Symapthy

This week's color challenge on SCS was to use Whisper White, Soft Sky and Basic Grey. Out of those 3 colors I only have Soft Sky, but I can substitute the WW with my own white and the BG with my Bazzill Grey card instead. I love Bazzill card - the colors and textures are lovely but it is too thin to make card bases with - that's such a shame! Anyway here's my card:


These colors are so soft and pretty together. I think I'm going to make this into a sympathy card.


I started with making my own card base from white card with the fold at the top. I stamped the Baroque Border wheel at the top and bottom using Soft Sky ink. The scalloped borders were made using pieces of Soft Sky card and the slit punch.The grey panel was added to the middle and Soft Sky ribbon added to cover up the joins. The flowers panels were embossed using the Cuttlebug Elegant Corners folders. I felt they were a little plain so colored in the flowers on each using Soft Sky ink and an aquapainter. I did orignally try to do the negative embossing technique where you ink up the folder then emboss and the embossed area should stay the same color as the card, but it didn't work with this folder for some reason. These squares were mounted onto Soft Sky and then onto the grey panel and voila... A simple but elegant card.


Recipe


Stamps - Baroque Border Wheel from Stampin Up


Paper - Soft Sky from Stampin Up, Bazzill Grey and white from LSS


Ink - Soft Sky from Stampin Up


Accessories - Elegant Corners Embossing Folders by Cuttlebug, Soft Sky ribbon from Stampin Up

Featured Stamper Challenge CASE

On a Sunday SCS do a Featured Stamper challenge. The idea is that you look in the nominated stamper's gallery, choose a card you like and CASE it. You have to change at least 2 things - could be the stamp set, colors used, sentiment etc. I love doing this challenge as it gives me an opportunity to copy those designs I really like but change them to suit me a bit. This week's challenge was to CASE Amy aka Pickletree, so I chose her card here for the layout more than anything. Here's my version of it:





In a bid to use up all my old cardstock I used some pink card to make the base. I found a square envelope that I got from Pondskipper Crafts ages ago (I haven't been there in a while - might make a trip next week while I'm on holiday).


I cut the 4 squares about 2 in square from the new Raspberry Champagne papers by Papermania. Sometimes this company does some really nice stuff and these papers are gorgeous. I inked the edges with Purely Pomegranate and then mounted them on green to kind of go with the green in the pattern but it's a bit brighter than I wanted. I didn't want to break into my SU cardstock as I only have a few sheets of the Old Olive that would have gone better. However, I do like the green with the pink. I added the brads in two colors as I realised that other than gold and silver I didn't have 16 (yes 16!!) brads all in the same color and didn't want to use either of those colors. I just made sure that opposite colors met together.


I stamped the flower from Friendship Blooms (SAB 2008 set) onto the white circle, which I had cut out and embossed with my nestabilites. I cut round the embossed edge to make the circle a little smaller as I only have 1 set of circle nestabilities at the minute and the next size up in the set was too big for a border. (I will get round to buying all the others when I have 1 set of each shape - I just ordered my squares yesterday!). I found these leaves in my stash of flowers and thought the color went well although I do think they look more like holly leaves than other leaves but I like them. I stamped the flower again on scrap white card and cut it out so that the leaves could go behind without covering up any of the petals. I added a bit of Stickles Diamond Glitter Glue to the center of the panels to add a bit of bling. I joined them all together using a spotty pink brad from Lakeland. I added some dots with a pink gel pen in the scallops of the green layer as it looked a bit too plain. I cut out a small rectangle for the ribbon using my craft knife as I don't have the slot punch from SU yet. I'm going to put that into my next order as I didn't think I'd use it that much but actually it will be really handy for making ribbon slots. I tied some ribbon I got from my local market stall through the top and stuck the whole circle panel down with double sided tape. It didn't need popping up for the brad as the gap in between the panels was high enough. I did miss out the sentiment from Amy's card as I didn't feel it needed one. Also it could be for any occasion that way as well.


Recipe


Stamps - Friendship Blooms from Stampin Up


Paper - Pink, Green and White card from local stamping store, Pink Champagne papers from Papermania


Ink - Purely Pomegranate from Stampin Up


Accessories - Pink and Green Brads from Papermania, Ribbon from local market, Spotty Brad from Lakeland, Stickles Glitter Glue in Diamond

Daisy's Butterfly

Here's a card that I started making for the Sketch Challenge 168 over on SCS here. As I was making it I realised that if I didn't use any white card and just kept to the designer paper that it would also meet the Ways To Use It Challenge here.




I started with a pink A6 base from Craftonic and stamped the flowers and swirls from Friendship Blooms (SAB 2008 set) at the top and bottom but they didn't work out how I had planned. They needed to be straight rather than at an angle. Anyway...


I used some Daisy Bucket paper that I bought ages ago and have never used. It comes in a 12 x 12 sheet but divided into 4 different patterned designs. Each of these designs can be bought as a whole 12 x 12 sheet as well, but I like the coordinating smaller pieces. It is also double sided so you get twice as much for your money. The brown layers are on the reverse of the whole sheet. Everything on here was from the same sheet and no other card/paper was used at all.


The center panel only had one dragonfly showing so I cut out 2 more and added them to that piece. The butterfly was stamped directly onto the spotty paper using just the butterfly but not the sentiment from Just Celebrate (Occasions Mini Spring 2008) using my chocolate chip marker and was cut out before being popped up with foam pads on the brown panel. The antennae were so fiddly to cut round and I cheated - I colored in any white bits with my chocolate chip marker. I did add a little cinnamon stickles glitter glue to its body and to the center of the flowers, which were also stamped from the Just Celebrate set with just the heads inked up and stamped on to different scraps of the same papers. I added some Diamond Stickles to the wings as well.

The peel off borders were found in my huge pile of peel offs - I think I got them from The Paper Mill Shop ages ago but I'm not sure. The bling is not as bright as in the photo. I have tons of peel offs and never really use them, so I'm trying to get rid of them a bit more now.


Recipe
Stamps - Friendship Blooms and Just Celebrate by Stampin Up


Papers - Pink card blank from Craftonic, Daisy Bucket designer papers


Inks - Chocolate Chip SU Marker


Accessories - PInk glitter peel offs (from The Paper Mill Shop I think), Stickles glitter glue in Cinnamon and Diamond

Easter Cards

I got my Easter cards done really early this year using some gorgeous stamps from Stampin' Up and High Hopes Stamps. Here's just 3 of them for you to look at.

Hop Along Hallie

This one uses Hop Along Hallie by High Hopes Stamps and was also done for Sketch Challenge 83 on Splitcoast Stampers here.

I started with a simple pale pink base and rounded the corners on the outer edge to go with using the circles on the sketch challenge. I added a simple layer of the designer paper with circles on (still keeping to the theme of circles see!). The image was stamped onto white cs and coloured in using chalks with a wet paintbrush to make the colours more defined. I wanted a soft look but not as pale as the chalks usually give.I cut the white circle out with my nestabilities and embossed it (you can almost see the embossing where the sky and grass finish). The pink scalloped circle is also a nestabilities dies. I just love these dies! The sentiment circles were cut out first and then the greeting was positioned using my stamp positioner and embossed with pink embossing powder.

Recipe:

Stamps - Hop Along Hallie and Fancy Hoppy Easter by High Hopes Stamps.

Papers - Pink cardstock from local stamp store, white cardstock from local stationery store, Designer Paper is Spring Fling by Imaginisce

Inks - Versafine Onyx Black and chalks

Accessories - Nestabilties circles and scalloped circles, clear embossing powder, weird ribbony thing from HOTP Icy Rainbow ribbon pack

Dotty Chick Trio

I saw this card on SCS and just had to CASE it. I changed little bits on it but generally kept it the same. I paper pieced the egg shells and the top half of them are mounted on foam pads (dimensionals)

The card base is a peach one by Craftonic in A6 size (UK sizes). I used scraps of blue, yellow, pink and green - they could be from anywhere but most of my older card stock has come from Craft Central or the Papermill Shop in their A4 card boxes pick and mix selection. Now I'm starting to buy the Stampin Up cs naming colours won't be so much of a problem! I used the solid dots stamp from A Good Egg set from Stampin Up on each strip in the different coloured inks and trimmed them all to about 1 3/4". I stamped 3 chicks onto white cs from WHSmith and chalked in the bodies. I then stamped the chick 6 more times on white scraps and used the same coloured inks to add the dots. I then cut out the shells and positioned 3 over the full stamped images and the other 3 were used as the top shells. I added the Happy Easter greeting from the same set and chalked round the edges in yellow like the chicks just to add a bit of colour. It looked odd just being plain white. The grosgrain ribbon is a yellowy colour from Dovecraft that costs £1 for a 5 metre spool from any Dovecrafts stockists. Such a bargain!

Recipe:

Stamps - A Good Egg by Stampin' Up

Papers - Peach card base by Craftonic (I dislike peach as a colour so am trying to get rid of these blank bases!!), blue, green, yellow and pink cardstock from local stamp store, white card stock from local stationery store

Inks - Versafine Onyx Black, Stampin' Up Bashful Blue, Certainly Celery, Barely Banana and Pretty in Pink

Accessories - chalks, yellowy ribbon by Dovecraft (it's more yellow irl than the peachy colour the camera shows), foam pads

Posing Bunny and Hot Chicks

This bunny was so cute, she was dying to be coloured in pink.

I started this card by following sketch challenge SC53 on Spiltcoast Stampers here. I used a white craftonic 15cm square card base (when I first started stamping/cardmaking I used card bases with the envelopes all the time, so that I didn't have to worry about getting my sizes correct! As a result of that I have so many different card bases in different colours, sizes and shapes and I'm frantically trying to use them up when I can!) I used Imaginisce designer paper in Hot Chicks for the background layer. I already has glitter on it so is perfect for adding that bit of extra bling. I dismantled some unsent Easter cards from last year that were simply put quite awful!! I had made them using ideas from a card magazine and they sucked! I pulled all the bits off that I could keep and kept the back of the cards for scrap cs. And this is where the lime green ricrac comes from. I believe I got it free with the magazine that gave my the awful ideas for the cards.


I stamped my image on to white cs from WHSmith and coloured her in using Twinkling H20s. I also did a version using chalks and the result wasn't as nice. I did chalk the sky and grass though as the colours are much more muted. I mounted the image onto pink pearlescent paper from my local stamp store and then again onto the reverse on the Imaginisce paper used on the card base. The Hoppy Easter greeting was stamped onto white cs and then embossed with pink EP (I also added an edge round the cs using the versamark pad and embossed that too!) but the white didn't look right so I chalked it all in yellow. The eggs were stamped using versamark and embossed in lilac and pink embossing powders from Blonde Moments. Each egg was cut out and coloured in using Twinkling H2Os again, but I'm not sure I like the colours. The embossing powders have almost hidden the pattern (that's Papermania stamps for you!). I did think about putting some Liquid Applique on her tail but never got round to doing it!

Recipe:

Stamps - Posing Bunny and Fancy Hoppy Easter by High Hopes Stamps, Egg Border by Papermania

Papers - White square card blank by Craftonic, Designer Paper is Hot chicks by Imaginisce, Pink pearlescent from lss and white cardstock from local stationery store

Inks - Versafine Onyx Black and Versamark for the sentiment

Accessories - green ric-rac, chalks for sentiment, Twinkling H2Os, lilac and pink embossing powders by Blonde Moments