Who's Turning Fifty?

I really liked the sketch over at CAS(E) This Sketch this week, so this was the basis for a card I needed to make for a decorator friend who turns 50 soon. I really enjoyed making this one!

The toolbox image is by Little Claire, coloured in Promarkers with shading added in coloured pencils. The red & dark grey backing card was plain white, edged in Promarkers, while the kraft cardstock backing was embossed with a mask by That Special Touch. The screw brads are by Creative Expressions.

The main text was stamped in various Hero Arts shades of grey & black ink; the alphabet stamps are really old ones by Club Scrap, while the rest of the sentiment was computer generated. This was the original sketch & I stuck to it fairly closely:

CAS Vellum

The challenge over at Addicted to CAS is vellum, and for once I knew immediately what I wanted to do but it took 3 attempts before I achieved it!

I started off by stamping the Hero Arts flower in Versafine Onyx Black, then heat embossing it with Wow clear embossing powder. I coloured it on the back with Promarkers in Spring Lilac & Peony, then added clear Wink of Stella to the circles on the front. The greeting by Flowersoft was also heat embossed. The difficulty came when trying to adhere the vellum to the card, and I eventually achieved this with some Woodware Miracle Adhesive Film, although I think that may eventually come unstuck too!

Sunshine!

A quick post from me, this is my entry for this week's challenge over at Less Is More where the theme is "Little Creatures". I didn't think I had anything suitable until I came across the Tag-Its #3 set by Papertrey Ink which was purchased from that famous auction site some time ago.

I coloured the flowers with a mix of Aquamarkers then added the black flower centres afterwards. The bees were stamped in Versafine Onyx Black then coloured with a yellow Aquamarker. I added the black loops by hand then decided it was lacking something, so I sponged Distress Ink in Mustard Seed to give the impression of sunshine. I had intended for the overall effect to be more like a watercolour, hence the stamping was onto watercolour cardstock, but I decided that no-one would know what the little creatures were if they were too blurry!

Autumn

Autumn has definitely arrived here today and that's the theme of some of the challenge blogs I follow. I've combined the autumn theme with one or two other challenges & this was what I came up with:

The background is by Kaisercraft, stamped in Adirondack Paint Dabber in Terra Cotta. The leaves were created from One Strike Filler (aka spackle) using a stencil I made on my Sizzix Eclips. I coloured them by dropping diluted Distress Inks onto them as they take the colour very easily. I used a mix of inks: Fired Brick, Peeled Paint, Rusty Hinge, Gathered Twigs and Barn Door. The greeting is from Clearly Besotted's Many Messages set, in Memento Potter's Clay which was also used to stamp the Flourishes border by Marion Emberson Designs.

I'm entering this into the following challenges:

Addicted to CAS: Theme "Stencil"

Virginia's View: Theme "CAS"

Less Is More: Theme "Autumn's Bounty"

Stamping Sensations: Theme "Autumn"

CAS(E) This Sketch: sketch below

Do More

A lovely crafty friend brought me some great gifts whilst on her holidays in Canada earlier this year. One of them was this inspirational stamp by Stampabilities, and this week's "Mostly Words" challenge over at Less Is More was my opportunity to use it for the first time.

I inked up the stamp in Hero Arts Unicorn white, then embossed it with Wow! clear detailed embossing powder. I then played about with watercolouring using Distress Ink in Peacock Feathers until I was happy with the overall effect. Once I'd got my main image I couldn't decide how to finish the card off, then came across the sketch at I {Heart] Sketches:

As I didn't use one of their images I can't enter into the challenge, but the sketch is great so I hope they don't mind me using it! The ribbon & gems had been in my stash for several years so I've no idea of the maker of either.