SDC35 - red, orange and yellow

It's a sizzling hot challenge at Stampotique this week. It's a stampotique only stamps challenge this week, but as it's a colour theme, I'm sure anyone can make this one work with even the fewest stampotique stamps.
I've just used a single stamp from Jo Capper-Sandon's range, with a masked backgound of distress inks.

This year's batch Christmas Card??

Every year I do a couple of designs for cards that I will be able to batch make (usually in late november). I think this is this year's first design. It's quick, uses minimal materials that are easily replaced, and is perfect for batch making.

The Stamps are all from Jo Capper-Sandon's range at stampotique, (available from Happy Daze in the UK) stamped in brown versafine on kraft card, and coloured with coloursoft pencils. the berries are highlighted with Glossy Accents, and the knotted ribbon is glued on.

This is one of my favourite ways to use ribbon, and so is my second entry for this week's Less is More Challenge. I have also entered this for the Kraft Jounal's Christmas in July theme.

LIM ribbon

The theme at Less is More is ribbons and buttons. I made this little scrapling using an octopode stamp I've been meaning to play with for ages along with some Stamp Camp words.

The ribbon is tied with an immovable knot, but I think is too thick for the flower, but it's kind of quirky!

Nestability card

On the Frantic Stamper Blog today I have this quick card featured.

I made this circle card with a Nestabilities scallop die and a humorous birthday stamp by inkadinkado, and finished it with a piece of green apple grid ribbon.

I used the largest die in the scallop Nestabilities set to cut a circle card by overlapping it over the fold of the card.

I used the same die to cut from patterned paper and attached it to the card.

I used the 3rd smallest die to cut a white circle, then stamped and coloured the image. I stamped it again on scrap, coloured and cut out just the head and neck, and attached them to the card with dimensional adhesive.

I attached the white circle to the card. Lastly, I decorated the card with ribbon tied around the fold of the card.

I finished the card by cutting a flat edge on the back of the card to allow it to stand.

Hello Bebe

Come over and visit the current Stampotique challenge, which is Flower Power.
As it's the first challenge of the month, you can use any stamps in your work, and let's face it, who doesn't have at least a few flower stamps in their collection, and you could win some stampotique stamps!!

My stamps are of course all by Stampotique: baby, altered Hello and just a little bit of the in stitches stamp along the bottom of the tag.

I decided to make my tag into a mini easel, which is held up with a glued on knotted ribbon.

teacher's card

It's that time of year.. The Teacher Card.

Of course I've gone for my favourite technique. You'd have thought that I would have been bored of colouring on kraft card with pencils by now, but absolutely not. The effect still seems really magical to me. The way the kraft takes colour is just amazing. On this one I have tried to keep a sepia effect throughout by only using neutral colours, except for the red highlight of the apples. I've also highlighted the apples with sepia accents, just to give a bit of lift to the card.

The stamp is from Sugar Nellie, and was a Craft Stamper Subscription gift ages ago.

I'm entering this for The Kraft Journal's favourite things challenge, as this really is made up of my favourite things in crafting at the moment, pencils on kraft card and one layer cards.

Hanging heart for Happy Daze Challenge

I've made another piece for the current challenge, "Dangly Things". This extremely simple card shows that to be eligible to enter your artwork doesn't necessarily have to include something that actually dangles, just a stamp of a dangly thing will suffice.
In this card I have dangled Jo Capper-Sandons heart from hearts cubed from Tree, also by Stampotique.

I've used a stamp positioner (actually lego corner and clear packaging) to position the heart accurately on the tree, and coloured with pencils on Kraft card.

gingersnap creations, gears, cogs and watch parts

Continuing the Steampunk theme at Gingersnap, the current challenge is to use Cogs, Gears and Watch Parts in your creation. I decided to stick with just stamps rather than incorporating the real thing to make this really simple card. I used Stamps just from PaperArtsy, some simple Layering and a single gem.

floriculture scrapling

I had a little bit of Kraft card left over, from trimming down a card to a square, so I made this Scrapling from stamps on the floriculture plate from rogue redhead designs. I stamped the sentiment,masked it with torn post-it note, stamped the flower, coloured with colour soft pencils.

Finally, I added a few dots of sepia accents.

playing with pointillism again

If you've seen this month's Craft Stamper magazine, you may, like me, have fallen in love with Kim Costello's Pointillism article. I have made this card using Jasmin and Daisy Daisy from Jo Capper-Sandon's range at Stampotique. I don't own Copics so this was made using Whispers markers. I've a long way to go before I master this technique, but I'm enjoying playing!

LIM one layer

The theme at LIM is to make a one layer card using "something with legs" ! Wow that's a big theme... so many things with legs.... where to start...
Then I decided to use one of the stampotique girls that always have the most fabulous legs.
now honestly this card started out Clean and Simple, but somewhere along the way it turned a bit grungy, and I actually for once think it's better for it.

I'm actually glad to show that One Layer doesn't have to mean Clean and Simple.

However I also want to keep the Limmettes happy, so I've used another stampotique stamp (with legs..... well feet at least) to make a CAS card too. This one is really CAS, just stamped and coloured, but I've also added a bit of depth by dry embossing a frame to make the image stand out.

feelin' fruity!

The theme at PaperPlay Challenge is "fruity" I made this get well soon card, using The frantic Stamper's own range of stamps for the grapes and the script, the words were from a clear stamp set that I also got from the Frantic Stamper Website.

I took my favourite pencil on kraft card technique one step further, by stamping the leaf onto another piece of Kraft card, colouring and mounting with 3D foam.

One Layer Wednesday: Clouds

The new theme at One Layer Wednesday is Clouds. I decided to make my own clouds using the fantastic pointillism technique that Kim Costello shows us in this month's Craft Stamper Magazine. Have you seen it? it's gorgeous. I don't own copics so I used Whispers markers and I'm quite pleased with the outcome.

What goes with clouds? why, hot air balloons of course. I know that it won't be an original idea, I'm sure loads of people will use them for this challenge. This is the one that came free with Craft Stamper magazine a short while ago, that I did some of the samples for. It's a useful stamp for your collection.

I think this card might be handy for a graduate, or someone being promoted

gingersnap: on the road

This is quite an easy challenge to kick of Gingersnap Creations' Steampunk/machine month. I used stamps from PaperArtsy. I made the "road" by simply swiping a grey distress ink across the card and then I just stamped the car and congratulations. I thought this would be spot on for someone who had passed their driving test

snake cake

As I posted the Climbing wall cake I made for my son's birthday last year, I thought I should post the snake cake that he had for his party this year. He had a wonderful party where Noah's ark exotic pets visited the house with an amazing collection of animals including an eagle owl, a boa constictor and a tarantula!!

I held a tarantula!!

anyway, it had to be a snake cake. It's not exactly professional, but I made it from scratch and I'm very very proud of it (it tasted good too!)

Dangly Star

This card is made using stamps from Stampotique originals: the ubiquitous Moon Girl and the oh so useful Great Moon. I have made Great Moon's star dangle in an aperture using wire, and so this card is for the "dangly things" challenge, currently running at Happy Daze.

did someone say brown?

you know if a challenge has brown in the theme, there's no way I'm going to be able to resist digging out my Kraft card. So as soon as I saw the challenge at Crafty Individuals, I had to take part, especially as my brand new Crafty Individuals stamps were just sitting there on my desk.

really easy card, stamped in sepia versafine, coloured with pencils, added some ultra fine flower soft, a ribbon and some sepia accents to the bird... done!

If you have this months Craft Stamper, I've done a similar technique in the gallery (animal theme, colours brown, blue and cream)

new Crafty Individuals Stamps

What a lovely surprise I had today to receive some new stamps from Crafty Individuals through the post. Of course I had to play straightaway, and as I had the One Layer Wednesday Challenge (just stamps and ink) and St Lukes Charity Challenge (black white and one other colour) on my mind I thought I'd play with them too.
This first card if for both challenges and really couldn't be easier, but I kind of like it




The second card isn't for any challenge, but was just playing. I handwrote the words over the words on the stamp, to make them jump out. and added some random dots of stickles. (I will be sending this to the st Lukes appeal along with all my spare cards at the moment.)