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!

Freshly Made Sketches Challenge

 

Entering this card in the Freshly Made Sketches Challenge #269.  

I forgot how much I love card sketches and I really enjoyed having a clean and simple card sketch to follow.

Couldn't decide whether to use a blue strip or a pink strip...so I joined them together and used both!

Stamps:  Altenew Vintage Roses; Stampin up Watercolour Wings (sentiment)

Inks:  Stampin up and Distress Inks

Thanks for looking!

Clean and simple flower card

Here is a card I have made for The Friday Mashup! card challenge.  The challenge this week was to use a watercolour wash and to keep your card 'clean and simple'. 

I rarely do clean and simple cards even though I love the look of them.  Must make them more often!  This would be an easy card to make multiple copies and give them away as a gift.

Supplies:
Flower die: MFT dies
Sentiment stamp:  Kaisercraft

Distress ink scraps - what to do?

What to do with all of my distress ink scraps?  I hate wiping up lovely bits of distress ink off my mat, seems like such a terrible waste of pretty ink!  I always have scrap pieces of paper lying around so I dip, scrape and dab the scraps into the ink to see what happens.  Sometimes my nicest colour combinations are the happy accidents that happen when soaking up the leftover ink!

The scraps were too pretty to throw out but not really big enough to make a background for a card or a tag.  So I decided to die cut flowers from them and I love how they have turned out.  I left the cards without a sentiment as I couldn't really decide what to put on them.  They could be birthday, thank you, hello, thinking of you....I htink I'll leave them blank until an occasion arises and then I'll stamp the appropriate sentiment on.

 

These backgrounds were made with distress inks stamped on my craft mat, misted with plenty of water, and then 'smooshing' the paper in the water.  I like how random the backgrounds are and I thought that these ones looked a bit like grass and sky so I went ahead and added some flowers to them.

I die cut the flowers using MFT dies, then added a button and some twine to the centre of the flowers.  I drew on the stem and black border by hand, no need for a ruler, I prefer the hand-drawn look.

What do you do with your leftover distress ink scraps?  I'd love to hear how you use them.

A non-scrappy post

I am not what you would call a gardener and I certainly don't have a green thumb.  In fact, I have never particularly enjoyed gardening at all.  Most things that I have attempted to grow have since passed on due to thirst or drowning (over-compensating for the things that have died of thirst!)

So you can imagine my surprise and excitement this Spring when I managed to grow the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen (I am a bit biased!)  Back in May my boys, aged 4 and 2, helped me to plant some bulbs.  The bulbs were purchased from a Kinder fundraiser which I felt obliged to purchase from!  The tag on the packet had a pretty picture of the flowers and even stated that they were 'Easy to grow'.  Anyway, every week without fail we went out and watered our bulbs. 

I had no idea how much joy my boys would get from planting something and watching it grow.  They have shown excitement and enthusiasm at every stage of the process from planting, seeing the first sprout, measuring how tall they were getting, spotting the first bud and then of course watching the flowers bloom.  In fact they squealed with absolute delight when the first one flowered ("Mum, come quick.  Look what we've done!") and every day they still go out to check on them at least 4 or 5 times!  I am shocked (and pretty chuffed) to think that we have grown something so beautiful from scratch. 

The flowers are ranunculus, which I had never heard of, but apparantly most people know what they are!  The colours are the most intense, deep, gorgeous shades you ever did see (and the photos don't actually do the colours much justice).  I just adore the ones with all those ruffles and layers, they are absolutely beautiful.  I thought I would share some photos of them with you today and I think I will make a digital scrapbook page to go in our album too.  Hope you like them!

If I was a digital scrapbook designer, I would definitely be making a Spring kit right now with these shades of hot pink, burnt orange, bright yellow....if only I knew how! 
I love Spring!  In fact, these flowers have given me such a boost of confidence that we have even built a vegetable garden - wish me luck with that one!