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 #135: A Double Challenge!

A fifth Thursday in the month means a double challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches with both a colour palette AND a sketch to work with together. Some hate it and some love the usually tougher challenge but Jane has made it easy for us by giving us both a super colour trio and a delightful sketch to work with.

I needed to make a card for Martin's Mum whose birthday is next week so decided to kill two birds with one stone as time is precious at the moment! I have interpreted the sketch using flowers, with leaves in place of the dots. I used a Marianne Designs die to cut the spirals for my paper roses in a scrap of navy paper. The centres of the flowers are white Candi that has been coloured with an appropriate Promarker and fixed with foam pads. The leaves have been cut using the same die set in a scrap piece of green card carefully matching the colour palette. The banners have been cut with a CB tag die again using scraps of cardstock. Lastly the sentiment from Paper Smooches has been stamped using a Memento ink pad.

Supplies Used:

Spiral & Leaf Dies: LR0162 Roses (Marianne Design)

Candi: Icing Sugar (Craftwork Cards)

Promarker: Buttercup (Letraset)

Banner Dies: Tag Along (Clearly Besotted)

Sentiment Stamp: Sentiment Sampler (Paper Smooches)

Ink Pad: Nautical Navy (Memento)

Snippets: Navy, Green and Textured Yellow cardstock

As all the cardstock I have used is from my snippets box I would also like to enter my card into this week's recipe challenge #234 at Less Is More and at the same time wish Chrissie a very happy birthday. I have followed her blog and her challenge for some time now.  All her cards are fabulous and she is a great source of inspiration to me and, I know, many other crafters! Edit: I forgot to link up my card to the LIM challenge - silly me!

I think I had roses on my mind because I have been making some paper roses for the wedding from a pattern found on the internet by Lia Griffith. Katie is making her bouquet from paper roses using pages from an old copy of her favourite book 'The Time Traveller's Wife'. So I am making some extras to partially decorate the cake and maybe for the tables, etc. I'm very pleased with the way they are turning out and more importantly Katie likes them too so I thought I would share photos of them with you.

That's it for now. Hope you enjoy the double challenge. 

See you next week!

Stef x

CC&S #132: Stars and Stripes

This week Jane has given us a lovely sketch to work with on CAS Colours and Sketches. My card has also been influenced by the themes from a couple of other challenges and so I thought I would make a patriotic card for all my blogging friends from across the Atlantic and a graduation card for my friend Rachel at the same time!

I haven't done any paper folding in a while so the focus of my design is a five pointed origami star made from a piece of blue starry paper. A video showing how to fold this star can be found on YouTube HERE. These make wonderful hanging decorations and I have made them previously in all different sizes. This one was made from a pentagon in a 6cm square (Edit: 12cm square). I cut some stripes from some matching paper and two smaller stars from a piece of red starry paper and stuck them to the card blank. The sentiment is computer-generated and finally the origami star was placed between the other two.

The other challenges I would like to enter are:
Less Is More Week #231: Colour theme 'Red, White & Blue'

And Addicted to CAS Challenge #67: Code Word 'Patriotic'

Supplies Used:
Origami Star Instructions: http://www.homemade-gifts-made-easy.com/5-pointed-origami-star.html
Sentiment font: Grilled Cheese
Snippets: Striped and starry papers

It's so busy at the end of the school summer term. Roll on the holidays!
Hope you have lots of fun with Jane's super sketch.
Thanks for visiting!
Stef x