I played with another challenge yet again, but this time it is from the team at Freshly Made Sketches.
Quite a simple design but you can be very creative with this. Some entries already submitted are very clever. Since I am on a Christmas themed stint of card making there are no surprises with my creation.
I am loving the Dainty Diamonds embossing folder as it gives a beautiful pattern in vellum paper. Vellum paper is something I have been using a lot lately. It’s a great addition to any card without making it ‘heavy’. On this card I have backed it with Real Red CS. As you can see I am still on the spritzer wagon. I love the randomness of it.
Oh, and this card only took me 35 minutes to pull together from start to finish…..maybe sketch challenges are the way to go.
Hello again. I am back with another challenge entry. I must say these challenges are helping me get inky even if it takes two days to complete. I did have this one in mind for two challenges, but I have missed the deadline for the Color Throwdown challenge #617 of Kraft, red, dark green and light green. I do, however, have some time left to enter the TGIF Challenge #288. This challenge is all about circles.
I had a quick look through my stamps and found Cherish the Season with all the bells in the set and thought it would work well. I ended up using the matching die set Sounds of the Season to create my bells and used the sentiment out of the stamp set. I have also decided I will probably buy a whole heap more spritzers and create a colour mist for every current SU colour I have. I am definitely addicted. I used Real Red, Frost White and White.
Even though it took two days to put together I liked the end result. Now I am off to find another challenge (hopefully one that doesn’t take me so long to complete…lol).
Yes that’s right. I’m back to paper crafting. I have rejoined Stampin’ Up! and I am reconnecting with a lot of old friends and we are having a laugh at how out of the loop I am! LOL. You have to understand its been 5 years since I have even posted on this blog. You could imagine my surprise that I remembered my password, but my dismay at finding my computer no longer supports Photoshop Elements 13. Boohoo. I think I am up for a new computer anyway. Thats my story and I am sticking to it.
So, if you follow me on my Facebook page then you already know I am back and have seen some sneak peaks at my attempts of making a card or two. A few definitely were fun and easy to make, but many were taking way to long with my “should I do this or that?” or “does this work?”. You can imagine my hubby and kids thinking why the heck did we tell her its a good idea to do this again. LOL
Anyway…..I decided I would kick start my blogging again off with a challenge. I went looking at some of the old challenge blogs I used to participate in and found all of them finished up. So I went on the hunt for more. I found the Spot Creative Challenge Blog. The current challenge is a sketch.
I have to say I did struggle with this one. We won’t be showing my first attempt. I tried a CAS card but I failed miserably. My second attempt is more my style.
Its not quite traditional Christmas colours being Petal Pink, Crumb Cake, and Calypso Coral. I like to be different. I also enjoyed creating some spray mists with white craft ink and the Frost White paint. The shimmer is gorgeous. I just didn’t quite capture it in the photo. Something else I have to relearn…..taking decent photos. If you have any questions about my creation please send a message and I will answer as soon as I can.
So here’s hoping I can keep this going and belt out some regular blog posts.
I have been playing with my new goodies again. Jingle All the Way is very fast becoming a favourite as it gives a great opportunity to create beautiful night skies. With this particular design I found a card that Billie Moan made and I loved it. She had a colour combo for her night sky that I haven’t  played with before and decided to CASE her card. I do love how it turned out except for that dreaded smudge. You know the one that shows up just as the final piece of the card is put together?!
Ughh! I hate that! But I wasn’t going to create it again. LOL! Now my starry night is a little different to Billies’ where I stamped the Gorgeous Grunge in White Stampin’ Craft Ink, got a tissue and wiped it in one direction then came back and stamped the white again, but this time I did not smudge it. It reminds me slightly of those blurred night sky photos I see a lot of, and I suppose very lose to the Bokeh technique……which in fact I have made a Bokeh Technique card, I just cannot find it. I suppose that means I have to make another.
Thanks for dropping by!
Kirsty xx
P.S. Again the Stamp and Die set are not listed below as they are not available yet. Not long now!!
Very soon, in just 10 short days, we have our Holiday Catalogue going live. I have a creation with some of those goodies to share. I used a technique I have seen a lot lately and I love how it turned out and you will laugh when you realise how easy it is….not too mention you have probably accidentally done it before and thought “Well that’s ruined”, because I know I have. LOL!
See those splotches in the ink? Well that’s just plain old water. Now I will have to back up a few steps first as I am sure a lot of you will want to know what colours I used for my evening sky.
I started down the bottom with So Saffron and I sponged it on quite liberally, then Calypso Coral, be careful to leave a little Saffron showing. I did go over again with the Saffron to blend the two together better. These two coulees were only put on the bottom. I then sponged Perfect Plum over the rest of the card stock and blended that with the Calypso as best I could. I then splotched Bermuda Bay and Island Indigo over the purple. I finished it off with Blackberry Bliss and Night of Navy last to get that deep night sky. It’s my first attempt and I am sure I will find more colours to add or swap some out for different depths and tones.
So now the sponging is done, grab your Stampin’ Up! Aqua Painter, make sure the reservoir near the tip is full of water and flick it over your night sky. Stop and mop up the water with a tissue and repeat (This is what I was talking about in regards to stuffing past cards up by accidentally wetting them!! haha). I found the longer I left the water on the whiter the spots. I did ones that were left on for 10 seconds and some left on for 2. It gave me quite a few different tones.
Now you could have done the emboss resist technique with this, but I think the water droplets would have turned out differently. I covered it liberally with the Embossing Buddy as you could imagine this piece of paper is quite wet being full of ink and water. I am sure a zap with the heat tool would help too. Using the Versa Mark I stamped the sentiment and stars and used white embossing powder. I nearly used gold but on a scrap of paper it was too dark. Silver might be nice though.
I then added the die cut along the bottom on Dimensionals to have that beautiful shadow effect.
If you do CASE it please let me know in the comments with a link so I can check out your creation.
Thanks for dropping by!
Kirsty xx
P.S. The Stamp Set and Die cut is not listed below as it is not available yet.
It’s Festive Friday Challenge time, and this round is a sketch. I do apologise for getting this up late, but it has been a very hectic week……month, actually. I must also say that I was quite ill when I made this card and I don’t think I should do that again! LOL!
Here is my submission
I used the Letter’s to Santa DSP quite heavily and matched it with the Merry and Type stamp set. I dyed my hemp twine with Early Espresso ink. I wanted this to look a little more vintage and I used the distressing kit with the Tea Stain ink in it. I rubbed it over all pieces of cardstock using the rubber stamp block in the kit.
Don’t forget to head over to the Festive Friday Challenge blog and play along. I would love to see what you create with this sketch.
I love these tones together and if I could make every card in these I would be a happy girl! LOL!
I now have a love affair going with the Elizabeth stamp set. It’s not only great for the placement of the sentiment but also a good background element if stamped in the right places. I also love the two little banners underneath the vintage brad. They are a cute little element, but they are not too distracting that it draws your eye away from the main image.
I hope you all have a chance to play along this week and share with us what you have created.
It is Festive Friday Challenge time and our challenge this week was FABRIC!! I must say I love our Stampin’ Up! Fabric, but I haven’t played with it too much. So to get some ideas of something different I can do with it I went looking through our Stampin’ Up! magazine Impressions. I came across this gorgeous little creation that I just had to re-create. It so happened it used the Petal Cone die…..another product I haven’t played with much. So the plan was looking better and better by the minute.
And here it is
I have fallen in love with it! I think I might make a few of these the Christmas in the Country Art and Craft show which is coming up in November on the 2nd and 3rd. They could be a hit. Here’s a closer look
To make this I had to adhere the fabric to cardstock and then run it through the BigShot on the Petal Cone die. The flower on the front however is not adhered to cardstock. I diecut the larger flower shape from the Perfect Pennants die, I then folded them in half and half again. I used a hot iron to help me get the shape. I hot glued the four pieces to a 1 1/4″ circle cardstock. I must say I used the hot glue gun to do a lot of the adhering. Magic stuff that! LOL! The little silver bell is just tied on with the white thread through the Real Red button. But the button is hot glued!
Anyway, please link your creation up at Nicole’s blog for us all to see. I would love to know what other people can do with fabric.
I have always loved the large Christmas Baubles in the Letters to Santa DSP pack, which are the same images as the stamp in Merry and Type but bigger. As you can see I stamped the image in the background. I used colours, Blushing Bride, Soft Suede, Old Olive, and Riding Hood Red. I also tried to keep this card simple with few layers and limited stamping. I used some simple tools to make the card come to life though. I used the distressing kit and inside that kit I used the sanding block and files on the DSP and the Tea Stain Ink on the card base and image panel.
Don’t forget to link your creation to this challenge over at Nicole’s blog and I look forward to seeing them.
Kirstys cards 'n' scrapping 