The Male Room #43 Music

The theme at The Male Room this week is very dear to my heart as I have quite a lot of musical talent in my family - just a shame it missed me out!

And as two of my three sons are guitarists, the oldest particularly talented, the choice of stamp was obvious.

I went for my favourite colour, purple, but to keep it more masculine added some dark blue and red into the mix. I masked off three circles before applying the ink using my inkylicious brushes.

The image - so totally gorgeous and true - was stamped using the misti tool to get that deep coverage. Finally I added a strip of black card to help draw your eye to the left hand side of the card and the stamped image.

Supplies:
Stamp: Visible Image, Music Speaks
Inks: SU, night of navy, real red; Ranger Distress, wilted violet

How will you interpret this theme? Check here to see what the DT came up with. Hoping to see a gallery full of your wonderful cards so that I can come visit your blogs and leave you some love.

Huge thanks for visiting my blog today, you are greatly appreciated.  And keep crafting!

Tuesday Talk

Today I'm sharing a card I made for the challenge at Inkspirational.

Here's my card:

I feel as if my life is surrounded with these primary colours at the moment as my youngest grandson leaves a trail of toys all over the house and garden.  So it was with him in mind I chose the sentiment.

And I'm loving how easy it is to create a CAS card with this stamp set, think it's going to be appearing a few more times in a few more colourways before I'm done with it.

Supplies:
Stamps: Clearly Besotted, Colour Chameleon
Inks: Memento, dandelion, danube blue, lady bug, tuxedo black
Promarkers: tulip yellow, indigo blue, poppy, blender

It's been fabulous to have you take a look at my blog, thanks so much.  And keep crafting!

Monday Moments

Hi and welcome to my blog.  Today I'm playing along with the challenge at Less Is More - to use sticky labels, stickers or peel offs.

Hmm, well I do have an embarrasingly large stash of peel offs that haven't been touched in years and honestly I did try to use some for this challenge. Alas, it was not to be! Bin job!!!! I came up with this instead:

Much more my style! The sticker is from Simple Stories Summer Vibes collection which I normally use for my scrapbook pages - seems I have quite a large stash of this type of sticker too. 

I placed the cloud sticker towards the top of the card and then stamped some sentiments dropping down from it. I then picked up on a couple of the sticker colours and stamped some linking circles. And I actually like this card and may just be tempted to raid my stickers for future cards.

Supplies:
Sticker: Simple Stories, Summer Vibes
STamps: HLS, Bold Birthday Sentiments, Mix Mash
Inks: SU, soft sky; Memento, lady bug, tuxedo black

Thanks for looking today, hope you all have a great start to the week.  And keep crafting!

AAA Cards - #72 New To You Technique

The next fortnight at AAA Cards we'd like you all to step out of your comfort zones and try a new-to-you technique. And still keep it CAS. Scary or what!

So I decided to try a technique I never got round to when I took the Online Card Class -  Stretch Your Dies. The lesson title was 'Die-cut within a larger die-cut', but I've used butterfly punches instead of dies and placed them fairly close together on a piece of card before die cutting the stitched circle. Neat effect with bits of the butterflies missing where the circle has been cut.

The background card for the circle and the punched butterflies was created using shaving foam  - another very new to me technique, so I'm feeling I've really challenged myself with this card!

The butterfly punched inner circle has been raised onto pads, but the die cut thanks is adhered flat to it.

Supplies:
Dies: MFT Die-namics, inside/our circles; Lawn Fawn, scripty thanks
Inks: Ranger distess re-inkers, mustard seed, picked raspberry
Punches: Martha Stewart, SU, Tonic 

I've been looking forward to this challenge for ages, it's going to be so interesting seeing what my fellow team mates come up with and I just know I'm going to be learning lots of new and exciting techniques. Go check them all out at AAA Cards!

Great to have you stop by today, hope I've inspired you to try something new. And keep crafting!

Uniko - Challenge #35 Reminder

Just popping in today to remind you about the current challenge going on over at Uniko.

And my song title is - Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day. Well I keep singing it all the time to my youngest grandson so it is definitely right at the front of my brain!

I stamped the ducks trying to keep up with their mummy duck and one of them about to disappear over the pond - or rather off the edge of the card.

Supplies:
Stamps: Uniko, Sweet Baby, Simply Said
Ink: Memento, tuxedo black
Promarkers: tulip yellow, mustard, peach
Paper: Lawn Fawn, Beachside
Embellishment: twine from my stash

So which songs keep going round and round your head? And can you turn one of them into a card? Of course you can! Check out the DT cards and the prize on offer at Uniko and then get creative with those words buzzing at you.

Thanks for your time today, I really am pleased to have shared some of it with you.  And keep crafting!

CAS Colours & Sketches #188

Wow, the last CAS Colours & Sketches challenge for August starts today. All downhill now until Christmas then!

I decided to rotate the sketch for my card and keep to a simple colour monochromatic colour scheme. I started by masking off the L shaped border on a piece of coloured paper and stamped it with flowers.

Then I die cut an oval and used a magazine freebie daisy die to cut three flowers from the oval.  I added a couple more die cut daisies to the oval and mounted it on pads for dimension before adhering it to the base card.

I finished the card by adding a sequin to the middle of each of the focal flowers.

Supplies:
Stamps: Uniko, Flower Power #7, Simply Said Birthday
Inks: SU, Bermuda Bay; Memento tuxedo black
Dies: Spellbinders, petite ovals large; Xcut, flowers magazine freebie
Card: SU, emerald envy
Embellishments: Lucy's Cards sequins, star shine

Do go check out what the rest of the CC&S DT have done with this sketch - here - you're bound to be inspired.

So pleased you dropped by today, as always your visit is greatly appreciated. And keep crafting!

Wednesday Words

I'm sharing a scrapbook page today and decided to play along with The Memory Nest's Make It Monday Team 2's second August sketch.

I've just got back from a mini break to Suffolk and we were so lucky with the weather and spent a fabulous day at Southwold soaking up the atmosphere and sun. So it seemed the ideal sketch to use with that sun - although in the end I didn't actually use a sun on my page!

I love this photo of me in an iconic pose and knew it just had to be scrapped as soon as I saw it. I decided to use a theme from Shimelle's 20 Project for my colour choices - opposite sides of the colour wheel - which also picked up on the blues and sandy colours from the photo.

The background paper and some of the text papers are from a collection I bought for Christmas last year - just shows how versatile some papers can be.  The blues are scraps from my stash.

And the replacement for the sun was cut from one of the papers becasue it just seemed to sum up everything about the photo.

Supplies:
Papers: Kaisercraft, A Touch of Gold Collection' scraps from my stash
Stamp: Kaisercraft, Wood Panel
Ink: Memento, tuxedo black
Dies: Paper Smooches, Bam Bubble; MFT Die-namics, Ampersand
Punch: Woodware, inverted corner
Enamel dots: MME, now and then

Great to have you drop by my blog today, thanks for your time.  And keep crafting!

Tuesday Talk

I have a pretty little card using my favourite Uniko stamps to share with you today. Here's the challenges I think it meets the criteria for:

   

And here's the card:

I started by inking directly from the pad through a circle stencil and then added a little more of each colour using a brush to get that fade out look.

I then stamped the bloom and sentiment using the misti tool to get a good deep colour.

Supplies:
Stamps: Uniko, Paradise
Inks: Ranger distress , mustard seed, spiced marmalde, picked raspberry; Memento, tuxedo black

Thanks for your visit today, I do appreciate you taking the time.  And keep crafting!

Monday Moments

I'm having a bit of a catch up with entering challenges at the moment and today's card is for Happy Little Stampers August CAS Challenge

I love this doodled flower stamp and am always pleased with how my cards turn out when using it. So a bit of an easy choice today. I started by stamping and fussy cutting the flower on masking paper - not at all a chore as I know I'll be using it again in the future.

The middle flower was stamped and then masked before the other two flowers were stamped off the edge of the card. I removed the flower mask and then added a straight mask and inked the side panel with violet. I replaced the flower mask and inked over the violet with the blue.

Once the mask were removed I added some colour to the flowers with promarkers, popped an enamel dot in their middles and added a simple sentiment from the same stamp set.

Supplies:
Stamps: HLS, Doodled Flowers
Inks: Ranger distress, blueprint sketch, wilted violet; Memento, tuxedo black
Promarkers: violet, purple
Embellishments: Doodlebug Sprinkles, beetle black asst.

Hope you enjoyed dropping by my blog today and will come back again soon. Thanks for looking and keep crafting!

Sunday Stuff

Today I'm sharing a couple of cards made with Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes With Dies Challenge in mind.

I took inspiration from the wonderful Jennifer McGuire - here - but then made life complicated by trying the same effect with dies rather than stamps.

It all started out really well - I chose my coloured card and stamped  the sunflower in matching ink on the white card and stamped and embossed it in white on the peach card.

Next I die cut the thanks and actually remembered to save all the little bits and placed them back in without too much bother.

Then things got a bit more tricky! I sliced the cards and did the swap and boy was it fiddly getting all the little bits - this time round even smaller - back into the correct spaces.

But on the whole I like the effect this technique gives, but would just be a bit more sensible with choice of die, or just sticking to stamping would be even better, another time.

Suppiles:
Stamps: Stamplorations, Sketched Sunflower
Card: SU, peekaboo peach
Inks: SU, peekaboo peach; Versamark
Embossing: Ranger, superfine white
Die: Lawn Fawn, thanks

Thanks for dropping by today, hope your weekend has been a blast.  And keep crafting!

Saturday Slot

Just popping in today with a card I made for Stamplorations August CAS challenge.

I decided to go for the optional twist of using gold combined with my favourite colours - you know what they are!

I started by stamping and heat embossing the flower and sentiment in gold. Then I brushed over the distress inks and added extra ink to the flower had with a water brush. 

I added some diagonal lines by using the edge of the ink pads and finally some splats flicked off the water brush.

Supplies:
Stamps: Stamplorations, Helenium large
Inks: Ranger distress, shaded lilac, picked raspberry; Versamark
Embossing: Personal Impressions, mirror gold
Wink of Stella, clear

So pleased to see you here today, thanks so much.  And keep crafting!

Uniko - Challenge #35

Hello and welcome. Today sees the start of a new challenge at Uniko and this month we'd like your cards to be inspired by a song title.

Well my decision for today's DT card was really easy - Paradise by Coldplay. And I've used the Uniko stamp set with the same title.

I had this image in my head of those tropical shirts that were, maybe still are, popular to wear on tropical holidays. So I hand cut a shirt shape and then got busy stamping the toucan and leaves in suitable tropical colours.

That was the easy bit, then I needed to work out how to turn the shirt shape into a card!

Supplies :
Stamps: Uniko, Oaradise, Paradise Leaves
Inks: SU, daffodil delight, tempting turquoise, pear pizzazz, emerald envy; Memento, tuxedo black 

Bet you've already got favourite songs jumping around in your head. Well before you break out your supplies take a peek at the Uniko DT cards - here - to discover which songs they've been singing. And while you're there check out the prize too.

Thanks for dropping by my blog today, your visit and time is always greatly appreciated.  And keep crafting!