Working small

Today's offering is straight from my scrap box. These Kaisercraft scraps are so pretty. I had my usual fight getting the punched border right, but it did help that one set of 5 scallops is exactly 2" long. So there weren't as many rejects and deeps sighs as usual.

For the Twinchies challenge to "add a flower":

And made into a card for Less Is More's 3-2-1 challenge. I have here 3 die cuts, 2 scalloped circles and 1 brad. Or 3 embossings, 2 shapes with cut-outs, and 1 stamp. I just realised that the photo is pants, but think of it as subtly de-focussed and it works. You get the idea anyway.

Enjoy the ^delightful^ bank holiday weather everyone! {rolls eyes but at least I don't feel guilty about being inside crafting instead of outside gardening. ;-) }

Sketch #2

OK I used the Creative Scrappers sketch again. I rotated it this time, for the ScrapJazz photo inspiration challenge:

I love the red and yellow with the grey and white, along with those blue photos. Shame I didn't have any flowers or Copics in quite that "subtle" orchid purple/pink!

Love this sketch!

Creative Scrappers have come up with a great sketch. I just kept seeing things I wanted to do with it. See what I mean?

I used Basic Grey's Life of the Party shapes which DH bought me, and the journalling is done on Papermania's Portobello Road paper with the matching flag ribbon.

Christmas stamp? Where?

For August's card challenge at ScrapJazz, Nora has come up with a truly challenging idea, and it has taken me this long to finish it. She wants us to choose one Christmas stamp, or a set, and create 3 cards with the stamps used in different ways.

Now as this is an American site, her terminology was actually "holiday" stamp. And silly me, having just got home from my summer holiday at the seaside in the sunshine, jumped to the immediate impression that she was talking about flip-flops, beaches and the sea. So I faffed around with masking and lighthouses (the only stamp I have that even remotely resembles a beach) for a while until I admitted defeat. At last the light-bulb went on. Duh. "Holiday" in American means "Christmas". And all the other religious and non-religious consumerism which goes on at the end of December.

OK, having got past my senior moment, I cracked open my box of Christmas stamps which hasn't seen the light of day for months, and considered. A stamp with multiple uses. Hmm.

How about this one? It's called "A Purrfect Day" from Personal Impressions. I've already shown you the first card I made. That's the complete stamp - no masking:

Now the next one is using the top part of the stamp only. I had to mask the border off as well as the sun and the cats. The copper star is a brad and the others are just made with a silver marker. My usual problem with photographing black doesn't show how vivid the copper ink is - you'll just have to take my word for it.

The third one also works for several current challenges:
Basic Grey: anything goes (I used paper from the 6"x6" Kissing Booth collection)
Creative Card Crew: script (the Cuttlebug embossing folder)
Stampavie and more: animals
Sketch Saturday: the sketch

See how I covered up the holly there to make it into a birthday card? Hehee. Not bad, all from one stamp. Me likey.

Animal antics

Simon Says Stamp's challenge for last week is Animal Antics, and I think I'm just about going to get this card squeezed in for it. I also made it for another challenge which was to use the same stamp or set of stamps in 3 different ways to make 3 cards. I was hoping to post them all together but I'm not going to be able to finish the third in time. Ah well.

Here's my versatile stamp in its first incarnation. The background paper is one of Basic Grey's, and their current challenge is "anything goes". I used my new-to-me Marianne Designs Creatables poinsettia die and quite a lot of Stickles "frosted lace" as well as my beloved Copic markers to colour the image.

Having a blue day

This has nothing to do with discovering that a local plumber has been advertising our telephone number as his fax number, and that the internet is peppered with it, and old ladies are calling me and wanting to know what a fax is. Honest.

No, I'm not feeling blue in the emotional sense. But blue is my favourite colour today. When I am asked "what's your favourite colour?" I can never answer because it changes depending on how I'm feeling. Yesterday I was all about green, today it is blue.

I've been wondering how people get those perfect sponged shapes (Mandi's beautiful flamingo circles, and Squirrel's effective oval) so this morning I've been playing. I die-cut circles and squares out of card scraps as a template, and sponged inside the shapes. I'm not getting that lovely crisp edge though. I suspect that my template may be too thick. I'll try again with paper.

But I also learned a few things about Distress ink, chalk ink and pigment ink, namely that you can't use Distress ink OVER chalk ink. Well there you go.

I also want to know what those masks are made of which you can use in embossing folders to get a non-embossed shape in the middle. It isn't craft foam or really thick card. I didn't want to use anything really strong in case I broke my folder. Or my Cuttlebug. Hmm.

As a result of all this playing around, I now have a handful of embossed scraps, wobbly shapes and wasted card blanks. And this one successful card.

Let's try and enter it into these challenges and see what happens:
CAS-ual Fridays (2nd entry) - square card
Charisma Cardz and Stampin' for the Weekend (2nd entry) - monochrome
Creative Card Crew - maps/newsprint/sheet music/script
Less Is More (2nd entry, first was fur now feathers) - fur/feathers

Cartoon card

I've never been very good at cartoons. DH is much better than I am, so he's been advising with this card, although I'd already done most of it before he appeared. It's Monica jumping "Hooray" from House Mouse and Friends, and I've given her a pole vault. Honest, that's what it's supposed to be. If I feel the need to explain, it probably isn't very good!

I'm putting it in for these challenges:
Cas-ual Fridays (my first entry) - square card
House Mouse and Friends - Olympics
Less Is More - fur/feathers
Stampin' for the Weekend - monochrome

Washed clean

Just a quick card which took longer than I thought. It's DH's best friend's anniversary on Saturday (as well as their eldest's birthday) and he's popping round later to drop off all the presents and cards while I get the tea.

I hope there's enough "white space" on this to count as Clean And Simple. Just, I think. It's busier than my normal CAS cards, but it kind of evolved that way. Maybe I should have used a long, thin card shape instead. Ah well, if it's not CAS enough then hopefully someone will tell me.

With that hope in mind, I'm entering it into CASology (pond) as well as my second entry for Less Is More (blue and green). Inside it says Happy Anniversary on another white rectangle with gold mat, and another of those lovely little dragonfly brads.

A crafty morning

I was "gently" awoken at 4 o'clock this morning by DH hearing a mosquito. When he turned the light on, there were about 30 of them whining around the room. They must have got in the window which I had left open on the security latch - just a crack really.

I don't ever remember having mosquito problems in England before. I know that there are 30-odd resident species here, but they have bothered animals more than people. But this year we have waved a thankful goodbye to the tropical and desert mozzies, only to find that the irritating little blighters have decided to move here too. For goodness sake.

4am is not the best time of day to go charging around the house energetically walloping a "feather" duster against the walls and ceilings for half an hour, and then expect to fall asleep again quickly. I am tired. But my body still woke up at normal time and only let me doze for a few minutes' lie-in. Again, for goodness sake.

Card-making is always soothing when the brain is tired but the body is wide awake.

Other god-son's 11th birthday is this weekend, and I understand he is getting a BMX bike. And some Lego, but I'm a bit Legoed out after his brother's card. So I concentrated on the bike.

Basic Grey are asking for "bright and bold" this fortnight, and Stampavie want Birthdays. I wanted to use a Sketch Saturday sketch, but they haven't put up this week's challenge yet, so I used one of their old ones. The image is a digital stamp from edupics, coloured with my faithful Copics. The BG Lime Rickey collection is just perfect for this, and I used the scraps to make a banner inside.

I missed Less Is More's pretty sketch last week which I had a load of ideas for (thank you holiday washing and ironing) but I'm up early for the new "blue and green" challenge. It also fits for Cute Card Thursday's "clean and simple" theme, and Creative Card Crew's "beach/sea" theme. Cute huh?
(ETA: that's a wave)

And here are this fortnight's Twinchies challenge of bright colours. These adorable little woodland stamps were embossed in black before colouring - and I STILL managed to smudge the black with my Copics. I really thought that embossing wouldn't do that, but you learn something new every day. These three will probably go on a card in another bunch of threes. I really like that look.

And now the forecast thunderstorm is breaking (this really IS like the tropics, except about 10 degrees cooler!) and I have to stir my stumps.

Have a great weekend everyone!