Cars and Christmas Trees

Saturday again! And so here is this week's stash challenge from 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown.

Using markers is an interesting one for me. I love the colours and shades you get in markers, mine are Promarkers but I know there's a huge range out there. My problem is my lack of artistic talent. The rules for shading and adding highlights escape me, I can no more look at something and see where the light hits it and where the shadows fall than I can see through walls! Therefore, you talented colourers out there will always get a sincere comment from me when I say 'beautifully coloured' I am in awe of your artistic ability. May be all I need are a few lessons but until then my use of marker
S will be minimal.
After all that, here is my card, made a while ago but never blogged before

I used the set White Christmas. It's great for whimsical little cards like this one. 

You can see that the cars are popped up on foam pads. I stamped the cars and trees as one and then fussy cut them out. I think the red car also adds a pop of colour to the chilly blues and greys. I have stayed the falling snow and the trees and then add.ed a brush of colour to the cold sky. 

Hope you can see that you don't have to be a colouring whizz to use markers, I think 'colouring in' is something we never grow out of, it's fun and easy. 

Its Your Day

Good morning crafters. I am off to indulge in one of my other craft hobbies this morning, beading. To be more accurate I'm off shopping for beads and calling in to see my daughter, who is away at University, so a top day for me. Just have time to quickly post my card for CAS Colours & Sketches and today we have a sketch challenge for you.

I used my stamps to create the panel, from Work Of Art, just love these stamps

I had a little help with the colour scheme fromThe ColourQ team

and I want to thank the team there for choosing my Valentines card as a Colour Q Courtier, I was really chuffed.

I used a very simple silhouette stamp from an old, long-retired set, added a punched butterfly in matching cardstock and a banner from Decorate A Daisy.

I love the clean, crisp white space, enhance by popping up the whole card front on foam tape. I've noticed how other crafters have done this, rather than matting onto coloured cardstock and I think it gives a great CAS feel to a card.

Snowy scene with pearl border

It's Saturday again and this morning I have the usual Christmas card to share with you, made for 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown. Our hostess for February, Patricia, has chosen the challenge which is a stash challenge

Don't you just love this one?

I often use white/ cream pearls on Christmas cards as mistletoe berries, I think they're perfect for that. Liquid Pearls are great for those too. You can colour pearls with markers so that you can match the
colour to your project! Sequins I'm not so hot on, don't even own any, but it's a choice so I hope to see some great cards with sequins on which will encourage me to give them a try.
So whilst I knew I wanted to use pearls, I had to come up with something different this time.

I added the gold sticker sentiment to pick up the colour scheme a little and also because I always find adding a stamped sentiment to an embossed background tricky, unless you stamp before embossing. I did try silver first but the gold one just made it pop better- you know what I mean! As there is no red or green in my card I can enter it in the challenge at Completly Christmas, where anything goes this week

This is a double embossing card, Dry and heat embossing.  I used the pearls as a border. The image was stamped in Versamark and then I used white embossing powder on a dark cardstock. I have found that if you use white ink on very dark card it tends to pick up the pigment and so does not stay white when dry. 

The dry embossing was done using a Sheena Douglas embossing folder. Nothing clever here, just straight forward white cardstock and you will notice that I have used the debossed side. 

Incognito Butterfly

One day earlier this week I had a massive card crafting session, I made 7 cards for the DTs I am on. Hrs the one I made for this week's colour challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches

The colours are

This one layer card happened by accident! I inked up this gorgeous grungy

Butterfly image from Visible Image stamps and stamped it onto what I thought was a piece of white card stock but which was actually a card blank. Looking at it I decided to continue and add a sentiment, as I thought it looked very CAS

As you can see it is quite a big card. The wavy sentiment from  the SU set Happiest Birthday Wishes just fits in perfectly. 

Travel The World

Gotta love a technique challenge! Well, over at The Male Room that is exactly what the team have lined up for you for the next two weeks. It's a Make Your Own Background Paper challenge and we all know how many different ways you can do that! I love random stamping, printing, using shaving foam, paper piecing, resist stamping, but for today's card I chose a simple background stamp, there are loads of these around. This one is SUs World Map

To make it into my background paper I simply watercoloured it, using an aqua-painter brush and Mossy Meadow, Crushed Curry and Island Indigo inks.

The stamps are all froma £1 set I bought in a bargain store. I thought they would be useful for masculine cards.

I cut the panels out so that they could be lined up in a square formation, but when it came to sticking them down I preferred the offset pattern you see here. I have used foam pads to pop them off the background. I used a Kraft card base and so added a panel of the Naturals White card inside, I hate writing on coloured card.

I think my choice of stamps was driven by the fact that we've been thinking about our annual family holiday in the summer- I  love travelling , planes, trains and (not so much, as I get very seasick) boats mean great  family times ahead! 

silver snowflakes

Colour challenge time! Well, at least over at  52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown it is. This week it's a real Christmas special,

 
Just loved this one...

I had a little extra help from the sketch at ShowCASe Your Style, isn't this a fab CAS sketch to play with?

I used grey cardstock, mounted on silver mirri card, the snowflake die from Memory Box, which I cut out twice, once in silver glitter card and once in white card. I tore a strip of pearlised silver card to make the wavy 'snow line'.

Finally, using my Stamp-a-ma-Jig I stamped the sentiment from Ornamental Pine in Versamark and heat embossed it using silver tinsel powder.

I was aiming at CAS and elegant, with a little texture and dimension. Now it is finished I think I could knock up a few of these quite quickly, useful if I need a few extra cards. This time my poinsettia is the perfect backdrop, it's still looking good!

Do pop over to the blog to see my fellow DT creations for further inspiration. Look forward to seeing  lots of cards in the gallery.

Read All About It, Valentine

I am strangely looking forward to Valentine's Day on Saturday. My husband of 25 years has booked dinner for two at a local restaurant I've been hoping to try out, so I thought I should get on and make him a card....
I have used the sketch at CAS Colours & Sketches. Clean and simple can be a great style for masculine cards

I really like this sketch and think it would be great for all kinds of occasions. I miniaturised it to make a panel for the front of my card to make it even more CAS by having more white space.

For my colour palette I searched around for a colour challenge and loved the idea of the twist in the challenge over at ColourQ... Red, black and newsprint! The photo inspiration also played a part,

There is texture here too, as the red corner is cut from some red flocked acetate. My newsprint is French (how's that for romance!) The heart was stamped in Versamark and then heat embossed in Candy Red and then popped up on foam pads.

Finally, it needed a sentiment. Not sure if this was inspiration or desperation but I suddenly thought about cutting the letters out of the newsprint. They were a bit fiddly to stick on but I think it was worth the trouble.

There are loads of Valentines challenges on the blogs. I am also going to enter this one at Casology

Where the cue word is LOVE and at Make My Monday, where the cue is VALENTINE , I haven't playe over there in a while so it's nice to be able to enter a card.

I know, I know, these are poinsettias I've used to set off my card, well they were red and I don't have any roses... May be on Saturday???

Glitzy Birds on Berry Banner

Brrrrrr.... It's cold outside, and seeing the photos of snow from other parts of the world I know it's not just here, so it's time to stay indoors and craft. In my case this means making Christmas cards for 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown. We have a sketch for you today, as always the first challenge in a new month and I just know you're going to love it!

  Back to an old favourite colour combo for me, Kraft, white and red, with a dash of green this time.
The embossing folder is an old one and I've only used a small part here, selecting the words I wanted to appear in the aperture.

The holly leaves in the sketch are replaced by two glittery birds and they are perched on a banner of seasonal berries, used instead of the sentiment, keeping the focus on the text in the embossing. Lots of texture in this card, as the red cardstock is also slightly textured

However, it is still quite flat for posting. To be honest I made the aperture part of the card quite a while ago, didn't know what to do with it but liked it too much to condem it to the bin. I am so glad I didn't as IM very happy with how this turned out -clean lines, crisp white embossing and just a touch of bling!

Hope you feel in the mood to create a little bit of Christmas magic on a cold February day too. I'm going to enter my card in the challenge at Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge, where it is decorate a corner; those little birds are decorating that corner I think. 

Striped Balloons

Two pink cards in a row! Well, I'm not really very fond of pink, unless it's that bright fuchsia pink, but it is that time of year when pink and red challenges seem to dominate the colour challenge blogs and we are no exception at CAS Colours & Sketches.

This time the pale pink pirouette is combined with lush strawberry slush and the soft Sahara sand. I only have Strawberry slush, so I have improvised with a generi
C pale pink and a tawny grey colour. You don't have to use the exact Stampin aka up colours, just as close as you can and no other colours. I found a new(to me) challenge too, I just loved these balloons, and it was the little fluffy cloud that really inspired my design

To make the balloons I used one of the dies from Ornament Keepsakes, cut out two, one in each of the pinks and two more in the 'grey'. I then cut out panels from the grey ones and stuck them on top of the pink ones. I used the cloud embossing folder to create the background.

I stamped the Hello in the two pinks down the side of the card, using my Stamp-a-ma-jig to get them exactly in the right place. You can see here that one of the balloons is popped up.

This card is going to be winging its way across to the States as a swap card. I love swapping cards, I only craft for my own family and friends, but this way I can send them to others who I know will appreciate a handmade card. I'm always interested to know what other crafters do, do you sell yours, donate to charity or just do it for fun like me?

Valentine Celebration

Valentines' cards, love 'em, but I don't make them very often and I'm not a big fan of lovey-dovey stuff, so my cards are often quite masculine in feel, which is a good thing because today my card is for The Male Room. Valentine is the theme over there for the new challenge which lasts for two weeks, well past the day for lovers.
This time I used a sketch from Cas(e) This Sketch as my starting point. I have often seen links to this challenge blog but never ventured over there before...boy was I missing something! I loved all the cards I found there, CAS- my favourite style, all beautiful, from the DT and challenge entries so I thought I'd join in. Here is the sketch

I used three stamp sets here, Happy Celebrations, Delightful Dozen and Work of Art, combining them to make strings of heart shaped lanterns. The central panel is kept very clean, one more heart with the sentiment and the twine, coloured with ink to match strung across at just the right spot.

I kept the colour scheme simple too; white, red and Crumb cake/kraft.

  Keeping the stamping crisp was the biggest challenge, although getting the excess ink off the string also kept me busy for a while (I'm too impatient to just leave it to dry and come back later!)