Bloom with Hope in watercolour

I am enjoying another evening of being home alone, and have been glued to my crafting desk for the whole evening. One of the results is this card, which was inspired by the Retro Sketch challenge, which is ending in just a few hours. I was also inspired by the wonderful colours over at ColourQ. For a while I have been planning to do a watercolour style flower card, and I thought this colour and sketch combo would be perfect for it. I'm also entering over at A Little Bit Crafty where the theme is Anything goes but not Christmas, and it's fun to take a bit of a break from all those Christmas cards.

I stamped the flowers from Bloom With Hope in Antique Linen onto watercolour paper and used an aquaflo brush to colour the flowers using Stampin' Up inks. I also painted a faint pink around the flowers and the edges of the watercolour paper, but unfortunately as the photo had to be taken in really abysmal lighting conditions it doesn't show. I coloured the sentiment using marker pens. I selected to use cardstock in Crisp Cantaloupe and selected a matching paper from the Sweet Sorbet DSP.

Card: Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe, Daler&Rowney Aquafine Watercolour paper
Stamps: Stampin' Up Bloom With Hope, Yippee-Skippee
Ink: Tim Holtz Antique Linen, Stampin' Up Bermuda Bay, Calypso Coral, Pink Pirouette, Pistachio Pudding
Other: Stampin' Up Sweet Sorbet DSP, Crisp Cantaloupe Thick Baker's Twine 

Spring colours

I am in complete denial. I refuse to admit it's November. It's 20 degrees and bright sunshine outside. I picked raspberries from my garden yesterday. I cannot be November. Especially as it was August yesterday. I swear. So instead of making Christmas cards or fall cards, I decided to pick beautiful spring colours and flowers for today's card. 

The inspiration for today's card is a Viva La Verve sketch. I used papers from the lovely Stampin' Up Sweet Sorbet DSP and stamps from the Petal Parade set. Funnily enough, I didn't like the stamp set at all at first, but it grew on me. I also didn't like Summer Starfruit at all, but again it slowly grew on me. I didn't even like the DSP at first. So given that I didn't like any components of this card, I think it turned out rather nice after all.

Card: Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card
Paper: Stampin' Up Sweet Sorbet
Stamps: Stampin' Up Petal Parade, Bloom With Hope
Ink: Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe, Pistachio Pudding and Pool Party
Other: X-cut scalloped circle die

Poppy Challenge #4

Inspiration is funny sometimes. I really loved this week's Poppy sketch, and immediately got an idea what I wanted to make. But I couldn't make that work, and at the same time this idea came to me instead. I really like the Banner Blast stamp set and matching punch, but haven't used it very much (isn't that always the same story!). I didn't have the exact colours for the challenge, but I used the closest replacements from the Stampin' Up palette.

I guess it's quite obvious from the card how it was created. I stamped the banners and punched out, stamped the background using Gorgeous Grunge and the star from the Banner Blast set. Last, I stamped the sentiment and attached everything into place. 

Card: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe and Coastal Cabana card
Inks: Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe, Coastal Cabana and Pistachio Pudding
Stamps: Stampin' up Banner Blast, Gorgeous Grunge and Yippee-Skippee!
Other: Stampin' Up Banner punch

Birthday present bag and card

I'm going for a birthday celebration tomorrow, and wanted to make a customised gift bag and matching card for the present. I got my inspiration from the beautiful pastel yellows, greens and pink/coral of the chocolate box I bought as a present. 

The inspirational colour combo

For the card, I used the colour combo from the chocolate box and I stole the idea for the card from my guest stamper, my Sis. She made the awesome green and pink birthday card you can see below, and I used the green hardwood background as an inspiration for my card. I added the same Petite Petals flowers I used for the bag and added a birthday sentiment in bright yellow. It was so much fun stamping with my sis. She got very creative and also made some artwork for her home.

Birthday Card made by Sis that I used for inspiration.

My Sis got inspired by stamping and made this scrapbook page.

To create my bag I measured the chocolate box and calculated the size of the gift bag that would be needed. I ended up using a 10x12 in piece of DSP, and used the remaining 2 in piece to create the tags for the ribbon. I scored the DSP at 1.5 and 8.5 in in the longer direction and at 5 1/4 and 6 3/4 in in the shorter direction (see sketch below). Then just cut as indicated, fold and put some double sided adhesive on the small squares and one of the long side "flaps" on both sides and assemble. I got the idea for this bag from the Pootles blog, which has a video showing how to assemble the bag (although it's a different size to mine), check it out. I then inked the edges of the bag with Daffodil Delight ink and a foam applicator and created 2 tags with the scalloped tag punch. I inked the edges of the tags as well and attached the ribbon to the back of one of the tags. I then attached the tags to the gift bag. To finish off the bag, I stamped four flowers in Pistachio Pudding using the Petite Petals matching stamp set and punch, curled the leaves of the flowers and attached adhesive gems. 

For the card, I stamped the hardwood stamp in Pistachio Pudding onto white cardstock. I also stamped the birthday sentiment from See Ya Later in Daffodil Delight and cut out in the shape of a banner. I used the same ink and a foam applicator to ink the edges of the banner. I stamped flowers in Daffodil Delight and Crisp Cantaloupe I attached everything into place and matted onto Crisp Cantaloupe cardstock. 

The theme of this week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is Five. I'm entering my card with five flowers. I'm also entering this card as my second contribution to Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where the theme is "Anything goes" (my first contribution is here).

Card: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Card, Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card
Paper: Stampin' Up Sycamore Street DSP
Inks: Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe, Daffodil Delight and Pistachio Pudding
Stamps: Stampin' Up Hardwood, Petite Petals and See Ya Later 
Other: Green Ribbon from my stash, Stampin' Up Petite Petals Punch, Papercraft adhesive gems in Capsule Verde

Hey chickie

I know pretty much on first look whether I like a stamp brand or not. The stamps with the girl with no mouth - freaky! Not my thing at all (and no offence meant to anybody, I know there are some seriously beautiful cards out there with those stamps, but like I said, just not my thing). But then there are others that I just fall for from the first time I see them, and would love to buy every single stamp and die they have ever made. I am a sucker for the cute cartoon characters. And Paper Smooches is definitely one of those brands. I finally bought a few of their classic stamp sets, including this one called Chubby Chums. It actually reminded me of me and Best Friend. We are both chubby chums. Chubby in a very cute and loveable way!

My stamps arrived just in time to make a card for Best Friend's birthday. I love love love the Hey Chickie sentiment. Makes me chucle every time. And I thought, what could be better than to celebrate my first Paper Smooches card than to participate in the Paper Smooches Sparks Challenge. This week it's a sketch challenge (see below). The round circles in the background inspired me to stamp the little chickie all over the background. I was also inspired by the CAS-ual Friday challenge, which this week was three thirds. I used three gems and three XO:s on the tag which covers about a third of the card surface. As a bonus, I used three colours for the chickies in the background, and there is three scalloped tag ends on the two tags on the card. How's that for threes! I will also submit the card to this week's Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge, despite the fact that there is already more than 430 submissions for the challenge, and this will just get lost in the crowd. But the theme this week is keep it clean and simple and I figured if the shoe fits...

For my card, I stamped the chickie onto white cardstock using black ink, coloured using Sharpies and fussycut using scissors. I used the Stampin' Up scalloped tag punch to make the two tags, one in Crisp Cantaloupe and the other in vellum. I stamped the chickie onto the background panel in Crisp Cantaloupe, Daffodil Delight and Tangerine tango. Then I just adhered everything into place and added the twine and gems. I also stamped the cute little moo inside the card.

Cardstock: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Cardstock, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, Stampin Up' Crisp Cantaloupe cardstock, Dovecraft 110 gsm premium vellum
Stamps: Paper Smooches Chubby Chums
Inks: Hobbycraft black pigment ink, Stampin' Up Crisp Cantaloupe, Daffodil Delight and Tangerine Tango
Other: Stampin' Up Scalloped tag punch, 80's Glam Sharpies, Papermania adhesive gems Capsule Sunshine, yellow twine from my stash

Thank you cards with Wildflower Meadow

My most avid (and possibly only) fan, my Mum, asked me to make a few Thank You cards for her. Always eager to oblige should anyone have a need for my cards, I put together this little set of sweet cards using the Stampin' Up Wildflower Meadow set with matching stamp and embossing folder. It's so quick and easy to make embossed cards now that I have my Sizzix, compared to using the rolling pin method I have used before. Embossing is now a breeze and I want to make an endless amount of embossed cards. For these cards I chose to use the Stampin' Up seasonal colours for 2013-2015. I printed the sentiments as I don't have a Finnish "thank you" stamp. The font I used is called Xiomara and I downloaded it for free from here. I used this website which contains the RGB codes for all Stampin' Up colours to match the colours of the prints as closely as possible to the ink and cardstock.  I think I need to calibrate my printer colour profile as the Coastal Cabana didn't quite match up, the rest of them were great. 

I cut out Crumb Cake card in 10x20 cm to make eight 10x10 cm cards. I cut a mat of the coloured cardstock 9.5x9.5 cm. I stamped the image onto white cardstock and embossed using my Sizzix. I then cut the stamped and embossed image to 9x9cm. I printed the sentiments and cut using scissors. I also cut the banners using scissors. Finally I attached everything onto the Crumb Cake card and added an adhesive gem.

Inks: Stampin' Up Strawberry Slush, Coastal Cabana, Crisp Cantaloupe and Pistachio Pudding
Cardstock: Stampin' Up Strawberry Slush, Coastal Cabana, Crisp Cantaloupe, Pistachio Pudding, Crumb Cake, Hobbycraft white 160 gsm cardstock
Stamps: Wildflower Meadow
Other: embossing folder Wildflower Meadow, adhesive gems either clear and coloured using my 80's glam Sharpies or from Papermania Capsule verde.

Turtle friend - late birthday card

I realised the other day that I missed a friend's birthday, so I wanted to make a card quickly and also play on the theme of being late. This adorable little turtle friend is from the Stampin' Up Fox and Friends stamp set and I think he is perfect for a late Birthday Card.

I stamped my little turtle friend on Pistachio Pudding cardstock using Pistachio Pudding ink. I also stamped him onto white cardstock, and cut it out in the shape of a circle. I fussycut the scalloped circle in Crisp Cantaloupe cardstock. I used the Hobbycraft alphabet stamp to stamp the "Sorry I'm late" sentiment and cut the banner in Crisp Cantaloupe cardstock. I stamped the "Happy Big Day" sentiment from the Chalk Talk stamp set onto white carstock and fussycut it using scissors. I also cut a slightly bigger banner in Crisp Cantaloupe. Then it was just all about assembling it all onto Kraft cardstock and adding the little ribbon and bow. Hopefully my friend will be charmed by the cute little turtle and will forgive me for the card being late.

Colours: Stampin' Up Pistachio Pudding and Crisp Cantaloupe (inks and cardstock)
Stamps: Stampin' Up Fox and Friends, Chalk Talk, Hobbycraft Clear Stamps Typewriter Alphabet
Cardstock: Stampin' Up Pistachio Pudding and Crisp Cantaloupe, Hobbycraft white 160 gsm cardstock, Kraft card
Other: green ribbon from my stash