Pale Blue and Pink

You can tell it's half term, can't you? How many posts is that this week?




It's a Sarah Kay image, and it's coloured with Promarkers. I've added some papers from Personal Impressions and some pearlescent card punched with a Martha Stewart border punch. The lacy pink textile is something I've had for a while - it was used to tie up a bouquet I got a few years ago! And the flowers are a mixture of ones from the local pound shop and others I made myself. The leaves are punched and coloured with Promarkers.

I'm entering it for three challenges: Sketch Saturday, Papertake Weekly which had a theme of 'Fun in the Sun' and Colour Create which required a baby pink and pastel blue colourscheme.

A Couple of Challenges

The Sir Stampalot challenge for June is to use punches. And the Craft Cardmakers challenge is to use your least and most favourite colours.

Punching takes me back to some of my earliest papercraft (as opposed to cross stitched and hardanger) cards. I love the precision of punches, and the results often fulfil my love of symmetry and regularity. (A bit like counted cross stitch and hardanger, really.)

The colours thing is harder. I've got lots of favourite colours, although turquoise shades and corally ones are pretty much up there. For the sake of this challenge, I went for a strong cyan/turquoise. My least favourite is harder. There are combinations I hate, but that's not the same as individual colours, so in the end I went for the colours I find it hardest to cope with - black and white. (I know, two colours. But I have this obsession with black being somehow morbid and I hate having too much white on a card. I couldn't decide, so I went for both.



The stamp punches and the central pattern are all McGill punches that I've had for a while. The stamp shapes are punches I thought I'd use a lot, but even the bigger one isn't big enough for a lot of purposes, and of course, now I've got my Wizard and nesties, so they've been relegated to the cupboard. The border punch is from Fiskars.

The effect is simpler than I've been making of late, but I think it works, and it'd definitely make a good masculine card for someone.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

When I saw Vixykins' card for the latest Crafty Cardmakers challenge, three things were obvious. First, it was gorgeous. Second, I had to go and buy the image. And third, that I had to do something similar.

Now, I don't have Vix's talent with a brayer and stamps, but I do enjoy electronic manipulation and, since the image is a digi, that's the route I took.



The image is from Stitchy Bear Stamps and it's called 'Watching'. It's supplied as both a JPG and a PNG, the latter allowing it to have transparency in the wings. The background is a selection of gradients, using what are probably my favourite colours - peachy/corally shades and pale turquoise - the sort of thing you sometimes see in a sunset. I added some silver die cuts done with my In Spades medallion set, and backed it with some sparkly black paper I've had for a couple of years. The flower uses some scraps of silver and holographic paper and some silver printed netting. I cut out the shapes with my Nestibilites Blossom die, and finished it off with a black brad.

I've got to say, I love the result, but then that's hardly surprising given that I loved the original. And if you haven't already seen the original, it's here.

I'm going to enter it for the One Stitch challenge which calls for the use of something new. The digi definitely qualifies!

Notelets

I had to think of a little addition for my sister's birthday, and, after a day of frustration dealing with a bank that doesn't know its own procedures, I really needed some distraction. Well, my new subscription to Craft Stamper came to the rescue as the magazine dropped onto the doormat this morning. There was a feature on doing a Masterboard and it looked like an ideal starting point for some notelets. I checked my stash of A6 cards - I rarely use that size these days for greetings cards - and found six bright yellow cards. With that and the knowledge that my sister loves pink, I set to work.



I used a variety of stamps from various sources, Promarkers and Sakura Stardust pens for colouring and Memento black and Versacolor inks in olive, raspbery and marigold. I then cut sections of the masterboard and mounted them in a variety of ways - using my nesties, borderabilities, edge punches and Cuttlebug embossing folders. I then made a box and topped it off with a large section of similar pattern. As you can see, while there's an overall theme, they're all quite different. I kept them all pretty flat - seems more practical for notelets really! Now, all I've got to do is work out how to get it to her without the box getting too bashed!