Spring Blooms

Hello and happy weekend!

A couple of floral cards today, the first is my second take on the April Inspiration challenge over at Altenew. I bought a gel press recently - it's very addictive but I've found that even after creating all these backgrounds I still hanker after white space as you can tell by these cards!

For the card above I used a lighter version of the grey/blue in the inspiration challenge and mixed a couple of dye inks on the gel press to get the right tone, then put the Altenew Beach Towel Stripes over the top of the ink and brayered over the top. I like the subtlety of it, particularly as I'm never quite sure what to do with loud backgrounds!

The bloom is from Nostalgic Florals with matching die and stencil, a sentiment from Sentiment Strips and it's framed with the Fine Frames Cover Die just to satisfy my white space craving!

The second card is using the pretty colour palette over at Sunday Stamps. The same process for the background but this time I used the Forest Foliage stencil from Funky Fossil. I added the Clearly Besotted Beautiful Friend blooms and sentiment, then framed it with a PTI die.

I'm sure I'll branch out and experiment with brighter colours - watch this space!

Happy stamping!

Claire

Less is More Colour Challenge

Hello again,

Quick card for Less is More's black and aquamarine colour challenge:

I stamped Avery Elle's Rounded Diamonds in aqua and black and stamped the Clearly Besotted bloom over the top in white EB. I then cut the bloom into 4 smaller rounded diamonds and placed them over the same stamped image in black, being careful to line everything up.

I like the style but I'm not sure I like those colours with the delicate bloom - I think it would look a lot better in pastel colours so I may have a go using those instead! What do you think?

Happy stamping!

Claire

Fusion Colour Palette

Hello inkers,

I made a very simple card using the pretty colours from the latest Fusion inspiration pic:

 

It's entirely different to what I had in mind - I had wanted to do a simple beach scene by masking a striped background and adding a sail boat. Since that didn't work I stamped the Clearly Besotted bloom over the stripes instead but it looked very dull and flat so I used the matching die to cut the image out and then popped it up with some dimensional tape. I also matted it against some black card to make it pop. Amazing what a difference a bit of dimensional tape can make!

Happy stamping!

Claire

Freshly Made Sketch #473

 Hello again,

More watercolour practise, this time using Clearly Besotted's Beautiful Friend, inspired by the pretty sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches and the colours at The Color Throwdown:

 

  

This is just the kind of sketch I like with lots of layers to play with. I've edged the front panel with some gold washi tape from Altenew and embossed the middle panel using an Altenew embossing folder. The background has been stamped using MFT's Wood Plank. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Claire

Freshly Made Sketch Meets Time Out

Hello folks,

I just had time to make quite a clean and simple card using this week's Freshly Made Sketch and taking some inspiration from Time Out's photo challenge:

 

I struggled initially with the diagonal line on the card sketch but then remembered my favourite Cheery Lynn die cut. I added a couple of blooms from Ink to Paper with a sentiment from Clearly Besotted. The background lines have been white embossed with Mama Elephant's Basic Borders.

No guessing required as to where I drew my inspiration from - the colours from the surfboard and the stripes from the flip flops (or thongs as we say in Australia.)  The starfish immediately made me think of  Grout Gray card stock.

Hope you have the chance to ink up some of those stamps this week!

Thanks for popping by,

Claire

Colour Throwdown - Guest Designer

Hello folks,

I'm delighted to be guest designer over at The Color Throwdown this week - it's a very simple colour palette featuring black, white and terracotta:

Terracotta doesn't feature much in my ink collection so I turned to some copper embossing powder to create my card. I embossed MFT's Woodplank on to black cardstock and used this as the backdrop to my Clearly Besotted embossed bloom called Beautiful Friend.  The left hand side was stamped with Waltzingmouse's border stamp from Asian Gardens and the sentiment's Poppy Stamps. 

Hope you get the time to join in this week - happy stamping!

Claire

Addicted to CAS #184

 Hello and happy Sunday to you!

For those in Australia and the US, I hope you've had a lovely Mother's Day!  I've been playing with some new distress oxide inks my gorgeous boys gave to me:

This very simple one layer is for Addicted to CAS which has a 'flower' theme for their latest challenge. I blended Evergreen Bough, Cracked Pistachio and Tumbled Glass, then embossed the Clearly Besotted's bloom from Beautiful Friend in pewter.  Took about 10 minutes!

Happy stamping everyone,

Claire

Cutting it Up for Freshly Made Sketches

Hello, hope you are enjoying your weekend and that you're gradually getting back into a vaguely normal life!

Linda has created a deceptively simple Freshly Made Sketch this week - I say deceptive as my original idea just didn't work and I ended up making something totally different to what I 'd planned:

I used a daisy die cut from MFT, together with die cut grout grey sprigs and vellum leaves. The rectangular panels have been blended with distress inks and gold embossed with a WMS stamp from Heirloom Patterns. The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted and fits with the challenge at Cut it Up - make a project to celebrate friends.  I've also used the gorgeous colours over at Colour Throwdown - definitely a palette I'll use again!

Thanks for popping by,

Happy stamping!

Claire

Freshly Made Sketch #410

Hi folks,

It's been a while since I've had a play along with Freshly Made Sketches. Linda's lovely layered sketch really caught my eye this week so I've used it to make an 80th birthday card for my Mum. She really is quite amazing for 80 and still plays tennis twice a week - in fact she seems to have the energy of someone 20 years younger!

I've coloured this Clearly Besotted bloom called Beautiful Friend with Copics and added a gold embossed sentiment from MFT. The background has been stamped using MFT's Bundles of Blossoms using Grout Gray ink on the same coloured card stock. It's given it a subtle amount of texture without detracting from the flower I think.

Thanks for stopping by and happy stamping!

Claire x

FMS #386

Hello fellow inkers!

Not many cards being made lately. I've been practising my watercoloring skills which are pretty average to say the least:

I white embossed Clearly Besotted's Beautiful Friend and stamped a Wood Plank Background from MFT. The scallop edge is also MFT - Stitched Scallop Basic Edge die. I knew it would fit perfectly with the latest sketch from Freshly Made Sketches so it all came together very quickly!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Claire x

Time Out for Fusion and The Card Concept

Hello and happy weekend!

More new stuff to play with - this time Clearly Besotted's Beautiful Friend with matching die:

I took inspiration from The Card Concept's pretty colour palette and used the clean and layered sketch from Fusion where they're celebrating a whopping 5 years of playing with ink!  I've also stuck with the 'loving' theme over at Time Out.

The background has been white embossed using W Plus 9's Defining Words and I stamped and embossed Mama Elephant's Basic Borders in gold and black for the left hand panel.

Hope you get time to get inky this weekend!

Claire x