A little bit of sunshine is just what we need!

How are you? Sorry I haven't been around. Don't even get me started. It's been insane. I keep thinking that the job will ease up as soon as we get through x. But then there is y. And no matter how much we think that will be the last level of craziness then there is z and it's five best friends sneaking up on us around the corner. Sigh.

I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of crafty time the other day, but it's like going back to the gym, the first time is a complete disaster. I did manage to do an intervention to save today's card from joining it's friends in the bin by applying a bit of banner magic. As we haven't seen the sun for ages, I thought a bright yellow card would light up the day a bit. I used the spritzer tool on the background card, and splattered some watercolour as well, although it doesn't show very well on the photo.

I'm linking up with the following challenges:
Shopping Our Stash - Dreaming of something warm
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Ray of Sunshine
Time Out - Love is the flower you've got to let grow
Addicted to CAS - Bloom
Allsorts Challenge - Clean and Simple
Cardz 4 Galz - Fantastic Florals
Hiding In My Craft Room - No red or pink

Card: 300 gsm white card, 190 gsm watercolour card, scrap of Stampin' Up Old Olive card
Ink: Tsukineko Staz-on Jet Black, Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress Inks Fossilized Amber, Mustard Seed, Shabby Shutters, Spized Marmalade and Squeezed Lemonade
Stamps: STAMPlorations Bloom Sketches
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies

My first and only valentine for this year

I'm not big on Valentine's day cards, and not planning to make many. In fact, I'm assuming this will be my only one for the year, for my dear Culinary Consultant. It might be a bit too girly coloured, but he likes warm colours so why not. I had fun playing with the watercolour background, and decided to colour the moose with watercolours as well. Sorry about the horrible photo, I am about to head out of the country for a week, and realised that I won't be able to take a photo of the card in daylight before I go away, so had no choice.  Anyhow, as I will be away, it will be a bit quiet on the blog for the next week, I have a post or two lined up but that will be it on the crafting front for a while. I hope to see you all in a bit though, don't forget about me and take care!!

I am linking up with the following challenges:
ColourQ - colour challenge (and yes, I only used the colours from the challenge, but when smooshing pink and yellow it will create some orange to... so technically I don't think I'm cheating although there is also some orange in the background)
Lawnscaping - Watercolour
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Create With Critters
Retro Sketches - sketch
Make My Monday - Stitching (real or faux)

Card: 300 gsm white textured card, 190 gsm watercolour paper

Paper: Lawn Fawn Let's Polka and Let's Polka in the Dark

Stamps: Lawn Fawn Critters in the Arctic and matching dies

Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress Inks Mustard Seed, Worn Lipstick, Fired Brick, Vintage Photo and Ground Espresso

Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle and Say Cheese dies

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

A little bit of shabby grunge

This card is so not my style at all. I'm very much a CAS type of cardmaker, at least most of the time. But when I saw the amazingly beautiful inspiration card by Julee Tillman over at Viva La Verve Sketch challenge I wanted to recreate something similar. It's nice to go outside your comfort zone from time to time and try different things. I used the colours for that challenge as well, although again they are far from my usual colour palette. Which is great as it allowed me to use up some cardstock that I haven't used before. 

I embossed the blue panel using a Tim Holtz embossing folder. I used a pair of scissors to distress the edges and some sandpaper to distress the Core'dinations cardstock which reveals a lighter shade when distressed. I inked the embossed and distressed panel with orange, yellow and brown ink. I die cut the stars and inked the edges with brown ink and distressed using scissors. I did the same for the sentiment banner and the background panel. The sentiment is from one of my most used sentiment sets, the Paper Smooches Sentiment sampler. I think this card would work well as a male birthday card.

Cardstock: Craft UK kraft card, Tim Holtz Core'dination card in Spiced Marmelade, Mustard Seed and Tumbled Glass

Ink: Tim Holtz distress ink Spiced Marmelade, Mustard Seed and Walnut Stain

Stamps: Paper Smooches Sentiment Sampler

Other: Xcut star dies, Tim Holtz embossing folder Retro Circles

One never before used stamp card in two colours

You know how sometimes things get a little out of hand when you start crafting... That's certainly the case with today's post of not one but two cards. It all started with a simple little colour challenge over at Stampin' Royalty.

I completely fell for the bright colour combo which is actually strange as I'm no big fan of yellows or oranges but for some reason this colour combo really hit home. I found a nice flower stamp from a set from Kanban that actually I have never used, despite owning the stamp for at long time. The challenge over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is Create Your Own Background so that's exactly what I did, and for that I used a Simon Says Stamp stencil and Tim Holtz distress inks. 

Colour scheme one: Festive Berries, Mowed Lawn, Mustard Seed and Spiced Marmelade

I stamped and coloured the image inside the card and on the envelope.

I have been running into the NBUS challenge lately on blogs I am following, and thought that's such a great idea. NBUS stands for never-before-used-schtuff. Guilty as charged, and happy to play with some of my untouched goodies. The stamp I used is completely virginal, and in fact the stencil I used for the background has never been used before. Or it has been used, but nothing I have created with it has so far made it to an actual finished card, so that's as good as unused. One of the options for the current NBUS challenge is to make two cards with the same stamp, so I decided that's what I'll do next. 

For my second card, I looked for colour inspiration and found that both Colour Me...! challenge and Just Add Ink have a palette of turquoise and yellow. So all in all, the card that started with one simple colour challenge ended up being two cards and five challenges in total! Now the only question is, which one is the prettier one?

Colour scheme two: Peacock Feathers and Mustard Seed

Some stamping inside the card as well

Cardstock: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm Three shades of Yellow and Three shades of green card, orange card from my stash, Coloured 240 gsm kraft card in teal and pillarbox red
Stamps: Kanban Flower stamp (only marked as Stamp06 on the packaging), Paper Smooches Sentiment Sampler
Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz distress markers Festive Berries, Peacock Feathers, Mowed Lawn, Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmelade
Other: Simon Says Stamp Large Moroccan stencil, Papermania adhesive gems Capsule Sunshine, Ranger super fine detail clear embossing powder