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!