Serenity... and a card

Today I just may have had the most relaxing day ever.  We have enjoyed a few days off and today we went to Bath and visited the Thermal Spa.  The rooftop pool is just 100m or so from the Abbey, there are steam rooms with differently scented areas and there is a basement pool.  All use the hot spring water and are really, really warm.  Just blissful!

OK so despite all that laziness I do have a card to show you.  It's an "on the mend" card for a sewing friend, the patchwork block in the background is Churn Dash.  I've used Basic Grey Kioshi DP, a Martha Stewart punch and the digis are from Pink Petticoat.  The buttons at top right and the one on the flywheel of the machine are from my buttonbox.

My card is for the following challenges:
ABC Challenge - V is for violet
Creative Card Crew - anything goes
Inspirational Card Sketches - sketch
Papertake Weekly - pale, pretty pastels
Digital Tuesday - add some texture (popped up image, buttons)
Creative Craft - restful colours

Phindy's Place Challenge #34 - Winter

Good Morning and welcome to a new Phindy's Place Challenge, this week we have the fun challenge of Winter - which can be Christmas but doesn't have to be - as long as you use a Phindy's Place image!  We've had far more snow and ice than is usual for England at this time of year and I've been busy making icy, snowy Christmas card.  Today I've used Winter Walk, an image that works for all kinds of occasions, not just as a Christmas card (think engagement, Thinking of You...) but I've tried to use a warmer colour palette.  Maybe the weather will follow suit!

Colouring is Copics and some Distress Ink in Pumice Stone, Liquid Pearls were added for snow.  I've followed the Inspirational Card Sketch for this week, the sentiment is Impression Obsession and I've stitched across the My Mind's Eye DP, which has been maturing in my stash!
I'm entering the following challenges:

Inspirational Card Sketches - sketch
Simon Says - Christmas but no red or green
Papertake Weekly - red and green must not be seen
A Spoonful of Sugar - Christmas Card
Digital Tuesday - baby it's cold outside
Sassy Studio Designs - non traditonal Christmas colours
Inktegrity Challenges - non traditional Christmas colours
Christmas Card Challenges - monochrome

Home for Christmas

This is a tiny Christmas card, just 4" square, with another Hobby Art scene from the Jenny Mayes stamps.  I've matted and layered a few times and then simply used some embossed white card to follow this week's Challenge at Inspirational Card Sketches.  There's a HUGE holidays challenge and blog hop at Simon Says this week and I'm entering my card for their challenge.  Bah Humbug Christmas Challenge asks for a card using your favourite medium - mine is stamping and watercolouring.

Scene uses just 2 stamps and is watercoloured with some glitter added to the snow.

I do like to be beside the seaside

I started this card with the intention of entering Twisted Thursday last week when the theme was summer accessories, shamefully I didn't get it finished in time.  When I saw that this week's Twist was to use Red in my card I was really pleased that I had coloured the beach umbrella red and I finished up my card:).

I kept it pretty clean and simple, basing it on this week's Inspirational Card Sketches Challenge.  Image is coloured with Copics, striped card was blog candy, sorry don't know the make.  The sentiments are Joanna Sheen House Mouse.  The cocktail has some Glossy Accents giving the glass a shine, doesn't show up too well in the photo.

This card is for the following challenges:

S2G Twisted Thursday - Use some red

Inspirational Card Sketches - sketch

Totally Papercrafts - By the Sea

One Stop Card Craft - Summer Fun

Crafty Cardmakers - It's our Birthday

DT Post - Phindy's Friday Challenge #8 - Happy Birthday!

Hooray for Friday, it's a lovely sunny day and I don't have to work today! It's also time for the Phindy's Place Friday Challenge, which this week is to make a birthday card or a birthday project. You can never have too many birthday cards and there are certainly images to suit everyone in Phindy's shop, check out the DT's cards, not one uses the same image:).

I based my card on sketch #68 from Inspirational Card Sketches, they are having a choose your own sketch week. I enjoyed looking through the old sketches and then picked the one from last week after all that lovely browsing! My colourscheme came from Paper Sundae's kraft and blue challenge.

Kraft always seems to me as though it should be on a fairly clean & simple card and also this isn't an image that wants too much fuss around it. So I coloured Love Letter with Copics and edged it with Distress Inks. The DP behind it is Basic Grey, seniments are Papermania. The kraft paper has a pattern so I used the WS and I've stitched in white to fill in those wide empty spaces:).

Too many berries

This House Mouse image needed a simple sketch, it's quite large and busy, so I was really pleased to see this week's sketch at Inspirational Card Sketches, it's ideal. My mouse is meant to be saying "Goodbye" for the House Mouse Challenge this week, they've got a blog hop and all sorts of prizes. But I think he looks more like a mouse with indigestion than a sad mouse saying farewell:). I'm also entering this for Totally Papercraft's photo inspiration challenge, thanks for the heads-up Lols:).

Image is coloured with Distress Inks, edge is distressed and its mounted onto Bazzill Bling. Sentiment is computer generated, DP, border and sticker are Basic Grey Nook & Pantry.

Safe Harbour

Here's another card made with those gorgeous HobbyArt stamps that I bought at the NEC. As soon as I saw this week's Inspirational Card Sketches I knew I wanted to use it with this scene. Cute Card Thursday is calling for Dimensions or lots of layers; I've got plenty of layers here as well as dimensions in the dry embossing. Papertake's theme this week is Anything Goes so I'm entering that too with my little card:).

Striped DP is My Mind's Eye, I've Cuttlebugged Bazzil Bling card for the squares. The Cuttlebug folder is called Branches, I've turned it around to make waves. I've masked and stamped my scene stamps and coloured with Distress Inks.

Christmas birdhouse

Passion for Promarkers this week doesn't call for specific colours to be used, which is useful for me as I don't have too many; the Challenge is to use polka dots so I began by unearthing the soft blue and biscuity double sided paper; don't know who made it, there's nothing printed on the margin. It goes nicely with the holly paper from My Mind's Eye that I bought last year. If the holly wasn't single sided I'd say they came from the same collection, they go almost too well together :).

I decided to work with the sketch from Inspirational Card Sketches' Challenge this week, which really appealed to me with the square on point. I'd like to be able to say that I decided to flip the sketch to make it more unusual, the honest answer is that I stuck my on-point square round the wrong way!

The birdhouse is a pretty Christmas stamp that I got at Lili of the Valley, I coloured the house using vanilla and pastel beige together. I remembered to keep out the pens I'd used and photgraph them for posterity :). The birdhouse is cut out and decoupaged with silicon glue, as are the bird and the stockings. I've used fluffy stuff for the snow and Glossy Accents on the berries. The background for the image and the sentiment have Distress Ink in tea dye and denim Adirondack ink rubbed in. Everything is mounted onto a navy card, the ribbon is from stash.

Happy Bark-Day! - Inspirational Cards Sketches #21 meets Shirleys2Girls

I got my prize stamp from Shirleys2Girls in the post earlier this week and I used it for this week's Inspirational Card Sketches Challenge. It's a great stamp with several alternative sentiments included; I've used two here. I love this stamp, it's going to be so useful, thanks Shirleys2Girls!The circular birthday sentiment is a Hero Arts clear stamp.

I've paper pieced the stamp and coloured it in with Koh-i-Noor pencils, the papers are Basic Grey cupcake, which are bright and summery, with some blue Bazzill card as the base to the card.

The card is for Dad's birthday, Happy Birthday Dad!

Dusk till Dawn

New Challenge blogs seem to be popping up every day and there is more and more choice of challenges to take part in. If only someone could sell some more hours for the day so I can keep up with them all... :)

Stampin' for the Weekend is a new one, with my friend Vanja as one of the Design Team, having seen her lovely card and their great theme - From Dusk until Dawn - purple and yellow - I wanted to be sure to take part in this one. I went with a really nice sketch by Dawn from Inspirational Card sketches challenge #19 . I also included the Secret Crafter's challenge #35 for this week, which is bling, using some glitter, some gemstones and some Glossy Accents. Cute Card Thursday's Challenge #63 is to use punches and die cuts; I've managed to include this on the card too. Phew! I think four challenges in one card is my record, I'm always in awe of those who manage to fit umpteen challenges into one card, which takes some multi-tasking! OK that's the challenges, now on to the card :).

I have used all Elusive Images stamps for the card; the Graphicus Guild stamps this month include the bird and birdhouse, the brilliant "Best Wishes" stamp is from another, older, Guild stamp set. The papers are all from the papers included with the Guild membership. The birhouse is embossed with Adirondack Eggplant onto patterend paper, with a gem on top of it. The bird is stamped onto pale yellow Bazzill card and then again onto a pale yellow patterned paper, in Eggplant dye ink this time. I've used the birdhouse stamp around the edges for the leaf pattern. The bird is mounted onto the card using silicon glue and then painted with Glossy Accents, which seem to have turned the Eggplant a bit blue.

When I assembled the card I was going to use the thin piece of the sketch to the left for the sentiment, until I remembered the pearlescent card that I used a butterfly punch on a couple of days ago, the negative shapes were just too pretty to throw away so it went into the scrap box. I think it fits the sketch really well.

I stamped the "Best Wishes" onto the card when it was assembled, in Eggplant again, and added faux brads to the corners and gemstones below the butterflies. I've coated the brads in Glossy Accents and dropped some Prisma Glitter on them to give them a bit of bling. I also used a tip from a workshop I went to at MadeByYou last week for the ribbon: I used double sided tape wider than the ribbon, with a narrow sticky border each side of the ribbon and again, coated it in the glitter more some more bling. I think this is a great idea, may come in useful for any accidental sticky tape left showing :) .

Love the Dusk Until Dawn theme, great one to work with and it came together with the other themes quite well, I think.

Be Happy - Inspirational Card Sketches #17

I fell for the new Leanne Ellis stamps from Sugar Nellie in a big way when I got my first set. At the weekend Sugar Nellie released the third set and I succumbed all over again :). I ordered them on Saturday and they arrived with me yesterday (Tuesday). That's amazingly quick from Sugar Nellie and from the postman - thank you!



When I saw Dawn's sketch for Inspirational Card Sketches this week I thought it was the perfect sketch to use for one of the stamps, my only dilemma was which to pick first! The image is called Patience. I teamed her with some yummy new paper that I got at the Stamp Attic on Monday called On A Whimsy, by Fancy Pants.



Patience's coat and skirt are paper pieced, as is her body on the stripy background, which has torn edges. The colouring is done with watercolour pencils and the apple and flowers are highlighted with Glossy Accents.

I've used a mini alphabet that I was given as a freebie at the Stamp Attic on the jewellery labels at the base of the image and some ribbon I've had in my stash for ages.

I can't wait to play with the rest of the stamps but for now I have to go to work...

Three birds with one stone...

This card combines three challenges, hence the name, I know there are two birds, not three, sitting on the fence :) To begin, I've used the Dawn's great sketch from Inspirational Card Sketches #16 .

The lilac and lemon colour scheme (plus digi image) is from Dare You to Digistamp's Friday Challenge and the final touch is GLITTER for Secret Crafter's Saturday Challenge # 32

The digi image is a free printable from Pollycraft called Lovebirds. The page comes with extra sets of the birds and fence to cut round, very handy. I'm not totally sure about digis, I do like to be able to emboss images when I want, but this freebie is a great way to test them out, thank you Paula for your generosity. I've coloured with Inktense pencils and used Glitter on top of Glossy Accents on wings, tails and hearts, then Stickles as it wasn't glittery enough for me.

The birds and fence are both cut round (ack the fence has a lot of detail!) and are mounted onto foma pads to give dimension. The lilac spots and stripes are free magazine papers, the purple butterfly is an Artylicious paper. The vellum is stamped with a Hero Arts sentiment and is attached with brads. Purple gems at the top are from Kaiser. Nice colourscheme, with hindsight it could have used a little contrast...

Inspirational Cards Sketches #11 & Flutterby Wednesday Week 52

I got out my Elusive Images butterfly daisy and poppy collage stamps for this week's Inspirational Card Sketches Challenge. I coloured some glossy card with Distress Inks. The colours are Tea Dye and Weathered Wood. I stamped the lovely text and scrolled background onto it and cut an oval from it with Nestabilities dies. Then I stamped a large butterfly onto the glossy card and cut round it. I've chopped off its antennae as too fiddly to cut round though, and can't decide whether to try to draw some in on the background... The butterfly is attached so as to be 3D, sorry it doesn't show up well here.



The two sentiments come from Graphicus Guild stamps, they are stamped onto Glimmer Misted paper that has had cling film crumpled onto it while the ink was wet. The design paper is from the Graphicus Guild membership pack and I've stamped the smaller corner scroll from the butterfly daisy collage set onto the paper. All stamping was done with black Versafine ink.




I've changed the proportions around a bit to fit my ideas to Dawn's sketch but I'm quite pleased with the end result. I'm also submitting it for Danni's Flutterby Wednesday challenge - Danni has been challenging crafters for a year now! Congratulations Danni, hope you like my butterfly card :)

Inspirational Cards Sketches #10

Still sticking to my CAS (clean and simple) theme for this week, here is a card I've made using this great sketch from Dawn Baty over on the ICS Challenge. There's a bit more going on in the sketch, but I've simplified where I could.





The cupcake is from my Hero Arts clear set, the wrapper is paper pieced from gold card, the colour is Inktense pencils with some Stickles added to the icing. Both of the sentiments, the design paper and the ribbon all come from the Craftwork Cards Goody Bag that I bought at Make It in February. I'm getting good value for money from it :). I plan to go to Ally Pally later this month and maybe get another of their goody bags.


I love the sketch and hope to have another play with it, when I'm not in CAS mode, but for now I'm quite pleased with the result I've got.

Inspirational Card Sketches #9

Dawn has a fun sketch to use on ICS this week. Like Karen on the DT, I used a Gorjuss Girl stamp from Sugar Nellie, I coloured her with H20s and watercolour pencils to match the lovely turquoise/brown papers from the Stamp Attic. I ddin't like the white card she was stamped on against the papers, so I stamped round the edges with some tapestry stamps to soften it a bit. The flowers on against the brown wall she's sitting on are stamps from Craftwork Cards and the border beneath is a fussy cut piece of co-ordinating paper, I've cut round the circles.

I tried cutting and tearing paper to make the long border to the left and didn't like the effect, so I came across some mulberry paper greetings from Papermania that I think came in a goody bag when I was first starting to make cards. Celebrate works for me, I hope it's ok as far as the sketch goes :). The brown flower centre was a white paper flower coloured with Copic pen.

Inspirational Card Sketches #8 - a gift tag

I was lucky enough to get a prize from the very generous Aileen on Papercraft Planet for taking part in a Leanne Ellis/Gorjuss Girls challenge. She sent me a pad of Basic Grey paper and some yummy co-ordinating brads. I wanted to put them to use straight away and show Aileen how much they were appreciated.

The sketch I've used is by Dawn from Inspirational Card Sketches. At first I found it quite tricky to work with, I hadn't used a tag shape before and it needed lots of detail on it. I persevered and am pleased with the result, thanks Dawn, I've tried something new :).

All papers Basic Grey from the Infuse pad. Gorjuss Girl coloured with watercolour pencils. Sentiment from Elusive Images, Prima flowers from the Stamp Attic.