Project: Congrats sketch challenge

This is a very fun and silly response to our challenge for you at Sketch Saturday this week.

My friend for life Claire has just celebrated 2 years with us at our company - we've worked together before at a previous company and I couldn't resist the temptation when we were looking to expand our office in New York to see if she was up for the challenge. 2 years later, here we all are! Today marks the start of a girls weekend for us so it's a perfect entry for today.

I thought I'd do something a bit silly and light and instead of a serious congrats card I decided to go a bit whimsical. I used Harriet from our great sponsor this week, Crafty Sentiments Designs and colored it as if Claire was the little girl. I decided to stick with blues and greys and chose a backing paper Claire has admired (re: stolen) in the past. I added a vertical congrats sentiment from Stampin' Up and some string and enamel accents to complete the sketch. I think it will crack her up.

We have a prize of 3 digis this week so make sure you enter by Friday the 25th of August!

Project 436: A masked blended sketch and color challenge

I saw the colors at Color Throwdown and was going back and forth in my mind for the past few days trying to think of what to do. Then I discovered the sketch at CAS(E) This Sketch and something came together in my mind.

I masked the right hand border and blendd using Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers and Seedless Preserve distress ink and added some bleached water dots. I added a few feathers stamped and die cut and faised them on foam for texture. The sentiment is from Stampin' Up Balloon Celebrations.

By making it a birthday card I also wanted to enter the CAS on Friday birthday challenge.

I ended up liking the treatment so much I did it in two other color combinations.

 

I liked it so much I ended up spending the rest of my day blending and masking so the challenges were truly inspirational! 

Project: Welcome kitten card for Sketch Saturday

Happy Saturday! This week we have a great sketch for you at Sketch Saturday by Alex - hopefully it will inspire some great projects.


Our sponsor is MMedel Illustrations and we have a prize of 2 digis + a discount coupon so it's definitely worth playing along!

For my take, I took this cute kitten set and chose a cat (yawning? singing? something vocal!) and colored it using ProMarkers to match the colorings on my friend's new little kitten. I added touches of gel pen as white accents. The hello border down the side is an old sentiment I have had for ages and decided that by repeating it there was more of a pattern that worked with the balance. I added giant buttons to complete the sketch and it has a playful masculine appeal now. I'm pleased and so is my friend, it looks just like her cat:


Be sure to join the fun by Friday the 11th of August to be in with a chance of winning the prizes!

Project: Things that fly at MAWTT

I have been making a lot of cards lately that involve birds, butterflies, hot air balloons, and I realised that I seem to be obsessed with things that fly. I thought it would be the perfect challenge for Moving Along with the Times this week!

My card features a set of bug stamps that I heat embossed in black. I put them on a strip of watercolour paper that I painted using an aqua brush and Distress Inks. I tried to choose colors associated with that particular bug and I'm really happy with the combination. I added a sentiment from Tim Holtz idea-ology stickers that I thought worked well for the set. I tried it on white, black and kraft card and decided black looked best.

Project 435: Watercolored cards

As I was on a craft date with Claire this weekend I was feeling more brave in my card makes. These might not look very brave but look! The paper is torn, not trimmed! Small things.

We made the headline card as a joint challenge with repeated image/text in a resist and a watercolored background and her card is pretty awesome, I hope she shares it soon. I got a bit bored with the heat embossing as the stamp took quite a lot of powder but otherwise I liked the combination of colors I got from Peacock Feathers and Blueprint Sketch Distress Ink. The little tag is covering an oops where I messed up my stamping. I liked it better neat on the card but then had to hide the mistake. Oh well!

The next card uses the ripped scrap from the headline, painted in Mowed Lawn ink. The image is a new Tim Holtz that I heat embossed in black. I embossed a yellow scrap in a woodgrain folder to go with the leaf. The little tag is a new punch from EK Success.

Finally I thought I'd share this just as a freebie. The frame is cut from the headline card from yesterday. I used a flower freebie from a card magazine and a thank you from a set I got second hand. I colored it all using ProMarkers and added some pearl and glitter accents to the flowers and sentiment. It's a girly but I like it, it's very different from my recent makes.

Project 434: Scraps and dies

I wanted to bring a bunch of cards to my sister and mom (who I am seeing today!) and they said thank you cards and blank cards are the most useful so I concentrated my efforts there. I also wanted to use the dozens of scraps I had lurking on my desk so in a bid to clear out, I decided to make some of my dies work hard to use up the scraps and make some fun cards without too much planning.

The headline was a fun one to make - I really struggle with that big leaf die. It really only works with really thick card and the little holes are an absolute challenge to get out cleanly. I got one clean one, ruined 2 other scraps and abandoned my plans for a set. The background is from a small square pad and I used a stitched die to get a border. The tag is punched and stamped and it came together with just a handful of pieces.

These came together through a collection of scraps. All the papers you see here were die cut or trimmed to size. The green paper on the cactus sheet was stamped using a chevron background stamp but otherwise it's dies only - no stamps at all. 

Finally I thought I'd show this set. These papers are prized possessions but I decided my sister and mom were worth it to use them. I die cut some giant scottie dog dies in different purples and then added a tartan paper with a candy - super simple.

All in all a pleasing collection! I can't wait to see which my family go for.