Sharing a fun card today which I made for one of my great grandsons who had a dinosaur themed birthday party. The image came from a CD which I've had for many years. The background paper was printed from a more recent USB and the bunting, numbers and letters were die cut using up some scraps of matching card.
Mixing things up a bit is a great way of coming up with designs for cards and it's something I do quite often - the important thing is a bit of discipline to make sure that when finished, all the dies and/or stamps get returned to their correct storage so that each set is complete. For this card I started with a piece of white card slightly smaller than a DL card blank and brushed it with blue and green inks before colouring and die cutting or fussy cutting a selection of bits and pieces to build up a Happy Birthday scene. I've used a mixture of items from some different sets, a mix of current and retired items. I must say that during the very hot spell a bit of quiet colouring and fussy cutting was just about all the crafting I could cope with. Temperatures are much closer to normal now thank goodness and we've had some gentle rain.
I was lucky enough recently to be the winner of a give-away which Christina offers most weeks - usually a copy of a magazine along with the free gift it contains. Owls always seem to be popular and this one die cuts nicely and has embossed and cut details as well. There was also of course the magazine and a set of sentiment stamps. Look out for Christina's posts on a Friday if you are interested. For my card I started with some cream pearl card and cut a circular window before embossing with a 'bark' texture; backed it with a scrap of text paper and then added the own which I'd die cut from kraft card and rubbed lightly with some copper gilding wax. The sentiment was one of the stamps which came as part of the magazine gift.
Embossing Folder - Stampin' Up
My card for this latest challenge is based on one which I spotted on Lesley's blog recently where she had used a large stamp as a background. Seeing this reminded me that I have a very similar embossing folder from a few years ago so this is what I used for my card. At Allsorts the theme is **anything goes with an option to create your own background** so I've inked the embossing folder and stamped trees and a deer before transferring the ink to a piece of white card by running it through the machine. All that was needed to finish the card was a sentiment. This way of using embossing folders was one which I'd almost forgotten about but it is a relatively quick way of making a card. Thanks Lesley for the inspiration 😉.
Embossing - Woodland Textures Stampin' Up (retired for quite a while)
Time to visit the Playground again and although we've just had two Christmas themed challenges, I've come up with another idea for a Christmas card even though 'anything goes' as long as Snippets are used. Apart from the white base card, everything else came from my various Snippets collections. The red layer was a fairly large snippet and I found two snippets of different Christmas papers and a piece of white which I cut with a curvy die. Next I raided the smaller snippets collections to die cut the bicycle, tree and presents for this eco-friendly delivery. The sentiment was one which I'd stamped and fussy cut last Christmas and not used (found in one of my pots of bits 'which will come in handy' sooner or later) 😉😉
Bicycle - Memory Box die
Tree and Presents - from a Sizzix Christmas Elf die set
I have another card to share where I've used a gelli plate, this time stamping onto the plate before pulling a print. The idea came from a video I'd watched quite a while ago and I don't seem to be able to find it again but think it was from Jo Rice on You Tube. The round gelli plate was first inked using a couple of colours using a brayer and then the lower part had some colour added using a tree stamp. Once the print had dried I used a circular paper mask before stamping the rest of the details
Stamps - from Lavinia stamps
Distress inks used on the gelli plate
PS - apologies, only just realised this post had no title (senior moment I guess)
Afternoon tea appears to be one of the fashionable things to do nowadays and it seems to come with all the trimmings although it is not something I've experienced. For one thing I don't like tea and never drink it 😉 Anyway I came across some tea party themed dies in my collection which had never been out of their packaging even though I've had them so long that I can't remember if they were a magazine gift or maybe they were part of a special offer at the time. It occurs to me that I could link my card to a challenge I've not taken part in before - NBUS - Never Been Used Schtuff . As luck would have it I have a paper pad with suitable designs and I chose the one with teapots and cups. I then die cut a circle, a cream doily, square stitched frame and sentiment strips and, of course, the all important teapot and cups using a selection of card scraps. Why not follow the link and take a look at this challenge and perhaps have a go. There is a very apt quote at the top of the page which says it all for me - I wonder why so many of us purchase crafty items and then don't actually use them 🤣🤣
