Shades of Brown

Hello fellow bloggers!

It's a blistering day here in Sydney today - the heat has been increasing steadily throughout the week.  And so what did my dozy other half do a couple of days ago? He took the kids fishing at the weekend and forgot about the raw fish bait that he had left in an esky in the boot of my car. Can you imagine the stench when I opened my car door on Tuesday morning?  Needless to say he is a naughty boy and is definitely in my bad books at the moment....

Moving swiftly on, the cue word over at Casology this week is 'brown.' When I had a quick look at all my ink pads, I realised I own about 6 different shades of brown ink, so I used a few of them for my card, together with a touch of pink:

This is the first Casology card I've been happy with for ages - I find it so difficult to keep layers to a minimum and always seem to be adding bits and pieces so it no longer looks like a simple card!

Have a fabulous night and thanks for stopping!

Claire x

Colourful Colour Q

G'day folks,

Summer is just around the corner for us in Sydney and so far the school holidays have been bursting with sunshine and beautiful, clear blue skies. The kids have been having a ball swimming in a friend's brand new, giant spa (it's literally like a giant bath in the garden) and playing around on inflatables at the local pool today.

Speaking of Summer, there's a brand new colour combo over at Colour Q which is sure to brighten up your day - it makes me think of Summer scrapbook pages and cheery cards that make you smile:

I printed a polaroid frame using the Silhouette but it looked a bit bare so I decided to layer a few of them in the chosen colours. The pumpkin threw me a bit so I used that to stamp the flower from Hampton Art and layered it with some punched blooms from patterned paper.  The glass baubles are Prima and I could quite happily use them on every project (if only I could afford to!)

So, even though Autumn may be upon you in the Northern hemisphere, get yourselves into a Summery mood and have a bash at becoming this week's Colour Queen.  Can't wait to see you what you come up with!

Thanks for stopping by,

Claire x

Freshly Made with Foil

Good morning bloggers!

Jen B has come up with a fabulous sketch this week at Freshly Made Sketches...so many possibilities...I'm sure I'll be using this one again:

 I bought some multicoloured leaf foil a couple of weeks ago from my local craft store. The first time I used it was a total disaster...it just wouldn't stick to the sticky embossing powder and I ended up wasting an entire sheet of the stuff (and it's NOT cheap!) So, I went back to the craft store and got a bit of advice and it worked perfectly...I 'm really pleased with the result.  I used it with a Stampin' Up Papillon Potpourri butterfly. I searched every nook and cranny in my stash and couldn't find any matching buttons or brads to embellish it, so in the end I covered a couple of pearl brads in some Versamark, dipped it in the sticky emboss and added the foil to those too. The patterned paper is more of the pretty Japanese yuzen paper that I don't seem to be able to stop using lately!

Since the challenge over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog is embossing, I'm also going to enter the card there. As well as using the foil, I've dry embossed the background.

Hope you have a wonderful Monday, thanks for stopping,

Claire x

Sunglasses Required!

Evening all,

Another day, another card - I seem to be on a bit of a roll this week. This time it's for the latest Color Throwdown challenge. Not once, have I ever had all the colours for a colour challenge in my (pretty small)  ink collection. Until now! So, no patterned papers in this one...just a heap of repetitive stamping...in a very bright, Summery colour combo:

At least it may brighten up someone's day - although I think it may have been easier to do all that stamping with a pair of sunglasses on!

I'm also going to enter it into the Simon Says Stamp 'Anything Goes' challenge...well, you never know your luck do you?!

Thanks for popping by,

Claire x