Less is more week 34 - Sketch

The girls are out shopping and O/H has gone to the footie, so I'm taking advantage of some time in my craft room and I've had such a lovely afternoon. I've been stamping, messing with inks and embossing - heaven.

As usual, the lessismore challenge has encouraged me to dig into all those items of stash that get sadly neglected - that includes another one of those stamps that has never been inked.  It's from the Stamp Man's Aspect of Design 01 plate and some of my Adirondack rainbow pads.


The challenge is a sketch:

and here's my card:

I had such fun playing with the inks I did two. I'm not sure which I prefer, but I think it's probably the pink and green.

Both images were embossed although you can't tell from the photo.  I stamped the image onto a piece of copy paper first and cut out the frame to create a mask and used my brushes to add ink to the backgroun.  The sentiment stamps are both from my Paula Pascual set.  I mounted the finished pieces onto some Stamping Up card.

Sue.x

Less is more week 33 - Challenge 1000

Chrissie and Mandi at lessismore challenge  are hoping to achieve a goal of 1000 entries this week, so here's my card in the hope of helping them to get there.

There's not a lot of white space on my card so I hope it's ok for the CAS look,  fingers crossed it counts.

I've used a cuttlebug folder for the background - I think it has the look of dinosaur skin!

Itty Bitty Bobby in dinosaur costume is from Pink Cat Studio which has been coloured with Promarkers.

The 'Raargh' has been done on the computer and I wrapped just a bit of Crafters Cord around the card (I'm waiting for my Baker's Twine to arrive).

I'm hoping to get time to do another card, but my little girl (well, big girl really - she is going into 22) is off to Australia on Tuesday for 6 months to be an Au Pair before beginning her training contract next September to become a solicitor, so we're a little pre-occupied at the moment.

Have a good evening and thanks for stopping by.

Sue.x

A bit of brayering

After a weekend of Barbara Grey on C&C I got the brayering bug again (it happens every time I see Barbara at work).  

I've had this stamp called Woven Silk for ages but been stuck with ideas of what to do with her.  So, I had a mooch through the clarity gallery and found a card by Emma Williams I was inspired by.

Here's what I did:

I stamped the image and masked her off and then created the sky background with a cloud template I cut out with my Silhouette and sponged around it with Adirondack Winter Sky ink pad.  I brayered the grass with Adirondack Lettuce and Bottle ink again using a torn piece of paper to create the hills and then stamped the Clarity grasses stamp using Bottle.   I brayered the sun using a cut out circle from a piece of copy paper and Adirondack Butterscotch and Red Pepper ink.  

I coloured the image with Promarkers and mounted onto black card.  To finish I added some sheer ribbon.  

Next time I think I will be brave enough to use my Clarity shiny card - I've been keeping safe until I feel confident enough it won't end up in the bin.  

Sue.x

Charisma Cardz - Inspired by a song

Good evening all! Hope you're well.

Here's my first shaped card using my new Grand Calibur and Grand Scalloped Circles dies.

For my card I've used:

Largest Grand Nestie scalloped circle
Petite Scalloped Circle
Fizzy Moon Stamp
Promarkers
Marianne Creatables die
Pink Petticoat paper
Silhouette Machine - plain circles, daisy, tag, fancy border
Do-Crafts ribbon
Craftwork cards candy


I'm going to enter this into the charismacardz challenge for this week which is entitled 'Inspired by a song'.  My song is 'You don't bring me flowers' by Barbara Steisand and Neil Diamond.

Thanks for dropping by.

Sue.x

Morning all.  

Thank you to everyone that has already commented on yesterday's post, but I was kinda rushed to finish my lessismore card by my hubby as we were going out for the evening.  So, I decided to add a bit more to it this morning.  Well, as you can imagine, disaster.  I smudged ink all over the white area on the original card.  After a bit of cursing, I decided to start again.  Not too much of an effort as I did enjoy getting inky doing this card.  

You may be trying to spot the difference from yesterday's card.  I just added some ink around the base of the bottle and glasses to stop them looking as if they are floating in mid air, and a bit of inking around the text.  That's it.


Ok, I'm off to visit some blogs now, so bye for now.

Sue.x

Less is more week 32 - Seeing double

Whoa! Where did this week go? Went back to work on Monday after the 'big' holiday - not too bad.  Then the week sort of just went and before I knew it, it's that time again, another lessismore challenge.  

This is what Chrissie and Mandi have come up with for this week:

ONE LAYER CARD
entitled
SEEING DOUBLESo on your entry this week, we'd like to see TWO of something.

For my entry I've used stamps from a Creative Expressions set (sorry, can't remember the name).  I stamped the glass twice and then the bottle.  I used lots of masking to colour the image with various Distress inks.

I like this challenge, really quick and easy unlike the struggle I had last week. lol!

Right, I have to shoot, my OH is giving me earache to start getting ready to go out this evening.

Hope you're all having a great weekend, I'll be catching up with some blogging tomorrow as OH is off to the match.

Sue.x

Less is more week 31 - Metallic

Hi folks, hope you've had a fab weekend - the weather's been lovely here in Solihull. We even managed to sit outside on Friday evening until 1.00am, having drinks and a lovely evening catching up with friends. A pity we couldn't have had many more of those beautiful days and evenings during the summer.

Anyway, onto this week's Lessismore challenge.  Chrissie and Mandi really do know how to put the pressure on with some of their challenges and this week has been no exception for me. This is what they said:

METALLIC

We'd like to see CLEAN & SIMPLE cards with something that has a METALLIC finish to it... ink, embossing, card, charms, actual metal... come on people let's get creative! 


So, that's what I tried to be, Creative.  Oh boy, how I wish I hadn't.  Have I struggled with this one.  I'm not at all happy with it, but I spent so long on it I wasn't not going to post it.

I dug out my Dawn Bibby Papercrafting Tips and Techniques DVD with all good intentions of trying to come up with something really arty and beautiful, hah. I decided to have a go at making a triple embossed centrepiece using silver embossing powder (a bit like Chrissie's first card).  I can't begin to count how many times I stamped the impression, wasn't happy with it, so reheated and stamped again - aaaaargh. It was driving me mad.  Enough was enough, so in the end, I threw my heat gun out of the window (joke) and decided that this was going to be my final effort.  


The stamp I used was bought in the sale at QVC ages ago which I really like but have never used (another one of those sadly neglected pieces of stash).  I just added a few crystals and mounted onto some pearlescent card which I ran though my Wizard in an embossing folder (I used the negative impression which I like a lot but I discovered a bit by accident, I put the card in the embossing folder the wrong way round).  


I hope I've left enough white card for Chrissie and Mandy.  I had to cut the background card bigger than I would have, cuz I got a grubby finger mark on the card which I needed to cover.


All I can say is - NO MORE TRIPLE EMBOSSING FOR ME!


Bye for now and I hope you all have a good week.  

Sue.x

Less is More Week 30 - Recipe

I've missed loads of the Less is More challenges recently so have given myself the day off from housework and gardening to do some craft (typical that the sun has come out today - my craft room faces west and only has a small window so it's a bit gloomy until late afternoon). 

The challenge for this week is a Recipe - Take 3 Challenges and this is the spec:

We want you to choose 3 from any of our previous 29 and combine them in your design.

For my card the 3 challenges I have chosen are:

Week 18 - Monochrome - Versafine Crimson Red for the image and sentiment

Week 15 - Embossing - dry embossed lines above and below the image

Week 6 - Off the edge - my rollergraph wheel stamp

I think I can also include Week 28 - Use ink as I masked off my card and inked around the image - a technique I have used before so I think I will call it a favourite technique. I've thrown this one in just in case one of my others didn't fit the bill.

Here it is from a different angle - as usual my photo is a little dark and not showing the true colour.

Oh, the only other thing I added was a few crystals.

Thanks for stopping by, please visit again.

Sue.x