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!

Take Time to Smell the Flowers - Sketch & Stash #13

This week's Sketch & Stash Challenge has an optional challenge of using animal themed stash. This made my mind up as to what I was going to stashbust this week :) - a lovely dog stamp that my friend Anne bought me from Little Claire's stand at Ally Pally. I fell for 2 dog stamps and have coloured the larger one several times and not been happy with the effect I've got.

For this card I pulled out the little terrier stamp and inked it up at last. I masked it off and stamped an Elzybell's flower stamp onto the background. I coloured the images in with Koh-i-Noor pencils and blended them, adding some Distress Ink around the edges.

The gorgeous papers are Basic Grey from their Porcelain 6x6 pad, fairly new stash from the Stamp Attic, and the two flowers are new stash. I've bought the most beautiful stamp plate from Elusive Images called Retro Vases, with, I think, 40+ images to it. It's taken me a while to cut them out and now I need to start to use them :). This hardly gives much idea of their potential, but I stamped the little star flowers with pink chalk ink, cut them out with a circle punch and shaped the edges. They looked too white so I rubbed more Distress Ink across them and painted the flower middles with it.
I think the dog looks a bit like Sweep, our terrier, but those who know her may think it looks rather better tempered than Sweep :)

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!

An English Summer? Whiff of Joy Challenge #34

Challenge #34 at the Whiff of Joy blog uses a lovely sketch by Bev. It's been a lovely sunny day here, I hope I'm not tempting fate by using this Willow with Umbrella image :), which was sent to me by my generous SBS "Sister" Vanja. I've coloured her with Koh-i-Noor pencils and added Glossy Accents to the raindrops as well as a bit of Stickles on the emboridery on Willow's jeans.

All the papers used are from a Basic Grey pad called cupcake, that I bought at Stamp Attic. The sentiment is from an Inkadinkado floral set, I've cut the flower circles with my smallest Nestie dies. It's a fairly simple card, the papers are quite busy and I don't think it needs anything more...

Purple & Pink for Alice

Dutch Dare's challenge this week is one close to my heart, they are asking for cards to be created for Post Pals. Post Pals is something I already support, I send cards to Alice, who currently undergoing chemotherapy. Her favourite colours are pink and purple, so that's what I've used for my card.

I've used the gorgeous sketch from Sketch & Stash Challenge this week and I've used butterflies on my card, which is this week's challenge for A Spoonful of Sugar . I love Danni's butterfly challenges and this week she gave us the very straightforward challenge of using a challenge sketch and including butterflies (or fairies) so I've covered that one too :).

This is, of course, a stashbusting card as it's for Sketch & Stash :). I began with something new: the lovely butterfly stamp from last month's Graphicus Guild themeplate, which I hadn't used yet. It's stamped onto Glimmer Misted paper, the butterfly stamped again and coloured with Koh-i-Noor pencils then with Glossy Accents on top. The sentiment stamp is part of this month's Graphicus Guild themeplate, again I've not used it before.

The pink pearlescent card came from a box of paper that I filled at one of the first craft shows I ever went to, this is neglected stash, as are the two DPs, which are both from my Graphicus Guild membership papers. The pink background is obescured by the images, but it is a lovely large-scale flower print, and of course the butterflies had to go onto this card :). Butterflies diecut with a punch that I've had for a while and just begun using, ribbons and flower from stash.



Post Pals is a lovely organisation, please join in and send cards if you can :).

Three Challenges, one card

I'm combining three challenges here on one card. My starting point was with some digital download papers that I got which fitted the them on The Secret Crafter's challenge for this week perfectly: pink, turquoise and a hint of brown. I got an email about a birthday sale at Funky Fairy and saw a really sweet set called Just a Bit, which is based around pink, blue, green and brown. I've printed off a floral, an almost plain blue and a dotty pink. There is some brown in the trails on the floral but I added brown centres to my circles from some Basic Grey paper too.

Because the paper was digital, I decided to use the sketch from Digital Tuesday Challenge and found a beautiful free digi-image on Nina's blog, created in honour of her daughters. Due to lack of room I've cropped the text from the bottom of the image. Nina has a brilliant blog, do check it out if you get a chance. The image is coloured with Koh-iNoor pencils, with Stickles blinging it up a bit. The image was cut out with a Labels Nestie and mounted onto turquoise Bazzill card. The circles have small brown and turquoise circles overlapped on the smallest scalloped Nestie size.

Danni's Flutterby Challenge this week is an open one, to use butterflies or fairies. I've used a punch to cut out a butterfly that is sitting on the ribbon and a couple more on the sentiment. I had a lot of fun making this card, I just hope it's not too busy :)

Twisted Thursday #11

I've used one of my new Shirleys2Girls stamps to make this fairly simple card. This week's Twisted Thursday Challenge is to make a card using the sketch by Joy Stagg. The twist is the the card must be 4" square.

Well that didn't seem to be a problem - until I saw how small 4" is :). I stamped my image a couple of times, coloured them with my new Koh-i-Noor pencils and used the blending stick on them. I'm quite pleased with the effect I got, using the pencils for the first time. I trimmed down my image with a Nestie as small as possible and cut a hightlight from the second image. I used a piece of DP from Kaiser that toned with the image and that was it - no room to tinker about with the design any more!

It's a lovely stamp with a very useful sentiment, next week we're going to a 7oth birthday party and I plan to use this with my Dimension Fourth numbers to come up with something special.