more CAS

Yeah, I know, I'm still on the same design as last time I posted. But I've been using up scraps and these cards are just fabby. And they fit into Less Is More's sketch challenge this week. And they can be gender-defined just by changing the colours, and I have some blokey birthdays coming up. What's a girl to do?

and inside:

 This one takes the sketch completely literally, and also fits into the "girlie" theme of Stampin' for the Weekend and Creative Card Crew (it is quite a lot more pinky-purply in real life - I haven't got the colour balance right on my photo. It is the Basic Grey Kioshi papers) as well as Simon Says Stamp's "anything":

 

 

And lastly, here is my entry for the Show us your Twinchies challenge which is also "anything" this month. Cute isn't it? Perfect for an anniversary card.

Washi tape - first time?

Oh dear, I am so behind the times, aren't I? I've had two whole rolls of Washi tape for almost exactly a year now, since I bought it in Singapore on my last trip there. It was so eyebrow-raisingly expensive that it took me a while to choose - I went for red and grey because I thought they would be neutral-ish and go with most things. Because it was so costly, I've been wary of using it, but this week I broke my drought.

Now I'm wondering why I didn't use it before! It's fabby stuff! And because it's such hot property at the moment, there are oodles of designs and inspiration around using strips of it. I LOVE that because every scrapper/card-maker always has strips of scraps left over, and you know me. I don't throw anything out. I could start a shop selling strips if there was a market for them.

I lifted this card unashamedly from the lovely Nora, who is our guest designer for the current Scrap Whispers game. She used all Washi tape and I didn't. I combined it with my scrap strips, but doesn't it work well?

I liked the front so much that I did the same thing inside and the effect is delicious.

It is for these challenges:
CAS-ual Fridays - long and short
Simon Says Stamp - Washi tape
Sketch Saturday
Stampavie - spots and stripes

An interview

Scrap Whispers is back folks! Back with a vengeance. The game has started, the teams have been allocated and dates decided at record speed. The first secret LOs will be sent out on Friday for the first players to lift.

Meanwhile we have some great challenges in store for you, all inspired by our wonderful Guest Designer Nora Noll. The first one is to scrap an interview. I e-mailed my DH some questions to answer, because he has a way with words and I know he could make me laugh. But he spent most of the weekend battling with our new, improved (NOT) BT hub, so I let the poor man off. Instead I had a nice little chat with our pet gecko. Well he didn't say much, but you can get a lot from body language.

I used sketch #242 from Creative Scrappers, and combined it with the Challenge of the Week #2 from Scrap Jazz which is spots, stripes and brads.

So, are you going to take up the challenge to scrap an interview? You don't have to be a Scrap Whispers player. Just drop in, create your LO and post it on your blog, link back to Scrap Whispers in your post, and then enter using the Challenge Entries button at the top of the blog. Easy. See you over there!

Black, white and red all over

I have been mulling over the plan for this birthday card for our dear friend in Australia for the last few days, and yesterday evening in the car with DH I asked him to choose the colour to go with black and white. After being awkward and choosing black to start with (ha funny ha!) he picked red. Good choice.

Every time I work with black, white and red I am reminded of that old joke - probably the first joke I ever remembered as a child: What is black, white and read all over? A newspaper! Of course, it doesn't translate well into the written word, being a play on red/read, and the word "read" having two different pronunciations. But I have loved word-play as long as I have understood it.

It's for Sketch Saturday, Whiff of Joy (celebrate) and Simon Says Stamp (black, white and one other colour). Oh and did anybody notice the winner of the first Simon Says Stamp challenge of 2013? :-) Thank you to you all at SSS! Who says 13 is unlucky? 2013 is going to be BETTER than 2012 for us all!

Last supper

Creative Scrappers always publishes beautiful sketches for us to play with, and their first sketch of 2013 is no exception.

I've stuck fairly rigidly to it because I love it just the way it is. My LO is about one of the dear friends to whom we had to say goodbye when we left Australia.

My Bo Bunny Apple Cider 6"x6" paper pack matched the small amounts of colour in the photos perfectly, without making it look autumny. Because it isn't autumn at all, it's March and still high summer in Australia.

While I'm here, I'd also like to show you a winter birthday card. I had a play with sponging, which I'm not 100% happy with yet. Maybe I need to invest in some fancy sponges rather than using make-up sponges. I think I'm managing better with masking than I usually do though. You can't tell from the photo, but I stamped and inked straight onto the card without making a mess! The black frame has been cut out and stuck on around it purely so that the bottom of the stamp has some definition. I'm just realising even as I type that could have done that so much more easily if I'd just stamped the image onto a difference piece of card and matted it on the black - what a dunce!

I'm entering it into these challenges:
CASology: winter
Charisma Cardz: monochrome
Creative Card Crew: snow and ice (see the Stickles?)
Less Is More: black, white and a dash of colour (I hope there isn't too much)
Stampavie: blue and white

New love

This weekend a dear friend of mine is marrying her sweetheart. It is her birthday just a few days afterwards, her first birthday married to her man as they start their new lives together. Is that "new" enough?

Here is her card, and I'm entering it into these challenges:
House Mouse and Friends: "Christmas hugs or, kisses". I've gone for the kisses, because I'm done with Christmas for a while!
Stampin' for the Weekend and Basic Grey: "anything", and I've used that gorgeous rich red background paper from the Lime Rickey 6x6 pad.
Creative Card Crew: "Chinese New Year" which isn't for another month so I've gone with the red and gold.
Simon Says Stamp and Cute Card Thursday: "new"
Sketch Saturday

10 minute dash!

This was such a challenge for me! On CAS-ual Fridays, their challenge was to decide on a design, gather our supplies and then set the timer for 10 minutes and complete the card in that time. My additional challenge is to get it posted before the challenge closes, which was 54 minutes from when I opened their post. Gulp....

So everything was arranged except the timer on my phone. It was set to go to sleep after 2 minutes so I had to keep putting my pass-code in to check how long I had. I finished about 15 seconds after the timer went off, and I'm sure those 15 seconds were taken up with waking the dratted phone up!

Anyway, that is up to CAS-ual Fridays to decide. Here is my card anyway. I think that should be the last Christmas card for many months.

Happy New Year everyone!