Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 29

This week at Crafty Cardmakers, the challenge is to make a card that's 'Clean and Simple'.  That's easy, isn't it? Keep the clutter to a minimum. You can even go 'minimal' if you want. And this week's sponsor is Joanna Sheen who's offering the lucky winner a gift certificate for her shop (with free delivery on most items worldwide!)

And now onto my efforts!

I was playing with Distress Inks. (I'm still pretty much at the experimental stage with these. I play, and see what comes out, then decide if I can use it and how.) In this instance, I used Chipped Sapphire, Pine Needles and Wild Honey, and I added some dye ink from an old pad which is a gorgeous turquoise colour. I dabbed some of each onto a non-stick sheet and spritzed with water, swirling the result a little with some plastic before swirling some glossy card in the mixture.

I stamped the image onto a small piece of this background using Chipped Sapphire. The stamp is from the set I bought in Strasbourg - the Paisley combination. Then, I layered everything together with dark blue and a lovely blue/green card. And that's it. Nothing added. There's a lot of layering there, so it could be simpler, but I really liked the effect. And the good thing about not adding lots of ribbons, jewels and flowers is that this card would work well for even my boys who have a horror of 'frippery' on cards!

I'd like to enter this card for the following challenges: Pile it On who are looking for lots of layers (I used eight on top of the base card,) and The Saturday Challenge who are also looking for plain and simple.

Now, despite the lack of embellishment on that card, those backgrounds themselves couldn't really be described as 'clean'. (My hands certainly weren't when I'd finished!) So I thought about the challenge again and came up with this.

Now, I made this card as an attempt to have some Christmas cards that I can actually fit into an envelope and post! (Seriously, it's becoming a problem - I've even had to buy some boxes to allow posting of slightly thicker cards.)

Punched cards were my first love when I moved on from stitched cards. I love that the lines are clear and definite, and the instant dimension you get too.

I used my Tonic Border punch system to put the scalloped edge on some holographic card, then used both pieces to get the wave effect. Then I punched small snowflakes in some white card and matted it with silver, and mounted both on a narrow card blank. Very simple and pretty clean, so I'd have thought that definitely meets the challenge.

I'd like to enter this into the Crafty Creations challenge where they're looking for 'white plus one' - silver.

Don't know which Vix will choose to put on the challenge blog, so I'll be waiting to see when I get back from school!