It has been a while since I entered a challenge at Sunday Stamps, so I decided to give this sketch challenge a go. Life has been quite busy recently and I’ve spent a lot of time on ensuring I’m up to date with designs for the two blogs I’m a design team member of. I’m enjoying it but it is more work than I expected. I’m not sure where the idea for this card came from although I know I’ve seen something that gave me the idea. It could be from my hubby’s photo magazine as some of the images there are spectacular. Anyway I wanted to try making an icy moon so I searched for some shimmer CS and die cut a circle and then went on to cut snowflakes using a tiny die from Marianne Designs. I also cut some out of white CS that I covered with a Spectrum glitter pen and out of a small scrap piece. I added a fine silver line around the edge of the circle/moon and then added the snowflakes on about half of it. Using more scraps and unbranded banner dies I made the banners and used a foil CS from Recollections in the colour I needed to make the layer for the card front. I added each piece as you see and then added the die cut sentiment which I’ve had in a box on my desk since spring. I’m not in Christmas mode yet, but every once in a while I get one ready for my stash.

I’m quite pleased with the end result and appreciate your stopping by to take a look. Hope the week ahead is a good one for all of you.

This card also works for the Peace on Earth challenge so I’m adding it there as well.

The background piece here, started out as something totally different. I had the idea of stamping small sunflowers in Oxide ink and then clear heat embossing, but I messed it up and didn’t like it at all. I tried covering it all with the Carved Pumpkin ink and hated it. After a small thinking session, I wondered what would happen if I covered the piece with scrunched up tissue paper and that worked great. Once it was dry I added more ink using Rusty Hinge to deepen the colour that was showing through the tissue. Dried that and added some Inkagold in places. Loved how this turned out and decided to use it the way you see here. I added a die cut from a very old Sizzix die to which I also added a little gold. Glued it in places and added the die cut panel with foam tape for dimension. Panel was cut with a an old Spellbinders Distressed edge die. The angle of the photo makes the orange look much lighter than it actually is and in reality this is a lovely rich background. Added the butterflies to finish the look and the sentiment is from a Joy Clair set that I use a lot.

Thanks for stopping by, it is appreciated. Hope you are having a great day.

My initial desire was to create my own plaid using a stencil set, but I have loaned it to a friend who is currently away on her boat so I looked through my PP stash and found this one. It is from an old paper pad, as is the other piece, but I have no idea which company produced it. I also decided to use the layout that I used the other day as I like how it looks, so I now have a twofer as these papers are one sided. I don’t have much in the way of thanksgiving stamps and pumpkins and what I do have is on the smaller side which I felt wasn’t right for this card. I decided to make my own pumpkins (I did two) out of scrap CS and PP using a few small dies. I die cut two small circles from the orange CS and glued them together to give me a base and then I used two oval dies to cut the next layers. I glued these together as you see and added a small strip in the back which I cut into a stalk shape at one end. Then I added some curled ribbon and a leaf at the top. The tiny green leaves are fallouts from a background plate and I used them as embellishments. The sentiment is computer generated and then added to the background piece. I also dabbed it with some leftover sponge ink to soften the glare from the white. The gumdrops are from Your Next Stamp. It’s fun to get really creative and make my own stuff using what I have and I could make much larger pumpkins using larger dies if I feel I needed them.

Thanks for stopping by, it is appreciated.

Yesterday I began a card that I thought would work for the challenge here, but then I realized that I hadn’t paid enough attention to the theme and consequently couldn’t use it. I decided to be amused by my error and put my thinking cap back on. However I had run out of time for my craft room, so although I came up with the idea for this card I had to wait until today to execute it. My morning was spent in the kitchen and hopefully my afternoon will be here in my craft room.

Having seen a tutorial called the easiest layout ever, I thought it would work really well for a speed challenge and I was right as I put this together in 6 minutes. It would have been less than that if I hadn’t had issues with my glue bottle, but there you go life happens and sometimes things don’t go smoothly.

After gathering up the necessary items to make the card, I set my timer and off I went. First step was cutting the DSP which is from Stamping up. Second step was to die cut the fisherman out of black card stock and I used a new die from Kokorosa to do this. Once this was done I glued each piece of DSP down as you see, stamped the sentiment from GKD at the bottom and glued the fisherman so he appears to be standing on the letters. He wouldn’t stay glued – honestly this new glue has to be the worst I’ve ever purchased and I am at the point of chucking it because it is so bad. I shall empty the bottle and refill it with my usual brand as the nozzle on this bad one is the only thing good about it.

Because there is no real measuring required for this card, it was very simple to create and really quick too. Yet even though quick it is an effective layout and it uses the DSP beautifully. Thanks for stopping by, it is appreciated.

The Make My Monday challenge theme is ‘In the City’ and I guess this can be interpreted in many different ways. I struggled a little trying to come up with something that would be different to a city scape and decided to use a new kit from MFT that I’ve had sitting around for a while and not yet used. It is a little intimidating to use as there are so many tiny pieces to deal with. I now know why I admire some of my stamping friends who do a lot of building with tiny die cuts. It requires a lot of patience which in my case is sometimes in short supply.

I began by die cutting everything and keeping it together in a small box. After I had decided on the orientation of the card I began to build the scene, initially just placing pieces to see how to fit everything. Once I had that sorted it was simply a matter of adding each element. The first layer of seating was glued flat but the 2nd set was popped up with foam tape leaving me enough room to add the people. I built those separately using pencils to colour in the various bits. They were then added to the seats. I made an error and ended up with glue where I didn’t want it so had to add a few more people to hide the mess. Once they were in place I added the movie screen and curtains. I did cut the curtains shorter so they would fit nicely. The words were computer generated as I didn’t have anything suitable in the kit. I will use one of the sentiments from the kit for the inside.

When I was making a card for a colour challenge recently I messed up the first attempt. Setting it aside I went on to do another one and this piece sat on my desk for the next few days. I was thinking about how to rescue it and use it when the challenge at JUG’s showed up. That gave me an idea of how to rescue my poorly done piece. I traced the ghost onto some card stock from a image found on line and then fussy cut him so I could cover up the really messed up part and this worked well. Now to add the moon without destroying anything else. As it was inked with Distress Oxides I wondered if I could fade out the ink using a mask so that the moon would appear through the tree. Up to a point this worked well, but because this layer wasn’t done on watercolour paper, I couldn’t fade it enough without damaging the CS. I wondered if adding some Perfect Pearls would make a difference and gave this a try. I was at the point of, if it works great and if not then trash it. As you can see it did work reasonably well and any shadows look as the moon looks sometimes in reality. The little bat is another fussy cut computer image as I didn’t have a small enough stamp in my stash. The sentiment is from GKD.

As I’m not a Halloween fan, I don’t make many cards in this theme, but this year I’ve done several and surprised myself. I’m adding this to another challenge, first time ever, as it fits the theme there as well.

In my head I was planning a different card, and dare I say it, for a different challenge too. Because I didn’t read the instructions correctly I realized that this card simply wouldn’t work as planned and instead this evolved. It works perfectly for the Anything Goes at Less is More and is a simple CAS card. I used an A.I. set that has fun sheep images and pun sentiments. I used this image but my sentiment comes from a cut apart set, which at the moment, I’m unable to remember who by. I used pencils to colour the sheep along with an alcohol pen for the face and legs. I added some tiny hearts as embellishments and am quite happy with how it turned out.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope your day is going well.

Our current challenge here at Cardz 4 Galz, is to use leaves as your theme. My card is using a new stamp set from Your Next Stamp and I paired the images with a few sprays and leaves from an MFT set, along with a sentiment from a Joy Clair set. Using some CS that has a grain that looks like subtle embossing I created a slimline card base and stamped the various images after marking where the circles would be cut. After I had coloured everything with watercolour pencils I used an MFT slimline stitched circle die to create the openings. Setting the die cuts aside temporarily, on the inside of card front I added foam tape, to which I added an additional piece of CS. Then I paper pieced the die cuts into the openings ensuring they lined up properly but were slightly set back due to the popped up card front. In retrospect I should have doubled up on the foam tape so it would have lifted a little more but I still got the look I was going for. I curved the sentiment slightly so it fit around the circle edge in two places.

I did see somewhere that a card creator named this as a reverse eclipse technique. So far I haven’t tried the original eclipse technique although I plan to. I am quite pleased with how this turned out and it was a fun way to make a card.

Thanks for stopping by and a Happy Fall to everyone. In our case we hope for some rain as we really need it.

Thanks to one of my stamping buddies, I was able to do a Golf related Christmas card as requested by a friend. I used this image because I found it so cute although all of the images I received from this lovely buddy are great and will be used eventually.

What I did with this snowman involved a bit of fussy cutting which was pretty easy. I took the stamped image and photocopied it onto some card stock several times so I could cut out all the parts I wanted. I coloured in each snowman exactly the same before cutting. Each layer of the snowman was popped up with foam tape. Firstly I cut the top half of the body, including the golf club and then I cut only the head and scarf section. The snowman layer was added to some CS that is similar in colour to the blues used on hat and scarf. I added some snow hills at the bottom and part of a Sizzix holly berry garland at the top after I had adhered it to the dry embossed card front. The other half of the garland is on the inside panel. The sentiment is from an old Kaiser set and I cut it in half so I could stack as shown.

I think layering each section of the snowman onto the original stamped image has given it quite a realistic look and I’m quite pleased with the end result. It does look better in reality than on the photo, but photography skills aren’t my forte.

The card is being added to the following challenge:

Thanks for taking a look. I know your time is precious so I appreciate that you spend some of it with me.

For this card I cut a small piece of textured CS from a new 6 x 6″ paper pad, purchased at the dollar store, and masked off a heart shape. Using Tumbled glass ink I sponged colour into the center. Then I took a small Gina K stamp set, gifted to me by a treasured stamp buddy, and randomly stamped leaves and flowers in Dried Marigold. I wanted some butterflies so I went through my stamp sets and found tiny stamps in a Penny Black set. These were stamped in a slightly darker blue with a couple of tiny dots of the other colour in the wings. The sentiment and tiny dragonfly are from the same set. Added the textured panel to the card front and called it finished.

Thanks for stopping by it is appreciated.