This card is made up from a few bits and pieces I had leftover from prior projects. Yesterday I had started to put the vase and black embossed piece together but didn’t finish it and this morning I saw the two challenges and decided to finish it for entering in to them. The black piece is embossed down the leftside but the photograph didn’t pick up much of the texture. The vase and flowers are, a new to me, stamp set by Penny Black that I had water coloured and set aside so the Nuvo Crystal Glaze could dry. I fussy cut the vase out before popping it up with foam onto the black layer. I added some leftover strips to ground the vase, as close to challenge colours as I could get, and then added the image. This in turn was added to the floral layer and then onto the card front following the sketch from Sunday Stamps. I die cut the circle and stamped the word which is from a Joy Clair set and then added some colour to the entire piece with a sponge. I’m not sure about any additional embellishments and can add them later if I change my mind.

Thanks for taking a look and I hope anyone dealing with a heat wave is able to stay cool somehow. We are into one here and the reports suggest that it is going to get very hot as the week progresses. Thankfully living where we do means we get a constant sea breeze and that helps to keep the house cool without air conditioning.

This is my final effort for the Double D challenge and I’m happy with the result on this one. I got the colours and a design that I personally really like. The flowers were made by die cutting a couple of different Memory Box dies from a background piece I made with some mixed media CS and inks. I sprayed the paper with water until saturated and then added the inks using purples, dark blue and some greens. Once it was fully dry I used some watered down gilded Opal Blaze, which when dry added a ton of shimmer to the surface. I die cut the oval opening using my new infinity die set from Hero Arts and some DSP from StampinUP. To get this the way I wanted it I went around the back of the oval and edges with foam tape and picked up the flowers and leaves so they showed through the oval. Then using more foam tape I popped up the entire piece onto the white card base. Added a few extra flowers and a sentiment (by Penny Black) and some pops of colour to a few flower centers and it was done. The way the colours blended when doing the background was interesting and adding the shimmer gave it something extra. Thanks for spending time with me today.

When I saw one of our Angie’s recent posts using a new lavender die from Memory Box I remembered that I had a die from them that was lavender too. I considered CASE’ing her card but I also had the embossed background piece leftover and decided to go with that instead. I guess her card inspired me in a big way. After die cutting the flowers several times in purple, blue and green, I paper pieced the stems to make them green and then added them as you see to the card front. The stamp used for the circle window is from Impression Obsession and I’ve had it forever, and the sentiment stamps are from Joy Clair. The folder is a 3D from Tim Holtz. I added some sparkle to the flowers and to the sentiment using a Sakura glitter pen. My Mojo is better today but still not great so in my mind I haven’t done this challenge justice. Maybe I’ll get another one done before it ends. Thanks for spending time with me today.

Considering this mood board features my favourite colours one would think I would be totally inspired to make a card. I must have been tired yesterday (bad night) because none of my ideas worked and in the end I compromised with this card. I am honestly not sure it is good enough for the challenge, but decided to add it anyway as I like it better today than I did when I finished it yesterday. The background piece was done by smooshing into wet ink and as an experiment I added a bit of gold using the foundry wax. While that worked I didn’t like the result much so decided to cover up most of the gold bits. The stamp sets used are from Penny Black and one from Inspired by Stamping and the sentiment is a die cut. I coloured the images with Inktense pencils and distress inks. The window is a die I’ve used recently, cut from a store bought card and was on my desk so I popped it up over the top of the other images with the sentiment below. Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Using a matte gold background initially, I then die cut the leaf frame, using an MFT Lots of Leaves die, in coral. Taking a light gray piece I die cut the same frame again and this time selectively hand cut a few leaves to tuck behind the coral layer in several places. Using a Creative Expressions stamp and die set I cut the hello out of both coral and gray, added them together and then to the card front. From the same set I stamped the smaller word onto a scrap piece of coral, fussy cut, and then glued underneath the Hello. I had wanted to stamp the word directly to the card front but it simply wouldn’t stamp clearly enough so fussy cutting meant I could make it look okay. A few gold gems from Trinity stamps and I called it finished.

It has been so long since I used this set of stamps that I thought I would dig them out and make a card for the AAA challenge. As it is Christmas themed I’m also adding to the Peace On Earth challenge as well. No plaid in my card but it is an anything goes so it works.

I found an old stamp that has curved snow flakes by GKD and after making a circle mask I added the snowflakes all the way around. Then I stamped the cats, masking off one and partially masking the other for the hat. These were coloured with Prisma pencils and a bit of Sakura glitter as well as a new Spectrum Noir glitter set I now own. The googly eyes and sentiment are a separate layer and sentiment was stamped using a Hero Arts set and fussy cut before adding to the front. I added a bit of glitter to the sentiment and to the dots between the snowflakes. I kind of like the googly eyes myself. Thanks for looking.

My first card in a few days and using the challenge colours at ColorHues to make it. In thinking about making a card for this challenge I had a different idea in mind, but realized that I don’t have an ink that is truly peach in colour so instead I went with die cutting rather than stamping. The CS is from my stash and had the subtle grain that looks like linen but as this CS is thin I backed it with another piece of CS to add some strength. I added score lines across the side and top of the card front. The flower die used here is an unbranded one and I found some peach CS to cut the flowers from. The leaf die cut is also unbranded and I used a scrap piece of silver gray CS for this. The circles are cut from Hero Arts infinity die circles and I sponged Iced Spruce over them to get the darker shade of gray I wanted. I stacked them using some foam for dimension and added the flowers and leaves tucking the stems to the circles. The sentiment is from a new Penny Black set that I’ve just received and I popped this up on top of the score lines. The silver gems are from Trinity stamps. I’m quite pleased with how this turned out. Thanks for taking a look.

The challenge at JUG’s is to make a rocker card and of course at CYHTP it’s to use an EB folder. With my new 3-D texture fade from Tim Holtz called foliage, I did a background piece from which I cut the small scalloped circle. I had swiped bundled Sage over the impression before cutting it. With the largest circle die I own I cut the circle piece, scored in the middle and folded it. Deciding to make it look like watermelon and using sponges I added some colour and then by hand, added the black spots to look like the seeds. Using another scalloped circle I die cut a section to look as if a bite had been taken. Then I stamped and coloured my little gnome who is from a set by MFT. He was coloured with a mix of Ohuhu pens, and various pencils. I added him to the embossed circle and then onto the main card. Its a very small card but I like the cuteness of it. The sentiment is from 2 different sets put together. Two from GKD and the other from Creative Expressions. Thanks for looking and have a great day everyone.

Summer means many things to many different people. For me it means quite a few things, boating, vacation, and fresh local fruit. Having just received my stamp set with peaches from MayMay Made It I decided to CASE a card she showed when the stamps were released. What is more summery than fresh fruit? This is my version of what she did. I used Inktense pencils to colour it and deliberately left in the lines so it would look fuzzy as a peach would do. Using another of her stamp sets called Tiny Faces I added a face underneath the sentiment. I also added some bubble gems here and there hoping they look like drops of water. Although the local peaches aren’t in yet, they are certainly something we are looking forward to. Our season is slow as we’ve had much cooler weather than last year but hopefully the local ones will arrive soon. The strawberries are delicious so far, but I heard from the blueberry farm that his crop is not going to be ready until August. As well he wasn’t sure if he would have his normal crop quantity so we hope we can get our usual large order and freeze them for the winter months. Have a fun weekend and thanks for taking a look.

A while back a friend helped us out with our boat and I made this card to say thank you. At the time I didn’t post it although I always meant to, Yesterday I was going through some of my older photographs I came across it and realized that it fits the challenge at Colorful Options. I figured I may as well enter it into the challenge even though it was made some time ago.

The papers are all from my stash and the one with the anchors was a gift from a friend who purchased it at Michaels. The sail boat is a from a Hero Arts set and was stamped on to the die cut panel. The white frame is something that was left over after I had die cut the center piece and I thought it was good enough to frame the smaller layer allowing all the PP to show through. The sail of the boat has a bit of sparkle added but it looks kind of smeary (is that a word) in the photo. The die cut thank you is from an old Sizzix set of word dies. Thanks for taking a look and hope you are having a fun day.