Hello! A post mid-week from me to get in to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - I think I have about 15 hours left! I saw it was Furry Friends and Newton's Nook and as part of my happy mail last week from Make the Day Special was my first set from them - In Slow Motion - I couldn't resist.
I love this set - I've already used it once to decorate an envelope! - so I thought I'd use the sloth - how can a sloth not be a furry friend?
[Supplies: Newton's Nook In Slow Motion; Lawn Fawn Large Stitched Square Lawn Cuts; Memento Tuxedo Black; Versa Magic Hint of Pesto; Ranger Dye Lily Pad; Memento Cottage Ivy; Derwent Artist's Pencils; Caran D'Ache Prismallo Aquarelles; Copic Ciaos]
I had to look up a picture of a sloth on the internet to work out its fur. I stamped the sloth a couple of times to try out what media to colour with. The final result was a strange mixture of Copics, water colour pencil and coloured pencils. The body was coloured in Copics (E57 with C2 on top), with white water colour pencil on the top; the face, claws and branch were then coloured using coloured pencils.
Here's a little close up of the fur - I think it works quite well!
I then fussy cut him out. I also made a mask of the sloth and then the leaves on a post-it note and cut them out.
I positioned the sloth post-it on the card and got to stamping the leaves with some of my greens - Versa Magic Hint of Pesto; Memento Cottage Ivy; Ranger Dye Lily Pad - and masking off the ones I wanted to stand out.
After removing the masks, I positioned where I wanted to emboss my stitched square around the sloth, and then stamped the sentiment on the inside. I then ran it through my Grand Calibur - I need to emboss my dies a lot more. I really like the results.
Normally I'd pop the cut out piece up on foam, but I decided I'd like a more one layer card - it's much cheaper on postage! - so just used some double sided tape.
I'm quite impressed I managed this today, but my 4 year old helped me by sharpening my pencils and doing a bit of colouring beside me while her sister had a long nap.
Thanks so much for reading! Hope your week is going really well.
Hello! So who is still doing The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge? I'm still going, with the odd hiatus - sometimes you have to do housework! This card was inspired by Kathy Racoosin's Day 8 post, where she created an amazing card background just using a roll of tape and markers. It was pretty inspiring, so I came up with my own interpretation. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll have seen the first few photos, but not the finished product!
Basically I started with a piece of watercolour paper and took a couple of my Spellbinders Nestabilities Large Circles and drew around them in a random pattern with some of my purple Spectrum Aquas, overlapping to create the different shapes. I then got to colouring in between the lines using all my different purple and blue markers and pencils - from my Spectrum Aquas, to my lonely blue Inktense and my Caran D'Ache water colours and my Artists pencils too. This was the result:
It looked a bit odd with the water colour pencil as is, so I blended those bits with water to soften it up. In hindsight, I shouldn't have used a water colour marker to draw the circles - they naturally bled a bit, and it looks a bit messy up close. You don't get anywhere by not experimenting though!
Pretty funky, but what to do with it? I've seen some great inlaid die cutting on cards, so after watching a Jennifer McGuire video and one from Lawn Fawn, I got busy with my CB Thanks die cutting it out from the corner of the funky panel and then several from white card stock:
I then glued the white Thanks together using my new bottle of Ranger Multi Medium Matte with its precision tip - that makes it much easier! - and then added the coloured panel on top. To stick it back into the panel, I put some double sided sticky tape on the back of the panel so the blank space for the thanks was now sticky. I stuck it on carefully, and put back in with my tweezers all the little extra die cut pieces from the 't' and 'h' and 'a' etc. Blimey, that is fiddly work!
I then simply attached it to my card blank. It's quite subtle because it blends in with the background, but some Wink of Stella and Glossy Accents help it pop out a bit more.
[Supplies: Water colour card; Spellbinders Nestabilities Large Circle Dies (out of stock where I purchased them); Spectrum Aqua - Floral; Derwent Artists' Pencils; Caran D'Ache Prismallo Aquarelles; Derwent Inktense Pencils; Clearly Besotted Thanks die; Wink of Stella; Glossy Accents; Ranger Multi Medium Matte; Precision tip; Double sided tape]
Thank you so much for reading and have a lovely weekend :)
It's been quite a week and amongst other things, the 30 Day Colouring Challenge hosted by the lovely Kathy Racoosin started. I am LOVING it. I've been posting on Instagram every day so far and there are so many people in social media land joining in, it's really inspirational. If you don't know what I'm on about, check out Kathy's blog for more information and join in if you can!
Enough rambling, did I actually make any cards? Well yes I did! I focused on Father's Day cards as that is coming up in a couple of weeks and I had three to make - my Dad, my Father in Law and my Husband!
I've been using some Lawn Fawn stamps I got a couple of months ago, which is nice because they haven't been out of their packet much! Here they are:
My Dad:
My Dad loves reading, so the CB Bookworm set linked with the LF Best Pun Ever fitted nicely. The cup was stamped in Lemon Twist Ranger Dye ink, and like the rest, coloured in using my Derwent Artist's pencils. I cut it from the matching die and covered it in Wink of Stella then glossy accents to make it stand out. I cut a slit in the top and popped in the die cut book worm. I think he's cute. The backing paper is LF Let's Polka.
My Father in Law:
Again I used the LF Best Pun Ever set, stamping the cheese onto a panel of water colour card stock in Lemon Twist and appropriately, Cheese Puff Ranger Dye ink, with the grater in Memento London Fog. I coloured them in with my Prismallo Aquaralles and gave them a light wash with water to bring the colour out. The sentiment is simply stamped in Ranger Jet Black Archival ink. The background is LF Let's Polka Mon Amie. I think he'll like the terrible pun!
My husband:
I love the little ice lollies from the Best Pun Ever set. The little faces that go with them are so so cute! As we have two little girls, it seemed appropriate to stamp the larger lolly in the middle of two little ones My husband likes green and my eldest loves pink, so that was the colour scheme I went with. They're simply stamped onto water colour cardstock with Ranger Jet Black Archival ink, coloured in with Spectrum Aquas (from the floral set), and given a light wash with water. I thought it would be fun to put the sentiment on the inside too - making the 'Coolest' blue (Blue Ribbon Ranger Dye)
[Supplies used on cards: Lawn Fawn Best Pun Ever; Lawn Fawn Let's Polka (currently out of stock where I purchased it) and Let's Polka Mon Amie; Clearly Besotted Book Worm; Ranger Dye Inks; Ranger Archival Ink; Derwent Artist's Pencils; Spectrum Aqua Pens; Caran D'Ache Prismallo Aquarelles]
It's so far been a productive week and we're only on Day 5 of the challenge - I don't think I've made so many cards in a week!
Thanks, as always, for reading and I hope you get the chance to join in with me and everyone else on the challenge. Oh and it's release day for Clearly Besotted Stamps - it's a good one ;)
They keep talking about a heat wave, but it's avoiding West Yorkshire at the moment, so with the grey weather in mind I decided to try the challenge at Addicted to CAS - Code word Showers.
The card top is a piece of water colour card die cut from the Memory Box stitched rectangles with the images stamped in Ranger Archival Ink. I used the bicycle from Clearly Besotted's Good Times set (the first thing I purchased from them and it's still my favourite!) and the umbrella from the Mama Elephant Up and Away set. I then added some colour using my Prismallo Aquarelles, and some rain dashes (ME Up and Away) in Memento London Fog. The sentiment (also ME Up and Away) is in Versa Magic Night Sky rather than my usual tuxedo black for a change!
Been a long week without much crafting, and it's funny how frustrated you can get without a bit of 'me' time, so I was grateful for baby's long nap this morning.
Thanks for reading! It's nearly the weekend again and hopefully it will be a bit brighter up north :)
PS Apologies for the not so great picture. I need to work out a better set up in my tiny craft space and also get a decent camera!
