CC&S 172 Colours: Time to say goodbye...

... to SU's retiring in colour collection 2014-2016. One of our newest DT members Caro is hosting for CAS Colours & Sketches this month and has chosen the retiring colours for this month's challenges. As there is a green and two flower colours in the mix I decided to do one of my favourite floral cards.

I haven't used this Rubbernecker stamp set in a while but I do love it and being a four step stamp it's very easy to get a great look. I inked the largest image with a yellow DI and used a water brush to colour the tips of the flowers with orange. After a couple of mists with water I stamped it onto a piece of linen cardstock. The stems were stamped in black without misting. The leaves were stamped in a similar way to the flowers using a green DI and the random splatters with an orange DI. This piece was then matted onto a piece of coordinating orange cardstock.

I stamped the sentiment in black onto a vellum strip and wrapped it around the mat adhering it to the back to secure it in place and then stuck the whole thing onto an A6 card blank.

I was trying to think of a different way of presenting this stamp and came across this great sketch at Freshly Made Sketches so would like to enter my card into their challenge 235.

Supplies Used:
Stamp Set: Flowers In The Breeze (Rubbernecker)
Ink Pads: Scattered Straw, Dried Marigold & Peeled Paint (TH Distress), Onyx Black (VersaFine)
Snippets: Linen & orange cardstock, Vellum

This is the first time Caro has hosted one of our challenges so please visit her blog and say 'hi'.

Thanks for visiting!
Stef x

CC&S #136: Summer Pastels Colour Challenge

Hi everyone! Just a tad late and missed the CAS Colours and Sketches deadline by a little over an hour but things are getting oh so busy around here with just over a week to go now so I hope you'll forgive me!

Patricia is our hostess this month and has given us a beautiful summer pastel colour palette to work with this week. I decided to use my first ever purchase, a stamp and corresponding die set from Uniko Studio (Beautiful Blooms 1) and it is still my favourite! I inked the centre of the flower with a slightly darker ink and the outer petals with a lighter ink but I don't think this really shows in the final photo.

I found a really nice sketch that I thought would work well with my idea over at Freshly Made Sketches #198, so I would also like to enter my card into their challenge with thanks for the inspiration from their DT! The stamped flowers and leaves have been layered up onto scraps of corresponding card from my snippets box, the rectangles having been die-cut with my stitched rectangles die.

The sentiment has been stamped with a recent Paper Smooches acquisition - I love the fonts in this set! For a finishing touch, the flower and sentiment have been highlighted with a touch of Stickles. I decided to use a square card blank for all my layers so that I could also enter my card into the current themed challenge #256 at The Paper Players: It's Hip to be Square!

Supplies Used:
Stamp and Die Sets: Beautiful Blooms 1 (Uniko Studio)
Die: Stitched Rectangle Layers (Memory Box)
Ink pads: Hyacinth & Smoke Blue (Versacolor), Whisper Pink (Whisper)
Sentiment Stamp: Sentiment Sampler (Paper Smooches)
Snippets: Pale textured yellow, Pale pink & Dotty hyacinth card scraps, Rhinestone Stickles.

I think that's all from me for now! Our guest designer at CC&S this month is Magic Flying Boots who has featured in our weekly favourites several times lately with her stunning designs so be sure to drop by and say hello!

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

Embroidered paper angel

Tonight I want to share with you my entry for this week's 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown Challenge. The fourth week of the month means it's a stash challenge and this time around it's the technique of paper piercing. I have also taken inspiration from the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches this week and would like to enter it into sketch challenge #164.

I had the idea of paper piercing an angel and then going one step further and doing some paper embroidery. I used a pattern that I had on my computer, found whilst browsing the internet a while back, along with a piece of 350gsm white card and some fine metallic silver machine embroidery thread. I didn't have any proper instructions but with a little patience I think it's come out just fine!

I turned the sketch on its side and matted & layered the finished angel onto a piece of metallic silver paper and then onto a metallic plum-coloured square card blank. It's finished off with a piece of white ribbon with a silver Christmas greeting printed on it and a matching handmade bow.

My mum does a lot of knitting and sewing and I think she would appreciate this card for Christmas, so that's her sorted!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Stef x

A trio of challenges!

We have a lot of family and friends' birthdays around this time and tonight I have made a card for my son Phil's birthday which is on Friday. I'm not sure that the card I've made is really CAS enough to fit into two of the three challenges below but as I had them all in mind when the ideas for the card were in my head, I thought I'd go with it and see.

The collage stamp is one I bought at a craft fair several years ago from Butterfly stamps which, sadly, I don't think exist anymore. This has been stamped with blue Versafine ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. The sentiment is from the same set. To try and keep things simple they have both been simply layered in contrasting colours and put onto a background paper that has tiny anchors printed on it.

I would like to enter it into the following challenges:
Allsorts Challenge Blog: Week 283 Masculine

CASology: Week 120 Sea
Freshly Made Sketches: 161 A sketch by Linda

Even if it's not CAS enough for the last two, it certainly fulfils the criteria for the Allsorts challenge!

Thanks for looking!

Stef x

Uniko Studio #12, Freshly Made Sketches #146, ColourQ #251 and Cake!

Looking for some fresh inspiration to make Martin's Mum a birthday card I have decided to combine three card-making challenges that are all new to me as well as having my first play with my recently acquired 'Beautiful Blooms' stamps from Uniko Studio. My current favourite style of card-making is definitely CAS so I immediately loved the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches, especially with Bev's beautiful flower stamp in mind. For my colours I decided to play along with the ColourQ challenge and although I don't have any StampinUp products, I have matched the colours as closely as I could. The composition of the card speaks for itself really; the centre of the flower is decoupaged and lightly embossed though this doesn't really show up too well in the photo!

I am entering my card into the following challenges:

Uniko Studio #12: Anything Goes

Freshly Made Sketches #146

ColourQ #251

 

 I've also decided to start showing some of my other homemade creations here as life is too short for me to try and keep up with more than one blog! So here is a strawberry cream sponge that I made for a 'Bring and Share' end of term Division Guiders'meeting that I attended during the week! I think they all enjoyed it!

Thanks for visiting!

Stef x