SJ Card Kit Club October

It's the end of October, and that means the SJ Card Kit Club reveal again.

This month Jenny sent out the challenge kit. It was indeed a challenge for me, because it was mostly Thanksgiving and Hallowe'en, which of course we don't celebrate here, although Hallowe'en is getting bigger every year. By the time I had taken out those elements, there wasn't much left to work with, but that just means a better challenge, and you know how much I like those!

Here are the cards I made with my pack:

This started life as a cream card, dry embossed with this lovely scene. I got out my almost unused brayer (as you can tell from my rubbish technique!) and my Distress Inks. The pumpkins are coloured in with Wink of Stella pens and glimmer gorgeously.

This simple one came next, because the green didn't go with anything else so I singled it out. I added a birthday greeting, although that was not the theme.

The leaf that I die-cut from the previous card then got the inking treatment and was added to this one. The orange spider paper made a beautiful tree because it looks almost like branches at first glance.

The dry embossed greeting was painstakingly coloured over with another Wink of Stella pen, and more die-cut leaves added. 

My second attempt at brayering - I'm getting better - and my first attempt at a spider.

Now this spider is much better - I'm learning! The "wall" paper began arrived a brightly-coloured Trick or Treat design, and I painted over it with sand texture paint (a Lidl special from last year) and I'm thrilled with the result.

I might add a "Hang in there" greeting, and a thread to the top of the window-frame, but for now they're fairly universal.

Next month it's a Christmas theme. I know today is Hallowe'en, but I can't believe Christmas is already in sight. I'm not prepared in the slightest...

SJ Card Kit Club September

The SJ Card Kit Club began its second season in September with a new player, Debbie. Nora sent out the challenge pack and the theme was birthdays. Her style was young, modern, bright and sugary - perfect for birthdays. Here is the link to everyone's cards for September (except Virginia's, which appear here) and here are my cards. It was refreshing to work with Nora's colour scheme.

Plants vs Zombies Peashooter card

My nephew is 10 tomorrow. His current game craze, when he's not playing Skylanders, is Plants vs Zombies. For those who have not had the pleasure of this "cultural learning opportunity", it's a shoot-'em-up between those afore-mentioned "realistic" characters, and he loves it. DH played against him last time we visited them, and I could hear my nephew directing my gullible man to make his character "go and stand over there, Uncle" which DH obligingly did, and promptly got munched. Several times.

Nephew has got Skylanders cards for the past few years and to be honest, I'm getting a bit tired of asking him who his latest favourite character is, making a fancy card featuring said character, then on the day being told that he has a new favourite. Blow that for a game of soldiers. Or a game of Plants vs Zombies. Time for a new subject!

Pinterest failed me, so I turned to Google for inspiration and found a distinctly uninspiring selection of precisely two P vs Z cards. It was no good, I had to design my own.

It's like punch-art, but using dies. Die-art? No! That really doesn't sound right, does it?

Here is Peashooter, the principal plant character.

Don't care whether it's his favourite or not, it's the only one I could make a realistic version of using my dies, so that's what he's getting. I have to say, I'm thrilled to bits with how this turned out.

Make a fish

If I had had a stamp saying "make a fish", I would have used it on these cards 'cos I'm a punny kinda girl. But I haven't, so the standard one will have to do.

I made the first one for a blokey friend's birthday, and made the other just because I had everything out and the other half of the piece of card was going begging. You never know when that gender-neutral sort of thing might come in handy, do you? I haven't used a landscape card folded along the side for ages.

They are for Less Is More's one layer card challenge this week, which is at sea. There are some completely delightful cards entered, so now I'm going to leave some happy comments for people and cheer up this grey day.

Felt and flowers

This card is for the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday blog challenge of Fun with Felt, and Cuttlebug Mania's flower challenge, as well as an NSD card challenge on Scrapbook.com. I cut the flowers with a new die set that I got with my birthday gift card. I'm saving it for the birthday next month of one of my fellow choristers.

I haven't done cute and bold for quite a while. It's nice to get back to it again.

Mother's Day

I was given some decoupage kits a while back, and I've not tried them until I took them to our monthly crop to play with. I wasn't sure whether I liked the results at first, but I have to say they've grown on me. And I know that my Mum will be very happy with her lavender card.

I'm entering this one into the Cute Card Thursday challenge for this week, which is Mother's Day.

Cupcakes

This week's challenge at Less is More is texture, and Simon Says Stamp's is anything. Combining these with Sketch Saturday's sketch this the week, I produced these two cards. The photos are not very good but the pink is embossed with a Happy Birthday folder, and the panels and cakes are all raised on foam dots.

All white

Less is More is 5 years old this week - happy birthday LIM!

They are challenging us to produce a card that is white on white, with metallic accents and black stamping allowed. This is a version of a card that I found on Pinterest absolutely ages ago and have been meaning to try out ever since.

Clean and Aussie

Hello all! I'm so ready for spring, aren't you? All this mucky, grey weather, horizontal rain and rubbish light levels. Pfft. I'm trying to encourage it to get things moving by going from Christmas to spring in one post. Hehee.

Less Is More's challenge this week is "down under". I got this darling stamp when we were living in Perth, WA, and that year many people back home got it on their Christmas cards from Australia. Since then it hasn't seen the light of day - it's so distinctive that you can't really use it two years running, and the year after we came back to the UK. I've made a few of these all the same and this Christmas I'll be sending them to some of my Aussie friends to give it a new lease of life.

ETA: While I was leaving comments on other people's cards, I came across another challenge site that I haven't seen before: Crazy 4 Challenges also has "down under" (C4C321) as this month's subject, so I'm entering it there too, thanks to Laurie.

CASology's current challenge is "adore", Cute Card Thursday's is "ladies only" and Simon Says Stamp's is "anything goes". To that end I created this:

I need to explain it a little, because I spent 10 minutes faffing around with my camera and I could NOT get the gold to show. It's a gold outline sticker matted on gold mirror board. Honest. I coloured it with Copics. I hope there's enough white space for it to be classed as CAS.

Have a good week, and roll on spring.

Resolved?

Hello and a Happy New Year!

Yes, yes, I'm a bit late. As usual. But there's a reason. I gave up making new year's resolutions ages ago - I knew I would never be able to stick to them so I didn't bother trying. Then last year in that post-family-Christmas-visit, house-is-a-disaster-zone, still-flippin'-working, hate-this-dark-wet-dreary-weather feeling of miserable anti-climax, I realised something quite ridiculous. I have done virtually no crafting for myself since I went back to work in September 2013. That's 16 months ago.

Not that I've been idle. In 2015 I made: one frantic, massive, 50-page scrapbook for the departing vicar. 48 birthday and anniversary cards for everybody else. 54 Christmas cards to send out. 20-odd candles for the church. 130-odd hearts for the church. And for me? A handful of candles. WHAT?? What's happened to ME? I've disappeared - got buried under a heap of the rest of humanity's needs and requests. Look, even my blog still has last summer's background photo on it. This has got to stop!

So for 2016 I HAVE made a new year's resolution, for the first time in years: to stop saying "yes" to others, if it means saying "no" to myself. I'm going to craft. I want to get back into scrapbooking, but not doing DT work and setting challenges and administrating stuff for others. I'm going to scrap for myself. Cards are for other people of course, and I'm going to continue to enjoy making them and sending them out. People who don't reciprocate will be taken off the list, sent bought cards or birthday wishes on Facebook.

My goodness, I'm sounding HARD! Too harsh? NO! No, I'm going to stick to this. (Besides, the church has enough candles and hearts to keep them going for a while...!) It's going to take a while to get back into it though. Today (day off) I decided to make a card for a few challenges, as I used to do regularly. It took 3 sittings, with me getting up and down, frustrated with an aching back and playing hide-and-seek with my mojo. I don't even know whether I like what I've created, but it's done now, and ready to send.

Less is more: the kissing technique. I "kissed" the clouds, the leaves and the tree stump, although only the clouds were completely solid stamps. The green ink I used on the leaves didn't work very well.
Simon Says Stamp: Create with critters.
Stamping Sensations: anything goes with a die.

Oh man. I've just realised that foxy looks as if he's got a tree trunk stuck up his... drat, drat. I'm so out of practice at this...