Birthday swirl cupcake

Oh how I look forward to the next two weeks or so. First right now, I'm looking forward to this weekend, and some quality time in the garden and craft room. I'm planning to get a few raspberry plants to enhance my raspberry patch after I dug up some useless bits. Then I only have three days at work, followed by a glorious six day Easter holiday which I plan to spend relaxing and crafting. And enjoying our two new family members, the steam cleaner and the pressure washer! I will be cleaning and washing everything I can get my hands on, starting from my horrendously filthy car. And all of this will be followed by another three day work week followed by yet another weekend! So right now it feels like like is quite good.

Today's card is inspired by the image over at The Card Concept as well as the colours and sketch over at The Challenge. I made my cupcake swirled with pink just like the cupcake in the inspiration photo. I coloured selected parts of the Tim Holtz Birthday Blueprint cupcake stamp using a black marker, and then coloured the cupcake using a grey, pink and green marker. I then added green, pink and clear stickles to the cupcake. Last, I cut out the banners and stamped the sentiment. I made the enamel dots myself from Perler beads using the tutorial over here, which I found over at House of Cards. I'm also linking up my card for their enamel dot challenge. This is my second entry, I couldn't find anything in their rules whether you are allowed to link up more than once. I'm also linking up over at Clear It Out challenge where the theme is birthday and the stash item is polka dots and 2 Cute Ink where the theme is glitter.

Card: 300 gsm white card

Stamps: Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous Birthday Blueprint, Paper Smooches Sentiment Sampler

Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' write markers Basic Black and Smoky Slate, Tim Holtz distress markers Picked Raspberry and Mowed Lawn

Paper: Stampin' Up Designer Series Paper Pattern Stack Brights

Other: Tim Holtz Distress Stickles Worn Lipstick, Ranger Ice Stickles, home-made enamel dots

Congratulations and smooches

On today's card you can find some more of the little cuties I coloured on the beach. The inspiration for this card was the current sketch from CAS(E) this sketch. I used Paper Smooches stamps for the chubby little critters and the sentiments. The chubby chums are coloured using Tim Holtz and Stampin' Up markers and a blender pen on watercolour paper. The banner is from a set of Christmas sentiments, I stamped it and fussy cut it and mounted the sentiment stamp slightly curved to fit with the banner. I am also entering the card in the Paper Smooches SPARKS challenge where Anything goes until July 12th.

Card: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, Daler & Rowney 190 gsm watercolour paper, Coloured kraft 240 gsm card in teal

Stamps: Paper Smooches Chubby Chums, Sentiment Sampler, Papermania Urban stamps 12 Days of Christmas Word Banner

Ink: Stampin' Up Bermuda Bay, Stampin' Write markers and Tim Holtz distress markers, Stampin' Up blender pen

Dino baby

If you follow my blogs on Facebook, you may have noticed that I couldn't go away on holiday without taking just a little bit of crafting with me. I'm sure my fellow sun worshippers thought I was stark raving mad sitting there in my beach chair in my pink tankini colouring little dinosaurs. What can I say, mad as a hatter...

This card is inspired by this weeks The Card Concept challenge which is Oh Baby! My chosen style for this card is Clean & Layering. I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch for inspiration. In addition, I'm entering this card into this week's Addicted to Stamps and More which is themed Make Your Mark, as I coloured the cute little dinos with markers and a blender pen. Last but not least, I'm also entering Stampin' Royalty challenge #235 which is "Keep it simple" as this is at least for my style a rather clean and simple card.

I stamped the dinos in black onto watercolour paper and coloured with Tim Holtz and Stampin' Write markers and a blender pen. I stamped two different heart stamps for the background. The smaller hearts are actually a lilac colour, but it looks grey on the picture. The sentiment is heat embossed using silver powder onto vellum. This card existed in quite a few different guises before it ended up as it did, I tried so many different papers for the banners, but this simple layout worked best.

Card: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Card, Dovecraft 110 gsm premium Vellum, Silver grey cardstock I ordered off eBay and has no branding, Daler & Rowney 190 gsm watercolour paper
Paper: Stampin' Up More Amore DSP
Stamps: Lawn Fawn Critters from the Past, Critters Ever after, Paper Smooches A Little Lovin, Sentiment Sampler
Inks: Stampin' Up Wisteria Wonder, Smoky Slate, Tim Holtz embossing ink, Hobbycraft black pigment ink, Tim Holtz distress marker in Shaded Lilac, Stampin' Write markers in Soft Sky and Marina Mist, Stampin' Up Blender Pen
Other: Stampin' Up adhesive gems, Papermania silver embossing powder

My CASest card so far

I had to do some emergency crafting this morning. I had planned to devote the whole bank holiday weekend to crafting as the weather forecast didn't look like it was going to be amenable for gardening. However, I was told a few days ago we are having guests stay over instead, so there goes my crafting time. The short while I spent in the craft room this morning may well be my only stab at crafting this weekend. 

I've had this idea of a rainbow coloured card for a while now, but it was only with the emergence of a number of floral/nature themed challenges this week that my mind kind of figured out what to do with the beginning of an idea. And as I knew I would soon have to get out of my crafting bubble to clean the house, a quick, clean and simple design would have to do for this morning. To be honest, although it looks quick and easy, it took quite a few trials and errors until I got the card looking the way I wanted to.

I coloured the stamp from Stampin' Up Reason to Smile set using Tim Holtz distress markers in the seasonal colours. I lightly spritzed with water mist before stamping onto white card. I used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to stamp the matching flower outline in Basic Gray. I used the Basic Gray marker and the Tim Holtz markers to colour the sentiment from See Ya Later. I finished off with adhesive gems from Papermania. This is the most CAS card I have ever made, and it's hard with all that white space left everywhere, but I'm getting used to it. I think it actually turned out quite good. And such a fitting sentiment for a day like this with nothing but grey skies.

I am entering this card into the following challenges and browsing the lovely cards from the DTs  really helped get my mojo going as usual.
Addicted to Stamps - Anything goes
Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge - Botanical 
Make My Monday - Nature
CASology - Flower

Card: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card
Inks: Stampin' Up Basic Gray, Stampin Up' marker Basic Grey, Tim Holtz distress markers Festive Berries, Mowed Lawn, Peacock Feathers, Picked Raspberry, Ripe Persimmon, Salty Ocean, Seedless Preserves and Squeezed Lemonade
Other: Papermania Adhesive gems