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 #152 Sketch: Gilded Christmas

I'm very pleased with the way my card has turned out this week for CAS Colours and Sketches. Louise has given us a delightful little sketch to work with and I have also combined my DT card with two other challenges involving the use of metal/gilding.

My card involves gilding in three different ways. Firstly, I made the background. This involved getting messy with my mica spray mists, a piece of hammered cardstock and the cling film technique which pools the mica together in glorious folds when it's dry. Then I simply cut a rectangle with a stitched die. For my second gilding technique, I sponged Flitter Glu directly onto a piece of white cardstock and applied gilding flakes to make a solid piece of gilded card. From this I die-cut two circles of different sizes. I die-cut a small white Christmas tree and stuck it to the centre of the larger gilded circle and then layered this onto a white scalloped circle. This was then cut in two down the middle and positioned on the background piece as shown in the sketch, raised on foam pads. The third piece of gilding involves the printed gold sentiment  which was stuck onto the smaller gilded circle and adhered to my card with foam pads.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges:
CAS-ual Fridays challenge #145: Precious Metals

and Happy Little Stampers November CAS challenge: Gilding

Supplies Used:
Dies: Stitched Rectangle Layers (Memory Box), Plain & Scalloped Circles (Spellbinders), Christmas Tree (free gift on PaperCrafter 88)
Mica Sprays: Meadow Lush & Rich Gold (Cosmic Shimmer)
Gilding Flakes: Yorkshire Dales (IndigoBlu)
Greeting: Gold sentiment (Craftwork Cards)

I hope you're not too busy yet with your Christmas preparations to join us this week and don't forget that we currently have a DT call!

Edit: So sorry my card didn't post on time. I had saved it as a draft instead a published scheduled post!

Thanks for visiting!
Stef x

CC&S #141: Flowers Sketch

Lizy is our hostess at CAS Colours and Sketches this month and this week her inspirational sketch makes it very easy to create a quick CAS card.

For my background piece, I used one of my Cosmic Shimmer Mist sprayed pieces of cardstock in green with touches of blue and yellow that have merged together to make even more interesting green shades. The gold mica forms a lovely pattern by scrunching clim film over the top while it's still wet. I love getting messy with this technique, it just needs patience whilst it dries.

I interpreted the sector of the circle at the top by using a circular sentiment printed in gold. The poppy flowers have been simply die-cut in white cardstock.

I would like to enter my card into challenge #240 at Less Is More this week where the theme is to use the colours green and gold and very little else!

Supplies Used:
Shimmer Mists: Meadow Lush, Aqua Lagoon, Mango Blaze (Cosmic Shimmer)
Die: Prim Poppy (Memory Box)
Snippets: Circle sentiment

Just beginning to catch up now after my busy summer but still got loads to do!
See you all next week!

Stef x

CC&S #129 and just a few challenges!

I set myself a huge challenge this week! Lizy's colours at CAS Colours and Sketches are just lovely and I wanted to do a butterfly (just because I love butterflies). But when I started thinking about a design I came across just a few challenges that if I was clever I could make one card to fit them all (how greedy is that)!

The code word for Challenge #65 at ATCAS is 'Butterfly' so I could already tick that box! I decided to die-cut a steel grey butterfly and use my Cosmic Shimmer mists in green and gold to match Lizy's colours.

I love the scrunched up cling film technique with the mists and the beautiful marbled effect that you get with the mica all drying in the folds (sorry, it probably has a more technical name than that) and decided to cut some shapes from it to sit the butterfly on! That fits with the second challenge as the June theme at Happy Little Stampers CAS Challenge is to use sprays or mists on your cards.

Then I discovered a great sketch for Challenge #127 at CAS(E) this Sketch featuring a butterfly and a square window!

This was when it started getting a bit trickier. There is a super colourful butterfly inspiration photo at Challenge #37 for The Card Concept this week. I don't think I've ever played there before so thought it was about time! My preferred style is definitely CAS but at heart I think I'm a little less 'S (simple)' and a bit more 'T' (technique) which isn't always necessarily simple; so CAT! possibly? I absolutely love trying out new techniques and getting inky and messy and have certainly dabbled in other styles along the way. I have a yearning at the moment to try out some mixed media stuff which very probably won't be CAS at all!

Studying the photo at The Card Concept, I really wanted to find a way of interpreting the writing icing on the butterfly cookies so went for a kind of zentangled background for the squares and finished with two gold star sequins either side of the printed sentiment to match the stars in the centres of the butterflies in the inspiration photo.

Phew! And that's it, card accomplished. I think it turned out OK and liked the colour scheme better than I thought I would.

Supplies used:
Dies: Butterfly (free with Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine) & Classic Squares Large (Spellbinders)
Mica Sprays: Meadow Lush & Rich Gold (Cosmic Shimmer)
Patterned Paper: Colour with Candi (Craftwork Cards)
Sentiment Font: Bodoni MT
Snippets: Metallic steel grey cardstock, Watercolour paper, Gold star sequins

Bye for now and thanks for visiting!
Stef x

FUSION (Something wicked this way comes... or not...)

A quick post tonight to share with you a card I've made for a work colleague, Donna, following the criteria on the Fusion card challenge blog.

I decided to use both the photo and the sketch and was inspired by the colours in the photo. These are not colours I usually work with so it was a real challenge for me not to use my preferred blue/green/purple palette. The roses also inspired my choice of stamp. It's from The Stamp Barn and I've had it in my stash for a while but not used it that much. Don't know why not as I love poppies and it stamps beautifully. As Remembrance Sunday falls this week I also thought it a very appropriate choice even though it's not coloured red!

Anyway, here is my rendition:

The background panels were created by merging three colours of mica spray mists and the outline of the stamped image was then highlighted with Promarkers and coloured pencils.

I would like to enter it into the following challenge:

FUSION: Something wicked this way comes... or not...

Thanks for visiting
Stef x