Have a heart

After a grotty week I was hell bent on having a quick Less is More fix before I went out today.  Ack the LIM ladies chose hearts!  Didn't think I had ANY heart stamps for one layer week and Mandi's card even showed you don't need heart stamps so that was no excuse!  I had a quick look round and got out this gem of a stamp which, after my first foray to a stamping show that saw me come home laden with Lavinia stamps, was the first one I ever bought.  I went to a free taster class at a shop that is now sadly closed, had a wonderful time and loved this Hero Arts stamp, which we used with another spiky one.  I still have both stamps but they have been uninked for ages.  Can you see the heart shaped petals?  Sentiment is Hobby Arts, I stretched one layer by adding some tiny pearls to the flower centres.

I'll be back later to hop around and check out the other heart cards, in the meantime our beloved greyhound, Red-dog is very poorly with a spinal infection and your positive thoughts would be appreciated.  Thanks!

Patriotic Less is More

I'm getting quite hooked on Less is More, where the challenge this week is to use the colours of your nation's flag.  I've opted for good old red, white and blue rather than the English red and white and I've used my Hero Arts clear flower  set.  There are second layers on all the flowers and I've added some contrast colour with Pigma permanent fine marker pens.  The sentiment is Stampin' Up and I've additionally challenged myself by making this a one layer card.


My card is for:
Less is More - your nations' colours
Craft Your Days Away - birthday celebrations (Happy 1st Birthday to CYDA!)

Another "Just because" card

Here's another "just because" card.  The stamped image has been lying on my desk for ages waiting to be made into a card.  It's a Hero Arts cling stamp that was inked with 3 Distress Inks and then spritzed with water.   The flower was made with a Marianne Creatables die set (I can't tell you how hard that stamen was to extract from the die!) that was then inked with Distress Inks.  The blue tape is from stash.  The sentiment is Elusive Images and the check background was printed from Joanna Sheen Times Gone By CD for yesterday's card.  Oh, there area few tiny gems on the image.
This card will fit the following challenges:
CD Sunday - check it out
Aly's Sunday Sketch - anything goes
Craft Your Days Away - punches or die cuts
Fab'n'Funky - quick and easy does it - the card was quick and easy to make - as long as you don't count the time lag between stamping the image and assembling the card LOL!

One layer card - City Christmas

Here is my one layer card, at least here is the version that I'm happy with, there are a few rejects on the desk:).  This has a Distress Ink background, masked with Post-Its.  The city stamp is Hero Arts, the Santa is Sheena Douglass.  The sentiment is heat embossed.  Fun to do and definitely not a traditional card!
Entered for the following challenges:
Totally Gorjuss - not so tradtional Christmas
Ellephantastic - Christmas and/or butterfly
A Spoonful of Sugar - distressing

A City Christmas

I've a couple of cards to show you today, here's the city one, country card coming up later.  This card began life as a one layer card, inspired by my blogging friend Chrissie's awesome card here.  It's just the most beautiful card I've seen for ages, however while I love tree stamps and have a whole forest of them, I wanted to do things a little differently.  So I decided to use the Hero Arts city stamp I bought a while back which hasn't yet got inky.  But you don't need to look too closely to see that this isn't a one layer card...

I masked off the card, used my duster brushes and Distress Inks, stamped the buildings.  It looked gorgeous.  Then I took off the Post-Its and saw that my gorgeous scene was upside down on my card!  I have now done one that I'm happy with but the next few had silly mistakes on them.  So I trimmed this with a little of the white  either side and gold embossed a Sheena Douglass star on it.  Hmm... looked like the stable in Bethlehem was now a skyscraper... rapidly added Santa in his sleigh:).

The DP is Artylicous from the Spirit of Christmas CD, the sentiment Craftwork Cards and the lacy MS punch was a present from my very kind friend Val.

I'm entering my card for the following challenges:
CD Sunday - lavender and lace
Wagsnwhiskers - lavender and lace
Truly Scrumptious - sketch
Stamp scrap and doodle - no flowers at all
Fussy and fancy - non-trad Christmas colours
Bah Humbug - lovely in lilac

The least and most - what WAS I thinking of?

I've just completed this card and I'm really not too sure about it. Mmm... here goes:). My crafting friend Val was kind enough to bring over her new Sweet Pea stamps recently and I was the first to get them inky, stamping a few sheets of images. I've been rather shying away colouring these challenging images, there are some wonderful cards around made with them. First go was in conventional green and pink and looked ok-ish. I discarded it when I found a smudge that looked like a failed tattoo on her shoulder:).

So then I thought about the Crafty Cardmaker's Challenge which is to use your least favourite and most favourite colours, which is how I ended up with orange and green LOL! Don't get me wrong, it's quite a fun combo and I think the fairy looks great as a redhead. But then I've spent most of the day trying to find DP to work with this rather unusual colourway, ended up with Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses Christmas DP and some Basic Grey orange from the Green at Heart pad. A little odd, no? I'm also entering it for the Totally Gorjuss Challenge of Wings - and notice that one of their DT has a rather more polished version of the same image! Nice card Gez;). I've used this week's Card Patterns Sketch for my card's layout.

I'm fairly pleased with my first colouring attempt, these seem to need a dramatic background, so I gave it purple and went over it with light orange, which gave it a glow. Colouring is Copics and Stickles and when I'd finished I saw a tiny mark on the image so I oversprayed the whole card with gold Glimmer Mist as a kind of fake tan to disguise the blemish:). The ribbon has dots on the RS, which looked too strong so I used the wrong side. Sentiment is Hero Arts. What do you think? Hit or miss?

A tale of two stamps

I'm lucky enough to have a DH who will go to the local craft shop and buy me things for birthday and Christmas. Last Christmas he bought me a really unusual Hero Arts stamp, the first of the Clings that I had seen, a negative of a field of flowers. I stamped it out a few times and really liked it, brayered inks across the surface and did a few other things. Set it to one side, as you do, then when I wanted to use it, around March time, it had vanished. I turned my craft room upside down, DH looked everywhere, I looked everywhere, with no luck. In the end, yesterday, I admitted defeat and bought another Cling as a substitute. I joked in the shop that now I'd bought another the original would turn up. This afternoon, lifting down one of my ring binders of stamps, I noticed something on the shelf. Yes, the Cling had reappeared on the shelf that had been searched many times. Deeply weird; perhaps it was abducted by aliens who wanted to make cards...

So in celebration of its return I've made two cards:).
Card number 1 uses the new Cling of a bird in a circle on top of text. I've cut out and popped up the circle; flowers and bird are coloured with Copics, the background are sponged with Distress Ink. I used my MS hydrangea punch on the bottom of the mat for the image, the DP is Basic Grey Capella, I've dry embossed a couple of bits of pink pearlescent card and addded pearls to the centres of the flowers.

This card is for Sketch Saturday's Challenge, and it's colourscheme is based round this week's Simon Says Challenge of Pink or Blue with Green and Brown. My greens look a bit greyish but they are green! This week's ABC Challenge is V is for Vintage, Create4Fun has the same theme of Vintage and the theme at Quixotic Challenges is embossing.
Card two uses the original stamp on this week's Mojo Monday sketch. I've inked it with Distress Inks and added some gems to the daisy centres. They are yellow in real life, the photo isn't great. DP is K&K, sentiment is Craftwork Cards and ribbon is from stash.

Summer Flowers

Geraniums are so evocative of summer, that lovely scent that they give off when they are bathed in sunshine is second to none. Today I've had a day off work and filled my pots and tubs with geraniums and other tender plants, I just hope the summer is as kind to them as it is today:).

This lovely image is from Isabella's Sketchbook and I'm entering their birthday card challenge with it. The sentiment underneath is Hero Arts. Image is coloured with Copics and the DP is Basic Grey Green at Heart. Card candy is from Craftwork Cards. The sketch is from Card Patterns
Challenge I'm also entering it for Papertake's say it with flowers challenge.

G is for Glitz - and a chilly owl

Here's a Christmas card to add to the small but growing pile, which fits the theme at ABC Christmas Challenge this week of G is for Glitz with the optional add-in of silver. I was trying to do some clearing up in my craft room last night and found the elements of this card mixed up with some kits from Dimension Fourth that I was filing. How shameful to put away the stamps and the cardstock still unused, I've put them all in one file now and I WILL get round to using them:). Anyway, back to the Christmas card.

As far as I remember, I began it at a sponsored make and take in aid of McMillan nurses, at Made by You, my local shop that is sadly closing down any day now. The flourish is a Hero Arts border and I think the owl is also Hero Arts. The card is very clean and simple, with the scalloped circle and parts of the owl popped up on foam pads. I've used a glue pen and the wonderfully named silver Glamour Dust (can often do with large helpings of this LOL), also Liquid Pearls and more Glamour Dust for the snow. Hope you like my black and white Christmas:).

Scene It!

At the NEC yesterday, one of my purchases was a gorgeous little set of clear stamps by HobbyArts, their designer, Jenny, was very friendly and helpful and she had loads and loads of artwork made using the set. Although I had challenged my blogging friend Val to see who could make the first card with the Cupcake stamps we both bought from Graphicus, I just HAD to have a play with the harbour scene last night. I made masks for the individual stamps so that I could make scenes with them and this is what I came up with for my first attempt:
I'm entering Stamptacular Sunday's Scene It challenge with this. They stress that it's not for stamps of a ready-made scene and here's a photo of the set, so you can see it isn't one image - it worked so well that it looks like one stamp to me :).

I stamped and masked the boat, added cobbled harbour wall, houses, waves and gulls, all stamped in Versafine black (oh, used grey for the waves). Coloured with Distress Inks, trimmed and matted onto black to fit the centre of the embossing folder frame. Stripy DP is My Mind's Eye and sentiment is Hero Arts. The card's going to my Dad today, he's retired from the Merchant Navy, loves boats, the sea and everything about them, he's not too well at present.

I've only just managed to photograph the card as, during the night, our greyhound Red managed to fall UP a step inside the house(!) and cut his leg open, badly bruising the bone. He's stitched up, home from the vets and still very stoned, so instead of being at work I'm here looking after him. Goodness I would have spent less yesterday had I known the vet bill that was coming today, oh well it's only money :).
Here's the wounded soldier convalescing with a very manly camo bandage on:I've one last thing to show you today; Maureen who I met yesterday at the NEC for the first time handed out brown envelopes to us all with a word on them. I got "Imagine" which had this stunning bookmark inside it, isn't it beautiful? A real surprise and so beautiful, thanks Maureen!

Everyone loves cupcakes!

I've made a card using an image from my crafting friend's visit the other week, this is of course a Whiff of Joy image, Melinda with muffin basket. I've iced the tops of my muffins, with pink Copic and Glossy Accents and turned them into cupcakes.

Whiff of Joy has a lovely sketch by Bev for its challenge this week which I've followed and Charisma Cards has the theme of Birthday cards - with a candle on. You may need to click on the photo to enlarge it, but the cake in Melinda's hand has a lit candle on it. One Stop Craft Challenge's theme is Optimistically Pink and I'm entering my primarily pink card for this challenge too. Meilnda's a fairy with wings so I've also entered her for Flutterby Wednesday's open challenge.

Image is coloured with Copics, Stickles and Glossy Accents, the edge of the oval is edged with Torn Paper Distress Ink. Papers are My Mind's Eye, sentiment is Hero Arts, flowers are Prima with Stickles added and Card Candy is from Craftwork Cards.

New Year Resolutions

At last, back into my craft room :). It's been fun having visitors but it's also nice to be just the four of us. Today is my free day, the last visitor left yesterday, tomorrow I have to go back to work. I'm hoping to get a few cards done, we'll see how the day goes... Here's a bright, cheery card that's based round a New Year's Resolutions Challenge, which takes in a few other challenges at the same time.

Corrosive Challenges is asking for a creation that has a connection with New Year's Resolutions. My only formal resolution will be to continue with last year's resolution, which is to pick up a piece of rubbish from the street each day and put it in the bin. It does make a difference, please think about doing this :). But that doesn't make a very pretty card, so I came up with this: 1.Being thankful for what I have, 2.Flowers because I want to get the garden really looking good this year; the hard landscaping is mostly done but I need to weed and to plant; 3.Enjoying and using the vast amount of crafting stash that I have.

Papertake Weekly's Challenge is a great one for this time of year - Thank You cards.

I've used the sketch from Sketch & Stash, for which I need to tell you what new, never used or neglected stash I've used. The stamp is a lovely new one I got for Christmas (Hero Arts), the MS punch is also new Christmas stash. The papers are old stash and the Big Shot die used to make the flowers is neglected stash. The picot lace is very old stash from my sewing days...

I added the lace in, just the right shade for the card, which means the card is eligible for the Quixotic Challenge, to use lace.

Dutch Dare's Challenge is to "make it happen" - using home made embellishments. I've made the flowers for my card with a die and a small punch.

Hero Arts stamp was stamped in Kaleidoscope blue inks onto glossy card. Sentiment is Elusive Images. Papers are K&K.

Last Minute Gift

You know those clever people who make "one card, ten challenges"? This is the opposite - ten cards for a last minute gift, which fits Secret Crafter's Challenge for the next fortnight. All the images are by Elusive Images, the sentiments are Elusive Images, Hero Arts and Papermania.

I made a circle mask and sponged Distress Inks in the circle for all the cards. The first 3 images are all from the Retro Vases themeplate, left sentiment is Hero Arts, other two are Papermania.

More Retro Vases...











Then there are a few bird images from the Let Your Heart Sing themeplate.










The cards are for a friend who always give home made chocolates for Christmas and who enjoys receiving home made presents. I've made her quite a few bags and this year is time for a change.

The last couple of cards are from Retro Vases again; the last one with the teazles on the soft yellow background is my favourite. All 10 cards took just over an hour... sometimes simple is good.

Monochrome Christmas

This is a quick posting of a card for Spoonful of Sugar's monochrome challenge. I learnt how to make cards with a swinging centre a few weeks back when I went to a class at Made by You in Swindon. It's a tricky card to take a good photo of but essentially it's folded so that the centre square hangs as though it's suspended, you can decorate the front and the back of the square. I opted for a clean and simple card, using clear Hero Arts stamps for the image and the border. They are stamped in Versamark and embossed with crimson powder.

The picture below isn't for the monochrome challenge; it's another of the swing cards, this time experimenting with a circle centre. The image is a digi from Shirleys2Girls and I used Paint to change the image so my reindeer had a back view as well as a front one :).

Quick Christmas Flowers

I've a couple of cards to blog today, first of all this is a quick and easy card that uses a downloadable freebie image from Fred She Said, aka Tracey. I have bought some lovely images from Tracey (lost in the hard drive crash, must sort out) and she is very generous with her freebies too. The flower is ready coloured, I've layered it and used foam pads to give it depth. Once the card was assembled I added lots of blue and silver Stickles.

The flower is mounted on a circle cut from mirri, the sentiment is Hero Arts, paper from an old Dovecraft pack. The flowers make a very simple but effective card, thanks Tracey! I'm entering the card for a few challenges:

• Saturday Spotlight - Christmas Flowers
• A Spoonful of Sugar - non-traditional colours for Christmas
• Pile It On - Tinsel Town
• Stamp Something - Glitzy Somethings
• Paper Play - Christmas without red or green
• Creative Card Crew - Christmas
  

Christmas Cheers

Cute Card Thursday has a fun challenge theme this week of Midnight Margaritas which works really well with the free digi image that Shirleys2Girls gave away when they reached 150 members on their SNR Cardiverse group. If you join the group here then you can download the image too. I also decided it is a good image to bling up a bit and am entering it for the Simon Says Challenge this week of "all that sparkles".

I prnited out the image onto plain paper and then ran it through the printer again with some patterned paper glued down over one of the images with 505 spray, to make the upholstered chair. The image was coloured with Copics; while I was colouring I thought the outfit was a bright pink but now I've combined it with the papers it looks far too red - oh well... There's lots of bling added: she has a gem bracelet and earrings, as well as gemstones on the background, the wine glass is coated with Glossy Accents and the Santa hat has Perfect Pearls that are coated with Glamour Dust for the brim and bobble. The sentiment, from Hero Arts, has more Glamour Dust around the edges. Ribbon from stash, papers came free with a magazine.

Falling for Autumn

Stampin' for the Weekend has made a welcome return to the list of challenge blogs; this week there is a colour challenge to use orange, brown and leafy green, which also fits the challenge at the Secret Crafter to use autumn colours. I think this Whiff of Joy image epitomises Autumn, it was sent to me by my generous blogging friend Vanja.

Image was coloured with Copics and edged with Distress Ink in Peeled Paint. Image was cut out with Nestabilities, the border in the striped DP uses a Woodware punch. Apart from the plain orange cardstock, all papers come from Summer Drigg's generous free download sets. The sentiment is the centre of a Hero Arts stamp with the border trimmed off, the ribbon and brad are from stash.

Yum, yum, yum

Good Afternoon, I've only one card to post for the weekend, I'm at the international Festival of Quilts, living it up, looking at the quilts, meeting old and new friends and teaching Young Quilter workshops.

This card is made to celebrate Cupcake Craft Challenge's 1st birthday. The theme is "Something Sweet", I've used cupcake stamps from Hero Arts in their honour :). There's a great blog hop and some amazing prizes to be won, make sure you enter! Happy Birthday CCC!
CPS Card sketches, I love cards with multiples of three on them, don't you think cardmaking is like gardening, when in doubt work in threes of fives?

The card is fairly simple: cupcakes are paper pieced from plain pink and a stripe, with Stickles blinging up the hearts. The papers are all K & Co, purple gems added and all put onto a Kraft card. Blue grosgrain ribbon is from my stash.

Happy Bella Birthday!

I've been playing with my Promarkers again and used a Stampinbella image that I got in a swap, to make a birthday card. I used a great sketch from Truly Scrumptious, but neglected to read the challenge first, which was to use black and white and one other colour :(. Hey, it's such a pretty sketch that I'll do another one, just not tonight...

Papers from K&K, bought at Newbury Art Stamps, which is also where the pearlescent blue card came from. The birthday sentiment is a clear Hero Arts one. Prima flowers from the Stamp Attic.

Sweet Summer Sun - and 8 challenges!

It's been a lovely hot day today, in fact it's been hot for a few days and I've been drawn to making a hot summer sunshine card. I've begun with the very simple, very usable sketch from the CPS Challenge blog this week. I've used some lovely images from My Grafico, a set called Garden Elements and I've coloured them with Koh-i-Noor pencils in hot pinks and oranges to match Michelle's Summertime theme on the Digital Tuesday Challenge. This is also the theme at Cupcake Craft Challenges so I'm entering it for this Challenge too. Sadly Cupcake Craft is closing down as a challenge, it will be their last challenge next week. A Challenge blog is a big commitment and a lot of work, thank you to all the Cupcake gals for running their challenges for so long :). There's yet another Summer Challenge to enter at A Spoon Full of Sugar this week!

The challenge this week at One Stop Craft Challenge is to use Fruity Colours, so I'm entering my orange and raspberry card, though it has no actual fruit on it, it still fits the bill. Charisma Cards has an open challenge that you can enter up to four times, that they've called Rubbernecker Week after their sponsor, so here's entry #2 to their challenge. And last but definitely not least, my blogging friend Danni has a Flutterby Wednesday theme of creating an outdoorsy card with a butterfly of fairy. OK I make that SEVEN challenges in one card - yippee! :).

PS My Grafico has a Summer/4th July challenge which Martha has reminded me about (see my post below). So that makes it a record EIGHT!

Now, on to the card...

Digi images from My Grafico were printed twice and coloured with Koh-iNoor pencils. Flowers were cut out and added to the image with 3d sticky dots. The image was edged with Distress Ink in Worn Lipstick and matted onto pink card. The DP is an Artylicious printed paper from my Graphicus Guild membership. The Hero Arts sentiment is stamped onto orange Bazzill card and the whole of it matted onto pink. The butterfly from the set was then stuck down, some Glossy Acents and Stickles blinged it up a bit and I added two butterfly brads from a special offer pack I bought at Made by You. Enjoy the summer and I hope you enjoyed looking at the card!