Challenge 150 at Crafty Cardmakers & More - Autumn colours

This week it is my challenge at Crafty Cardmakers and more, and I would like to see those glorious autumn colours - oranges, browns, russets, green and dark yellow...

You will see that my wonderful teamies have produced a fantastic array of cards to inspire you - don't forget to visit their blogs to see how they did them!

I decided to make a man's card this time - I KNOW!  I find men's cards really hard, but I'm still chipping away at my crafty stash, and this time I found a sheet of Hunkydory toppers that were perfect for this challenge colours, and bonus, suitable male subject matter.

My base card was plain cream cardstock cut to be a 6 x 6 card (my favourite size).  Onto this, I layered a piece of brown card.  As I don't have much of this card (and can't remember where I got it from) I took the centre out with a layer die to use on another card.  Because I didn't want to have a dip, I cut another piece out  of scrap card the same thickness to put in its place. 

Onto the brown card, I put a piece of decorative paper that I had put through the cut n boss in a Sheena Douglass leaf embossing folder.  Before sticking it down, I coloured it with distress inks and edged it with gold pebeo gilding wax.

I then cut out the orange swirls from some scrap card, and then stuck them to the backing paper.  Using foam pads, I attached my Hunkydory toppers, and the card was done.

This was a comparatively simple card to make and didn't take very long - one of the benefits of using the toppers.  I'm not much of a "pick and stick" crafter by choice, but there are times when having the work done for you is beneficial, and there is a place for all this in the crafty world!

Challenge 149 at Crafty Cardmakers & More - Circular Card

Kim is hosting today and would love to see your Circular Cards.

 

I finally used my Tattered Lace circle stepper card die to make my card!  I have this very bad habit of spending lots of money on dies and then leaving them pristine in the folder for A Very Long Time... and along with my resolution to use more of my stash, I have resolved to stop doing that!

 

Anyway, this card was the perfect opportunity to use not only the Tatty Lace die, but also a variety of others that I have available. 

 

It's very straightforward to make up once the card base is cut, as the score lines are very clearly defined.  I used a pearlescent card for mine.  The "tartan" layer paper came from an 8 inch pad that I had in my stash, and I used some of the off cuts to make flowers.  I then rummaged through my stash for matching tone papers  and luckily found a couple of pieces of lavendar/mauve paper that was suitable.  I used the smallest die in the grand circles spellbinder set of dies to make my base circle, and then cut a circle using a tonic circle die for the topper base.  Offcuts of these papers were again used for flowers. The topper was on a sheet I had printed off (possibly a Crafters Companion Mulberry Wood CD) at some point and only used one image.  It fit the circle perfectly - how cool was that?

I used some scrap pearlescent card to cut out the sentiment and the swirls and then arranged and stuck everything on the card.  The last thing I did was to stick on some creative expressions pearl corners and some diamante stones in the centre of my flowers.

I had to custom make and envelope to fit it, but fortunately, I recently discovered an app from WRMK for their envelope board that I downloaded to my phone which works out the paper size for any size envelope.  Well worth looking out for if you have one of those boards!