International Art and Soul Challenge 89

The theme for this fortnight is Tea Party.  I must admit, I struggled with this one. I bought some tea cup dies a while ago (Crafter's Companion) and thought I'd use them. But I just didn't like the effect of cutting them out of patterned paper which was the basis of my idea. So, I did a search for digi stamps with a 'tea' theme, and found a freebie set from Crafts Beautiful magazine which I rather liked. There are a lot of different images on the download, but I just used three; teapot, cup and a stack of cups.

I coloured the pot and cup in the central image with Promarkers. I printed out the stack of cups quite big and coloured them too. Then I scanned the result and tiled it in Photoshop Elements to make a background. Of course, at the time I'm writing this (late May) we're still pretty much being told to stay at home, and the idea of sitting with a cuppa chatting on Skype is becoming the new normal, so the sentiment seemed natural. I finished the card with a teacup embellishment cut using the aforementioned Crafter's Companion dies.

That's it. I do hope you can join us.

International Art and Soul Challenge 85

The challenge for this fortnight is Under the Sea and can be anything so long as there is an under-sea theme.

My immediate thought when I saw this challenge was to reach for my Josephine Wall Enchanted Dreams CDRom. Having said that, there weren't so many under sea images there, but I found one that's lovely and went with it.

I love the images on that CDRom, but I'm generally disappointed by the background papers supplied - they always seem rather plain and drab compared to the gorgeous, vibrant images. This time, I decided to make my own but not using digital means. I started with my 6in gelli plate. I added an all-over layer of Distress Ink, and printed it on to copy paper. Then, I chose a stronger, bluer shade and again applied a layer to the plate, but before printing to paper, I used a stencil to remove areas of ink. The result was the wavy pattern. I wanted to add a subtle hint of seaweed, so the next stage was to use a stencil of long fronds (from Crafter's Companion) and I added Distress Oxide ink through that. The result was definitely subtle! To get the stronger shades at the edges of the background, I stamped with Versacraft Ink. That's the most opaque of the inks I own, and it definitely gave the desired effect. I used some Creative stamps for this. They're supposed to be watercolour greenery images, but I think they pass for a stylised sea weed!

And, apart from some matting and layering, that's it.

I do hope you can join us this time.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 225

The challenge for this fortnight is Winter Fun.

I've made another Christmas card, using a digi-stamp. I used to use those more often than not, but since I got my craft room (and my Tim Holtz platform), it's just as easy to do traditional stamping, so I've been doing a lot more. Anyway, back to this project.

The image is from Heather Ellis and was on a magazine freebie CDRom several years ago. I coloured it wiht pencils, cut and pierced the image and other layers with Tonic dies and added stitching. Nothing too complicated, and the time spent stitching the layers was very restful!

I do hope you can join us this time.

International Art and Soul Challenge 46

Our challenge for this fortnight is Wild Animals. My first thought here was to use a stamp set I got recently, but it turns out that llamas aren't wild animals! They seem pretty wild to me, but having checked, I decided to think again. And of course, the one thing we need lots of is Christmas cards, so I looked out a digi I've had for a long time and came up with this.

The die cut in the front is by Frantic Stamper, and the sentiment die is from Tonic.

And there you can get a look at the digi - it's from Stitchy Bear. I shaded the trees dark green in Photoshop Elements before printing, and then I used Promarkers for shading the bears, and a little Distress Ink to give the sky a bluish hue. There's room for a message below the image, and that's it!

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: