Project 231: A slightly funky wedding card

I was asked to make a wedding card for a colleague's wedding for all of us to sign and I was delighted. This guy is great, and his fiancee is a very cool chick, they have a funky retro style and I'm a big fan of them both.

I used this KennyK image as it's so easy to personalize and am entering their Anything Goes challenge. He has jet black hair and a turned up coif while she has ombre orange hair. Yes orange. Not ginger, not trying to be red. Orange. Love it. They are both covered in tattoos and I thought this image allowed opportunities to make it all about them. I also got to use it for my 30 day coloring challenge.

I did a bit of facebook stalking and talking to colleagues to also do some stalking to get a good photo of the bride's left arm. I managed to get a few that showed a star, with a bit of a dashed line and then the top of a heart that leads to a half sleeve with roses and diamonds and some other very cool retro images.

Their wedding scheme is creme and pink and this Neopolitan Recollections pack was perfect - the little greeting is from there as well.

I kept it simple with some candies and a little bit of glitter on the earring and flowers. I think it will work really well and I'm excited to give it to him at his going away party later this week.

Project 230: Wales, London, Bikes and hills

My colleagues give me amazingly weird briefs. I can't even think of which ones to link to as examples there are so many. (Maybe see this one as a starting point...) So when my colleague gave me a brief with keywords - yes really - I knew this was another special one. She previously commissioned this kid's card so you know how specific we can get.

See, another colleague's girlfriend's parents had put her up for a night and driven her from London to Wales to compete in a 140km bike race. She wanted a card that demonstrated her appreciation for this extremely generous gift of time.

So I went for a patchwork quilt feel for the card as I thought it would help tell a story. I cut out some rolling hills from different patterend papers and created a little road, house and a van driving from London to Wales and back. I went for a rough-drawn outline on the van and irregularly shaped dashes for the road - I thought it would work well for the homemade feel.

I created a little sliding door on the van to reveal a diecut stamped bicycle. I like a little bit of interaction.The sign is made from scraps on my desk and I hand wrote the signs.

I thought it was a fun little project and it went down extremely well with both my commissioner and her recipients. All in all, a great card to make.

Project 229: A colouring challenge round up

I thought I'd share some of the bits and bobs from my 30 day colouring challenge with Claire these last few days. It's been really good fun, trying colored pencils and different markers, relying more on dig stamps than I usually do and generally just having a good old fashioned play in the stash. It's ace.

Here are some hits:

The headline card is the second in a set and started with Fiskars toadstools above, and when I colored them and cut them with a circle die, it was such an easy card to just add a little scallop circle and hand-drawn border that I did it again the next day with a different stamp from the same set. Love, love, love. I want to make two more and make it a set of 4 to give away. This is one for the win.

This is my big-eared bunny cupcake colored with pro markers, and a very very very subtle shading technique on his ears that is so subtle I'm not sure why I bothered! I criticised myself last week for starting but not finishing all that much so this week I wanted to make sure that I tried to make a few cards, no matter how simple. Hence this page!

I found that by just cutting him out and layering him over two simple papers (the bottom is cut to mimic a punch but is actually just cut along the chevron lines) it became a super simple layout, very reminiscent of the cards Claire and I made in our early days. And this layout is still super nice! I think big strip + featured image cut out + border along bottom is classic. Long may it inspire.

And then here's a badass lion from my art therapy colouring book. I'm loving my colouring book. I always have and always will love just colouring in images. And that's what this challenge is all about.

Expect many more colouring book pages this week because I'm travelling for work. I brought my little bag of colored pencils and colouring book on the plane and the stewardesses no doubt thought I was nuts. Ces't la vie!

Project: Song Lyric for MAWTT

This week at Moving Along with the Times we have a song lyric challenge. We want a project that is inspired by or referencing a song. This week we have a prize for the winner - 15 stamps donated by Lena! - so be sure to get involved.

I wanted to make a card for a friend who's little boy is in hospital. He loves space and astronauts so I went for the song Rocket Man, by Elton John, and thought this Bugaboo image was perfect.

I colored the image with ProMarkers and got to do some coloring as part of my coloring challenge. Win.

I layered him over a stitched rounded corner rectangle that Claire gave me. The star paper is from Studio Callico and I think the little banners make it feel more interstellar. The little greeting is from a stamp set that I got at Michael's...I have no idea what brand. But it's got this sentiment which is spot on.

Going in the post today to get to my friend, hope it cheers her and her little boy up.

Can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Project 228: A Cossack Father's Day card

It's unusual for me to say "I'm sorry, you want a card with what on it?!" when I get a brief. But that happened this week when my colleague said, can you make me a Ukranian Cossack card? (Same colleague who gave me the brief for the headline card on this post, actually)

She gave me a few images to work with and I went with this one as it was interesting and I could see it working in a card. Some were too cartoony and I thought wouldn't really work as well. So this is my entry for Day 16 of the 30 Day Coloring Challenge.

I colored him with ProMarkers and die cut him into a circle. I layered that on a scallop circle and backed him against a brick wall embossed photo sheet that Claire gave me from her stash. I added some light blue and yellow stars to mimic the Ukranian flag to top it off.

Random but fun, I'd say, as my three word summary of this one!

Project 227: A bottle of wine for dad

I had an idea for a Father's Day card and thought I could make it really personalized for my dad.

I cut up paint chips to create this wine bottle mosaic. It's intentionally a bit helter skelter - I tried all straight lines and it just looked weird and not very bottle like. I added the tag with a handwritten message and left it really simple.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

Project 226: A simple green and red coloring challenge card

I am doing a 30 Day Coloring Challenge with Claire and it is great. It is making me think of different things to color, different ways to look at card making and generally evaluate everything I have in my stash with, 'can I color that?'

I will do a round up post soon with some stuff I've done, but here's one I did today.

I liked the simple and bold colors at the Color Throwdown Challenge and decided to make that my color scheme for today's entry.

 Gorjuss stamp is the feature here, colored green and black with ProMarkers, and embellished with a bright red ribbon and bling. I used a bit of green for a border stamp from KnockOuts.

It's maybe not as cute as I envisioned it, but that's ok, I'm trying a new combo and sometimes it doesn't work. There's always tomorrow's challenge!

Project: Retro birthday challenge

Happy birthday MAWTT! This week, in honor of our 6th birthday at Moving Along with the Times, we are doing a birthday themed challenge. You have until 8pm GMT Wednesday 10th June.

I decided to do something fun and cheerful for my celebration card. When I saw that CAS-ual Fridays was doing a summery challenge it sounded great: white, tan and a bright color. I wanted to use turquoise and thought white and tan would be a great trio.

I already had in mind using this stamp set from January's Creative Stamping magazine and I decided to do something a bit different with it. I paper pieced the dress from bright paper and used a spotted paper for her apron. The greeting is from the same set.

I backed her against a sparkly tan sheet that has been in my stock and used an off-cut of the turquoise in her dress for the border. The spotted ribbon is ancient in my stash and I thought this was a good was to add texture.

I tried candies and all sorts to finish it off and settled on a little trio of gems - 3 colors, 3 gems, why not? - and really like how clean and bright it is. I hope it's CAS enough for the challenge but more than anything I'm just pleased it's a cheerful birthday card for our MAWTT challenge.

Looking forward to see your projects this week!

30 Day Color Challenge - Day 1

This is getting posted late - already slipping - but Claire found this great 30 day colouring challenge and I wanted to get involved.

It's going to be tough to commit. Yes I know, even 10 minutes shouldn't be that hard but it will be! Case in point: this post is going up Tuesday instead of Monday because I had some technical problems and gave up pretty easily.

Sighs.

Anyway, this little green flower is a digital stamp and I colored it with different green ProMarkers. I love this image, it's from Claire and I think it's so cheerful.

I'll be sure to commit and check in later today with the next colored piece!

Project 225: A special mother's day card

I have been meaning to post this for ages - I had to wait until the recipient had the card before posting and then it just slipped my mind altogether. But I'm super proud of this project so there's no time like the present to share it!

I wanted to make a special card for my mom this year and browsed Pinterest for some inspiration. I loved a few iterations that I saw of a flower pot card (this one was particularly cute), where you pull out the flowers to reveal a message.

I did a step-by-step tutorial here and found it really helpful in making the pot pocket. I decided to go for tulips for the flowers, and made them out of pink scraps and a petal die I had on my desk. I then added some green petals for flowers. I was really pleased to use a lot of scraps that I had at my disposal - even the little pink insert on the message is a scrap!

The rest is pretty straight forward really. I punched a scallop edge to the pot and added a little daisy-chain border to the bottom. The ribbon is from Tiger, really cheap and really good quality. 

I didn't take a picture but on the back I simply wrote 'Pull me out' in case it wasn't clear that it was something that could be separated. She really liked it and it's definitely a layout I can now make again. 

Project 224: A tic-tac-toe challenge

I love a tic-tac-toe challenge as it makes you think of your stash in different ways. I also love The Paper Players and decided to play along with Claire and this week's challenge when we had a craft playdate this weekend! This was their board: 

I decided to tackle the far right column: Sequins, Flower, Yellow. 

My image is a Little Claire daisy border stamp and I kept it black and white without colouring it as I wanted to keep it to just yellow, black and white. The yellow paper is from Studio Calico and the black spotted paper is Dove Crafts. 

The little black sequins are from a big bumper box - I had to pick out these from a much bigger variety, I really wanted just the flat ones - and I added the layered flowers and button for extra cuteness. I'm really happy with the finished project. 

In the spirit of honesty, I thought I'd show another one that I did trying to tackle the middle column. I have no idea why this was such a challenge! This is card attempt 2 or 3 and I just couldn't get the elements to come together. I tried blue, patterned paper and embossing here: 

It's ok. I don't love it. But it'll do for the stash I suppose!