Parchment-style Digistamp

This card uses an image I made whilst making this card but which I didn't use because the colours didn't quite match the backing paper. The image is from Digistamp Boutique but traced onto vellum & coloured from the back using Promarkers & watercolour pencils.

I dug some matching paper from out of my stash then added a stamped greeting, some simple ribbon & a few gems to finish.

Stamps: Digistamp Boutique (digi), Elzybells (no longer available)

Ink: Memento Teal Zeal

All other items from stash.

Thank You So Very Much - LIM #158

I've only recently started entering blog challenges, but sometimes they're almost a challenge too far! This week at Less is More the theme is to use felt or fabric. Felt? I've not used that since my son was a toddler, but having tidied up my stash the other day I knew I had some felt flowers which had been languishing unloved in a box for a couple of years so I decided to put them to good use.

First I stamped the stems, leaves & greeting before embossing them in white. How come stray embossing powder always appears AFTER you heat it, when it was invisible before? Time to try out my new gadget, a Jakar battery-operated eraser pen which I'd only seen used on excess gold leaf but I discovered works equally well on excess embossing powder without damaging the card. Edited to add: I've since discovered that whether it works or not very much depends on the type of card - it doesn't work at all on some!

Once that was sorted I stitched gathers in the middle of the darker pink flower to add a little more dimension because I felt they were too flat. On their own their colour was too similar to the cardstock so I glued the paler pink flowers behind so they stood out a little bit more. A little bling in the centre was all I felt the flowers needed to cover up the stitching. I was well out of my comfort zone with this one but in the end I really enjoyed making it. 

Cardstock, flowers & gems: unknown

Stamps: Craftwork Cards, American Crafts

Embossing powder: Cosmic Shimmer

Clean & Simple Stamping Sketch 258

I'm well out of my comfort zone today! I saw this sketch and decided I'd play along, using up some of the crafty stash I've been hoarding for ages.

The papers & green cupcake tag are by WRMK. I used an EK Success punch to make another cupcake out of matching paper & plain white card (covered in Glamour Dust) then mounted it on some of the matching cardstock.

The greeting is by Woodware, stamped in Memento Love Letter, with a bit of bling provided by Crystal Glamour Dust.

Bon Voyage!

A really quick card because my son is going to a party this afternoon to say goodbye to a friend from Scouts who is emigrating to America and - last minute as ever! - asked me to make a card for her.

Craft Artist Professional to the rescue! The plane & the flag were from digikits, and I added dotted "smoke" using one of the brushes. The ticket was from the internet so I obscured the names on it & added a watercolour effect to blur it a little. The sentiment is included in CAP so I just changed the colours & the name. All I needed to add was the baker's twine then I popped it on foam pads to finish. 

Butterfly Thanks

A few challenges have caught my eye this week. The first is at Stamping Sensations where the inspiration is a picture of poppies. The second is a colour challenge at Less is More, the colours being dark green & rust, and the third is at CAS-ology where the cue is silhouettes. I immediately decided against rust-coloured poppies as they would look like they should be thrown on the compost heap!

Instead I settled on silhouette-stamped poppies with a brayered & script-stamped background on the base card, behind an aperture cut from a piece of card popped up on dimensional glue. The greeting & butterfly were stamped in rust-coloured ink.

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus 300gsm

Stamps: Artemio 10001023, Inspired by Stamping Fancy Sentiments, Hero Arts, Inkylicious Script

Inks: Adirondack Terracotta, Distress Peeled Paint

CAS Guitar Card

Yesterday I received my prize from the "Summer" challenge the other week at Addicted to CAS which had been sponsored by Joanna at Inspired by Stamping. They're an Australian firm who make such fantastic stamps I had a hard time choosing my prize!

One of the things I chose was a set of guitar stamps which were perfect for making a card for a friend who is the lead guitarist in a band in his spare time. The "splodge" shapes which I've used to make the background behind the greeting came in the same set & I can foresee them being used frequently, they're really useful.

I'm entering this into the Addicted to CAS "Music" challenge & the Inspired by Stamping Customer Gallery challenge.

Cardstock: Xerox Colotech Plus 300gsm

Stamps: Inspired by Stamping Guitars, Woodware FRCL069 Large & Small Greetings

Inks: Versafine, Memento Teal Zeal & Cantaloupe

Silver Wedding Anniversary

Today is my silver wedding anniversary - well, not just mine of course! People who knew us way back when will be amazed we made it to 25 years, but here we still are despite (or perhaps because of) all the trials & tribulations we've had to weather over the years.

For once I had this card more or less planned for weeks, the words having just popped into my head one day. My husband doesn't like anything fussy or feminine, and when I saw this simply stunning card my ideas fell into place.

I cut out a stencil for the numbers on my Craft Robo Lite then sponged through it using silver ink, graduating the intensity of the colour from left to right. The sentiment was computer generated in a mixture of fonts. I sponged black ink onto the background script stamp to avoid hard edges, stamped it onto scrap paper and after masking the numbers I used the second generation of ink.

Ink: VersaColor Silver, Memento Tuxedo Black

Fonts:  Gabriola, Castellar, the numbers were Times New Roman

Script stamp: Inkylicious