Magic March Hares

With apologies to my teamies for being a day late, here is my card for the new challenge in The Male Room. The theme is magic or fantasy, and I did find this hard, particularly with a masculine slant.
Fairies are not really any good, I don't have any fantasy creatures or castles but I did think of something which I hope fits the bill. In past times in Britain I think hates were thought of as magical creatures. March is of course the time they seem to been seen most, "boxing' in the twilight. Here is my take on that, with no small thanks to a friend of mine, the queen of brayering, who made this image in much more detail and with much more skill than my offering as a picture.

I started by brayering the background in Indigo Island. Then I spritzed this while the ink was still a bit wet to get a starry night sky effect.

I die cut a large circle from matt silver card and carefully stamped the hares onto the edge.

They looked a bit as if they were floating in the sky so I grounded them with some grass stamped in the blue ink.I used a black layer and a long tall card blank. Card made in less than 10 minutes, time spent thinking about it 10 days!

 Below is a close up of the starry sky, complete with tiny touched of Sparkles liquid glitter. The stamps I have used are both magazine freebies.

No sentiment on this one. I will stamp something appropriate inside when I send it, as I think it would be good for a few different occasions.

Let Them Have Cake

This is the 5th Thursday in March and so CAS Colours & Sketches have a double challenge this morning, where you must use the sketch and the colours.

 Over Easter I definitely over indulged on cake. It was my son' s birthday and His sister made him a very special cake topped with lots of Easter eggs and chocolate buttons. It was so good I had to have a slice (or 2) which did not help the diet! Anyway, here is some cake I can enjoy without worrying about the calories.

I used Gorgeous Grunge in the colour combo to stamp the horizontal panel directly onto the card base.

I then used Big Day to stamp the two halves of the sentiment. I used Chocolate Chip for the stamping and coloured using Promarkers.

As a finishing touch I added tiny dots of yellow paint in the corners, a bit like icing decorations.

It's almost like a back to front CAS card, where the white space was added on top. Could easily be used for a male or female birthday I think.

Red Ties on Kraft

My card for CASColours & Sketches this morning is definitely one for the boys. We have a sketch for you this week and my card is completely different to what I set out to do. Here is the fab sketch for you to work with

I planned to stamp a long, tall image, cut it up into 5 pieces and reassemble with gaps on my card but when I started going through my stamps I came across Best Dad Ever. The 5 little ties in a row reminded me of the five panels so much. Howeve, ties going across the card didn't look so good so I have taken the,Iberia of rotating the sketch.

I've used a Kraft card base and shiny red embossing powder. I stamped directly onto the base (always stressful, believe me this isn't my first attempt, or second...or third) and then added the sentiment stamped onto a mat created from the scraps of my failed stamping. 

A tiny, rhinestone tie pin adds a little bit of interest.. I love the partterns on those ties. I suspect one of my kids will hijack this card in June to give to their dad. Hope you like it too.

Not Quite Navy Indeed

Back again, this time with a card for the new colour challenge at CAS Colours &Sketches . There are usually three colours in the palette for these challenges and we like that you use all three plus a neutral black/ white for stamping. I have used all three but you might be mistaken in thinking that I haven't since I used the very dark navy for blending and it's not come out as dark as I'd hoped. Take a look and you'll see what I mean

I stamped the image from an old set called Just believe in the pale blue and Watermelon. I used clear embossing powder and the emboss/ resist technique. Then, using a circle as a mask I blended the navy over the top, but just couldn't get it to go very dark. I promise you it is the right colour ink!

I used a piece of DP for a mat and then, as the embossing powder was out on my table, I made a 'cracked glass/tile' with the sentiment, which is from Happiest Birthday Wishes.  Basically, you just add several layers of embossing powder over your image and then, when it's cool, bend it to crack the glaze. You can see the cracks on the close up shot below.

I used a final white cardstock layer to 'crisp up' the appearance of my card. The photos have a bit of a blue cast, I'll try and get a better one in the daylight later.

Easter for Boys

One and a half weeks until Easter, so it seems appropriate that the new challenge at The Male Room Should be Easter for the men and boys. This card is the brother to one I posted a couple of weeks ago for a different challenge and it's definitely for the boys

I used a generic grass stamp and an egg from Nature Walk, which I fussy cut out, coloured and overstamped with the grass so that it looks like the egg is in the grass, not on top.

These two cute critters are actually felt stickers and the sentiment is from Delightful Dozen. You can see the egg on the grass better on the photo below. You can see my preferred style is CAS, even when going cute, which doesn't happen very often.

Easter is so early this year, but today with the sun shining, I can see the lambs in the field and the golden daffodils are brightening up my garden so I guess Spring is really here...hurray!

In The Spotlight

When I saw the sketch Jane had chosen for this week's challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches I had to agree, you can't get more clean and simple than this

My only concern is that I think I overuse this design in my CAS cards, so I knew I had to do something 'a bit different'. That's when I remembered an old technique somebody showed me way back, when I had just started crafting. It's called the spotlight technique, where you colour just part of an image to create a spotlight effect.

My chosen image?

Swallowtail.

I wanted the image to fill the card, so, after stamping onto a card base I trimmed it up real close. I stamped the image on another piece of card and coloured it all in...well, I wasn't sure which part I wanted to 'spotlight'!

Getting the two images to sit squarely was the only tricky part. I cut a black frame and lined the three parts up. I used Promarkers for colouring. I think they are a bit old school these days, but I still love the vibrant colours. As they always leak through to the other side of the card I used some white paper to put a card liner in.

The sentiment is perfect for me, I'm often a 'little bit late' as anyone who knows me will know.

Hope this and the other DT cards over at the challenge blog will inspire you to have a go with our ultraCAS sketch.

Tulips from Amsterdam

Not really from Amsterdam, from Backyard Basics  but Spring is in the air, with spring flowers and lambs, as I look through my window and this card jumped out at me so quickly and I am rather taken with it. My starting point was the colour palette chosen by our new hostess at CAS Colours & Sketches, Jane.

I had to take a few liberties, as I have none of these colours! I used the three closest shades I could, Gumball Green, Rose Red and Pistachio Pudding. Actually, whilst I would never have put them together I really like this combination, especially for florals.

I really took my courage in both hands and made a one layer card and so would like to enter it for the challenge at CAS On Sunday

First I stamped the tulip out

One in the darker green, using my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to get them lined up perfectly. 

Then I over stamped the flower heads, using a stamp from Work Of Art and the Rose Red. I used another stamp from the same set for the stems, bending it very slightly.

Nest I drew a border in a fine line black pen and stamped on most most modern birthday sentiment.

My biggest challenge on these types of card is keeping away the smudges...think I managed this time.

Park to National Park

Make it move! Paper engineering I like to think of it, these are some of the cleverest cards around, definitely beating anything you can buy, but they do often take a while to make. So, find some quiet time if you can and sit down and make one for this week's challenge at The Male Room. There re loads of ideas on the Internet, here is one I tried for the first time.

It's kind of like an unfolding present. Here I went for loads of texture and a theme of back to nature from the built up landscape. So, the front of my card uses brick and grass DP and a piece of guilded embossed card to look like metal, with a faux leather cover to the fold out bit. A town park in miniature.

And inside there are rocks and wood. I used a bold sentiment stamp from Delightful Dozen and left one panel bare for writing a message to the recipient.

Too arty? I am often looking for a theme these days to inspire my card making. I did have fun with this one and used up a few scraps, which is always good. If you want to try the challenge here it is