Blog Candy!

CuteCottageCrafts have a couple of places left on their all day colouring class - why not go and have a look?  If you leave a comment and link to their page, you could win this gorgeous Blog Candy.  What are you waiting for????

Challenge 102 at Crafty Cardmakers - Shabby Chic

Welcome to our latest challenge at Crafty Cardmakers, hosted by BettyC, who has chosen the theme 'Shabby Chic'.

I'm never sure if my cards are shabby chic or not when I make them, so hopefully this one does fit the bill!  For my base card I used a plain white heavyweight cardstock cut to be 5.75 inches square.

I cut a burgundy diecut "base" for my image from some scrap card.  I cut the next size down out of some white scrap for the image, which I stamped twice.  The top image was cut round before colouring and the edges of both were coloured with aged mahogany distress ink.  The top image was coloured using spectrum noir alcohol pens.  I normally use my promarkers, but have been conscious that I have the speccies and never use them!

Before layering with some floral papers from my stash, I distressed the edges of the card and the lighter paper with aged mahogany distress ink.  Before sticking the backing papers to the card base, I wrapped some burgundy ribbon around it (I know it looks scarlet or bright red in the picture, but it was really the same colour as the diecut base!) and tied a second piece in a knot.   Once the papers were in place, I attached a punch cut butterfly - base was scrap card coloured with the distress ink, and the top layer was cut from an offcut of the bottom paper layer.  I stuck three pearls along the body line.

In the bottom right hand corner I built up a group of paper flowers that was already made in my stash pot (colouring some of the white ones with the distress ink).  I used a diecut from my scrap box to go in the top left hand corner.  Finally, I added some more pearls to "hold the image down" onto the burgundy card cut to shape with a spellbinders die.

I haven't put a sentiment on this yet, but think it could be used for a birthday, anniversary or get well.

We are sponsored by

 MILK COFFEE DIGITAL STAMPS

WITH A PRIZE OF 5 DIGIS FROM THEIR STORE

Milk Coffee Stamps is a digital image shop specialising in cute and girly images. We provide high quality digital images with high resolution so you could resize at a big enough size for your project. We have many different image styles; sophisticated lady, cute girl, whimsical image, cute stuff, fairytale creature, and many other varied themes so they can fit many different crafting styles.

And also by

SIR STAMPALOT

with this fabulous prize:-

Sir Stampalot is a retail shop and online website that specialises in stamps, die cutting and paper-crafting goodies.  We try to offer exceptional delivery times on your orders as well as keeping our stock fresh, new and exciting!  Our dedicated team of card makers means we have a wonderful, inspirational online card gallery with many more cards still to upload!  Sir Stampalot ships internationally as well as domestic so why not check us out if you haven’t already – www.sirstampalot.co.uk.
 Happy Crafting!

Here's a heads up...

Clearly besotted stamps have a birthday promotion on at the moment.  Use their code before 8th October and you get 10% off.  Their stamp and die combo's look brilliant - I have ordered the snowglobe stamps and die and will be back for more when I have more funds.

Edited to add:   How cool...when the goods are delivered, they are wrapped like a present - look!!

Anniversary card

My friend C has a really bad habit of asking me to make cards at the very last minute... This time she needed an anniversary card for her husband - in 2 days time!

I find it hard to come up with cards for men at the best of times, and with a shortened timescale decided to keep it clean and simple.

I used a plain white card base, which I layered with red card.  Then I used one of my new Die D-lites from Spellbinders to cut out the filligree heart in the centre of a white square.  This showed through the red from underneath.  The top heart was cut using both elements from the die set in the same red as the base layer.

I stamped the banner and cut it out from the white card, but had no sentiments that would easily fit.  So I turned to my trusty peel offs.  They were in silver though, and I wanted them to be red... Thank goodness for Promarkers!  I used Poppy to colour the sentiments, and the three small hearts in the top right hand corner.

And because it still looked a bit unfinished, I used the thin nib on the promarker to make some faux stitching around the edge.

I am entering this card into the following challenge:

papercreatorscrafts Challenge 15 - Dies or Punches

Bertie the Snowman

Back at Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 99, one of the prizes was a rubberstamp called Bertie the Snowman.  I recently did a class at In2crafting where we used it - here is the result!

The stamp was stamped onto plain white cardstock using a memento ink pad.  He (and the penguin hats) was coloured in using coloured pencils.  I used glossy accents on the nose and feet, and some black accent to make the eyes and buttons stand out.

The image was mounted onto red card and then layered onto plain white card base.  The "ribbon" frame was done by hand using a fineline marker pen.

Quick and simple...