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

Simple Wreaths and Altenew Take 2

Hello folks,

CAS on Friday's latest challenge is to use your favourite flower stamp. I'm assuming a selection of flowers will do - remember this set from W Plus 9? Fresh Cut Wreaths was everywhere when it first came out but I haven't inked mine up for ages.  I almost made a one layer, then added a simple stitched frame from MFT to finish it off.:

My second card is still clean and simple but I matted the panel on gold card stock. For both cards I used the pretty inspiration pic from The Card Concept, drawing from the soft pinks, greens and gold with a touch of yellow:

As promised I did a second take on Altenew's colour challenge using the same technique as the first:

This time I kept it simpler and created a stamped panel of Hennah Elements with a stencilled Grid background again. A small sentiment and butterfly from Stamplorations and it was done.  I do prefer the simplicity of it in comparison to this one - as I said yesterday, splatters are just not for me!

Claire

Playing with Altenew

Hello again,

I've been trying a different technique with Hennah Elements for Altenew's May colour challenge:

I've always loved Heather Telford's cards and particularly the soft, watercoloured card she made in this tutorial. I don't have many solid image stamps so thought I'd try a similar thing with these outline stamps. Instead of colouring in the whole image I inked the stamp with distress inks, spritzed with water and stamped it on watercolour paper.  I then used a water brush to soften the outline of the image. For the stencilled background I used gesso with Altenew's Grid Stencil.

To be perfectly honest I'm not sure if I like it - I'm just not a spatter kind of crafter and wish I'd just left the blooms and the stencil as is. It looks too messy for my clean and simple sensibilities! I've also made a patterned panel using the same technique so I may make another card which is more to my liking!

Thanks for stopping by,

Claire

MFT Sketch #487

Hi folks, hope you are doing well.

Another card inspired by MFT's latest sketch using Sweet Holiday Penguins with a sentiment from Santa's Elves:

The snowy background has been stencilled in gesso with a liberal sprinkling of clear glitter. It looks very sparkly IRL!

Thanks for popping by,

Claire

Splats at Freshly Made Sketches

Hello, hello,

Happy Sunday to you. Here's a CAS card for Freshly Made Sketches and Less is More which has a recipe challenging us to use 'scribbles, drips and/or splats:'

Funnily enough the sketch from FMS features a splat so it's perfectly suited to the LIM challenge. I've used a splat stamp from Your Next Stamp's Cool Backgrounds, smothered it with a few blue distress inks, added a couple of sprits of water and stamped it. I had no idea what I was going to put on it but realised it's the perfect watery backdrop for this sweet little YNS whale from Totally Narly. I added a swirl of silver twine and a scattering of clear pebbles and it was done.

Happy stamping!

Claire

The Magic of Christmas

Hello again,

Hope you are all keeping safe and well. Australia is relaxing a few of the lockdown rules this weekend so at last I can catch up with a couple of friends over a wine or two.  I am beyond excited to have some social interaction with some like minded adults!

This CAS card is for a few challenges - Addicted to CAS (again) where the code word is 'silhouette', CASology which has the cue card 'magical' and AAA Cards which has a challenge to use one image only:

I blended a nightfall background with distress inks and added some paint spattered snow. The stamp is from a Cherrypie Art Stamps set called Winter Spirit and hasn't really seen much ink - they're unmounted rubber stamps and I can never get the scene to sit in the correct spot on the snowy hill. This week I invested in a Tim Holtz Stamp Platform (yes, I realise I'm slow on the uptake) and I've at last been able to make use of it. The sentiment is the only sentiment in my collection which has the word 'magical' in it - it's from CAS-ual Fridays' Snowy Sayings.

Hope you take some time out to put ink to paper this weekend! Thanks for popping by,

Claire