Stampin' Royalty - Colour challenge

Today is the time to reveal the second challenge for my guest DT stint over at Stampin' Royalty. Thank you for everyone for submitting your gorgeous flower themed creations last week. This week we have a colour challenge for you - Old Olive, Soft Suede, Tangelo Twist and Very Vanilla. If you don't have these colours, you can use anything you have that is close. If you hop over to Stampin' Royalty you will see the gorgeous inspiration from the DT. 

As I went with a super feminine card last week I thought it was time for something for the males this time. I masked off the edges of a panel of Very Vanilla card and used a foam applicator to sponge a light layer of Soft Suede. I then stamped the ship from The Open Sea set. After masking off the ship, I stamped the World map in the background after first stamping it off once so it won't be too prominent. Then I added splotches from the Gorgeous Grunge set, again after stamping them off first. Last, I stamped the sentiment from the Just Sayin' set in Old olive, and fussy cut it. Then I realised I actually have the dies for the speech bubbles and felt a bit silly about fussy cutting. Last, I stamped the anchor from The Open Sea in Calypso Coral and fussy cut that too. As a finishing touch I added some Soft Suede around the edges of the front panel and attached to a Very Vanilla card.

I would like to link up with the following challenges:
STAMPlorations - July challenge Stamp and Distress
Inkspirational - Grunge
Make My Monday - The Sea

Card: Stampin' Up Very Vanilla
Ink: Stampin' Up Old Olive, Soft Suede and Calypso Coral
Stamps: Stampin' Up The Open Sea, World Map, Just Sayin', Gorgeous Grunge

Happy Birthday from the herd

Nothing like getting a shipment of new stamps, is there? Except then you face the problem of choosing which one to start with. This is my absolute favourite stamp from the new Stampin' Up cattie. I mean, it has an alpaca on it! Or a llama, however, an animal from the alpaca-llama family of quadrupeds, you can never have too much of them in your life. Why are you laughing? I'm sure the term alpaca-llama family of animals is the correct scientific term. I mean, I'm a scientist after all. 

I love alpacas. There is an alpaca farm not far from us, and every time we drive past I hope the alpacas are out in the fields. I know it's going to be a good day if the alpacas are out. 

Anyhow, I love this stamp. And it's perfect for watercolouring!! I used my Stampin' Up inks and an Aquaflo brush. Then all I did was to add the sentiment and stamp the balloons.

This card was inspired by the new sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches, although I did flip it onto it's side kinda... I also think the herd is perfect for the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where the theme is All Creatures Great and Small and Just Inspirational Challenges where the theme is Any Animal. I'm also linking up at Addicted to Stamps and Craft Your Passion where Anything Goes this week.

Card: 300 gsm white card, Daler&Rowney 300 gsm watercolour paper Aquafine
Stamps: Stampin' Up From the Herd and Just Sayin'
Ink: Tsukineko StazOn Jet Black, Stampin' Up Baked Brown Sugar, Basic Black, Basic Gray, Blushing Bride, Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Daffodil Delight, Pink Pirouette, Real Red, Pumpkin Pie, Regal Rose, Sahara Sand, Smoky Slate, Soft Sky, So Saffron, Wild Wasabi
Other: Lawn Fawn Large Stitched Rectangle Stackables

Lots of weird things

This card contains several things that are very strange for me, which I don't use very much. I don't use much of orange, it's a very difficult colour for me. I also almost never use buttons, they make cards difficult to post, and just don't feel... well... right. However, I was very inspired by the challenge over at The Friday Mashup which involved a sketch and to use two different embellishments. I hardly every use any, or if I do, it's almost always gems. So this time I thought I would go "overboard" and use not one, not two but three embellishments. But somehow the style of the card still feels quite clean and simple, so I like it despite all the weird stuff on it. One reason I like it so much is the amazing colour combo over at Colour Me...! The colours are so bright and go really well together to my big surprise. 

I would also like to link up over at CASE-ing the Catty, where the theme this week is to use a new DSP. I love the cool new Irresistibly Yours DSP and have used it already with markers and with my cool new Tim Holtz spritzer tool. This time I thought I would use distress inks, and was inspired by the image on page 14 of the SALE-a-bration cattie. It's such a super versatile DSP. I am also linking up over at Craft Hoarders Anonymous where the theme is to choose your challenge by picking from different categories. I picked ink for colouring medium, twine for fiber, stamping and die cutting for technique, embossing for texture and buttons and bling for embellishments.

Inspiration picture from page 14 of the
Stampin' Up Sale-a-bration catalogue.

Craft Hoarders Anonymous Challenge

Card: Stampin' Up Bermuda Bay and Rich Razzleberry card, Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm card
DSP: Stampin' Up Irresistibly Yours 
Ink: Tim Holtz Distress Inks Mustard Seed, Peacock Feathers, Seedless Preserves and Spiced Marmalade
Stamps: Stampin' Up Four Feathers and dies, Just Sayin'
Other: Yellow twine, Stampin' Up buttons subtles, Papermania adhesive gems

Love Ya

This card is for all of you. All you wonderful people who visit my blog. We just passed 10,000 views the other day, all in less than a year!! So thank you for visiting, and I hope you will come back again. Make yourself at home, and don't be a stranger, feel free toleave a comment to let me know you passed by. I will try my best to repay the favour. Or just hang around, no need to talk if you don't want to. I'm happy to make you a cup of tea, or coffee. Maybe something chocolate-y to go with that?

This card was inspired by the current Color Throwdown and Freshly Made Sketch. I'm also entering over at Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge where the theme is Old and New as well as the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge where the theme is Something New. My old is the red card stock and the stamps, whereas the new is the black and white digi papers. I haven't used digi papers before, but I realised I don't have any black and white crafting papers, so I had to turn to the interwebs for them.

Card: Stampin' Up Real Red, Coloured 240 gsm kraft card black, Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm white card, Dovecraft 110 gsm premium vellum

Stamps: Stampin' Up Just Sayin', Gorgeous Grunge

Ink: Stampin' Up Real Red, Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark

Papers: Digipapers from http://freescrapbookingsupplies.blogspot.de/ and http://meinlilapark.blogspot.ch/

Other: Papermania Seafoam White embossing powder, Stampin' Up Basic Pearls

Pink feathers

This card is for my Mum who will have a rough few days coming up due to some health issues. I would appreciate any good thought being sent her way, I'll sure be sending out as much of that as I possibly can.

I'm really diggin' the Four Feathers stamp set. I love inking it up in various colours. I also love the current Retro Sketch. And I thought it made a great combo with the colours from the new The Challenge. I'm really getting into this whole clean and simple thing. 

Card: Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card
Stamps: Stampin' Up Four Feathers and Just Sayin' 
Ink: Stampin' Up Blushing Bride, Smoky Slate and Strawberry Slush

Fun sketch

This is just a super quick post to publish an extra card for today as I realised the challenge deadline is coming to a close in just a few hours. I made this card inspired by the My Favourite Things sketch challenge. You just have to hop over there to check in the designer card, it's one of the most gorgeous cards I have ever seen.

I thought the sketch was perfect for using up some of those paper scraps which I can't get rid of. I would have loved to have the MFT square grid die which would have made this card so much easier to make, but alas I had to fussy cut my little squares, and live with the fact that they are just a little bit crooked. I cut the squares from lots of leftover papers and adhered to black cardstock. I stamped the sentiment from Just Sayin' and heat embossed it using white powder onto black card. I then used my 80's Glam Sharpies to colour the white embossed sentiment. I love that technique, it's so much fun. I'm also entering the card in The Pink Elephant Challenge where Anything goes this week.

Cardstock: Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm white card, Coloured 240 gsm kraft card black
Papers: Paper scraps from Stampin' Up DSPs
Stamps: Stampin' Up Just Sayin'
Ink: Versamark 
Other: 80's Glam Sharpies, Papermania Seafoam White embossing powder

Galaxy technique

I'm a bit early with tomorrow's blog post. So if you read this on Wednesday, close the browser and come back tomorrow as this is meant to be Thursday's post. Just kidding, just kidding, read on. The reason I have to publish this post a bit early is that I just received some paint, just a few hours before the end of a challenge deadline that I really wanted to create a card for. The story goes as follows.

When I saw the galaxy technique challenge on The Friday Mashup last Friday, I immediately watched the linked technique videos as I just loved the look of the DT inspiration cards. This is the great video I used to help me get to grips with the technique. And then I immediately headed up to my craft room to play with my Distress paints. Only to discover that I actually don't have black paint. Ever so often I do this, I see a product used so much in blogs and videos that somehow my brain has convinced me that I have that in my stash. Very disappointed, I had to wait for several long days until my paints finally arrived today, only a few hours before the challenge deadline. So off I went into the craft room like greased lightning, and after a bit of playing around with the paints I managed to put together this card. 

For the layout I was inspired by this week's Freshly Made Sketch, and for the colours I used the amazing palette over at Colour Me...! I'm also entering the card over at Simon Says Monday Challenge where Anything goes.

I created the galaxy according to the instructions in the video using the Distress paints. I stamped the stars in Versamark and heat embossed using white powder. I stamped the sentiment using Versamark and heat embossed using white powder. I then coloured the white embossed parts using a Copic marker to match the colours in the galaxy.

Card: Daler & Rowney 300 gsm Aquafine watercolour paper, coloured 240 gsm kraft card in black and purple
Paints: Tim Holtz Distress Paints Black Soot, Dusty Concord, Picket Fence, Spiced Marmelade and Seedless Preserves
Stamps: Lawn Fawn Critters Ever after, Stampin' Up Just Sayin'
Ink: Tsukineko Versamark, Copic YR04
Other: Papermania Seafoam White embossing powder 

Fusion sunflower

When I saw the sunny and summery sunflower picture over at Fusion card challenge I knew I wanted to play along. My card isn't so much an interpretation of the photo as a copy of it more or less. I've never said that being creative is my strong side, I take things I see and interpret them rather literally. I'm also participating in this week's Shopping our Stash where the them is the sun or clouds. I have a SUNflower and lots of clouds, and I used paper from my stash for the card.

For my card I used a free digistamp from Tim Coffey Art. I coloured the beautiful sunflower using Stampin' Up Blendabilites and used some stampin Up papers for the background and a stamp from the Just Sayin' set for a simple and quick but colourful card. A bit of Tim Holtz distress stickles in the middle of the flower for that final touch. 

Card: Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm white card, Hobbycraft three shades of blue and Three shades of yellow 160 gsm card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card
Stamps: Sunflower digi from timcoffeyart.com
Ink: Stampin' Up Daffodil Delight, Daffodil Delight Blendabilities
Paper: Stampin' Up Polka Dot Parade and Sunshine and Sprinkles DSP
Other: Ranger Tim Holtz Distress stickles Mustard Seed, Xcut dies scalloped circle

CASEing the catty

This is the end of the current Stampin' Up Catty, CASEing the catty has reached the last section entitled Artistic Expression. So I thought I better play along as they will move on to the holiday catty next and I have virtually nothing from there, so I won't be able to play along much. But this time I got to play along, and whip out my Blendies. My inspiration is from page 166 in the UK catty (seems to be page 168 in the US catty I have downloaded, not sure where the difference is) and looks like this

From the Stampin' Up Annual Catalogue page 166

Making this card I realised I don't have any neutral DSPs at all, something I surely need to rectify soon. So I went with a monochrome banner instead. I used a stamp from the So Very Grateful set as I don't have the Vivid Vases stamp. For the sentiment, I used a marker to colour the text from one of the speech bubbles from Just Sayin'. I don't have a nice die to cut out the stamp, so I just fussy cut using a template I downloaded online.

Card: Craft UK kraft card, Stampin' Up Whisper White, Chocolate Chip and Rich Razzleberry card

Stamps: Stampin' Up So Very Grateful, Just Sayin', Gorgeous Grunge

Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Up Crumb Cake, Blendabilities Coastal Cabana, Daffodil Delight, Old Olive, Rich Razzleberry 

Other: Doily and twine from my stash (non-SU)