Project 185: A fresh take on fall colors

This week has been a stressful return to work after a week of traveling for business so I needed to escape into the craft room for a bit of a break! I was looking for inspiration and found a great trio of challenges to fit the brief.

I love the Color Throwdown and this week the colors were a great base to choose from:

I looked at I <3 Pro Markers as their challenge blog always has interesting ideas. They were featuring a Three of a Kind challenge and left it pretty open so I thought that sounded like a fun experiment. My three(s) are:

• 3 flowers
• 3 colors (blue, orange, yellow) 
• 3 papers
• 3 pearls and 3 gems 

I started with the little Fiskars stamp (I think it's Fiskars anyway?) which I bought in a sale earlier this year and have never used. I colored the (admittedly small) image with:

• Orange
• True blue
• Yellow

Earlier today I spied the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches and decided that was a good one to join as it's the sort of layout I like to go for - paper rich and lots of ways to interpret it.

Instead of the circles I used the rectangle image and a punched butterfly - hope that's an ok interpretation of the sketch.

I then looked for complimentary papers and was delighted to find the blue chevron and corrugated orange in my scrap folder. Claire does scrap amnesty really well and I just love a clean sheet....which is why I need to get better about using scraps. Sketch challenges are great for using scraps as you think of paper in different ways.

And also great as I discovered Clear it Out Challenge which is is having a "use your orange stash" challenge - a clear out and a challenge entry - score!

Instead of the banner shape I cut along the chevron lines - just felt like a better way to use the paper.

Finally I topped it all with some bling and pearls and added the little "friends" greeting tucked in the corner under the paper.

And I thought I'd also include this in The Pink Elephant's Anything Goes challenge.
 
It's been a fun evening putting this together - the perfect anecdote to a stressful return to work. And I think

Project: Someone Special at Christmas for MAWTT

This week Shell is hosting us at Moving Along with the Times and we have a Somone Special at Christmas challenge. Please indicate that this card is for someone special on the card, either in the sentiment or greeting - and that's it!

For my take, I wanted to feature this fun Kenny K holiday image. The Kenny K team are having a Christmas twist this week so I'm entering their challenge as well. I colored her using ProMarkers and then die cut the circle so I could get the layered effect that I wanted.

The baking papers are from a christmas stack and a glitter card stack from Michael's. I have always loved the argyle print but struggled to use it - I think it works here with the other elements, if a bit busy.

I wanted to make this more like a package so I added the tag and double wrapped it with some chunky string- I had this vision in my head to get all of these layered stacked up and I'm really pleased with the outcome.

Final touches were to glitter the fur trim on the santa hat and add a sparkly candy to the corner.

Can't wait to see what special somone is getting your Christmas creations week!

Project 184: Monograms and paint strip punches

I need to make a set of cards for someone I am seeing next week and wanted something modern and fresh. I saw this post yesterday on Pinterest and I thought it was great inspiration. This is the pin I found:

I have this little butterfly punch and thought it would be great for the paint strip gradient. I looked at using a white or black card base but went for the craft card as well as it looked more striking with these colors, especially the fainter shades in the base.

The headline card shows the details - I punched 5 butterflies from the paint strips and then followed a similar arc around the page. I added tiny little pearls to match the colors just to give it a bit more dimension.

Instead of a greeting I opted for a white monogram for the recipient. These are Tim Holtz Alterations strip die and as I just got a brand new Big Shot machine I decided to get these out. They never worked properly on my Epic Six - in fact I almost binned them because I thought it was a bad die! They are a double letter punch, so I pulled out the inner bit as I liked the outline here.

Here's the full set in all of the colors:

It's a simple layout and yet it used a fair amount of kit and manages to look CAS and modern. Hopefully the recipient will like them as well!

Project 183: A little cute bicycle set

My mother-in-law asked me to make cards for all of her sisters (she has 3!) for their birthdays this year and it's been a fun little challenge to make them throughout the year.

The headline card is an example from a set I just finished. These are really playful and fun, for one of her sisters who used to be a cycle enthusiast.

I used a Sizzix stamp and die set that I got ages ago (copying Claire as she had it- something I am often guilty of!) and decided to dig out for this set. It's so simple but it really does look modern and fresh.

I kept it girly using a patterned paper scallop-diecut from the Family Ties paper pack and a plain colored card as a background for the bike. I added some layered flowers to tie into the colors in the papers and then instead of going onto a bigger card I kept these on smaller 4x4 inch squares so they really a feature.

I added a bit of glitter glue to the wheels to add some extra sparkle and stopped there - it's a lot better to give blank cards (or monogrammed) so the recipient can do what they want with it.

I think the pink may be my favorite - it's unabashedly girly and I like it!

Project: Dog-gone-it challenge at MAWTT

Susan is hosting our challenge at MAWTT this week and we have a "Doggone it!" animal theme. I had a hard time deciding which dog stamp to use as I have so many!

I went for this little daschund dinky stamp from Little Claire as he makes me smile.

I colored him with ProMarkers and then die cut the circle shape and green scallop shape. The spotted paper is from Tiger (a kid's craft pack that I loved) and the little banner is a Martha Stewart punch-pad scrap. I have been trying do some scrap amnesty and use scraps instead of new sheets - the green scallop was from the same exercise!

The flowers are from a Recollections pack and they are topped with green bling. Finally the greeting is also from Little Claire as it goes with the cheerful colors and image.

I can't wait to visit your furry friend choices this week!

Project 182: A huge hero birthday

It's my friend Harry's birthday today and I forgot to bring him a card today! Gutted!

So to make it up to him I made a card using Huge Hero from Kenny K. If you don't already know I'm obsessed with Kenny K then you can get into the craze yourself as this stamp is currently on sale - it was all I could do not to buy everything in the sale myself!

The image is colored with ProMarkers and then I cut it out. I love this brick-embossed white photo paper which Claire gave me and I think it looks great with this image. The star paper is from a Dovecrafts monotone pack I picked up a while ago.

The greeting is an inside joke - my friend is a copywriter and I'm always asking him for little favours like blog writing for client blogs I manage and so I thought I'd make a joke. And yes - I decided to use my awful handwriting instead of proper writing or stamps or a printed message - more personal that way.

I'm entering it into the KennyK blog Anything Goes challenge as well. Hopefully he'll like it and it'll make up for my tardiness on forgetting it today!

Project 181: Sexing up black and orange

As it's the first of October, there's a trend to get all jazzed about Halloween amongst us crafters and I decided to dive head first in with a sexy take on the spooky holiday. No pumpkins here, just a bit of fun from Kenny K!

Their black and orange challenge 181 (I'm hoping I'm lucky as that's the number of this post as well!) was perfect for Veronica Vamp, a stamp I bought just this week.

The colors are a perfect match for this week's Color Throwdown Challenge:

I colored the image using ProMarkers and die cut her out in the petal shape with an inked edge to add a bit of darkness to the bright white paper. I layered that over a black paper doiley, which went over a textured black and white houndstooth card stock.

The orange chevron ribbon is actually fabric ribbon but it worked so well here. I added some black and white thread and a black and white stitched bow - once I start using ribbon I can't stop! The brown flag has a hand-written sentiment - I struggled to know what to put there so I just came up with something!

I thought I would also enter it into The Pink Elephant's Anything Goes Challenge this week.

Happy first day of a Halloween-themed month to everyone!