Jar of Love stamps

This card was inspired by a few different card challenge blogs:

Fusion Card Challenge - 4th July Jars.  I used both the picture and sketch (rotated 90 degrees).



Less is More Challenge #335 - Colours of your country's flag



CAS on Sunday Challenge #111 - Flowers


Stamps:  Stampin Up - Jar of Love; Altenew- Beautiful Day (sentiment)
Paper:  Bo Bunny

Thanks for looking!

CAS birthday card

Entering this card in:
Freshly Made Sketches Challenge #271
CAS on Sunday Challenge #99 - Black and white + a colour of your choice

  Loved the black and white + 1 colour prompt and think I'll be making a few of this card in lots of different shades to have in my stash.

Stamps:  Mama Elephant Brush Strokes; Mama Elephant Pandamonium; Stampin Up Endless Birthday Wishes 
Dies:  Mama Elephant 'birthday'

Thanks for looking!

A couple of clean and simple cards

Entering this card in the following challenges:
Casology - Cue word:  Cut
Seize the Birthday - Theme:  Anything Goes

I fussy cut the cow and die cut the white rectanglar piece. 
I used Mama Elephant stamps (lunar animals and brush strokes) and Stampin Up stamps (endless birthday wishes) to make this card.

   

 I created this card for a  colleague who celebrates a birthday in early Jan but unfortunately I forgot it.  The inside of the card reads:  "But I do!"

Thanks for looking!

We herd it's your birthday!

Entering this birthday card in: Seize the Birthday Challenge Blog.  The theme this week is 'anything goes'.


I used Mama Elephant Stamps (Brush strokes; Lunar Animals); Lawn Fawn stamps (Party Animals); Stampin up stamps (Endless Birthday Wishes) and MFT die (Fence).

I love a good pun and thought this was appropriate for the farm animals!

Thanks for looking!

Sending Birthday Thoughts

I'm entering this card in Freshly Made Sketches this week.
I'm also entering it in Colour Throwdown #425 - black, mustard and blue.  This is not a colour combo that I would normally use but it is really lovely!

I used Mama Elephant Pandamonium Stamps and Happy Everything sentiment stamps.

Thanks for looking!
 

Wishing you a tree-mendous day!

Entering this card in:
Freshly Made Sketches Challenge and CASology Week 23.

I loved the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches - it takes a lot of the hard work out of card making for me and makes it so much more fun to create.  The 'Forest' theme from CASology made me use colours that I normally don't use (which was fun!) and also made me realise that I don't own any tree stamps (GASP!).  Definitely need to add some of those to the wishlist!

I used Mama elephant stamps for the rabbit (lunar animals) and the sentiment (calli letters & happy everything).
Here's a link to both challenges if you're interested in having a look.  It's great fun to play along!

Thanks for looking!
        

CAS(E) This Sketch Challenge

Entering this card in the CAS(E) This Sketch Challenge #203.  Had a lot of fun creating a watercolour background for this card - sometimes the messier the watercolouring, the better it looks!  Really loving using sketches at the moment!

Stamps: Mama Elephant Happy Everything; Lawn Fawn Cheery Christmas

Dies:  Lawn Fawn ; Mama Elephant birthday

Thanks for looking!

Butterfly Challenge Card

Long time no blog!  Decided it's about time I started up again.  I've been making plenty of cards, just struggling to find time to upload them.  Here's hoping I can remember how to do this blogging thing!

The card was made using:
Stamps:  Stampin up Watercolor Wings and Stampin up Endless Birthday Wishes (sentiment)
Embossing folder: Flutterby - Stampin up
Inks:  stampin up Melon Mambo, Pumpkin Pie, Memento Black

This card was made to enter two challenges:
Colour Q Challenge # 357


and Retro Sketches #230

Loved the colour combo in the challenge and I always love to use a sketch to get me started with a card.

Thanks for looking (if there's still anyone out there after two years!)

A set of cards

Hi all,
Just here with a set of cards that I have made for a lovely lady who has been very helpful and thoughtful to me.  I can't take any credit for the card design, in fact I copied it completely from a card I saw on  pinterest here.  I thought I would bundle them up with coloured twine and send them to her in the mail. 
I love embossing on cards and I haven't done any for ages.  I found this little floral embossing folder (which I think came free with my cuttlebug) and I've never really liked it or used it, but I think it looks quite nice with these cards.  And yes, I forgot to emboss the sympathy card panel and was so annoyed with myself!  It would have looked much more finished with little embossed dots...never mind!

Thanks for looking!

Supplies: 
Cricut cartridge: Accent essentials (to die cut the flowers)
Embossing folders:  Swiss dots
Sentiment stamps: various Kaisercraft sets
Large brads:  Kaisercraft
Patterned papers:  Kaisercraft 'Hopscotch' collection

Watercolour wash card

I had a lot of fun with this watercolour wash challenge.  I created a birthday card with a watercolour wash background to create a scene.  I am in love with the little bird stamps that I got the other day and can't stop using them!  They are so cute!

Once the background watercolour wash was done I simply stamped the birds, added the die cut fence and some twine and I was done! 

I am entering this card into two challenges:

The Friday Mashup: Challenge 167
Create a project with a watercolour wash.



AAA Cards: Challenge #10
PLAY create a card with watercolour techniques.













Thanks for looking!

Supplies: 
Watercolour paints; Distress inks
Stamps:  'Tweet Bird' Woodware Stamps; Sentiment:  Amy R stamps 'Critter sentiments'
Fence diecut: MFT

Rainbow birthday card

I made this birthday card for a lovely girl who I work with.  She is celebrating her birthday at the end of the week.  She is very arty and creative so I thought that she would like the painted look of this rainbow card.  Bright colours always make me feel happy!

I'm going to enter this card into three challenges:

4 Crafty Chicks:  Challenge - Stripes
The Paper Players:  Challenge - #202 Sandy's Tic Tac Toe Challenge. 
Seize the Birthday:  Challenge - Anything Goes


I am going horizontally from the top and using - twine, a shade of blue, and the card is for a birthday.


Supplies:
Stamps:  Kaisercraft (bird cages); Amy R (sentiments); Hero Arts (bird)
Inks:  Distress inks

One sketch, four cards

I love the layout of these cards, it's so quick and easy to make.  Unfortunately I cannot remember where I saw the sketch, and I am pretty sure that I may have used the sketch before and posted some cards last year using the same sketch.  It is so versatile, I love that I can use the same papers and same sketch to make cards for two very different purposes.

The sympathy cards were made for my girlfriend who needed some sympathy cards quickly, and I just made the birthday card for my stash while I had all the supplies out.  Super quick and easy.

Thanks for looking!

Some distressing with my boys!

My boys (aged 5 1/2 and 3 1/2) have been eagerly watching me use my new distress inks and were not too happy that were not allowed to touch them under any circumstances!  In my defence, I share almost all of my scrapping supplies with my boys and am happy to sit with them and help them make their special creations and cards.  They have their own inks to use and free access to my stamps, they have plenty of lovely scrapbooking paper (my leftovers).  I decided that the cost of distress inks was too much for me to share with them...but I had a weak moment yesterday and decided that under careful supervision, they could have a go at the wrinkle-free distress ink style.  And boy did they love it!

They chose two colours, spritzed with water (so much fun!), and smooshed their tag in the ink.  They oohed and aahed when they lifted their tags up and saw the results, then had fun dipping the tag back in the leftover bits of ink...anyway, they did a super job and I thought I'd share their little creations with you.  Two of these are heading to their Gran for her birthday in a couple of weeks.

Pretty, aren't they!

Thanks for looking!

A little bit of inky fun

I've still been playing around with my distress inks - they are so much fun and very addictive!  I have had mixed results while mucking around with the inks - some turned out lovely and I was thrilled, others had colours sort of 'smoosh' together and turn a kind of 'murky, browny, blah' colour!  Ah well, you live and learn!

Here are some of the results of my inking fun:

I really love how this 'Friend' card turned out.  It is my favourite so far - love the colour combo and the marbled effect.  Once the ink dried I simply stamped the bird cage image (Kaisercraft) and the 'Friend' sentiment (Amy R) and it was done.

 This next card I like too, although I wish the colours were brighter and not quite so brown.  I love the splatters of colour all over the panel, just wishing that background was lighter and brighter.

And a little close up of those lovely, inky splatters!

 

 This little birthday card has me torn.  I love the yellow and I quite like the red splatters but I wish the green was a lighter shade, it just seems too dark next to the yellow and too dark for the stamp that I placed on top.  I also wish that I'd placed the sentiment just a little further to the right of the card.

 

And this last card, well, I almost didn't post it because it is pretty awful!  And no, I'm not after sympathy comments and I'm not looking for sympathy praise...it's just one of those cards that turned out NOTHING like I had pictured in my head!  And here it is, hold your breath...if it were a plant it would be called something like 'Cardeous Horribilious' or 'Cardeous Totally Muckedupeous'...you get the picture!!

My grand vision was this:  I masked off an area for a sentiment, then I wanted to marble the lovely colours of yellow, orange, green and purple.  However, I think I smooshed the purple way too much with the other colours, causing a bit of a murky, horrible browny colour.  But the worst part of it all?  Well the worst part was that I had said to my husband, "Hey, come and watch this, this is so awesome.  I'm going to make this really cool effect on my card, it's going to look so good".  Yes, I talked it up and then I did my excellent demonstration in front of my attentive hubby, who really didn't know what to say once I lifted up the card and had these feral looking colours all over it!!  He simply said, "I think you might have mixed the colours a bit too much!" 

Anyway, I let it all dry, pulled off the mask, sat the card down (face down unfortunately) and got a few little splotches on the white masked area.  So annoyed!  So of course I tried to fix it by adding some yellow splotches to make it look deliberate...you know sometimes when you just keep trying to fix something and you just need to tell yourself to stop, there is nothing more I can do to fix this!!  Well, this was one of those times!

So, what have I learnt from all of this? 
1.  Don't brag about your work until it's finished and you actually know it looks OK!
2.  It's much easier to use the distress inks onto a panel than directly onto the card itself.  You can attach the panel if it looks good, but you can't fix the card itself if you muck it up.
3.  Use the darker colours a bit more sparingly than I have been.
4.  Practice makes perfect!

Thanks for looking!