Freshly Made Sketches Challenge 318

Today I had an idea for the Freshly made sketches challenge 318 and after a bit of humming and haring I came up with this card:

The panel is a My Favourite Things background stamp which I heat embossed with gold embossing powder on hot pressed watercolour paper. I painted it using brusho paints and zig clean colour real brush pens. I decided to frame it in gold as it picked out the embossing nicely.

I hope you like it. Here is a close up:

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog, I would love it if you also took the time to leave me a comment.
Thank you
Hilary
x

Christmas Decoration

Every year I make some decorations to go on the presents that I give people that can then be hung on a christmas tree. I also make a tree decoration for my three grandchildren which I embroider with their name and year. I hope that I will continue to do this for the years to come, we will see how long I keep it up for. my eldest grand daughter is only 5 so I have a long way to go.

Unfortunately I left it a bit late this year so decided to do something straightforward and chose a stocking. I kept the stocking itself very simple and added embellishment by adding beads, bells and felt balls as tassels hanging from the stocking.

I felt quite pleased making these as everything I used I already had in my stash. I think it always feels good to find a use for the stuff that we collect.

Here they are added to presents, I added a little chocolate treat and a candy cane to the stocking to put it to use.

To create a label for the presents I cut a piece of shiny hologram card the same shape as the stocking and wrote my message on the back.

I thought I would enter the moving along with the times challenge 61, anything but a card.

Here are the tree decorations that I made for my grandchildren. They are a bit bigger than the present embellishments. I filled them up with sweets so I know they liked them!

Thanks for visiting me. It would be lovely if you left me a comment, but I know how hard that is so it is OK if you don't.

Christmas 4

I thought I would share this card on the Merry Monday 267 Colour combo Challenge as I realised my card matched the brief:


Here is my card:

The background is green and blue water colour, the die is cut from silver glitter card and the sentiment is printed on velum.

Here are a couple more versions in different colour ways just for interest:

Thank you very much for visiting my page. I really appreciate it.
Hilary
x

Christmas 3

Today I am sharing my little reindeer card. The reindeer was die cut from watercolour card that I had coloured and then spritzed with silver paint to give it a shine. The background and frame are cut from very sparkly non shed glitter paper  and the antlers are adorned with red and green seed beads.

I hope you like it:

Unfortunately the shine does not come through on the pictures.

I am entering this in the following challenges:

Happy Little Stampers Christmas

AAA Cards CAS Game 104

Always Fun Challenges 34

Thanks so much for visiting my page, I really appreciate it.

Hilary

x

Christmas 2

I have a second card that I am entering in the Addicted to CAS Bows challenge. Here it is:

The green die cut holly leaf has been inked with 2 shades of green pigment ink and then heat embossed with clear embossing powder. This was repeated 3 times to get the depth of colour and shine. The holly leaves are only attached to the cats at their base to create some shadow on the base card. The bow has been heat embossed 3 times as well. I added the sentiment as an afterthought as I felt the white space just needed something.

This card is my second entry to the following challenge:

Christmas 1

I have just seen that it is 3 months since I last did a post, how time flies. My long gap is because I have had some work done on my house including a new kitchen, but the main reason is because I had to empty my craft room to have some new shelves put in and it has just taken forever to get sorted and now Christmas is looming up so I am trying to get focused.

I saw the Bows challenge on addicted to CAS and thought I would enter this card:

I hope that it is not too fussy to be classed as clean and simple. I have been enjoying the effect created by multiple layer embossing. The bow has been inked with pigment ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I think I did 3 layers, I love the shine it creates. The die cut bauble is also embossed with versamark and clear embossing powder but it does not show very well on the photo.

Overall I am quite pleased with this one.

I have entered it is this challenge:

Thinking of you

Hello
I made this card for someone who is currently dealing with a bereavement. I got inspiration for it from a card by MASKerade that I saw on Pinterest. You can find it here. I just love her style. It is something about the simplicity of it that really works.

My card is nothing like as good of course but I thought I would try to replicate the fading ink stripe across the middle and I really love this tree from Lavinia Stamps. I put some colour on the tree with Spectrum Noir alcohol markers and added a few sequins.

I notice on the photo that there is a black mark on one of the sequins - I have no idea what it is or how it got there. Unfortunately the card is now in the post so I can't re-do the photo, typical!

I am entering this card in the Addicted to CAs One Layer challenge 117. I hope the sequins don't give it too much bling for a CAS card. I did hum and har before adding them. Generally I tend to chicken out of adding such things in fear that I will ruin the card but this time I went for it.



Thanks for taking the time to visit me today.

Hilary
x

Flowers

Hello
I recently bought this Woodware Cosmos flowers stamp and some gold embossing powder so I have used them both to create this card.

I used my zig clean colour real brushes to paint them and added some spectrum noir sparkle to the flower centre and the butterflies. The Thanks sentiment was cut with my scan n cut with gold layered over blue mirror board to give some more shine. It is difficult to get the shine to show in the photos but hopefully you get the drift.

Here is my card:

I am going to enter this card to the following challenges:

Just us Girls challenge 406












Uniko Challenge 42



Thanks for visiting today

Hilary
xx

Less is more challenge 339

I recently made a card for a close friends wedding day. I think it will fit the challenge Pierce your project as I cross stitched the heart as the centre piece of the card. I used to use cross stitch on cards a lot but I have recently moved on to using stamps and other paper crafts more. I do still really enjoy cross stitch but it is very time consuming. I find it very calming because if you don't concentrate you will go wrong and then spend loads of time unpicking, and if you do concentrate it calms your mind down.

Here is the card:

Whilst I am only entering the card in this challenge, I thought you might like to see the sampler and gift tag that I made to go with it.

The chart used came from the final edition of Cross Stitch Collection magazine published in February 2017.

My friends wedding day was spectacular we had the most wonderful day. Everything about it was stunning but the flowers were particularly memorable. Here is just a little taster, they look amazing even under the grey sky. Thanks so much Jenny for allowing us to share your special day with you.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Rainbow hearts

Hello,
Today I thought I would enter AAA Cards Rainbow Challenge.
My inspiration has come from Tracie Ponds' design team card. I loved the hearts and the way she has placed them on the page.

My card is not a patch on hers but I am reasonably pleased with it. I used a very small hearts stamp, which I think is from Lavinia stamps. I drew the sentiment with my Scan n Cut machine. I love how you can now create sentiments in any font that can also be filled in. I think it looks so professional and it is very easy to do.

Here is my card:

I hope you like it.

White on Gold

I decided to enter the one layer challenges at AAA cards and Less is More but it took me ages to settle on a design. I finally decided to go with a gold base and white heat embossed images.

It is my design skills that I struggle with. I know what I like and admire in other card makers designs but struggle to come up with my own designs. It is one reason why I have decided to start entering challenges as I think it will help me to make progress in this area.

Anyway, I did finally settle on a design which I am reasonably happy with, but the execution was more challenging than I thought it would be. Firstly getting the flowers placed exactly right and then heat embossing without getting stray bits of white everywhere.

The flower is a block mounted rubber stamp by Cam & Chloe. Unfortunately I do not know the make of the sentiment and butterfly stamps but they are from different sets.

Here is my card, I will keep practicing as practice makes perfect.

Thank you for visiting me. I hope you like it.

White on White

I have had several goes at getting this card how I wanted it. I think now I am reasonably happy with it, or as happy as I ever am with one of my cards. I have a tendency to always think they could be better. I am sure I am not alone I suspect that is how most card makers feel.

Here is my card:

I used an embossing folder that came free with issue 150 of simply cards and paper craft magazine. The little birds are from a cut file that was free on the internet (I can't remember where exactly) and the hello is the font 'always in my heart' made into a cut file in inkscape and cut on my scan n cut.

I am entering it in the Addicted to CAS challenge  White on White

CASology Week 255 Fly

I have been thinking about this challenge all week and finally got round to putting my idea into practice when I realised I have nearly missed the deadline - but not quite!

Here is my card:

It is very simple, I used broken china, dusty concord and festive berries distress inks. I was contemplating adding a sentiment to the front but realised I didn't have time. I notice that it seems to be normal to add sentiments to the front of cards, but it is not something I am used to doing, I suspect that will change.


Here is the link to the challenge: CASology Week 255 Fly

Doodle Flowers

Hello,
This card was made by stamping a flower from the My Favourite Things (Fancy Flowers set), I stamped it 3 times and cut it out using my Scan n Cut. I then filled in the petals with some doodles using a fine black pen, arranged them on a piece of white card stock and drew in some stems.

I quite like the effect and it was very simple to do.

I am entering it in this challenge:

http://alwaysplayingwithpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/the-challenge-88-keywords.html

I have focused on flowers as my keyword.

Emboss Resist

Here are 4 cards I made using the emboss resist technique. All were stamped with versamark ink and heat embossed with white opaque embossing powder. I used brush paints and zig clean colour real brush pens on the first 2 and distress oxide inks for the second 2:

I think I prefer the effect of the brushes. It is more vibrant.
I am going join the Foiled Fox Simply irresistible challenge.