One Stitch at a Time Challenge 51

This week at One Stitch at a Time, we're previewing the March collaboration - a great free gift if you spend $10 in the Stitchy Bear shop during March.  The theme of the challenge this week is 'Mothers'! Remember, Mother's Day is coming up at the start of April, and that's only one reason to make a card for a mum.

I cheated a bit with my image. It was intended as an Easter image - complete with Easter greeting, but I thought it'd be ideal as a Mother's Day image, so I used the magic of digital images to remove the sentiment.

Isn't it a lovely image? I coloured it with Promarkers, then added some further shading with my Coloursoft pencils blended with Baby Oil. I dabbed a little Versacolor ink in Cocoa in the background with a shaving brush. The paper came from a CD called 'Flower Power', but was originally in two varieties - black on white and white on black. I used PSE to change them to brown/peach tones. I've used some Spellbinder labels and the In Spades medallion die, as well as some Spellbinder swirls, and made the flowers using some Marianne Creatables dies, all in my Wizard.

We're sponsored this week by Bunny Zoe who's offering a gift voucher to the lucky winner.

Hope you can join us this week, and don't forget to check out the other DT creations!

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

Do You Stack Up where 'anything goes',
Papercrafting Journey where 'anything goes',
Stamp Something who want us to 'use flowers',
Crazy 4 Challenges who want us to 'use flowers',
My Grafico where 'anything goes',
CD Sunday who want Art Nouveau - well I think that pretty much sums up a lot of Hope Jacare's work!

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 36

For the first Crafty Cardmakers challenge of 2011, we'd like you to make a card with red and a die cut. A nice easy challenge to start off the year.

And this week we're sponsored by One Stop Card Crafts.

Typically, when faced with a challenge like that, I take it literally, and so I produced this:

I had to photograph it at an odd angle because the alternative is to have a perfect image of me holding a camera reflected back! I've used my new Spellbinders Lotus Pendant die set which I bought after winning a prize in a recent Fred she Said blog hop - the prize was a $25 gift voucher! I've simply layered various die cuts from the set onto mirri-board. I must admit, I love this style of card - it's got lovely, clean lines and I think these cards are perfect to have in your stash because they work for any occasion and for men as well as women.

I hope you can join us this time!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
Craft Your Days Away which has an open theme this week,
Southern Girls who have an open theme this week,
Papertake Weekly who have an open theme this week,
Tuesday Throwdown whose theme is embossing. (All the die cuts were cut and embossed in my Wizard.)
The Creative Cottage who want us to use something new. (Pendant die set.)

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 35

This week on Crafty Cardmakers, the theme is 'White and a Splash'. To make it even better, we're sponsored by Joanna Sheen who will give the lucky winner a voucher for £10 to spend in her shop.

For me, this challenge means lots of texture and sparkle. I cut the edge of some white card using my Craft Tonic Border system using an edge punch and a snowflake one,  embossed it with a Papermania embossing folder, and matted the result with my 'splash' colour. Then I cut the largest part of the Spellbinder Lattice medallion and I added one of the Labels 3 set for the hand-written sentiment, and cut a mat for it by hand using the same label die as a template. I cut several Spellbinders snowflakes and some smaller Cuttlebug ones and added some irridescent Glamour Dust before layering the larger snowflakes with sparkly brads.

 

So, put away your Promarkers and join us for our 'White and a Splash' challenge. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. 

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges: Stampin' for the Weekend whose theme is 'Winter'. 

Crafty Catz whose theme is 'Christmas'

Fussy and Fancy Friday whose theme is 'Christmas, no red or green',

Crafty Calendar Challenge whose theme is 'Winter/snowflakes'

and If the Shoe Fits whose theme is like ours, 'White and a Splash'!

Geometrics and Patterns

I love cards which are more abstract, but I don't make them very often. Then I spotted a challenge over at Paper Sundaes which is sponsored this week by Fred she Said which calls for 'White plus One' colour. That combination struck me as ideal to do with one of Fred's paper pricking patterns, and this is the result.

I've added one of the 'geometric' patterns that I picked up from the weekly sampler from Dover Books, printed it and coloured it with Promarkers, then raised it on sticky pads above the pricked layer. The patterned card is some I've been hoarding for a few years, but it seemed perfect for this, and I finished the card with some Spellbinders die cuts from my In Spades pendant set and some Promarker-coloured sticky gems.

I love the lacy effect of that paper pricking!

Brown, Khaki, Aqua and Cream

It's not a colourscheme I'd choose if left to my own devices. I love various turquoise shades with brown, but I'd normally be loath to add the khaki to the mix. But that's where colour challenges come in, isn't it? They get you to try things you otherwise wouldn't, and that's what this time's Colour Create challenge is asking for, with an optional extra of circles.



Now, the problem with challenges like this is that while pretty much everyone thinks of the same sort of colour when the basics like 'red' or 'yellow' are mentioned, some other colours are less clear - at least to me. And providing a sample on the site isn't foolproof either because in this case, the image looked like brown, pale turquoise and two shades of grey. Now I know that's a feature of my screen, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with that problem. And then there's the definition of the colour. Khaki. To me, that's olive green, but a quick check of online sources suggests that there are many different khakis and they range from sea green through olive green to brown. So, I used my own 'definition'.

The image is a Sugar Nellie stamp and it's coloured with Promarkers. I used my trusty Wizard and nesties to cut various circles and a circular frame as well as the computer-generated sentiment. Then, I used the same nesties to cut layers of tissue paper which I then coloured with my Promakers to make the flowers. To finish it off, I added an element from the Spellbinders lattice pendant die, and then added a couple of leaf fronds cut with a punch. All of those were coloured with walnut Promarker. The background paper is my own design, using my Promaker colour chart to match the colours in the image, and Photoshop Elements to put it together using some shapes and gradients.

A Card-making Day

I've made a few cards this holiday, but they've been pretty much fitted in among other things - like rewatching Stargate SG1 (something I took a notion to do) and reading (The Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series by Tad Williams). Well, today, my daughter headed off shopping/cinema/pizza with a friend for her friend's birthday, my husband went to play bowls and my son was in his room (as usual) so I felt like I had the house to myself. So, I pulled out my stamps and ink and had a play.

I bought my first samples of Distress ink at Olympia a few weeks ago, but really hadn't done much with it. And even longer ago, I bought a Versacolor pad with a range of blues which I'd never even opened. Then there was the recently acquired set of flower stamps from Personal Expressions, so there were some real possibilities.

First, I tried doing a background with the blues, but it really didn't work out as I'd expected. Still, I had enough to stamp a couple of images on, and then I did some further backgrounds by stippling card with my shaving brush.

This first card was pretty simple. One of the things about a stamped image like this one is that they seem (to me) to lend themselves to comparative simplicity. I did spend some time getting the layering to look right, but other than that, all I've done is add a sentiment and some ribbon.



This second card shares the backgrounds of the last one, but because the image is smaller, it lent itself to adding a little more. There's the sentiment - this one is from a stamp set from Anna Griffin that was in the Readicut sale a while ago, and I've added some roses that I made using a similar technique to one I saw on a video recently. (Sorry, can't remember whose it was - but all I've really done is to make them significantly smaller.) And then I added some pearls which were given to me by a neighbour. She's a hairdresser and she said they were left over from a wedding she'd been involved in. Whatever they are, I think they fitted well here.



This third card shows off my distress inks. I only got three colours - that seemed a minimum to play with, and I definitely didn't want to spend more than that until I'd got an idea of whether or not I'm going to use them. So, armed with Aged Mahogany, Fired Brick and Wild Honey, I set to work.

I must admit, nothing worked out quite as I'd expected. I found it much harder to blend the ink than I'd expected, but I wasn't unhappy with the result, so I carried on, stamping another of the flowers from the Personal Impressions set. The resulting colour scheme looked very rich, and I hunted through my paper stash, finding a gingham paper (again from Readicut) which worked really well. Then I added some ribbon and a sentiment (printed on film from the Fruit Pixie) and that was that. Again, I spent a lot of time deciding on the layering of the image, but I'm happy with the result.

So, what else did I do? Well, I finished a couple of Christmas cards - my first of this year - but I won't show them here. I'll probably do a general Christmas Card post when I've got a few more done.

The other card I made is for my husband's uncle and aunt who're celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary next month. I didn't have any stamps that seemed to work, but a quick check through my other images came up with one from a collection of Christian Clip Art I've had for years And interestingly, the couple in the picture look a little like the couple in question!



I made the backing paper using an element from the flowers, and generated the sentiment on the computer. Not particularly complicated as cards go, but the picture made it fairly easy, and all I added was a border from Spellbinders and a couple of sticky gems..