Crafty Cardmakers and More Challenge 148

This time at Crafty Cardmakers and More the challenge is to make it sparkle!. Oddly, when I saw this, I didn't reach for my glitter collection. Instead, I saw an opportunity to get out my Twinkling H2O watercolours which I haven't used in ages.

The image is from Floppy Latte Designs and I printed it onto watercolour paper. The background paper is from a magazine freebie pad I've had for some time. The flowers were made using watercolour paper painted to match the image and cut using Sizzix dies.

Having done one card, I decided to do another in a completely different colourscheme.

I hope you can join us this time.

I'd like to enter this card intot he following challenges:

Crafty Cardmakers and More Challenge 147

This time at Crafty Cardmakers and More we're challenging you to use flower embellishments. That's easy! (My problem comes when I'm not allowed to use flowers.)

I decided to try out a new (to me) techinque - colouring on dark card using pencils.

I stamped the image on black card using white ink. I coloured using a mixture of Spectrum Noir and Derwent Coloursoft pencils. Interestingly, I've discovered that the Derwent pencils are a lot softer and give much better coverage than the Spectrum Noir - despite being more robust. (I've had a  lot of problems with the colour in the Spectrum Noirs breaking.) The result is trill fairly dark - I may need to consider doing something different, like giving an undercoat of white before adding colours. I foresee some further experimentation.

The flowers were made using some dies from the Crafts Too Presscut range. I've added some patterning to the card using a fine line pen and finished the flowers with black gems.

I hope you can join us this time.

One Stitch at a Time Challenge 245

Well, this is my last post as a DT member of the One Stitch at a Time team. My first post was on 4th July 2010 - more than five years ago! It's been fun, but, although I'm still making cards, I've discovered other things which also take up my time and I decided that it was time to step down. I'd like to thank all the other DT members past and present who've made the team such fun to be a part of, and especially our previous DT co-ordinator (Choccy) and, of course, our current co-ordinator, Jane. Thanks for your encouragement and for the friendly and efficient way you've run the team.

So, now, onto the challenge. The theme is, 'Anything Goes with Gratitude', so anything you feel grateful for. In my case, I'm grateful for flowers which brighten up our world with such a gorgeous array of colours. I love colour, the brighter the better, and I can't think of any single thing in nature which provides such a wide range of colours than flowers. For this challenge, I used an image from Floppy Latte Designs called Pretty Sprig of Flowers. I've coloured it using a new (to me) colouring medium - Inktense pencils.

I printed the image onto watercolour paper. I like the fact that I use less water using these pencils compared to most watercolour techniques, so it's especially suited to digi-stamps since there's less chance of smudging the image.

The background paper is from Paper Pizazz and I made the flowers using some of the Sizzix Susan's Garden range of dies, a couple of Spellbinders dies, Pan Pastels and Liquid Pearls.

And that's it! I hope you can join us this time.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges: