Author: Catherine

Hello! Another day, another design team contribution. This is my creation for the Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes Birthday challenge and I once again have been delving into the pouches of half used supplies. Now this one uses flowers cut from the True Love dsp, a strip of Expressions in Ink dsp and a card from an old Memories and More pack. A bit of an eclectic mix … but I think it works well together … along with die cuts and the sentiment of course!

Those flowers are of course fabulous and although you can colour them, I decided black and white was just fine against the background of the card and with the strip of gold foiled stripes.

I did raise them up to give dimension and underneath I slid in some of the Splendid Stems die cut from black.

I decided to die cut the Happy and stack it three times for dimension and then added back in the pink from the background with the Biggest Wish birthday stamp.

I finished off with the black gems from my stash to keep with the drama of the black and pink.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Well here we go… last quarter of the year! I’ve another design team contribution to share with you today for the Craftyhazelnuts patterned paper challenge blog. The plan I made at the beginning of the year of setting aside Making Cards magazine old kits has worked really well and means it is an easy starting point… plus I’m working my way through the old stash and loving getting some use out of it.

This time some Peacock themed papers and images.

Took the two different papers and kept it simple… just made them into background panels and the remaining bits were cut in strips for the inside and the envelopes.

I first stuck the focal images onto white cardstock using pritstick as I wanted them to have a bit of sturdiness before I fussy cut them. I don’t mind the quality of the paper for the backgrounds, but for the focal images it is a tad thin sometimes.

Anyway, I then fussy cut the main images out and dug into the cardstock stash… all of it was scraps and not a bit of new cardstock was used (I hoard cardstock and hate cutting into new sheets if I can get away with not!

I decided to emboss the cardstock pieces so they have an elegant pattern and then used the Nature’s Prints stamp and the coordinating Natural Prints dies to create some embellishments.

Both cards have a slightly different colour scheme … one pink, one peach. But both very similar with the Pretty Peacock as the other colour cardstock. I then decided to use the Time for Tea birthday sentiment die along with the Happy from Cottage Rose stamps.

With raising some elements on foam these are fairly dimensional cards and of course the embossing gives and lovely texture to them.

Looking forward to blog hopping around and seeing what everyone else has been up to with their patterned paper stash this month.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

I’ve been a bit poorly so bought myself a crafting magazine kit to cheer myself up and decided to play with it and see what I came up with to try and distract myself from feeling ill.

It actually took me hours to make these five cards as I had to take breaks and my brain wasn’t exactly working well but chuffed with the final results.

The kit included an embossing folder, stamps, dies and a stencil plus lots of papers. I ended up playing with brushos, modelling paste, blending, stampin blends alcohol pens and had fun.

So this first one was a panel of white, embossed, ink blended and splattered and then added the ribbon and some white die cuts. Love the champagne glimmer ink splatters and centre to the flowers.

The second one took me a bit of thinking on how to use the poinsettia flowers I had coloured with brusho but I spotted the dl card blank and figured it was perfect for a panel of the paper and then the flowers with the white die cut sentiment.

This one took a while to do colouring in all the embossing.. then added gems, pearl accents and the die cut sentiment onto the embossed sentiment.

And this one using the brusho trees … I kept it quite simple in design adding all the lovely silver decorations to the tree and the sentiment as the “trunk”. Entering this into the challenge at TIME OUT CHALLENGES

And finally…

And it might just be the favourite of the set!

The background panel has the modelling paste and then the images were die cut from a couple of brusho panels I painted. That silver sentiment just finishes it off perfectly!

An odd selection of cards but I enjoyed all the playing with the mixed media.

What do you think? Which is your favourite? Mine is definitely the last one and then the tall slim card with those brusho poinsettia.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Hello! Todays blog is another design team contribution for Creative Knockouts using a gifted image from our sponsor All Dressed Up.

I chose to use the Little Fishes image and to print on mixed media cardstock and watercolour with SU inks. Love how it came out. I decided the image was a little bit large for my card though (I should have printed it smaller!) so did chop off the edge a little.

The theme for this challenge is embossing fun so I grabbed a stencil and a piece of cardstock and using versamark through the stencil, then adding the fabulous Baked Texture embossing powder I created the panel of splashes. This has a lovely texture and mix of colours and is a lovely way of adding something special into the card.

I also chose to emboss the die cut birthday which makes it into a lovely dimensional glossy embellishment.

I did add a panel of dsp in the Tahitian Tide too and put all those elements on a pale green card blank. The cardblank was A4 size but I trimmed it down to 6×6 and then used an offcut to die cut the Happy letters. I did think it needed something else whilst I was putting it together so die cut the cloud from Gummipan as a final element.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Had a playtime with the Tropical Hideaway background stamp and this is the card I made…

I had no plan making this card… I videoed the process… which shows how I had zero idea what I was doing, but had fun as I did it!

I teamed it with a label, gold laser cut embellishment and the lovely green twine. I finished off with an Avery Elle sentiment stamp and die set.

Love this!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Today I have a fall / autumn themed card made for the latest Creative Knockouts challenge blog as my design team contribution.

I used the lovely Sheepski Designs image called Winter Warmer which I printed onto mixed media cardstock and watercoloured using watercolour pencils.

I used some papers from the stash to make up the background and used Calypso Coral cardstock for the background.

I actually filmed the make (it’s been a long time since I’ve done this!) so check out the video.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Today I have the tag I made for this months UK stampers forum tag swap… and I went BIG!

I decided to use a tag I’ve had in the drawer for a long time which is an Art by Marlene one. I decided to cover it with word stamping … using the word Happy from all the stamp sets where I could find it!

I kept to a blue theme choosing blue and teal coloured inks. I then chose some star stamps from the stash and filled in areas around the words with the stars.

Next I added a strip of the black cardstock across the middle. This gave my main star and ‘happy’ a bit of grounding.

I die cut lots of stars from the glimmer speciality paper I still have a bit of in my stash and stuck them down all over the tag.

I finished off the sentiment with the white embossing onto black to make the full sentiment of sending a little Happy your way

I added some silver and blue ribbon to finish the tag off and called it done!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Hi there! Thanks for popping along to my little corner of the Web. I’ve got another Happy Little Stampers design team contribution to share with you today. This was for the Anything Goes with Dies blog.

This card turned into a labour of love … lots of stamping, masking and colouring with just a bit of die cutting!

I made this for my cousins daughters birthday as the girl images reminded me of her.

I cut a piece of 6×6 white and stamped the Polaroid image from Concord and 9th all over it, and then masking I filled in some of the gaps. Next I took the girl images which were magazine stamps and stamped those as the photo images… again lots of masking to keep the images within the frames.

I then coloured them using both Stampin Blends and promarkers until the whole sheet was coloured in. I also edged the panel with black.

Next I stamped and die cut the camera image and then coloured that in. I also die cut some hearts and coloured them using the same colours so they would coordinate.

I decided to then put a few things together to make the sentiment. Firstly the smile die from Lawn Fawn which I stacked a few together to give it dimension and then some little alphas. Then Your from Happy Celebrations and Birthday from Biggest Wish.

I added some foam behind a few elements and behind the main die cut panel I added some ribbon.

I then went to town with wink of Stella on the hearts and the smile die cut.

Inside the card I added three individual Polaroid images I had cut out and coloured and some more of the hearts.

For the envelope I kept it simple and just added the stamped hearts in similar colours.

Love how this turned out.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Saturday was my lovely friend Sue’s birthday. I made this colourful card for her.

I decided to use the lovely Nature’s Prints stamp and used some glossy photo paper to create a fun alcohol ink background to stamp onto. I must admit my alcohol ink background didn’t blend as well as I would have liked but when die cut and stamped it looked fabulous.

I decided to add them to an embossed panel and then added the sentiment using the Biggest Wish stamps. I also added a little strip which I added some ink to so it had a little rainbow popping under the sentiment.

I finished off with sequins just to add some sparkle.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

So here is my design team contribution for this months Anything Goes Birthday challenge over at Happy Little Stampers.

I’ve gone bright and funky with a pop of gold and black.

I grabbed the Cottage Rose stamps and dies and after a blending inks across the Basic White I decided to stamp in black and have them teamed with a black label to contrast the bright distress oxide inks I used.

I created the cluster and then decided I wanted some background stamping. I decided to use the splotches stamp from Nature’s Print and added that using the Mowed Lawn distress oxide so it was in keeping with the colours of the flowers and leaves.

I had wanted to add in the additional elements of the gold laser cut leaves from Forever gold pack so I slotted a few in so there was some shine, and also the glittery gems from the stash.

Love how this finished up … so bright and cheery.

Happy crafting!

Catherine