Not so square

Over at Crafts by Carolyn, the new challenge is to add or subtract something so that your card outline is not a square or rectangle. I did both! I cut away the top of the card to make the snow slope and added three trees cut out after stamping/embossing that stick up over the snowline. The middle one is pop mounted for a bit extra dimension.



Supplies: Tree from acrylic set by Skipping Stones Design, sentiment by MSE, white hammered card, Versamark and silver embossing powder, Clearsnap chalk ink - ice blue.

Nicola (you might know her online as Dollydimple) and I have joined Carolyn to make the CBC Crew and we'll be launching challenges and projects on a regular basis but not so fast that you'll get dizzy! There are some fab prizes in the pipeline too and everyone who takes up a challenge has an equal chance of winning. Pop on over if your Mojo's gone missing or you fancy the chance of winning some new stamps, papers, kits, ribbons etc etc etc!



Challenges at the moment include black and white Christmas card, cards including a charm, this shaped card challenge and there will be new ones coming up soon - keep your eyes open on Thursdays and Sundays!

Moooo-ving?

I always struggle with new home cards, I have no idea why! Anyway, here's the last of the stamps I got from Cornish Heritage Farms (see Monday's post).



She's called Bossy the Cow and gave me the perfect opportunity for a pun. The insert in the card says Hope the moooove went well. The Home Sweet Home stamp on the signpost is from the mini set by Tanda Stamps. I cut Bossy out after stamping and colouring and pop mounted her on the card front.

Supplies: Bossy the Cow (CHF), New Home mini set (Tanda Stamps), Ranger Archival jet black, Clearsnap Chalk azurite, ice blue and rose coral inks plus random browns for wood effect on signpost, Quikutz grass, daisy punch, green DCWV textured cardstock, blue and green papers from scrap box.

TFL!

A card for Victoria

Some of you might have seen out there in card-making blogland that lots of people are making cards for a young lady called Victoria. Victoria has cancer and her teacher is trying to help her achieve the goal of receiving cards from every state in the US. I thought it would be fun to join in and send one from England so here's my card for Victoria:



The deadline is 27th September so there's still a couple of days if you want to join in. There are details here.

Supplies: Singing Swirly Bird stamp (Cornish Heritage Farms), Hello stamp (Woodware), Ranger Archival jet black and Whispers Rich Plum ink pads, Prismacolor pencils (mulberry and canary yellow) and Sansodor, vellum embossed with Cuttlebug D'vine swirls folder, silver thread, sewing machine, scallop frame cut on CraftRobo, ribbon from stash, chipboard tag made from thick packaging card, silver glitter gel pen.

New stamps!

A few weeks ago I came over all peculiar and decided to apply for a place on a DT. Nowt wrong with that except that I chose a rubber stamping company and I'm still quite new to the whole RS thing so it was an odd decision, really! Not sure what that was all about - lol!

Anyway, I didn't make the team BUT I did get a gift voucher to spend on stuff from their online store as a 'thank you' for applying. Just how sweet was that? So, here's a card using two of my new stamps:



I've used the large paisley backgrounder stamp to emboss with Versamark and clear EP on white cardstock and then swiped Whispers Sugarloaf green over it and buffed with a tissue to take excess ink off the embossing. The main image is Daisy Jar coloured using the Prismacolour pencils and Sansodor technique (same stuff as Gamsol if you happen to be using American products). As I made this to fit a challenge over at CBC, I've added a daisy charm attached to wire wrapped round the central panel. The charm had a gem in the centre that didn't fit the colour scheme so I prised it out and replaced with a dot of 3D paint.

Check out the range of stamps at Cornish Heritage Farms - the quality is fab and I already have several more on my wish list! The range of background stamps is just amazing!

I have a couple more cards I've made with other stamps I got, I'll try to remember to blog those soon!

Supplies: Daisy Jar and Large Paisley Backgrounder (both CHF), Ranger Archival jet black, Whispers Sugarloaf green, Clearsnap chalk azurite inks, Prismacolor pencils (peacock blue, sienna brown, canary yellow, grass green, true green, light cerulean blue), Sansodor, charm, wire.

Kathy's birthday recipe

Happy Birthday Kathy!

Kathy posted a recipe and challenged us to make her a card and post on our blogs. Here's mine (click on it for a better view - tall cards aren't great at Blogger's default size, are they?!).



The recipe was
Three flowers
Three papers
Three ribbons

Now, I'm not good at patterned papers so I've chopped them up! They're all digi papers from Shabby Princess (the Sun Porch collection) and I've used them to make the petals and the flower pot. Two sorts of green ribbon for leaves and some organza knotted around the pot fulfils the ribbon quota. I doodled the stems and added a bit of green chalk 'haze' round them.

Hope you enjoy your birthday, Kathy!

In a word

What with one thing and another I haven't done a DCM dare for a while so I thought I'd try to get in on day 1 this week!

Rhi's set the dare and it's to use a word as the focal point of your design. Here's mine:



The word is embossed on DCWV textured cardstock with the Cuttlebug 'You' folder. I just put in enough card for the single word and trimmed round it. I stamped THANK with Little Classic alpha stamps in a style called Old Book and added a strip of harlequin paper, a star brad and some Colorbox Creamy Brown chalk ink. I let the embossed word run off the right hand side of the card to give it more emphasis.

Thanks for looking!

Christmas cat!

Hello, I'm back from holidays and thought I'd share a project I did just before I went away. This started life as a tin containing ground coffee and I've altered it to make a Christmas gift.




Thanks to Tanda Stamps DT member Anna for the inspiration to combine the stamps! The stamps are both from Tanda - they're called Festive Cat and Three Gifts and they're fab!

I stamped the cat on a strip of thin card cut to fit around the tin. Then I stamped it again onto thin notepaper and cut it out to use as a mask before stamping the group of gifts. That way, I get to keep the cut out to use for masking future projects and I didn't have to do anything precise round the whiskers as that part of the stamping doesn't overlap! I repeated the gifts image along the length of the card strip so the design goes all the way around the tin.

The gifts are coloured using brush markers and a green highlighter pen to keep things on the bright side! A gold gel pen adds a bit of festive metallic effect. As the cat's hat is solid on the stamp, I coloured over the black bit with a white gel pen and then used a Gellyroll pen to colour it red. I inked the edges of the card strip with Ice Blue chalk ink and stuck it round the tin before tying on a bit of stitched grosgrain ribbon.

For the lid, I cut a circle to fit and inked the edge with the Ice Blue pad. I cut a smaller circle from scrap paper and used the 'frame' as a border mask so I could stamp the cat's face without going all the way out to the edge. Then I used the Gellyroll pen to write Christmas Cookies round the border and finished by stamping a few snowflakes at the base of the circle in the Ice Blue chalk ink.

I'll bake the cookies to put inside nearer to Christmas!

I reckon you could adapt this for all sorts of things... get the snowman stamps out and make a 'Build your own snowman' kit for the kids (either marshmallows and Matchmakers or pom-poms, pipecleaners and felt)... decorate one to put Santa's snack inside to keep it fresh overnight on Christmas Eve...

Thanks for looking - if you've enjoyed the project, it'd be lovely to see your comments, it's always great to know who's visiting!