!! Anyhow, hopefully by the time this is published it will be feeling at least like Spring.

EDIT; Spring has finally sprung!!! Thank goodness.

As soon as I saw this image I imagined her floating away over a rainbow, and I had just the perfect die to match my thoughts. I diecut the colours of the rainbow with Sue Wilson’s You are my Sunshine rainbow die and the Sun is also from Sue’s Rain or Shine, part of the same Necessities collection. The clouds are from Memory Box. The sentiment I printed myself and the background paper is from Wild Rose Studio from their Blackberry Lane pad.

The image was coloured with a combination of Copics for the hair and skin and Zig Clean Colour Brush pens. Unfortunately I went over the balloons with some varnish in a pen and it bled the colour of the orange balloon onto the tip of the green one! I guess because the colours are water based it shifted. And after all that there isn’t even any ‘wet look/shine’ from the varnish which is what I was trying to achieve!

I am entering this into:-

A Perfect Time to Craft - #5 Anything Goes
Crafting With Friends - #67 Anything Goes
Crafts Galore Encore - May: Anything Goes
Crafty Hazelnut’s Patterned Paper - May. Anything goes with Patterned Paper
Creative Craft Cottage - #107 Dies and/or Punches
Fab ‘n Funky - #393 Garden Or Outdoors
Happy Little Stamper - May: Anything Goes With Dies
Jo’s Scrap Shack - #233 Anything Goes
Love to Craft - #22 May: Anything Goes
Pause, Dream, Enjoy - #19 Anything Goes
Tic, Tac, Toe - #46 Centre Line - Scene, Red, Something Digital

CCM #211 No Patterned Paper

Our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is No Patterned Paper. Please stop by the team’s blogs and leave them some love.

I started with a blank A3 white card which I created an approx A5 landscape card blank from. I stencilled onto that from an Imagination Crafts A4 stencil called Distressed Letter using Wilted Violet, Shaded Lilac, Broken China and Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxides. The blue/green frame is an Intricutz die, cut out of mirri card.

The feathers were a lot of fun to create. They are from Chocolate Baroque from their I shall Be Your Wings stamp sheet. There are several different styles and sizes of feathers and these two are sort of zentangled. I wanted to use the Colourcraft Soft Relief paste to make some textural feathers, but I wanted them to be multicoloured instead of the plain pearl of the paste, so before applying the paste I spritzed each stamp with water and then added some pixie powders. At this stage the stamps were very wet and I wasn’t sure that the paste would ever dry applying it to wet stamps so I mopped a little of the coloured water up with kitchen roll. In hindsight it might have been better to have made a paint from the powders and applied that as it would not have been so wet I think.

Anyhow I then added the paste with a palette knife, spread reasonably thinly and left to dry. Because it’s so hot at the moment it was dry in about 12 hours, but I’m guessing it would normally take closer to 48 hours. At that stage you bend the stamp a little and peel off the set paste and this is what I got.

As you can see, at this stage they were very pale and there were some areas where there was no colour at all. Whilst the paste was drying a lot of the colour leeched right through to the reverse side, the non patterned side of the paste feathers. So as I had wanted them to be much brighter I used my versamark pen and instead added some Cosmic Shimmer sparkle pigments in similar shades to the Pixie Powders I used to start with.

This is what they looked like after - I forgot to take a pic until they were on the card!

As you can see, they were now much, much brighter, much more what I was after.

The final part of the card is a sentiment, ‘A Heart Without Dreams is like a Bird without feathers’ from the same stamp sheet which I stamped with Kaleidacolor Riviera inkpad.

The feathers and sentiment were backed with foam tape to give them a little height.

I am entering this into:-

A Inky Mess - #20 Anything Mixed Media Goes
Artistic Inspirations - #199 Anything Goes
Calling All Sistahs - #12 Encouragement Card
Classic Design Team - #25 Open Challenge
Creatalicious Challenges - #138 Anything Goes, Option Add a Sentiment
Create and Inspire - #73 Anything Goes, Option use a stencil
Creative Artiste - #38 Anything Mixed Media Goes
Heartful Stamping - #38 Anything Goes + a Stamp
Just For Fun Rubber Stamps - May: Use More Than One Stamp
Polkadoodles - #18 Anything Goes
Quick Quotes - #87 Add A 3D element (feathers are VERY dimensional)
Stamping Sensations - May: Close to Nature
Stamps & Stencils - Let’s Fake It (clearly my feathers are not real!)
Use Your Stuff - #310 Mood Board (Bottom Left bird, or rather his feathers!)
We Love 2 Create - #8 Anything Creative/Mixed Media Goes

DV #178 Ribbon and/or Lace

Our challenge at Dream Valley today is to use ribbon and/or lace on your project. We are sponsored by Sheepski Designs and I have used their lovely image Perfect Pointe for my card.

I printed her onto some lightweight card and coloured her in with a combination of Copics, and Ecoline waterbrush pens.

I matted the diecut image onto Sue Wilson’s Poppy diecut which I cut from some lovely handmade paper which I have had in my stash for at least 15 years!! That in turn was matted onto some other handmade paper in complimentary colour to the ones in the image. Then the whole lot was matted onto some card and I can’t remember where that came from! The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards’ Year of Sentiments diecut pad, and I edged it with tiny coloured resin flowers. The lace ribbon was white, but I coloured it with the same Ecoline pen I used in the image, and then threaded through some blue satin ribbon.

I am entering this into:-

Artistic Inspirations - #199 Anything Goes
Back To Basics - #1 Matting and Layering
Creates and Makes - #21 Anything Goes
Dare2BArtzy - April: Pastel Colours
Fussy and Fancy - #210 Add A Diecut
Stamping Sensations - April: One for the Girls
Star Stampz - Hand Coloured Image
The Paper Shelter - #336 Die Cuts

CCM #210 Birthdays

Our challenge at Crafty Cardmakers today, hosted by me, is Birthdays. I chose the theme because today is my Sister’s Birthday. I won’t divulge her age, but she’s older than me….. in your face Sis!!! LOL - All the while we were growing up she used to say ‘when your as old as me’ as a way to prevent me doing something I wanted to do…. and naturally bragging about her seniority, well then you get over a certain age and you would kill to be the younger one. I created my own card blank with the Tonic dies, Bowscale. The matting and layering levels were various purple cardstock in my stash, but the background layer is from Heartfelt Creations’ Sugar Hollow collection paper pad.

The focal point is one of the stamps and dies, which I cut and coloured with copics. The sentiment comes from Craftwork Cards preprinted and die cut sentiments, and the flowers are also from Heartfelt Creations, Ariana Blooms. The corner die, again from Heartfelt is Fleur Borders and Pockets dies. I added glitter accents to all the flowers, including the blossom in the tree.

The little owls in this set are so cute, and the stamps match the dies so well.

I am entering this into:-

Always Happy Birthday - April
Aud Sentiments - #201 Happy Birthday
CCC Digi Creations - #91 Include An Animal
Craft Rocket - #47 Flowers
Crafting With Dragonflies - #102 Cards Using Dies and/or Punches
Crafty Friends - #82 Flowers
Di’s Digi Challenge - Include an Animals
Fashionable Stamping - #134 Animals
Fussy and Fancy - #210 Add a Die Cut
Sieze The Birthday - Vibrant Colours (opted to just go birthday)
Simon Says Stamp Weds Chall - Sparkle and Shine
Simply Create Too - #137 Use Die Cuts
The Paper Shelter - #335 A Birthday Card
Try It On Tuesday - Nature’s Beauty

DV #177 2 Or More Buttons

Our challenge at Dream Valley this week is to use 2 or more buttons in your project. We are sponsored by All Dressed Up and I have used one of their older designs ‘Love to Shop Girl 1’, which I coloured with copics.

I made my tag background by covering a manilla number 8 tag in patterned paper, you can just see it through the next layer. The next layer was made from some tissue type paper that came as a protective layer with some clothes. I do have rice paper, but thought I would try an experiment to see if stuff I would normally discard would work as well! This was the mopping up from another project that consisted of blues and pinks, which I put to one side to possibly use later. This paper seems considerably more fragile and prone to tearing than rice paper does, but once dried it did ‘firm up’ I applied it over my patterned paper layer with pva glue.

After it dried I stencilled the word Perfect and the stars and distressed harlequins with three shades of Pentart glitter pastes. I inked around the edges of my tag with Broken China oxide. The buttons, and ribbon bits that I stapled on, came from my stash, as did the dazzler flower and the thread I used in my buttons.

I fussy cut the image and popped her on with some foam tape.

This is the packing tissue before, and what was left after I took out the piece I used on the tag. As you can see, it’s not as strong and does tear easily, so maybe mop up in layers and let it dry out a little in between.

  

I am entering this into:-

A Inky Mess - #19 Anything Mixed Media Goes
All Dressed Up - #80 Anything Goes
Altered Eclectics - April: Anything Mixed Media Goes
Artistic Inspirations - #198 Anything Goes
Crafting By Designs - Elegant Ladies
Create and Inspire - #73 Anything Goes, Option use stencils
Creative Artiste - #37 Anything Mixed Media Goes
My Creative Scoop Color Inspiration Monthly - Anything Hand Coloured Goes
Naughty or Nice - #50 Use a Past Theme I chose #19 Ribbon
Simon Says Wednesday - Add Some Texture
Stamping Sensations - April: One for the Girls
We Love 2 Create - #7 Anything Creative/Mixed Media Goes

CCM #209 Water

Our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is Water. Do please pop by the blog as there are a lovely wide variety of interpretations of the theme by the DT.

I went for an underwater theme for my card. I started with the background to the scene by stamping Whimsical Waves from My Favorite Things in versamark and embossing with White detail powder onto a watercolour card. Then I just liberally applied various colours of Zig Clean Color Brush Pens and a couple of the blues from the Ecoline Watercolour Brush pens and then spritzed with water. I did add some extra colour directly to certain areas after it was dry in order to give some more depth and shade. I then went over the whole background with the clear overlay sparkle pen.

The three main embellishments are all Katy Sue Designs moulds filled with Paper clay and then coloured with Spectrum Sparkle pens. The jellyfish and most of the seaweed are dies from Magnolia and the other dies are from Marianne. The little shells at the bottom, the paper surrounding the scene and sentiments are from Heartfelt Creations’ Under the Sea collection.

A close up of the scene taken with the flash to show all the sparkle that sadly the camera doesn’t pick up properly with no flash:

The scene was intended to look like a Porthole and I even had a large acetate covering for it that came from a pack of giant crumpets!! Waste not, want not. Sadly in the event it was really too deep and would have made it too front heavy for a card. It might have worked on a canvas but I still think it was too deep, so good idea, but practically not suitable. If the crumpet packaging had been used it would have obscured the waist end of the mermaid’s tail, but because I had already stuck the embellishments down before I realised the packaging wouldn’t work now there is a dip showing in the tai.l. It was meant to look like a mermaid swimming past the porthole and all you can see is her tail. I am bemused as to why it’s shaped like it is anyhow I would have thought a flat finished waist area would have been more practical, and if I had realised sooner I would have trimmed it up to fit against the black frame.

You can see what I mean in this pic@

I am entering this into:-

2 Crafty Critters - #13 Anything Goes with a Critter
A Inky Mess - #19 Anything Mixed Media Goes
CCC Digi Creations - #91 Include An Animal
Craftaholics R Us - #14 Birthday Cards
Crafter’s Castle - #4 Anything Goes, Option Dimensional
Creative Artiste - #37 Anything Mixed Media Goes
Fussy and Fancy - #209 Add a Sentiment
Love To Craft - #21 April: Anything Goes
Love to Create - #7 Anything Creative/Mixed Media Goes
Naughty or Nice - #50 So Long and Thanks for All the Fish (with a title like that and my project, how could I resist!) July 2014 Mixed Media
Papercraft Business Challenge - #5 Anything Goes, Option Birthday
Sheepski Designs - #13 Animal Magic
Simon Says Wednesday - Birthday
Simply Create Too - #137 Use Diecuts
That’s Crafty - Going Round In Circles
The House That Stamps Built - DCC44 All Creatures Great and Small

 

Delicious Doodles April Guest Spot

I was thrilled to be offered a guest spot on Delicious Doodles for April. Stupidly I didn’t read my email properly and created something that did not have a Delicious Doodles image on it! Annoying, as Teri is a very talented designer and I actually have lots of her images. Anyhow, the challenge is Anything But Square.

My non square card was made for my beautiful Niece Madi’s birthday. I wanted it to be bright and colourful as she had a hard year last year after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Several rounds of chemo, surgery and radio therapy followed, and she was so positive throughout. Anyhow I am waffling now, sorry.

My card base and mats and layers were made with Sue Wilson’s Octagon dies, the layer with the circular holes is from the Classic Adorned Octagons and the base and top layer, and indeed the birthday sentiment layer are all from the Double Stitched Octagons.

The Sunflower diecuts are from Spellbinders Stephanie Low’s Cool Vibes Sunflower collection which are stamps and matching die sets. I was drawn to this set because of the beauty of the flower but also it has a sentiment ‘Radiate Positive Vibes’ because of Madi’s condition. She radiated positive vibes throughout. However, this was for her birthday so I didn’t want to ‘remind’ her of her recent past and stuck with the traditional Happy Birthday sentiment instead.

The feathers are a Spellbinder die from way back, sorry I don’t recall the name.

I coloured the flowers with a combination of Zig Clean Color brush pens and Ecoline watercolour brush pens. I also splashed the background with the pens. The feathers were cut from the Ink Away clean up cloth I used to mop up the spills from the various watercolours and then left to dry on the radiator before cutting out. It gives them a lovely ethereal feel. The final addition is a bunch of Card Candi.

I am entering this into:-

A Gem of a Challenge - #216 Female Birthday with a Sentiment
Always Fun - #52 Happy Birthday
Always Happy Birthday - Birthday
C.R.A.F.T. - #461 Shaped Card, not Rectangular or Square
Di’s Digi Challenge - Spring Flowers
DL. Art Thankful Thursday - #225 Flowers
Seize the Birthday - Birds (Birthday with option of Birds, do feathers count, as without birds there would be no feathers!)
Star Stampz Challenge - Throw on the Flowers
The Sisterhood of Crafters - Spring Flowers
Whoopsi Daisy - Anything Goes with Option of Flowers

DV #176 Dry Embossing

Our challenge at Dream Valley today is Dry Embossing. We are sponsored by Cute As A Button and I have used one of their images to create my card, Ballerina.

I coloured her in with copics, and printed the skirt part of her tutu onto patterned paper from Nitwits and then paper pieced it onto the image. The die cut is from Spellbinders.

The embossed background I have had since forever!!! It’s one of those craft supplies I just had to have, before embossing folders were so prevalent and die cutting machines, and came in a pad from Craftwork Cards. This particular sheet was a full 8” sheet, but the pad also contained embossed card that was precut in various lovely shapes.

I inked over it with Broken China and Shaded Lilac Distress Oxides. The two ribbons came from my stash, as did the gems and glitter enamel dots.

A slightly darker version of the picture. I really need a new camera, or better eyes, because I am struggling to get decent pics at the moment.

I am entering this into:-

Artistic Inspirations - #197 Anything Goes
Craftaholics R Us - #13 Enamel Dots
Crafting With An Attitude - #37 Anything Goes
Crafty Catz - #410 Anything Goes, Twist Use Old Stash
Dare 2B Artzy - April: Pastel Colours
Daring Cardmakers - Do Something Digi
Dies R Us - #94 Anything Goes with Dies
Get Creative - #68 No Patterned Paper
Southern Girls Challenge - Die Cuts
The Paper Shelter - #332 Digital Image

CCM #208 Bunnies, Chicks or Eggs

Our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is basically an Easter challenge entitled, Bunnies, Chicks or Eggs.

I have used an image from Delicious Doodles called Away with the Bunnies. It struck me funny because my family accuse me all the time of being away with the Fairies! So I loved this play on that saying.

I printed it onto watercolour cardstock and coloured the image with Zig Clean Color Brush Pens and a little dabble of Neocolor ii’s for the background.

The image, matting layer and card base were all made with a Crealies double dots XXL die.

The scrolly bits are a Joycraft die, and the Happy Easter comes from Crafter’s Companion Die’sire range. Flowers from my stash, some small diecut butterflies and a bit of glitter on her wings finished it off.

I’m entering this into

Always Fun - #51 Easter
Creative With Stamps - #24 Bunny
Delicious Doodles - March: Hare/Rabbit
Die Cuttin’ Divas - #361 Flowers
Di’s Digi Challenge - Spring Flowers
Fussy and Fancy - #208 Spring Flowers
Make My Monday - #67 Easter Fun
Scrapbook Stamp Society - #137 Easter
Scribbles Design - #63 Bunny Hop
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge  - Floral Frenzy
Whoopsi Daisy - Mar: Anything But a Square

DV #175 Spring colours

Today at Dream Valley we are sponsored by Paper Nest Dolls for our Spring Colours challenge.

I used ‘Will work for Carrots’ as my image, which I coloured with copics.

For the card itself I started with a sheet of Clarity paper from their Brighton Rock pad, which I chose because of the lovely Spring colours, particularly the peachy orange and yellow of the daffodil.

It looked like this:

I chopped it down to 7.5” square, and then cut it into 5 strips of 1.5” wide, and then chopped them down to 1.5” squares, so I had 25 squares, which I laid out like this:

I stuck them down onto a sheet of white paper and trimmed it up and then popped it through the Bigshot with an Embossalicious folder from Crafters companion so it looked like this:

Then I used several different shades of  Pentart Colored Metallic wax paste, picking out the embossed flowers, until it looked like this:

As kyou can see I caught it more heavily than I wanted in some areas but most of those were covered up with the image and sentiment.

This is a slightly darker version of the final card so you can see the dragonflies a little better.

The mats were cut from white card using a spellbinders die, the sentiment comes from Die’sire, the dragonflies are by John Next Door and the flowers were all from my stash.  Unfortunately you cannot see properly in the pic but the dragonflies have all been dusted with glamour dust so they are sparkly!.

I am entering this into:-

A Gem of a Challenge - #215 Easter Time
Animal Friends Challenge - #60 Easter
Bastel Traum - #63 Easter/Spring
Brown Sugar Challenge - #276 Spring or Easter
Crafting With Dragonflies - #100 Easter Cards
Creative Knockouts - #237 Spring Is On The Way
Eclectic Ellapu - March: Spring Is Coming
Fabrika Fantasy - #18 Spring
Hanna & Friends - #292 Easter/Spring
Let’s Craft and Create - #135 Anything Goes Option Easter
Mari Ko Creations - Bunny Hop/Easter
Moving Along With the Times - #67 Easter
My Time to Craft - #366 Easter/spring
Noor Designs - March: Spring
Papercraft Business Challenge #4 March: Anything Goes Option Easter
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Easter Inspired
Sparkles Monthly - #102 Spring Is In The Air
Stempel Magic - #149 Easter
Sweet Stampers - #18 Spring or Easter

CCM #207 Go Green

As it’s St. Patrick’s Day this coming weekend we thought we would celebrate with the traditional St. Pat’s Day colour of green, so our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is Go Green.

My card is on an 8” scalloped card base, using just two papers/card. One is a green paper with embossed offwhite dots and the other plain white card. I managed to get all of it out of a 12” sheet of the green paper by gutting the middle of the bottom square layer….. well there isn’t much point in hiding what you can use in the front now is there!

The bottom white layer has been embossed with a Sue Wilson die, Pinpoint Cross Stitch.

The rest of it was cut using a combination of Sue Wilson’s Lavish Accented Octagon and Classic Adorned Octagon dies, which you can cut into the card/paper or cut out with the accompanying plain octagon dies in the sets. I do also have the Double Stitched Octagon dies, but I didn’t want to make an octagon shaped card so just went with the pretty pattern ones instead.  I layered these up with a layer of the white card and then a final layer of the green paper.

The flowers are Heartfelt Creations Striped Sun Kissed Fleur, which I also diecut in the plain white card and inked through with Evergreen Bough Distress Oxide ink, the same ink I used to stamp the striped flowers with before | embossed them with clear powder.

I’ve added a couple of swirls from Crafters Companion, and from Marianne Designs, pearls to the centres of the flowers, and a sentiment from Creative Expressions’ Showered with Love stamp set.

I am entering this into:-

Cards In Envy - Green Things
Careful Heart - #12 Anything Goes, Twist Add Green
Die Cut Divas - Mar: Monochrome
Di’s Digi Challenge - Lot’s Of Green
Die Cuttin’ Divas - #359 Use Green
Dragonfly Journeys - #113 Going Green
Pearly Sparkles - #26 Flowers
Scribbles Design - #62 Go For Green
SheepSki Designs - #12 Flowers
Simply Create Too - #136 Use Green
Star Stampz - Lots of Green

DV #174 Vintage

Our challenge today at Dream Valley is Vintage. It’s not normally one of my favourite genres, but I found some lovely vintage photos with just a hint of colour to them and was inspired by one of them.

We are sponsored by Di’s Digi Designs.

As I said above I found these lovely vintage images online, and this one inspired me. She is just so beautiful. I used a sheet of Sara’s Shabby Chic paper from Crafters Companion, which is also beautiful. I wish I had bought more than one pad as I hate using it, in case it will be all gone! I am sure you all know that feeling. I trimmed this down to 8”, and used some of the offcuts later to make some diecut swirls. which are behind the flowers. I know they are difficult to see, but in real life they are quite noticeable. I think the subtle differences in colour to the background the camera found hard to pick up. There is a photo below in close up so you can see them.

I printed the image and then trimmed it out with another Sara signature product from the Glamorous dies, the background mat is from the same set. but I embossed that with a swirly embossing folder after I had diecut it. The lovely lace and pearl string were in my stash, and again they are something I hate parting with!

Flowers, diecut leaves and stamens all from my stash. I hadn’t used flowers for a while as I am often late and have to hurry to finish, but this one really cried out for some floral accents.

I am entering this into:-

A Vintage Journey - Treasure (my treasure is the paper, lace and pearl bead string)
City Crafter Challenge - #401 Die Cuts
Cut It Up - #142 Anything Goes
Di’s Digi Challenge - Die Cuts
Die Cuttin’ Divas - #358 Tic, Tac, Toe (Bottom Line - Flowers, Embossing, Ribbon)
Dies R Us - #92 Use Pastel Colours
Everybody Art - #420 Pearls and Lace
International Heart and Soul - #28 Emboss and Use a Die
Pearly Sparkle - #26 Flowers
Sheepski Designs - #12 Flowers
The Corrosive Challenge - #3 Anything Goes
Try It On Tuesday - Vintage