LIM Week 169

It's a sketch challenge this week over at Less is More and for once I had time to play along. My take on the sketch involves a stamp by Imagination Crafts which is meant for decoupage, but that's a technique I'm not especially fond of. Instead I stamped it in Hero Arts Unicorn white ink then embossed parts of it from the back. I coloured it, again from the back, with a mix of Promarkers & coloured pencils. 

The individual crocus is another stamp in the set, which I stamped in Memento Gray Flannel and then coloured with pencils, fussy cut & popped up on foam pads.

The matching curl stamp was also in the set, and the greeting is from a set I won in a challenge last year which was sponsored by Inspired by Stamping from Australia.

Manly Sketch Challenge

This card for a friend was last minute (as ever!) and based on the sketch at MFT. I had the whole card planned in my head but when I came to make it I discovered I didn't have any of the metal tool embellishments I'd intended to use. This meant that, apart from the layout, the finished card bore no resemblance to my original plan.

The papers and brads are by BoBunny & the green cardstock is Coredinations. I'm not sure who the stamp is by but it's inked up with Memento Paris Dusk.

Crafty Snippets

The amount of crafty stash I have which lies unused has been making me feel guilty lately so I decided its about time I did something about it. The papers I used for this card were bought several years ago, and as I no longer have the packaging I can't be sure who made them. What I do know is that I found some Bazzill cardstock which was a perfect match, and that New Sprout Memento ink was also a perfect match for the green.

Easter Greetings

Easter, for me, isn't about cute bunnies & lots of chocolate (although I never say no to the latter, of course!) Easter is a religious festival, so the cards I make at this time reflect that. All that said, I don't believe in pushing my beliefs on anyone else, so I only send Easter cards to close family. I've had the Papermania Moments of Faith stamps for a while although they haven't seen ink too many times yet, so I decided to rectify that.

I'm really enjoying watercolour painting at the moment and this card is coloured using Derwent Academy pencils on watercolour paper. Here's a close up. Happy Easter!

Purple Blossoms

The theme over at Virginia's View Challenge this month is Stencil so I decided to dig out a stencil which I bought some time ago but hadn't used yet. It's called Summer Blossom Border by Imagination Crafts and I sponged Adirondack Eggplant through it for the background.

The focal image is a Hero Arts stamp from the Luscious Bold Flowers set, stamped & embossed in white on kraft cardstock then coloured with Adirondacks, and the greeting is by Imagination Crafts.

The finished card was for an elderly relative whose eyesight is failing so I hoped that the bold patterns would be easier for her to see.

Turquoise Test

A flying visit to the Leigh Craft Show yesterday resulted in, amongst other things, some new cardstock by Limetree Crafts which is billed as good for stamping & Promarkers, so I decided to give it a try. A play with it last night resulted in the card above, which I'm entering into this week's challenge over at Less is More where it's a colour week and the theme is "A Touch of Turquoise" - although this is more than just a touch! The stamps are by Little Claire, the smaller one being another Leigh purchase to match the bigger stamp I've had for a while.

In case anyone's interested in what I thought of the card, this is the smoothest cardstock I've ever come across. I usually use 300gsm and thought that at 280gsm this might be too light for card bases but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it scores and folds well, making a sturdier card base than I expected. My first layer of Promarker colour seemed to be quite light and I discovered that's because there's a fair bit of bleed through to the reverse of the card, but there was no creep sideways over the stamped lines. Blending was extremely easy and I'm not particularly skilled with Promarkers! It's a pretty good white, too, although not quite as good as my previous favourite (Xerox Colotech Plus). You can see a bit more detail in the picture below.

 Stamps: Little Claire Flowerhead

Ink: Memento Teal Zeal

Promarkers: Tulip Yellow, Duck Egg, Cool Aqua

Watercolour Allium

This card was an experiment with some Reeves watercolour wax crayons I picked up cheap somewhere but had never used. I'd made several failed attempts to create a watercolour background with my Inktense pencils, so dug these out instead. Once the background was dry I stamped an Inkylicious allium which I coloured with a more concentrated form of the paint.

In an effort to maintain the CAS look I simply pierced the edge of the card then stamped the greeting and numbers, finishing off with some bright white pearls from Papermania. I've decided to enter this for Lucky Dip week at Less is More where the theme is "round and round". I'm sure there'll be more inventive entries but never mind!

Stamps: Inkylicious, Personal Impressions (from "Love is the Thread" set)

Inks: Hero Arts, Versacolor Heliotrope

Paint: Reeves Watercolour Wax Crayons

Papermania Pearls