Sweet

The current Twinchie challenge is "autumn". I used a Kanban stamp coloured with Copics and some punched leaves out of Basic Grey scraps, with the obligatory Stickles in copper.

While the Stickles was drying, I put together this card from the latest Sketch Saturday sketch. I wanted the card background to frame the Twinchie, but instead of cutting out an extra piece, I decided to experiment with cutting windows out of the patterned paper backgrounds instead. I know, I never make things easy for myself, do I?! But I think it looks a bit different. I rather like it. 

The Basic Grey paper is from the Bittersweet range (brown) and Green at Heart (the pink background), the pink tag from another BG scrap, and teeny scraps from Eskimo Kisses for the punched leaves - and their challenge this week is punches. Cute Card Thursday's challenge is also "autumn", Charisma Cardz wants "double", and Simon Says Stamp is asking for a stamp.

 Here's a simpler card for Less Is More's "pink and brown" challenge - almost my favourite colour combination. If Basic Grey can't see the small punches on the other card, then they can use this one as my entry!

ETA: Apparently Twinchies have to be square. D'oh! OK, off to try again....

Wishing my life away

No I'm not really. But on this glorious early autumn day, with the sun shining on the beech leaves which the sea wind has dried to that delicious rust already, to be thinking about Christmas seems as if I'm trying to hasten it. And I'm not! Autumn is my favourite season, and today IS all the reasons why I love it so much.

But challenges go as challenges go, and this one happens to be for Christmas.

Now isn't that pretty? It's called a Double Dutch Fold card. I had a practise run last week and made a birthday card for a friend which I can't show you yet, but it's very pink. This blue one has:
pearls and swirls for Stampin' for the Weekend
Christmas for Creative Card Crew
anything goes for Simon Says Stamp with about an hour to spare!

It is also a lift of a lovely card for a challenge over at Scrapbook.com in their Gallery Inspired Challenge. And for the same challenge, here is the LO which I started at the new crop I went to on Saturday. I love it, both the LO and the crop!

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.