Playing with Color Bursts

Hello again,

The big bloke gave me a voucher for the local craft store recently but rather than do what I normally do and rush in and spend the dosh, I actually had a browse, then went home and did some research. I decided to buy a set of Ken Oliver's Color Burst pigment powders. 

Playing with just one sheet of watercolour paper produced 3 cards - one for the latest My Favourite Things Colour Challenge and a couple for Casology, where the cue word is 'grow.':

I could play with these pigment powders all day - I love how you get a different look every time you use them. For the first card I embossed MFT's Bundles of Blossoms background stamp in blue, over the coloured panel. It looked very busy with all those bursts of colour and embossing so I had to make it a little more CAS and added a couple of slanted panels and a Die-namics Accent It sentiment. (Perhaps discontinued as I can't find it on the website!) I smothered the sentiment in very sparkly white glitter but my photo really doesn't do it justice!

For the next cards I embossed PTI's Botantical Blocks - one in gold and the other in white. I'm not sure which I like best..what do you think? It would be so easy to make a quick set of cards for a gift using these stamps and backgrounds...they took about 2 minutes!

Hope you get time to get inky this week!

Claire 

Altenew April Inspiration Challenge

Hello,

I've been really enjoying the Altenew blog  recently. So many of the featured cards look like mini  masterpieces - sometimes it's hard to believe that they've been created using stamps.

Anyway, I thought I would have a go at this month's challenge and try a bit of watercolouring.  I'm not good at watercolouring...I never seem to achieve a soft, pretty look but I do find it easier with Zig Clean Colour pens:

I used Floral Motifs and the die cut circles were coloured with Ken Oliver's Colour Burst pigment inks. I also added some stencilling with texture paste to the background.

I'm also entering this into Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge where the theme is Showers and/or Flowers.

Thanks for calling by,

Claire 

Calling All Sistahs - April 2017

Hello folks and a belated happy Easter!

It's the 17th of the month - time to whip put those boobs and give them the once over to check for lumps, bumps and anything else out of the ordinary.  This month, Michele has some exciting news at the CAS-ual Fridays blog! There isn't a formal blog hop for April - instead, she's invited anyone to take part and is featuring everyone's cards over on the blog. The theme for this month is 'flowers' so I used the pretty blooms from Loving Thoughts:

I love using this set to create pretty, floral,  backgrounds. The sentiment is from Hope Ribbon from the Calling All Sistahs range of stamps. 50% of the profits from these stamp sets and the matching dies are donated to breast cancer awareness and research programmes. Which means you can spend your money on craft goodies and not feel guilty about it! 

The colours on my card were influenced by Time Out's Home Sweet Home challenge so I'm going to pop this little card over there too. 

'Hop' on over to the  Cas-ual Fridays blog and check out all the other lovely ladies who've made a card to encourage and support anyone going through breast cancer. Together we can beat this insidious disease!

Thanks for popping by,

Claire x

Keeping it CAS

Hello,

A couple of CAS cards here - the first one is for Less is More using the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches. The theme is 'curve' and as usual I messed up my one layer card - I managed to mask the perfect curved line of Altenew's Painted Roses, then tried to curve the sentiment underneath and lined it up really badly. So I ended up die cutting the wavy line to cut off the sentiment, then put it back together again. I'm assume this still counts as a one layer! The sentiment is CAS-ual Fridays.

The cue word over at Casology is 'strong' so I stamped a WMS anchor on top of a Zig Colour background. I thought I'd see how the Zigs worked on smooth cardstock instead of watercolour paper - they worked but the colours aren't as vibrant due to the water pooling on top of the paper. I still like the softer effect though!

Not the best photos unfortunately as I'm not at home for Easter so I've had to take them on my I-phone. I'll maybe improve them once I'm back in Sydney.

Have a great Easter - hope you get some time to get inky!

Claire 

My Favorite Things - Sketch Challenge

Hi again,

I made a super quick card for MFT's Sketch Challenge using nothing but dies and a sentiment from Adorable Elephants:

I used Die-namics Blueprints 24 and Upsy-Daisy - if only I could win the lottery, I'd buy every set of dies in the Blueprints series!

Have a great day!

Claire x

Rainbow Crayons

Hello folks!

Did you know there's a new Lawn Fawn challenge blog? Their second challenge is to make an interactive card - I had a quick look on Pinterest and apparently an easel card is considered to be interactive so I hope this counts:

I'm on a bit of a rainbow roll at the moment and coloured in these sweet little crayons from You Color my World in a rainbow of Copics. I also used some of the little faces from Sweet Smiles. The card base is actually a template from the Silhouette store - yes I could have sat there for 2 hours trying to work out how to make one but why bother when you can buy a template?

Can you spot the little mistake I made? Oops - I forgot to colour in part of the orange crayon. I'd like to blame this on the glass (or two) of wine I had whilst colouring but actually I probably just missed it as I've just found out I need glasses! I just got my first pair and have come to realise that I've been crafting whilst blind as a bat!

I'm also popping this into the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge, CAS-ual Friday's Rainbows challenge and Time Out's inspired by words challenge: 'When it rains look for rainbows, when its dark look for stars.'

Thanks for popping by!

Claire x

Rainbow Play

Hello, hello,

How's your weekend going? There seems to be a profusion of rainbow themed challenges happening in blogland at the moment - the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge to make a rainbow, CAS-ual Friday's Rainbows and Time Out's 'Inspired by Words' challenge:

When it rains look for rainbows, when it's dark look for stars'

I made a very CAS card by blending a rainbow of distress inks and adding a die cut sentiment from MFT. A sprinkling of Your Next Stamp's enamel dots and it was done in a jiffy! A bit like this post!

Thanks for calling by!

Claire x

Your Next Stamp Sketch and Colour Challenge

Hi folks,

Hope your week is going well. Here's a card for Your Next Stamp's latest challenge:

It took forever to make this card - my mojo has definitely gone walkabout and I'm really struggling to make anything new.  Colouring an image always seems to help though so I picked this sweet cow from Funny Farm Crew.  The paint splats are from Cool Backgrounds and I added a white embossed strip of dots at the base of the card using a stamp from the same set.

I'm also popping this one over to Simon Says Stamp's 'happy birthday' challenge - they're celebrating 8 years of keeping our craft habit alive!

Happy stamping!

Claire x