Project 95: Sexy leaving card

This week is my intern's last week at my company. She has a very distinct style, very blonde and pink, and she loves bling. So what would be more perfect than a sexy KennyK card?

I used Honey Sparks and made her, what else, blonde and pink. I glittered her glasses for a bit of sparkle and topped off the flower with bling and a sequin for a double effect. I wanted to keep the layout simple so I just used two geometric pink sticky ribbons at the bottom and tied up a tag with black and white string. The tags are from a new craft kit from Claire, which I will write a bigger post on later this week.

I was excited to find two new coloring challenges this week and my pink lady worked for both themes.

Sweet Stampin' Challenge had a bold and beautiful theme that required a stamp or digi image. There was a lot of pink inspiration from the DT entries and Honey is a pretty bold feature stamp!

Second was Color Me Creative marker challenge, which had an "Anything Goes" challenge so long as you used alcohol-based markers. I can confirm all markers used here are ProMarkers:

Outfit: Rose Pink and Pastel Pink

Skin: Blush

Hair: Canary and Gold 

Glasses and boots: Cool Grey 3

Always nice to find new challenge blogs! 

I have to write a long post about all the great stuff Claire sent me to cheer me up - die cuts, cards, crab cookie cutter...it's a bag of fun and makes me miss hanging out with her. Luckily the distance means that we have an excuse to buy each other all kinds of random stuff (while expanding our own collections)... 

Hoping you all have a good week!

Project 94: Clean and Simple button challenge

Claire pointed out a challenge featuring buttons over on Clean and Simple Challenges and as I have a bit of time (and a need to keep my hands busy and mind distracted) I thought I would enter as I LOVE buttons.

I used it as an opportunity to use my new owl stamps and the result is the headline card. I debated making it a more complicated layout but that goes against the ethos of the clean and simple challenge.

I used a square cream card as white looked too harsh. I used buttons for the eyes, as close to matching as I could get and then flower red buttons on the branch. I find those a bit hard to work with usually as they are a bit twee but was happy with the result here.

I stamped everything directly on the card - haven't done that in ages, felt brave doing it with all 4 stamps!

I really like the way it came out and I kept it greeting free so I have it for any occassion. Buttons and owls, what's not to love?

Project 93: Stamping like mad double challenge

This week we had some sad news and it's really made me retreat into the craft world to be distracted. It's really been therapeutic though I'm not sure I'm quite ready to face the real world and work again. To really put my mind to work, I decided to double up challenges again.

I liked the inspiration at Designed to Color and I had a second opportunity to enter the Kenny K Steampunk challenge so I used the combination to create the headline card, a birthday card for my friend. We often joke that we'd be better suited for Victorian times so I thought the steampunk vibe would be perfect for him.

I used Captain Locke from KennyK as the feature. I used Chronology paper for the cogs and then patterned my own paper for the green die-cut on the left using two different key stamps. I textured the flower with two different green inks and cut out a cog for the center. I used green glitter drop decals for the top right corner. Candies felt a bit out of place.

I thought I'd show a few more of the stamping bonanza output here as it is the result of an epic session but only the top headline card is in the challenge. 

 

I used the same color inspiration for a baby card for my colleague who just celebrated the 12-week-scan of their first baby. They don't know if it is a boy or a girl so I thought the yellow, green and grey worked well. He's a cool graphic designer so I used bold papers and simple layout that I thought he'd appreciate. I cut the baby-grow free-hand and then stamped the greeting. I got the idea from Pinterest and then used a card magazine for the layout idea. 

 

 

Changing things up a bit, I got a great set of stamps with Get Stamping magazine. All three of the stamps on this card are from the summer adventure theme. I used my old friend the Latte stack for the papers and added the chevron paper to keep it modern. I added glitter to the images to make it a bit more blingy.

 

 Back to Kenny K for the last two. This card is for my brother in law. I colored the Wise Guy stamp to look like my BIL and found a paper (also Latte stack) that worked perfectly. I used brad-style candies along the bottom to give it a bit of hardware.

 

I won this mermaid stamp from a challenge I entered with Ginger Gem and this is her first outing for me. I made her purple and blue and colored the gradient to give her depth. The purple paper is ancient (I think Claire gave it to me 2 years ago) and I thought it had an ethereal, under-water feel. I stamped hibsicus flowers on the blue card using the travel stamps I mentioned above. I topped her off with a lot of glitter glue and some punched and pressed flowers with purple bling.

I'm grateful I have crafting as a distracting and coping mechanism; I don't hope for bad news again but at least the output is fairly productive!

Project 92: Steampunk challenge

A while ago I tried to conquer the steampunk trend and I'd say the results are mixed. This was before I became obsessed with KennyK and before I decided to start playing along with multiple challenges. The result? A card that took over an hour because I laid it out a dozen times and changed my mind at every opportunity. Oh and I decided to throw caution to the wind and make it OTT busy. LOVES IT.

No really, I do love it. Normally I stop at an embellishment or two but this time I thought I'd make an occasion-free card that I can use at my whim.

I used Jetpack Jayne for the KennyK steampunk challenge. It's the first time I've used her and I love her. I glittered up her goggles to match the orange, grey and black theme as she was a bit peachy compared to everything else.

The black lace doily was from the original $20 challenge from Claire and I think it works perfectly with the theme and the Mojo layout (above). I tried so many different ribbons to match the sketch but it just wasn't working for this already complicated card. Sometimes that's the way it is.

The papers are Chronology and the little paper embellishments (goggle lady, compass and pointing finger) were all cut out of one of the other papers by hand. The black flower with the orange stone adds a bit of bling to balance the goggles on Jayne and I aded three candies in the corner to make an imaginary line from the top right hand corner down to her foot so all of the details are taken in.

So even though it's more complicated than I would usually go, I'm loving it. Must be my crush on Jetpack Jayne.

Project 91: Knocked Up and fabulous

Back to my friend Hannah. This is the second card that was commissioned when I posted yesterday's card. The brief was roughly to make a "congrats your knocked up card" that wasn't too soppy. I won't use the words she described the lucky lady but they ended in ...-show. Which is a fun brief. Han is good for a fun brief.

So I made the card above. It's modern, it's not cutesy, it celebrates the woman, not the baby. I hope the colors are ok, I didn't really get a steer on that. But I think it's fabulous.

I used my nesting die scallops to get the layers. To make it more textured I embossed the bottom layer and then used that to make the banner. The centre image is some free clipart I found online.

I used the block letter stamps I have to spell out the greeting - I love the effect. It's baby-ish yet because it doesn't say "new arrival" or something twee it still fits.

I love it. If she doesn't, I'll keep it and hope someone I know gets knocked up soon.

Project 90: Mojo for an MBE recipient

My friend Hannah commissions the most unique cards from me. And I love her for it. She always comes to me with personalised briefs (see this Christening card or this new home card or this wedding card). So when she asked me to make a congratulations card for her mom's friend who had been awarded an MBE I was delighted. (She also commissioned another card but it's not finished so 'll post that on a different day.)

I looked to Mojo Monday for inspiration and found it. I liked the simplicity of the layout and thought it would work for this more serious occassion. This was the sketch:

The papers are Latte by  DCWV and I haven't used them for a while but I love the patterns and colors. Green strip is embossed with polka dots (I tried a damask embossing folder but it was way too busy) and I used a purple flower with a button to give it the embellishment. I tried adding a mini banner as per the sketch but it didn't work.

The brown paper is usually hard to use but I think by making it the feature it works. I used a long and complicated peel-off for the greeting as I thought it suited the occasion.

Will post the other card later this week when it's finished!

Project 89: New stamps for a new home card

This is a quick post but I was really happy with a new home card I made this week for my friend Palo.

I stopped in to my local craft shop this week when I had half a day off and found this awesome stamp set:

Owls, hearts and houses: what's not to love?!

I used the complicated house stamp to make the headline card using purple ink and grey paper so it wasn't too stark against the busy background. It was a beast. I think this is the 7th atempt? It's so complicated and getting even pressure to get a full image was a nightmare. So this has quickly become a special-occassion-only stamp.

The far left strip is embossed using a new Sizzix embossing folder I bought in a sale and the hot air balloon papers are from the steampunk Chronology set. I glittered these to give a bit of lift. And added the gold candies for the same reason.

I've not posted for a while as I've been so busy coloring in my KennyKs but expect more posts in the next few days as I've been starting to use them!