Stencil watercolour background

Woohoo, we have all made it to another weekend. It's time to enjoy life for two days. Are you planning anything special for Valentine's? We are not very romantic in this house, but I think we will cook our traditional Valentine's Day Venison from the farm a few villages over. And today I'm making pancakes for pudding, as we missed out on Pancake Day earlier in the week. I bet the pancakes will be delicious with a touch of our home-made Apricot jam. 

I made this card yesterday, but the photos I took were so horrible due to sunset that I didn't think they really did the card justice. Today I just about made it home before losing the light, still not as good as I wanted, but a definite improvement over yesterday's photos. So here we go! My card is inspired by the colour challenge over at ColourQ and the really inspiring new sketch over at CAS(E) this sketch. I couldn't resist the urge to get out one of my favourite stencils and play around a bit with watercolours. A few quick die cuts and a step of matting onto pink card later - done! 

I'm also linking up with: 
Alphabet Challenge - Y is for You Choose
Craft for the Craic - Something to make you smile
Crafting With Friends - Anything Goes
PDE Linky Party - Anything Goes
Simply Papercraft - Anything Goes

Card: 300 gsm white card, 190 gsm watercolour paper, Stampin' Up Melon Mambo card, gold mirri card
Ink: Stampin' Up Pink Pirouette, Calypso Coral, Melon Mambo
Stencil: STAMPlorations Tribal Triangles stencil
Other: Lawn Fawn Scripty Hugs and Stitched Rectangles stencils, gold sequins from my stash

Stampin' Royalty Guest DT - Photo inspiration

I can't believe this is already my third guest post for Stampin' Royalty. Time truly flies when you are having fun, doesn't it. This week we have a gorgeous inspiration photo for you. The colours could not have been more perfectly picked for me! Green and pink is one of my all time favourite colour combos. I absolutely loved making this card. Hop over to Stampin' Royalty to see how the amazingly talented DT have been inspired by the image. Then, please have a play around for yourself and join us as we love to see your gorgeous creations. 

For my card, I was inspired by the beautiful colour combo and the bright pink flowers. I was also inspired by the gold and silver bling in the beautiful jewellery. I started by stamping the large flower from Bloom With Hope in Staz-On onto watercolour paper. I coloured the flowers with pink markers and used a waterbrush to blend the colours. Then I fussy cut the flowers. For the background I stamped the Brushstrokes stamp in Pistachio Pudding. This is such a great stamp, and it certainly has not got all the use it deserves so far. I also die cut two feathers from gold foil. Then it was just a quick job to assemble it all onto a doily, add one of those gorgeous wood veneer sentiments, a bit of silver thread and a few rhinestones. Hey presto! 

I would like to link up with the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Anything Goes
Fab n' Funky - Flower Delights
Natalie and Amy's Challenge - Summertime
Happy Little Stampers - Sketch

Card: Stampin' Up Whisper White Thick cardstock, Gold Foil
Stamps: Stampin' Up Brushstrokes, Bloom With Hope
Ink: Stampin' Up Pistachio Pudding Stampin' Markers Strawberry  Slush, Melon Mambo, Blushing Bride, Pink Pirouette, Memento Staz-On Jet Black
Other:  Stampin' Up Expressions Natural Elements, Silver Metallic Thread, Tea Lace Paper Doilies, Feathers die, Jewels Basic Rhinestones

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 

Really tough colour combo

I received my wonderful Verve stamp set (called Surely Goodness) on the post the other day, the one I won at Mojo Monday challenges. I chose this set with the pretty flowers because I thought they would be really fun to colour in. And because you can never have too many flower stamps. When in doubt, always go for flowers. I couldn't wait to play with it, and thought the only right place to start was with the wonderful Viva La Verve challenge (by the way, you don't have to use Verve stamps to join in the fun). I really like their sketch over there this week, you can see it below.

Then the only decision was what colours to use. I thought I would really challenge myself and use this week's Colour Me... colours, which frankly is a combo I would never have put together on my own. I really didn't think I would be able to make anything useful out of it, but after many trials and errors I did manage to put together a more or less bearable card after all. But it's worth pushing your boundaries a bit from time to time and create something you never thought you would. 

I stamped the flower with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and coloured with Stampin' Write markers. I fussycut the background for the flower from a Stampin' Up DSP using a printout of a scalloped rectangle as a template. I stamped some of the flowers in Pink Pirouette onto cream cardstock, and stamped one of the sentiments from the stamp set in Marina mist onto the background. For the lower part of the card I used another Stampin' Up DSP and added some ribbon in Tangerine Tango (I don't have Tangelo Twist, so I substituted with the closest colour I had in my stash). Finally I die cut the scalloped borders using a Tim Holtz die. I also stamped inside the card and on the envelope, just because I had so much fun colouring in the flower. 

   

Cardstock: Stampin' Up Tangerine Tango card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm cream card

Paper: Stampin' Up DSPs Sycamore Street, Polka Dot Parade, Fan Fair

Stamps: Verve Surely Goodness

Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Up Marina Mist and Pink Pirouette, Stampin' Write markers in Marina Mist, Tangerine Tango and Pink Pirouette

Other: Tim Holts alterations Vintage Lace dies, Stampin' Up Tangerine Tango ribbon

Butterflies in a box

Just a quick post before I crash into bed. I made this box of butterflies a while ago. I used the same measurements for the box as I have used before here, here and here. Once you have made on card-in-a-box it's actually quite quick and easy to make more of them, although they look like hard work. What is hard work though is all the fussy cutting. For this card I cut quite a few butterflies. But it was all worth it in the end.

Cardstock: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Card, Hobbycraft white 160 gsm cardstock
Paper: Dovecraft Princess Fairytale Designer Paper Pack
Inks: Stampin' Up Pear Pizzazz, Pink Pirouette, So Saffron, Wisteria Wonder
Stamps: Stampin' Up Bloomin Marvellous, Tim Holtz Visual Artistry Heartfelt