CC&S 177 Sketch: Anchors Aweigh!

I'm so sorry that my post for CAS Colours and Sketches is late, I really have had a busy couple of weeks! It also took me ages to decide what to make and I kept changing my mind!

It's Father's Day in the UK next Sunday so I decided to make a male card. I rarely make Father's Day cards as my Dad died a long time ago. It was, however, forty years ago this year (22/05/76) so I decided I would make a card to remember him. One of my enduring memories of him when we were children is our family day trips to Cromer. He would spend all day fishing from the pier! My mum would walk me and my two brothers into town to the bakers and we would buy a loaf of bread, go back to the pier and make fresh sandwiches as we needed them. We would spend the afternoon trying to catch brown crabs from the pier. It's endearing to observe that kids today still love doing that as much as we used to!

Back to Bev's sketch and my card which is quite self-explanatory! I love this paper pack from Craftwork Cards and it is particularly good for men's cards. The tag is from the separate tag pack. The anchor and shells have been cut from the papers and I used some old rub-ons for the lettering. The windmill (another little piece of seaside nostalgia) was made from a small square of paper and a piece of Candi.

Supplies Used:
Paper and Tag Packs: Harbour Boulevard (Craftwork Cards)
Snippets: Blue textured cardstock, rub-on letters

Next week I hope to be back on track as I'm not away this weekend!
Thanks for visiting.
Stef x

CC&S #157 Colours: Roses Are Red...

This week at CAS Colours and Sketches, I haven't let my inky meanderings take me very far. In fact, the only inking on the card is the sentiment which is very unusual for me!

I have paper-pieced my roses outline die, a technique that I haven't done much with die-cutting and I have stuck strictly to the colour palette chosen by our hostess Patricia. I drew round the die and cut out the shape in a spare piece of card to which I stuck the outline, this made the piecing a whole lot easier! I didn't really want brown leaves but couldn't change the colours so I have just cut the outline of these in some brown cardstock and think they look better for not being pieced.

The large rose looks a bit orangey but I think it's just the light. It's so difficult to get good photos at this time of year when you can't take them in daylight.

Supplies Used:
Die: Roses DED186 (Paper Smooches)
Coloured Cardstock: So Mod (Core'dinations)
Sentiment: Sentiment Sampler A1SO13 (Paper Smooches)
Inkpad: Pinecone (VersaColor)
Snippets: White linen cardstock

I found myself really challenged by this colour trio, they're just not my colours, and it took me absolutely ages to come up with an idea for my DT card. But it's also very inspiring to try something totally different. Please join us this week and let's see what you make of them.

Thanks for visiting!
Stef x

Rediscovering my blog!

I can't believe that I haven't blogged at all in the last two years - I don't know where the time goes!! Anyway I decided that I needed to start again as I accidentally lost all my pictures, patterns, photos etc, last summer when my computer was upgraded - I know I should have backed it all up and really thought I had but obviously not and it can't be undone unfortunately!

Papers: Kate Knight paper stack
Stamp: PMA Retail Therapy

Today is as good a time as any as one of my cards has been published in Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine, issue 94 - it's so exciting to see your cards in print! I also won a small prize so that was great too! It was one of three cards entered for their Card Designer of the Year competition. I didn't expect to win such a huge competition but it's nice to see they liked one of my cards enough to print it in a future issue of the magazine. These are the other cards I entered:

Card blank: Little Claire tag card
Stamp: Little Claire Flowerhead

This is one of Little Claire's tag cards and one of my favourite of their stamps Flowerhead, cut into four jigsaw pieces. I also won a small prize for this when Little Claire featured it on their blog in the countdown to Christmas. So now I have a nice new stamp to play with too! The second photo is the back of the card which has a ribbon bow on it. The purple colours of the ribbon matched each other much more closely in real life, but the camera has made one of them look rather blue.

The last card was made using a recently discovered technique of cutting metal flowers from a recycled pop/beer can using a Sizzix Bigz die. I first saw a video on youtube and couldn't wait to get a suitable die to have a go (with grateful thanks to my friend Rozzy for ordering it for me)! I think they will feature a lot on my cards this year and I have saved loads of different cans to experiment with!

Die: Sizzix Bigz Flower Daisies #2
Papers: Dovecraft Winter Wonderland