The Sugar Bowl

There is a great challenge over at The Sugar Bowl which involved a sketch and the use of the colours pink and brown plus a Sugar Nellie image. I decided to give my Gorjuss Miss Attitude her first airing. I guess every other Mum on the planet thinks that this stamp resembles their Daughter and I am no exception, particularly if I put her in a dress! Now if that dress was pink and brown like the one here she would have been scowling as well as doing the arm thing. I just about managed to dress her the way I wanted until she was about 6 and then she just refused to wear a dress at all. She is still a tomboy now and she is 26.

The stamp is coloured with polys and OMS, K&Co paper for the background, Core'dinations for the top nestie mat and some ribbon (dyed to take the edge of the white), gems (also dyed to match) and some flowers, all from stash. The hearts on her dress really are pink, but I went over them with the clear stardust pen and it's obviously not as clear as the name would imply. I chose the nestie because it had hearts in it and she had hearts on her dress and in her hair.

Strangely my DD came in just as I finished colouring the stamp in and she said 'who knew brown could look so pretty', I think that was a compliment, lol

Lin

Penny Black 67, Papertake Weekly and Basic Grey 4

Wooohoooo I have managed a triple combination challenge. My word how some of you crafty folks do more than that I am in awe. I had to write down what each one had as a requirement and keep referring back to it or I should have been completely lost. I'm ashamed to say my favourite colour snuck back in there again! Penny Black's was to use lace and pearls and of course a PB image. So I stamped up Good Friends from the Victorian Country range. I just adore that range of stamps and have to confess to having a few... I have coloured her in with Inktense watercolours. The lace is double layered both of which I dyed with Brilliance inkpads to tone in with the colour scheme and the 'pearls' are made from pearly paint, so that completes the requirement of Papertake Weekly which was to 'fake it'. Handy really as I didn't have any pearl gems in my stash, why not I wonder, :-)) nor ribbon of the correct colour. Then over to Basic Grey for their gorgeous papers, these come from the Euphoria stack, and their requirement was to use embossing. So the top mat was cut with the blossom nestie and then run through with a CB folder. I was impressed at what the embossing did to the paper, it has given it a look of shimmer when in fact the paper was perfectly plain. I did all this with raging tootache....... all say ahhhhhhhhhh! Sadly for once crafting didn't take my mind off the pain and I had to keep going down stairs and making warm drinks and crying, and I had to finish it off this morning. There is no pain like toothache and now I have the added terror of a trip to the dentist PDQ. Lin

A Spoonful of Sugar and Truly Scrumptious

I have managed another combined challenge card. The Spoonful of Sugar challenge was Autumn inspired projects and over at Truly Scrumptious they have a sketch to follow with the extra challenge of using three stamps, not including the sentiment.

The card above is what I have come up with.

I normally start with the image, but this time I had only just taken delivery of the My Mind's Eye Bloom and Grow 12" paper pack and straight away the lovely autumnal leaves jumped out at me. So I needed to find something that would go with that.

I used a Pink Gem stamp Autumn Milly and coloured her in with prismas and OMS. I thought I had managed to crack hair colouring, but the camera shows up a multitude of sins the naked eye appears to miss, although she is definitely not as grey haired as this picture implies. I used a range of oranges to shade her coat, and the fallen leaves and greens for her wellies, bows and gloves. I cut a mat for behind her with the blossom nestie and just reversed the main backing paper. In fact all the paper, apart from the small embossed leaves strip in the middle came from the one sheet of MME paper. I just reversed it and back again to give the different patterns.

The white card I stamped on seemed very harsh against the soft oranges on the card so I chalked over with a couple of shades of orange and yellow shimmery chalks to soften it.

The added challenge at TS was to use three stamps, so I opted for a nice scroll stamp I got free with a magazine to make the orange scroll designs and the final stamp made the leaves. I stamped onto shrink plastic with memento inks and then drew the colour in with a damp brush. I did have to go over the veins with a sakura stardust pen as the memento spread and dissolved the vein pattern when I filled the colour in.

The flowers were from my stash with glue dots in the centre glittered with some fine glitter, in three different shades.

Now the weather is definitely turning to autumn, the leaves are just starting to turn and the temperature has really dropped, so much for our 'Indian Summer' we were promised in the UK.

Lin

Midnight Madness Wk 17

This is my card for the Midnight Madness Week 17 challenge. There is a sketch to follow, and this is my take on it.

I started off with a gorgeous little fairy digital stamp from Sketching Stamper and coloured her in shades of turquoise, highlighting some areas with sakura stardust pens. For some reason the camera refused to pick up the sparkly highlights were which her butterfly bag, edges of her wings and her sash belt.

The papers are K&Co and DCWV and the ribbon is from my stash and dyed blue/turquoise with some brilliance inkpads. The peel offs were also coloured to match and the mats are some card from QVC which is very similar to Bazill Bling.

I was a bridesmaid in a dress very similar to hers except it was a hideous shade of peach! Why are some brides so cruel to their bridesmaids?

Lin

PS When you are over at Midnight Madness check out the fantastic Priscillastyles blog candy!!

Truly Scrumptious Challenge 15

This is my card for the current Truly Scrumptious challenge. There is a sketch to follow and an added theme of 'Indian Summer', something we are sadly not likely to be experiencing here in the UK. Wish I knew what had happened to our 'Barbecue Summer', unless the weather men meant Hyacinth Bouquet's Indoor Outdoor Barbecues! Anyhow I digress.

I had a thought which immediately sprang to mind and blow me down if the very first DT card was using very similar papers and a similar stamp to that which I was thinking of using, so the gorgeous Indian Spice paper can go back into my stash for another day. Just a thought, do any of you ever NOT look at the DT cards and go it alone so to speak, only checking them after you have finished? I can't help but look first! So I started with the image which I coloured with my prismas and the dots on her top I went over with a sakura clear stardust pen. She has a nice suntan to indicate time in the sun, very naughty as she should have been wearing sun cream.


I had this lovely paper in a WRMK Tiffany pad with paisleys all over it and, one of the mat layers I embossed with the cuttlebug paisley folder. I know the theme was Indian Summer, but that naturally made me think of India and that made me think of Paisley. When I was a child our school used to commemorate Commonwealth Day every year and I can vividly recall having to wear the national dress of the country we were representing in a tableau. I had India, which my Mum thought was great as she was no needlewoman. She whipped off a paisley counterpane from the double bed and having washed it it became my Saree, hence my associating paisley with India. So now I have bored you with my youth. I shall carry on.

The flowers I made by stamping with Elusive Images stamps onto some strips of heavyweight paper that I cut from the front of a huge K&Co assortment paper pad which I got from QVC. I couldn't bear to throw this front away so cut it into the various design strips and later on made the flowers. Waste not want not! They are layered over some quite tatty silk flowers. Thank you for looking.
Lin

Penny Black Challenge 64

I am not too sure about this one. The challenge over at Penny Black this week is Christmas.

I have a few of their lovely victorian stamps with very highly detailed clothing etc on the children and I just love this particular little lovely called Sweet Holiday Shopper. I wanted to get away from the traditional christmas colours and I definitely wanted to stay away from purple for at least one other card so I figured I would give orange a go. Coloured with prismas. I rather liked the look of the blue with it too, and fortunately by the time I came to assemble the card I had come into the possession of K&Co's Winter Wonderland specialty pad and right in the middle was the perfect paper for the background of my card.

I also liked the fact that the paper wasn't what I would normally associate with christmas which went with my strange idea for an orange topper.

When I started putting it together though it didn't say 'christmas' to me, but then I remembered a script stamp I have....... wish I could remember where I got it from but I have no idea. I inked it up with a memento dew drop in Bahama Blue and it matched beautifully. A couple of stamped snowflakes in the same colour and Summer sky, and a small greeting finished it off.

Can't mistake now that it's meant to be a christmas card as the greeting and the stamping make that obvious, but I am still not sure about the colours.


It's probably just because we normally see red and green, purple and blue or silver and gold for christmas colours. Perhaps in Australia where it's summer at Christmas they have orange instead.
Lin

Colour Create and Whimsy Challenges

Here is my entry for both the Colour Create and Whimsy Stamps Challenges. The colour create one required the colours, ruby, cream and gold and the Whimsy one simply wanted a touch of sparkle. The background is some lovely handmade paper I found shoved at the back of the filing cabinet, perfect for the colour combo. The back layer of ribbon, the lacey stuff, was a cream crocheted ribbon so I dyed it with my dewdrop inkpads first rocket red and then rocket red gold as the first colour was too harsh, layered over the top is some satin edged organiza from my stash. The button came in a box of oddments.

The red layer is also handmade paper with little gold droplets all over it like really thick heat embossing, you can't see it in the pic because they are obscured but there are also gold roses on it as well. The top layer I stamped from the Elusive Images Poppy sheet and the largest butterfly and flower are also from different EI stamp sheets. Smaller butterflies some random stamps. The large flower was coloured in with cosmic shimmers. Loved the opulence of this colour scheme.

As the flower was coloured with CSs and two of the butterflies were embossed with holographic powder I figured it also met the 'sparkle' challenge over at Whimsy Stamps as well.

Lin