CC&S 174 Colours: Time to Say Goodbye (Part Two)

A quick post from me this week cos it's got really late again! Caro has chosen the other two retiring SU colours alongside silver for us this week at CAS Colours and Sketches.

I still need a lot of practice both with my ScanNCut and watercolouring but I had a some fun with both tonight so, I suppose, that's the main thing! I learned how to cut the rectangle outline with my SNC to match my die cut rose outlines, adhered the pieces to watercolour paper and played with some inks and brushes. I cut around them and arranged them on a card blank, raising the flower up and finishing with a greeting sticker and a few gems.

Supplies Used:
Die: Roses (Paper Smooches)
Ink Pads: Dusty Concord (TH Distress), Celadon (VersaColor)
Snippets: Watercolour paper, Greeting sticker, Adhesive gems

Sorry for the rubbish photo, it kept catching the light. Have a great week!
Stef x

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 167 Double: IndigoBlu Butterfly

I actually don't mind coming up with a card for the dreaded double challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches (we have one of these every time there are five Thursdays in a month). You are provided with a sketch and a colour palette, surely that's your card half made! Yet sometimes, something creeps in that makes you wonder what to do exactly. This week, for me, it was the colour brown! Flowers, no, they would appear to be dead; Autumn, no, wrong season!

After flowers, my next go to would be butterflies and yes there are a lot of brownish butterflies in nature but on our cards we usually inject more colours to pretty them up a bit. So I stamped the large butterfly with a brown inkpad, cut a square from part of the image and used the yellow and blue to watercolour (still my favourite technique at the moment) parts of my image. I colour-matched the sentiment on my computer and used a scrap of textured brown cardstock as a band to tie in with the sketch. I also ran a brown inkpad along the edges of my image and sentiment to avoid two slightly different whites coming together and raised them on foam pads.

Don't be scared of the double! Please set yourself a challenge and come along and join us this week. I liked my finished card better than I thought I would.

Supplies Used:
Stamp: Big Butterfly BBII (IndigoBlu)
Inkpads: Pinecone (VersaColor), Salty Ocean & Squeezed Lemonade (TH Distress)
Sentiment Font: Allegro
Snippets: Brown textured & White cardstock

Thanks for visiting!
Stef x

CC&S #133: Colour challenge

I made my card for this week's CAS Colours and Sketches colour challenge very late one night for my friend Ros's retirement from the school where I work. Sometimes those cards turn out to be better than those made when you're wide awake! I'm not entirely happy with the way the background came out but I loved watercoloring the flower.

I have used the Gerbera stamp set from Uniko Studio. The flower has been stamped with Versamark and heat embossed using white EP. I masked the flower and stamped and embossed two leaves to sit behind it.

The other week I found a fantastic Brilliance ink pad in my local craft shop. The colour is 'Rocket Red Gold' and I have been dying to have a play with it. It is the most gorgeous shade of red/orange/pink with a gold shimmer in it and I thought it matched rather well with Jane's choice of Melon Mambo for this week. The flower has been painstakingly colored with this and a matching turquoise green for the leaves. I thought the flower needed lifting from the background a little so used a very watered down shade of brown. I then cut a frame from the image and mounted both pieces onto separate pieces of dark brown cardstock before sticking them back one on top of the other. A sentiment from the same set stamped in the same brown ink finishes the card.

I would also like to enter the following challenges:
CAS on Sunday: Challenge #62 Embossing

And also CAS-ual Fridays: CFC #141 Embossing

Supplies Used:
Stamp set: Pure Florals: Gerbera (Uniko Studio)
Ink pads: Rocket Red Gold (Brilliance), Celadon (Versacolor) & Espresso Truffle (Memento)
Snippets: White EP, White linen & Dark brown cardstock

I hope this close-up might show the gold shimmer in the ink a little better! It would be lovely to see a few more entries in this week's gallery before you all go off on your summer holidays! Just remember to only use the three challenge colours chosen by Jane plus any neutrals.

Thanks for visiting today!
Stef x

CAS Colours and Sketches Challenge #110

Where did January go? I swear the months and years roll by quicker than ever these days! Patricia is our wonderful hostess at CAS Colours and Sketches in February and we start the month with a colour challenge. I thought for this that I would have a play with a new stamp bought from Oyster Paper Crafts and manufactured by Rubbernecker, a company that is new to me. I have always liked watercolouring and love that it is so trendy in the card making world at the moment! Their stamps really lend themselves to this technique and I will definitely have to buy some more as I really enjoyed playing with this one!

This stamp is called 'Flowers In The Breeze'. The flowers come as a four-part stamp set accompanied by a choice of sentiment. Firstly, I used TH Distress Inks in 'Worn Lipstick' to stamp the main flowers highlighting the stamps with Whispers dual-tipped brush markers and misting with water before stamping. Then I stamped the stems using Whispers 'Black' ink. The leaves were stamped in a similar way to the flowers using TH DI 'Frayed Burlap' and the dots with TH DI 'Spun Sugar'. As the card dries, the colours merge together creating a lovely watercolour effect. Finally I stamped the sentiment in Whispers 'Black'. As the 'Spun Sugar' doesn't show up too well, I matted and layered the card onto a piece of pink cardstock matching SU's 'Pink Pirouette' in the challenge colours.

I'm also entering my card into two challenges:
CAS on Sunday #51: Theme - Flowers
CAS-ual Fridays #136: Theme - Must Love Watercolour

I must also mention the brilliant Eileen Godwin's blog today. I have never met this amazingly talented lady (she is at the other end of the country to me!) but I have been a secret follower for a while. Thanks must go to her for my discovery of these lovely stamps and one or two other lovely arty techniques which I hope to try out soon.

Can't wait to see what you do with these gorgeous colours! Thanks for visiting today.
Stef x