You can't beat a good book

I've used a new Mary Hall stamp from Sugar Nellie to make this card. As soon as I saw the sneak peek of it on the SN blog I knew it would find its way home with me :).

The card is for several challenges: first of all the colour scheme is from this week's Passion for Promarkers Challenge: Gold & Ruby with jewels or gems. I've got Gold but I had to substitute Poppy for Ruby as I don't have too many colours yet. I've used the sketch from The Next Level, which is to be used with a 3D effect. I've decoupaged the image, the girl and cushions are raised on pads and then I've put a third layer for her mug, the cat and the book. Stamp with Fun and Dutch Dare both have Challenges to use dies or punches; I've used Nestie circles and I've cut the flowers with a die as well.

On to the card: I've used all Promarkers to colour the image, which is stamped with Cocoa Brown Memento onto white card. Face is Vanilla with some grey shading, dress is cocoa and the rest is Poppy and Gold. I also used the Promarkers to colour pearls to give the card its gems, to colour the flowers I diecut from white card and to colour the lemon yellow ribbon. Aren't they brilliant for this? I plan to buy a couple of reels of ivory ribbon, knowing I can colour it however I want...

The two papers are Artylicious, one from the Seasons Greetings CD and one from Graphicus Guild membership paper. The sentiment is by Elusive Images. The picture isn't the best, I hope to take a better one in the morning, in daylight :).

Summer Garden - The Next Level

The Next Level is a new Challenge Blog with lots on interesting articles and tutorials. It's first challenge is to create an aperture card, which must have a lollipop flower on it. I hadn't come across lollipop flowers before but there's a full tutorial provided on the blog so that was no excuse not to take part :).



I bought some sumptuous Basic Grey papers earlier this week in the Stamp Attic and was keen to use them, so that set my colour scheme as pinks, greens, browns and apricot. I chose papers for the flower and made it first, leaving it to dry, then I went on to make the card. I haven't made an aperture card before so I kept it simple and chose to cut a circle. I wanted the circle to be off-centre to make room for the flower and other embellishments, so I used a Nestie to cut a scalloped circle and stuck that in the right spot, then cut into that with a smaller circle.



The sitting Gorjuss Girl from Sugar Nellie works really well sitting at the edge of a circle, so I coloured her with watercolour pencils and a little bit of opaque white pen and placed her on the card, with some ribbon behind to make a stem for the flower. I filled the RH corners of the cards with flourishes from Elusive Images, stamped in green, and added a die-cut butterfly to the edge of the circle to balance out the sitting girl.



Then I moved on to the inner of the card. I used some lovely blotchy green paper and began with some grass, using a Stamps by Judith stamp and with a Penny Black tree. I gave the tree leaves and flowers with Tapestry stamps and added some flowers with Craftwork Cards clear stamps.

So far so good... until I decided to spray some iridiscent Glimmer Mist over the scene, to match the lollipop flower. The non-waterproof inks all began to run and I hastily dried it with a heat gun! I also learnt that I should have cut a large square of background, not cut the circle as of course it was a pain to line up and the white around it spoilt its look. I mounted it onto a dark square of paper, only to find that it wasn't quite parallel with the card edges and looked crooked. I solved this by cutting some lace borders from the papers and covering the top and bottom of the square.



I really enjoyed making the card even if the aperture was a steep learning curve :).