CC&S #153 Christmassy Sketch: Joy To The World

For my last post for CAS Colours and Sketches this year I have chosen my most favourite sketch of the year from challenge #124 in May. flipped it vertically and made it Christmassy! I have also taken the opportunity of combining my DT card with a few festive challenges along the way!

It combines two of my favourite card-making techniques (thus making it eligible for the HLS challenge)! Firstly the cling film technique used with my Cosmic Shimmer mists. Love, love, love this technique and while you're getting messy it's good to experiment with colours and make a few new pieces. The colour combos don't always dry how you'd imagined but that's half the fun of experimenting! Here I have simply die-cut three squares from a blue/silver piece, stamping the Wise Men image with black Versafine and raising this one with foam pads. The second technique involves my love of paper engineering/folding and here I have made a 3D star of Bethlehem from a 9cm square of holographic paper that itself has stars gleaming in it when it catches the light. A very clear tutorial for folding the star can be found on YouTube HERE. The sentiment is computer generated and the card is simply finished with a few silver star sequins.

Supplies Used:
Spray Mists: Aqua Lagoon & Silver (Cosmic Shimmer)
Stamp: Wise Men (DoCrafts)
Sentiment Font: Maiandra GD
Snippets: Silver holographic paper, Silver sequin stars

The challenges I would like to enter are:
Addicted to CAS: Challenge #78 Code Word 'Joy'

AAA Cards: Game #54 'Silent Night, Holy Night'

CAS on Sunday: Challenge #73 'Stars'

Happy Little Stampers: December CAS challenge 'Favourite Technique'

A very contemporary card but for me, this is a lovely reminder amongst the hustle and bustle of what Christmas is really all about. Thank you all for your visits to my blog over the last year and for your support for our CAS Colours and Sketches challenge. A few changes and some new faces joining the team in the New Year so please join us all then!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Stef x

CC&S #138 Colours & A Little Masking

Slowly getting back to normal after the wedding! Went back to work today so that brought me down to earth with a bump! For this week's challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches, Patricia has given us a set of colours that I wouldn't normally use together but I have enjoyed the challenge of working with them and am reasonably pleased with the result!

I took inspiration for my card from the current challenge #129 at Muse. I don't think I've ever played there before, though I have often wanted to, so thought it was about time! I was inspired by Anita's square stencil pattern and the die-cut leaves in her design. Using Patricia's colour palette I inked through part of a stencil mask with a biscuit shade of brown directly onto a card blank and then, using the faux cross stitch technique, used a darker shade of brown through a fibreglass screen to achieve the cross-stitch effect.

I chose the sentiment stamp as it has a similar texture to the stencilling and stamped the two-parts using the same shade of dark brown. The flowers are die-cut from two snippets of cardstock that match with the colour palette. I turned the green flower over as it suited the composition better. The card was simply finished with a few adhesive pearls.

As I have used stencils and masking techniques on my card I would also like to enter it into the following challenges:

AAA Cards: Challenge #46 - Masquerade

Happy Little Stampers: August CAS Challenge - Masking

Supplies Used:

Stencil Mask: Doodle Squares (Creative Expressions)

Stencil: Fibreglass Screen (Dreamweaver)

Sentiment Stamp: Happy Birthday (Clearly Besotted)

Ink Pads: Bisque & Brown (Versacolor)

Flower Die: Prim Poppy (Memory Box)

Snippets: Blue & green cardstock, Blue adhesive pearls

I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully, to share the card that I made for Katie and Tom on their wedding day and will post a few photos once I have some! Meanwhile enjoy this week's challenge!

Stef x

CC&S #130: Sweet Poppy Stencils, Translucent Paste & Micro Beads

Lizy has given us a nice uncomplicated sketch at CAS Colours and Sketches and I have combined my DT card with three other challenges this week. I like to try and design to the sketch we have been given as far as possible and this week it has given me the chance to use my recently acquired stitched rectangle dies.

The technique of using stencilling/pastes features in two challenges this week; Theme week #229 at Less Is More and Game #42 at AAA Cards. I taped my stencil onto my die-cut rectangle having printed a computer-generated sentiment. I then inked gently through the stencil using two different colours of distress inks. I removed and washed the stencil leaving the ink to dry. Then I replaced the stencil and applied some translucent paste. Carefully removing the stencil I covered the image with micro beads and left it to dry overnight. I absolutely fell in love with this technique having first discovered it on Eileen Godwn's blog and then watching the lovely Lucy from Sweet Poppy Stencils demoing at a show. I especially like how the tiny beads also stick to the sides of the paste where it is raised giving a beautiful translucent outline to the image. Some of the stencil is too narrow to ink through successfully but when finished this gives a lovely clear accent to the coloured areas.

Inspiration for the colours has come from CAS-ual Fridays CFC: #140 Michelle's Idea of Summer where we are challenged to create a CAS project using tan, white and one bright colour.

I mounted the finished image onto a piece of tan linen cardstock using some twine at the base of the image to tie in with Lizy's sketch and then onto a white card blank.

Supplies Used:
Die: Stitched Rectangle Layers (Memory Box)
Stencil: Dove (Sweet Poppy Stencils)
Inks: Broken China & Antique Linen (TH Distress)
Paste: Translucent Paste (Sweet Poppy Stencils)
Beads: Clear Micro Glass Beads (Creative Expressions)
Sentiment Font: Bodoni MT
Snippets: White & tan linen cardstock, Turquoise baker's twine

Thanks Lizy for a fantastic month of colours and sketches. Hope you'll have time to play with this week's sketch!

Stef x

Happy Birthday!

Today I have found a little time to join in with a few other challenges! I started out wanting to make a 1st birthday extravaganza card for Game #39 at AAA Cards Challenges.

But when gathering inspiration came across a few other challenges that my card would also fit. Inspiration for the cupcake comes from AAA Cards birthday game photo:

I bought this large stamp several years ago and have used it for lots of different projects including some notebooks I made with my Guides. I thought I would use marker pens in bright, bold colours, a bit of a challenge in itself for me as I'm much more at home with soft, muted colours. Inspiration for the colour palette comes from this week's challenge (#290) at ColourQ:

I think this colour combo is simply gorgeous (probably because it includes a shade of turquoise, my favourite colour)! I decided to use sketch #185 from this week's challenge at Freshly Made Sketches as it suited my card composition really well and I needed a background to use the fourth colour:

And because of the bold, strong shapes in my design I thought it would also fit right into this week's challenge at CASology where week #145's cue card is SHAPE:

I wouldn't normally combine so many challenges into one card, but I've had lots of fun this afternoon and they all seemed to fit together so well! The design was simply finished with some frosting on the hearts and swirls which you can just about see in the photo. Gotta have a bit of frosting on a special birthday card!

Supplies Used:
Stamp: Large cupcake CG157 (Hero Arts)
Dies: Scalloped rectangle (Spellbinders) & 'Tag Along' (Clearly Besotted)
Promarkers: Poppy, Pink Carnation, Peach
Frosting: Crystal Stickles (Ranger)
Sentiment Font: Bodoni MT Black
Snippets: Pearlised turquoise cardstock, Peach cardstock (Core'dinations)

Thanks for visiting my little world today!
Stef x

CC&S #120: Sing, Baby, Sing!

Oh how I loved the Stylistics, back in the day! I needed to make a baptism card this week and the friends who it's for are both musicians so I started my DT card for CAS Colours and Sketches this week with the premise of using our wonderful springtime challenge colours and combining them somehow with music! Inspiration for the butterflies came from a couple of other challenges and so the card was born!

I found myself playing for some hours on my computer trying to design a 'music tree'. If you look carefully you will see that most of the leaves (and the trunk) of the tree have musical notes and symbols on them. The tree was printed onto the middle of the card blank so that half the tree is on the back of the card. The sentiment is computer-generated and printed in the same colour.

I found an image of the sheet music for one of my favourite pieces of classical music, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, online and printed a section of it firstly onto plum cardstock and secondly onto rose cardstock. I die-cut the two butterflies and mounted them, centres only, onto the card finishing with some white pearls.

I love how the card turned out and really enjoyed creating something a bit different!

I would also like to enter it into the following brand new challenges to me and thank them all for their great inspration:
Butterfly Challenge: #28 Butterflies & M is for Music

AAA CAS Card Challenges: Game #37 It's Springtime - love the colour of those gorgeous tulips in their challenge image!

House of Cards: April Challenge ~ Add a butterfly or colour combination

Supplies Used:
Stylised tree: Computer-generated
Butterfly die: Sizzix Sizzlits Butterfly #12
Cardstock: Core'dinations
Snippets: White pearls

Hope you have fun with our colours this week. It's lovely to have some new players joining in with our challenges at CC&S since the rules were slightly revised.

Look forward to seeing your creations!
Stef x