Siren of Spring

Hi everyone, today I would like to share another card I made recently using some new birthday stash from AALL & Create. When placing my order I chose a couple of floral stamps, but decided to also go for something a bit different to ring the changes, and selected this quirky lady stamp set designed by Soizic. I was a bit unsure, but when she arrived and I started to play with her I was very pleased with the results. This card was actually very straightforward to make, and came together quite quickly. She is called ‘Siren of Spring’ but I think she is actually perfect for a summer card.

I die cut a wavy stitched square of white card, then stamped the focal lady to the left and the cascading flowers from the same set down the right hand side, thus leaving a space for a sentiment. I coloured the stamps with Zig pens, largely following the colour scheme on the packaging, and added some sparkle pen to the flowers. I had to hunt around in my stash for an old long and thin birthday sentiment which would neatly fit the blank space, and fortunately I found it! I blended some Elements ink around the stitched border then matted the panel onto a 6” square card blank. To finish I added some coordinating teeny heart gems beneath the sentiment.

Stamps: AALL & Create TP-1398 Siren of Spring; Hero Arts Special Birthday;

Media: Versafine Clair (Nocturne, Blue Belle); Kuretake Zig Clean Color watercolour pens; Lavinia Elements ink (Blue Lagoon); Spectrum Noir sparkle pen (clear);

Tools: Craft Addiction UK Double Wavy Stitched Squares die.

Challenges I would like to enter: 

AAA Colourful #29 - Colour Board

Ally’s Angels #107 - Anything Goes (2nd entry)

Art Nudge (June) - Colour boards

(I have used most of the colours in colour board C)

Craft Rocket #137 - Birthday (2nd entry)

Crafts Galore Encore #148 - Anything Goes (2nd entry) - DT FAVOURITE

Creative Crafters #101 - Anything Goes  (2nd entry)

Creative Inspiration #39 - Anything Goes (2nd entry) - WINNER

Creative Moments #283 - Pastels or Brights (2nd entry)

Fab ‘n’ Funky #640 - Something Beginning with B

(Birthday, blooms)

Heart’s Quest #86 - Anything with a Heart Goes

Heart’s Quest Celebrations of Love #30 - Birthdays (3rd entry)

Passion for Markers #843 - Anything Goes

Simon Says (Wednesday) - Anything Goes

Word Art Wednesday #758/759 - Anything Goes 

I have an update on my Gemini die cutting machine woes! I eventually managed to source 2 new ‘white’ A4 cutting plates (which supersede the original clear ones) and a magnetic shim, but there is no plastic shim to be had anywhere! I have tried to flatten the original one by weighting it down in boiling water, but not terribly successfully. I then followed a hack I saw online and taped the plastic shim to one of my new cutting plates to try to keep it flat - again only with partial success. Last week I tried die cutting some stitched squares and they came out with awful pressure marks on the card - I wasn’t happy! Eventually I followed a tip I had read somewhere to place the dies at an angle when cutting, and this seemed to work much better, though large frames etc. are still a bit wavy. Mind you, I’m not sure how well that will work when I want to nest dies symmetrically to make a frame! 

To be honest I’m pretty disgusted that Crafter’s Companion could produce such an expensive due cutting machine then within 3 or 4 years the replaceable plates be no longer available. If I had known then what I know now I would never have bought this machine, but at the price I don’t really feel I can justify jettisoning it altogether. At this rate for any dies smaller than 6” I will be reverting to my trusty ancient Cuttlebug ! (yes I do still have it in the back of my craft cupboard!) Anyway, enough of that … it’s just too hot to get hot and bothered about it!

Take care, and thanks for visiting.

Hugs,

Dandelion does the combo .. for my dad!

Here's my card for my dad's birthday, which is next Monday. In the usual way I thought I'd try to get some inspiration from a few challenges ... like so many of us, I do find men's cards the most difficult to do and don't have very many images to suit ...luckily this darling image of Dandelion that was an RAK from the lovely Marcea came to the rescue. I'd like to enter this for the following challenges ...

1. Sketch Saturday #53 ... which is a fabulous sketch. I've had to change it slightly as most of my images don't fit on the teeny tiny shape that is a nestie oval ... so I used a kinda wavy rectangle nestie linstead and hope that is ok lol! (by the way ... Happy birthday to SS!!)
2. Creative Inspirations # 10 - card for a male
3. Simon Says ... Animals
4. One Stop Craft Challenge #31 - Let's Hear it For the Boys
5. Charisma Cardz #21 - Going Dotty

Here's the inside ....


... and here's what I used...

Main image: Dandelion - coloured with watercolour pencils.
Sentiments: Penny Black (front), Hero Arts (inside); letters for "Dad" free with Creative Cardmaking issue 3
Papers: Penny Black "Black & Gold" and cream/black dotted paper free with Creative Cardmaking issue 3.
Supplies: ribbon - Anita's; brads from my stash.

Hope dear dad is going to like it!

Penny Black Challenge #51 - Sketch by Domi

Hello everyone .. the weekend's here again (yippee!!), so it's time for another Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Thanks for all your gorgeous creations with buttons last week ... don't forget to check out the challenge blog to see who won Tracie's cute baaa lamb stamp!

This week we have a real treat for you, with a fab sketch by Domi. This was brilliant to work with, and the rest of the DT have come up with some amazing samples to inspire you .. hope you will check out their blogs. And to give you a little further incentive, we have another great prize this week ... Dick at PB Stamps is offering a 15% discount voucher to one lucky winner. Here is my card .... whilst out shopping one lunchtime I called into my local craft shop Edwin Allen (like you do) and spotted they had got some BasicGrey "Wisteria" paper pads into stock .. now I had really fancied one but not picked one up yet. Having let it fall into my shopping basket I just had to have a play, so everything else on the card stemmed from that lol!


Here's another view to show (not very successfully!) the sparkle on the flowers.


Recipe:
Main image: PB "Fanfare", heat embossed with detail white powder and then decorated with glamour dust and cut out using oval nesties - I edged the oval with brilliance white pearlescent ink.
Sentiment: Hero Arts.
Paper: BasicGrey "Wisteria".
Supplies: raffia lace from Hobbycraft; flowers by Prima, Papermania and from my stash; brads by Papermania (pearl) and Doodlebug (frosted); spacers from The Hobby House.

Hope you all have a great weekend (let's hope that summer is really here at last!)

Penny Black Challenge #37 - Get Well Soon

Hello again ... welcome to the weekend, and the latest Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Already we are at week 37 - where does the time fly? As ever the DT would like to thank everyone for their amazing response to Nat's fabulous sketch challenge last week - don't forget to look out for the prizewinner.

This week's challenge is Get Well Soon - your chance to send a hug to a loved one who is under the weather. As always you may interpret this any way so long as you include one or more PB stamps or stickeroos in your design.

We have another amazing prize kindly donated by Carole - a selection of fab buttons and ribbons to jazz up one lucky winner's future creations.

I thought I would interpret this as sending a bouquet of good wishes to someone , and that I would make the card in cheerful and spring like colours.

I inked up one of the cuties from the PB "Hugs!" set for the first time, and also used some cheerful spring papers that came free with the first issue of a new craft magazine - Creative Cardmaking. I don't normally go much on the free papers in craft mags, but I liked these sufficiently that Iactually bought the mag because of it!

I am still decorating the insides and am loving using my new personalised stamps on the back - I particularly like this one as I can colour the 3 flowers to match the colour scheme of the card.

I used:

Main image: Penny Black transparent set "Hugs!" coloured with watercolour pencils & decorated with Stickles.

Sentiments: "For You" by studio g clear stamps; "A Bouquet ..." by Hero Arts; "Hugs & Kisses.." (inside) by Inca.

Papers (inc. printed disc): free with issue 1 of Creative Cardmaking magazine.

Supplies: flower by WH Smith; brad by Doodlebug sugar coated; charm from Dolls Made Up. Leaves punched using Leone Em Ash branch punch.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Different sketches, same style

I keep saying I'm not making any more Christmas cards, but I sat down yesterday afternoon to make a few more. I decided to have a bit of a change of direction, and pulled out a beautiful Hero Arts collage stamp I hadn't used this year. The result was two dark blue cards in the same style, but following different sketches.

The first one was this week's Friday Sketchers,

and the second one is Sketch Saturday.

For both cards I stamped the Hero Arts image using Versamark and embossed with silver pearl embossing powder. I also embossed a sentiment by Stamps Away in the same way. For both cards I matted my image and sentiment onto silver holographic mirri card cut with my nesties, and layered onto torn printed pearlised vellum by Papermania and dark blue pearlised background paper by Reminisce. I decorated the images (and second card vellum) with Papermania gemstones. On the first card I also cut a snowflake from vellum with my Cuttlbug, and I decorated the second card wtih two Dovecraft snowflake brads.

That's all for now .. hope you are all getting your Christmas preparations done ... I'm off to do some more chores now LOL!

Update: seeing as it's so near Christmas and we're all as busy as bees, I'd like to enter this into a challenge that only popped up one day after I posted the card ... namely PTW which this week is monochromatic... well I hope the cards above are self-explanatory on that score LOL! I rarely do mono cards, esp. for Christmas, so thought this was too good to miss :-)

A Spoon Full of Sugar makes a Cupcake!

This weekend I have found myself with a bit of a backlog of image wallets I need to make for various friends/reasons, so I thought I would try to tie one or two in to this week's challenges.

First up, I loved the sketch for this week's Spoon Full of Sugar Challenge, so have used it for my first wallet.

I am also entering this one for this week's Cupcake Crafts #9 which is Turn Up the Heat - you can use any heat tool/technique or hot colours. I took the opportunity of heat embossing both on the main image and the sentiment, plus the sun is obviously a form of heat itself LOL! It's quite a while since I made an oriental card so I enjoyed doing something a bit different.

I used: main image is Hobby Arts "Oriental Sunset", stamped with Brilliance "lightning black" ink (black with a hint of gold) and clear embossed. Sun and blossoms are coloured with Cosmic Shimmers and the sun is decoupaged. Sentiment is Hero Arts "happiness wish" embossed in gold. Background paper is DCWV "Far East" stack; flower is Prima; dragonfly brads, peeloffs and shimmery ribbon from my stash. The wallet is made from Papermill black cardstock with a gold shimmer finish, and the central band is also papermill black cardstock with a shimmery "animal skin" finish.

Docrafts August friendship card

Made this tri-fold card during the week to send to JanAng from the Docrafts forum .. I love doing monthly friendships swaps - it's great when the postie comes with a card!! I have posted further down the fab summer card she sent to me.

I used : PB stamp "Quite Dandy" which I coloured with Marvey brushstroke pens and spritzed with water to get the watercoloured effect; sentiment by Hero Arts stamped onto a nestie shape with the edges chalked with lilac and blue Colorbox Queue inks; background paper by Karen Neuberger for Paper Adventures, with the edges punched using the Multishaper Punch "Flower Garden"; flowers by WH Smith pinned with Making memories sparkly silver brads; gorgeous fluffy fibre given to me by a non-crafting friend Jean who picked it up at a car boot sale !! :-)

Penny Black Challenge #6 - Snow Much Fun

Well it's Saturday again already, and time for the Penny Black Challenge - this week it is to make a card featuring snow! This made me chuckle as I have already made a snowy card for the first PB challenge, plus another for the recent "Dazzle!" challenge - at this rate I'll be well ahead by December! So this week I have pulled out one that hasn't appeared on here before as I need to nip off and clean the house (groan!)

I have used the PB stamp "Royal Mail" coloured with watercolour pens and pencils and decorated with glitter glue. The background stamp is Hero Arts "Christmas script", and the very wide holly sparkly ribbon was an experiment from a cheap Chrimbo decs shop!

Happy 50th birthday to Gail

My friend and colleague Gail is 50 today, so I made her this card and gave it to her during the week. I believe she likes fairly traditional colours such as red, gold and green so tried to incorporate them into the design.

I used:

Main Image - Inkadinkado "Tulip Collage" coloured with Cosmic Shimmer paints and twinkling H2O's

Greeting - Hero Arts

Flowers - Prima

Jewel brads - Making Memories

Die cut numbers - Cuttlebug "Hippie Chick" alphabet.

Hope she has a lovely day!

PS. I have also noticed that this card falls in perfectly with 2 challenges that are on the go this week: Daring Cardmakers and My Time to Craft Challenge (# 22) are both for "numbers" cards - so here we are :-)

Penny Black Saturday Challenge - Colour

The Penny Black Challenge is what has inspired me to set up my new blog, so having emailed my cards to Tracy and Tracie for the past two weeks I am now finally able to post one here!!

The challenge this week is to make a card using the colours pink, brown and green; so here is my effort - hope you like it.

I have used the PB stamp "Clusters" for the main image, coloured with 2 shades of pink Cosmic Shimmer and "Sea Glass" Twinkling H2O.The greeting stamp is by Hero Arts; papers are all by Heidi Grace Designs for Fiskars, flowers by Prima and pearl brads by Papermania.