Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 91

This time at Crafty Cardmakers, our host is Sharon, and she wants us to 'Use Three Techniques'. The techniques must come from the following list:

Embossing, distressing, masking, make your own flowers, paper piecing and shrink plastic.

Our sponsors for this challenge are:

and

See the challenge blog for prize details.

I used an image from our sponsor (Milk Coffee) and made another Christmas cards.

The three techniques I used are: masking, embossing and I made the flowers.

For the background, I used a mask. I embossed some white card using it, and, with the card still attached to the mask, I dabbed the card with a Versamark ink pad. I then removed the mask and applied some Perfect Pearls in blue, pink and gold.

I coloured the image with Promarkers, adding a bit of Sakura Stardust pen to the wings, and cut it with an oval nestie. While it was still in the die, I applied some distress ink to the edge of the image. I added some using an Ink Duster, and then added some more to the very edge using a sponge. I matted using another Spellbinders die.

The flowers were cut using a Crealies die. I embossed the edge of the petals using some pastel-toned embossing powder and cut each petal in half before shaping the various layers. I finished the flowers with some turquoise Stickles.

I hope you can join us this time.

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

Left of Centre where they want a dig image,
Our Creative Corner where anything goes,
Brown Sugar where they want angels or fairies,
As You Like it where they want punches/dies
My Heart Pieces where anything goes,
Papercrafting Journey where anything goes,
CMC where anything goes,
Divas by Design where anything goes,
Papertake Weekly where anything goes.

One Stitch at a Time Challenge 163

This week at One Stitch at a Time, the challenge is 'Summer Sun'. Of course, that's something that means something different to different people. Now, I'm not a sun worshipper. I come from west central Scotland, and I have a colouring not unusual in those parts. Ten minutes of sunshine, and I'm liable to turn a most unattractive shade of lobster! I'm not fond of hot weather either, and generally want to hibernate during periods of hot weather. It always drains my energy completely. So, no beach scenes for me!

Instead, I've gone back to my childhood. Sunny days then might (if we were lucky) mean a jaunt down the coast to Largs, a walk along the front and maybe even an ice cream!

The photo is one I took of Largs the last time I was there (several years ago). Because the card I use for Promarkers tends to muddy colour photos a bit, I printed the photo onto matte photo paper, then layered the Promarkered image on top. It adds a bit of dimension too as I've gently shaped the image and attached using Colall Glue Gel.

The paper is from Dovecraft's London collection. They had packs of it very reasonably priced when I was at Alexandra Palace the other week, and even if I never use the Union Flag festooned sheets, there are some gorgeous florals like this one, so I'll definitely get my money's worth. And you never know, I might even use the other sheets. (I'm perfectly patriotic, but it seems an odd theme for a greetings card.) The flowers and butterflies are from my stash, and I've added sticky gems to the flower centres.

I hope you can join us this week!

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

LEJ Designs where summer's coming,
Papertake Weekly where anything goes,
Moving Along with the Times where they want CAS,
My Heart Pieces where anything goes,
Papercrafting Journey where anything goes,
Left of Centre where they want us to use a digi,
Simply Create Too where anything goes,
CMC Challenge where anything goes,
Our Creative Corner where anything goes.

Another 'Josephine Wall' Card

A colleague has a 'big' birthday coming up, so I've made a 'big' card! I love the images on the Enchanted Dreams CDrom by Josephine Wall, but there's so much detail in every one that I hate having to print them small, so it's become my 'go to' CD for 8 by 8 cards.

I've placed the watermark to hide the personalisation. (I'm never comfortable putting people's names on my blog even if they're untraceable.)

As I often do, I made the paper in Photoshop Elements using a small section of the image and tiling it. The blue layer with its personalisation was printed and layered with the image. The flowers were made from punched shapes and the ribbon is from Hobbycraft.

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

Creative Corner where they want 'things with wings',
Simply Create Too where anything goes,
As You Like It where they want our favourite dies or punches. (My favourite dies and punches at the moment are my flower shapes - all of them!)

One Stitch at a Time Challenge 162

This week at One Stitch at a Time, our theme is, 'Anything Goes'! So, show us whatever you've been crafting.

Our sponsor is:

See the challenge blog for details.

Now, there are loads of talented artists who sell through the Stitchy Bear Digital Stamp shop, and one of my favourites is Hope Jacare. I was lucky enough to work with one of her images this week - it's called Bonsai 2.

This is the front of the card. Now, you can't see the image very well, but  kind of wanted to do some sort of 'window' effect for this image, so I used a double fold card from Craft Creations. If you open it up once, you get this:

And if you open it up agan, you get this:

And, so you can see the lovely image a bit better,

The mage is coloured with Promarkers and edged with Distress Ink in Pine Needles.  The paper (both types) is from a MME pad I've had for a while. The flowers were cut with my new Crealies dies - some flower and leaf shapes with punched centres. I'm a little disappointed in the dies - they don't cut as well as I'd like. The two flower dies with long petals need several passes through my BSP, and since they're foam backed, that leads to a slightly different cut each time, with the edges of the die cut being shaved off to some extent. I edged the petals and leaves with Distress ink - Spun Sugar for the pale flowers and Victorian Velvet for the darker ones and more Pine Needles for the leaves.

The apertures and image were cut using a Sizzix die set, and the lattice is from Spellbinders. The lattice is always a hard one to cut - in fact I suspect it was largely responsible for my first set of cutting plates breaking when I first got my BSP. I've since learned how to strip-shim and that works really well, but I think, from now on, I'll use that die in my Wizard. Yes, it takes more passes through the machine, but I don't believe those great, thick plates are going to be cracked! (And if I'm wrong, then I'll just have to put my Wizard out to grass as I haven't seen any cutting plates available for it for ages.)

I hope you can join us this week.

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

Love to create where they want punches/die cuts,
Paper Pretties where they want pink and green,
Crafts and Me where they want a floral frenzy,
Fab and Funky where they want lots of pink,
Annabelles Stamps where anything goes,
Card Crafter's Circle where they want flowers,
Creative Corner where they want flowers,
Left of Centre where they want a digi image.