Project 116: Little love card x4 challenges

Today was a crazy day - stuck at home working while transport around London FAILED. One little gust of wind and it's all come to chaos. I'm being horrible, of course, it's far more than a gust of wind. It's a named storm that has caused major damage across Southern England. And it's afforded me the chance to do some crafting so who's complaining?!

I wanted to make a card for my husband as this week we're both travelling around for business meetings and I like to leave a little surprise for him to discover in his bags.

I saw this challenge over at Sweet Stamping to use a leaf or wood motif, and I have a great Little Claire heart-filled tree stamp that is perfect for the occassion. I combined this with a challenge at the Color Throwdown as I thought they were a great combo.

But why stop there? I needed a layout, so I looked to the good people of Retro Sketches and thought bingo.

And then, because it's not enough, I have been wanting to enter Designed To Color's challenge of "tie it up" for a while now and just haven't had the time to enter!

So this is the mad combination of all 4 things. I used some beautiful coral-peach paper I got in a pack from Claire. I added the woodgrain brown paper to enforce the wood theme and bring out the brown a bitmore. I added the ribbon and button to go with the challenge and thought it added a cutesy country feel.

I dotted the border with some drawn-on-stitching and hand wrote the greeting to be personal. Finally some melon-colored candies to match the backing paper and we're done!

Phew. 4 challenges may be a bit much. Might stick to the normal 1 or 2 next time there's a storm-day!

Project 115: Modern monograms

Claire and I both had strange weeks this week and she had a good idea to do a double challenge as a remote playdate experiment. She combined a sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

  and a Color Throwdown as our combined challenge:

I wanted to make a set of monogrammed cards for my friend Rowan as a birthday present and when I saw the colors I really couldn't have picked a better combo. She's fun, modern and girly and these colors really speak to all of those traits I think. Here's the finished set:

I used navy foiled paper as the backing paper and then embossed the turquoise card 4 different ways: crossed, dots, damask and funny little berry twig things. I still don't really know what they are but they're cute.

I kept the coral card untextured as the stripe across the middle and die-cut the Rs from the same turquoise card. I bought the letter dies ages ago but they are fiddle and difficult to use regularly but in a little mini set like this I like them.

The grey chevron is actually washi-tape sheets, tying in the silver color and keeping it really contemporary. I topped it off with the silver striped candies and tiny coral banners.

These may be my favorite monograms yet - I will definitely keep this layout in mind in the future.

But I have to confess one thing: eagle-eyed viewers will notice that the top left card isn't the same size as the rest. I didn't have quite enough navy paper so I cut the white base down to make it less noticeable. I think it just about works!

Project 114: 20s themed headbands

My friend Jules is having a 20s themed wedding and for her bachelorette party I thought we could use a touch of glam. I talked to her and her maid of honor and we decided that some cute 20s headbands would be the right amount of themed-wear.

Above are my "ingredients" - I went to my local craft store and found loads of great stuff, everything above was less than £10 which is great.

I liked the black and gold card toppers in bows and flowers - perfect for making layers as you can hide all the seams and glue behind the card.

For the ribbon-based bands, I played around and found I liked the gold loop using sparkly ribbon as my base with the bow (but the flower could work as well). I added a sequin in the middle and then in the corner to hide the base of the mini feathers. I love the sparkly white ones but I'm not entierly sure they work. But I love them all the same.

I asked O to take the pictures of me wearing them and as he was lying in bed watching football (I had taken over the big tv watching a baking show while crafting!) I had to squat on the floor to get into view as I was not going to break the flow of the game. Thus the awkward shots!

Next I tried some on an actual headband. I was convinced I had black headbands and I was wrong. So I busted out the sharpies and colored in a cream colored one.

For this one I put some gold ribbon tassles hanging down from the flowers and added a sequin in th emiddle for bling. I added the feathers at the top but then switched the order so the black one is first from the face. It looks better that way. Trust me.

So now I'm going to share this with the bride and see what she thinks - will keep you posted.

I imagine I need more ribbons and bands but I wanted to have a bit of a play with it all first before I bought the full amount of kit. I think that's all I'll need to get to complete them all though which is great!

Project 113: Pink new home card

My friend Han always gives me great briefs for cards. This week it was "my friend just moved house  and her style is super girly and pink. She basically had My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding as her wedding theme." Awesome brief.

This is my take!

I love this busy little pink house stamp that I got over the summer from HunkyDory. I used a scallop die from cream card and a scallop pink heart punch to hold the greeting. I added a touch of glitter to some of the objects in the house.

I added some white natural paper that has gold strands through it over the cream card. I bought it years ago as a sample for our wedding order of services - that's how long I've had it and felt like it was finally time to use it!

Gold candies to finish it and now it's off to my friend Han.

Loads of pink-themed challenges this week -
Creative Romance was having a pink challenge for Breast Cancer Awareness Month so I thought this was a good entry.

Stampin for the weekend also mentioned Breast Cancer Awareness Month in their anything goes challenge.

Addicted to Stamps and More was Anything Goes 

And finally Crafty Little Fairies was also pink themed this week.

Pretty in pink works for some briefs - I will see if I can make it work for some other projects before the end of the month! 

Project 112: Sexy biker chick birthday card (and challenges)

I had a brief to make another birthday card for my colleague. She loved this card that I made for her using KennyK's Harley Ryder and she asked what other biker chicks I had in my arsenal. I showed her my entire collection of KennyK and I think I've got a customer for life!

We chose  Carmen Electrifying because she said her friend would totally love her. I've never gotten a commission to use her before as she's definitely one of the saucier ones in my collection. But I'm lovin' it.

I am delighted that Claire is now a member of the Moving Along With the Times blog challenge. It's great to see my craft friend get even more serious about her crafting and that the great people of MAWT have recognized her talent! This is her first week as a DT and as they had an anything goes challenge I wanted to combine it with this week's KennyK anything goes challenge.

So here we are! Carmen's colored with ProMarkers and I kept her with primarily burgandy and grey to play down any girly-girl colors. I kept the background black and white and used a new back to basics monochrome stack from Dovecraft that I found on a mini shopping spree this morning. Yes this morning. Didn't even last the day.

I added a black and grey ribbon divider between the papers and then added a birthday tag as the greeting.

For the embellishments I used some glitter dots and black flowers topped with candies. I think it's a bit too much now but too late, it's already set and sealed in its bag, waiting to be brought in tomorrow!

Project 111: Simple thank you card for a CAS Mojo entry

I love a Mojo sketch and when I saw this one I thought it'd work really well with the CAS challenge to use chevrons and sequins.

I love these chevron ribbons from American Crafts and thought this sketch worked perfectly to show them off.

I used little scallop hearts from Claire  and embossed them to add texture. As it's a simple sketch I wanted to add a bit of depth and I thought the little twine-tied buttons were a cute topper.

I thought the card was at risk of being too twee so I used the really big Thanks stamp to finish it off. I added some sequins to complete the CAS-ual Fridays brief. Really simple but I like it.

Project 110: Sexy Christmas card part 2

So following on from my previous post, I wanted to play with Mrs Claus from KennyK for their Christmas challenge.

This time, I set myself a challenge to use more scraps from last year's card leftovers. Last year I made these square cards with little patterned papers and I cut so many spares I have loads left over. I wanted to come up with a way to feature them with Mrs Claus and this was the best* attempt trying it.

I stacked all of the scraps and then hid the main seams with white ribbon like a giant present. I centered her and added a tiny touch of glitter on the fur accents. I just love the blingy touch on the white.

I added a little glittery tree decal from EK Success in each corner and added the Chrismas banner. I kept it super simple because I want to be able to alternate between this and the other layout when I get to mass production stage. But I get bored easily and need two layouts to go between!

I need to do one or two more designs so that I can make a decision but I like this little layout using last year's scraps.

*I say best, I made about 3 tries with the squares and I really struggled to make it work with the complex image. Next time I will just stick to a simple brief and make it a bit easier on myself. Gotta have a few easy battles!

Project 110: Sexy Christmas card part 1

I made the executive decision not to do Christmas cards for sale this year. I will try to sell the 80 or so cards left over from last year but I may just donate them at the WI Christmas fair. We'll see. But I decided to dedicate what Christmas energy I did have to my own cards.

I have been eyeing up KennyK's Christmas stamps for a long time and decided that I deserved a treat, in the shape of Mrs Claus here.

This week KennyK's Krafty Krew were having a Christmas challenge so I decided this was the week to get some layouts together.

I made this one using scraps and embellishments from last year's kit and there is something very satisfying in that. I used embossed and punched snowflakes to add a dimension and added an EK Success holly decal in the corner. I glittered Mrs Claus around the white fur to give it added bling and decided to go for a banner greeting instead of a peel-off. Just liked the swoosh of it.

All in all this is a card that I think could be replicated for my personal cards...but who knows how I'll feel after 10 of them (let alone 40-50)!

This is post 1 of 2 as I tried another layout that I'm keen to get some feedback on. So stay tuned!