Going for Gold

Going for Gold is the theme of the challenge on the St Luke's Charity blog for August and there's just about time to enter if you've not done so already - I'm running late as usual!!   Obviously they had the Olympics in mind and were looking for a sporty slant to the cards.  I must say I don't seem to have a great deal of sports related stuff in my stash but thinking outside the box I decided to use this cute Diggity Dog image from Papermania, adding some gold Glitter dust on the cup.  There is just a bit of 3D with the pup and the rosette.

Do take a look at how their design team have interpreted this theme - there is a prize on offer too which has to be good don't you think?

Haberdashery

Today's card is a result of a bit of a play with some haberdashery elements from various sources.  The dress form is a stamp from Chocolate Baroque and it has been stamped and paper pieced using a scrap of Tim Holtz shabby vintage paper; the backing paper is from Prima Nature Garden collection (no connection with haberdashery but I thought the design was just right); the strip of lace is another CB stamp from a lovely set with lots of lace; the tape measure, cotton reels and saying are from a Creative Expressions vintage sewing collection; the scissors cut with a Marianne die and finally the buttons were made using a Sizzix embosslits die from Stampin' Up. Apart from the background paper,  everything on this card  was made with odd pieces from my scrap boxes.

I hope everyone had a good Bank Holiday weekend despite the horrible weather (a good enough reason to stay in playing with ink and stamps) - of course the sun is shining from a blue sky this morning!!

Simply Stampin' Challenge 74

Simply Stampin challenge this week is a colour one using pink, coral, olive and vanilla - I don't think I'd have thought of putting pink with the coral myself but then that's what challenges are all about - moving out of the comfort zone sometimes.

I've had to improvise a bit because the only colour I actually had from Stampin' Up was the Old Olive but I did manage to find colours near to the others either in my stash or from the scraps box.  Background paper is from a pad which has lost its cover so no idea of the source, the layers were cut from scraps of card using SU Sizzix framelits dies and stamping was done using the matching Apothecary Art set.  An Edgelits die was used to cut the wavy border and the computer sentiment cut with SU punches.  Flowers were from my oddments boxes with added punched centres and leaves were cut using the Bird on a Branch punch - so useful these leaves.

Another Bracelet

Yesterday I met up with some friends and one of them showed me some bracelets which she'd bought at a folk festival.  Because I work with beads she thought I'd be interested and she was so righ although they were a bit different from my usual beading which is done with needle and thread..  There were three different designs and I did my best to remember them until I could get home and have a go to see if I could make something similar.  This is one of the designs which I've done in micro macrame and it really is micro because the cube beads are only 4mm, the round ones even smaller and of course they have tiny holes so I had to use a fine cord which is S-lon which I found a bit slippery to knot but got there in the end.  Now I have to try and work on one of the other designs before I forget what it looked like.

Fantasy Flowers

Floral cards are always popular and I like to get away from recognizable ones sometimes and into the realms of fantasy florals.  Stamp is from Fantasy Meadow by Chocolate Baroque and some text was stamped on the background (Hero Arts stamp). The greeting was made on the computer.

Birthday Card

I was asked recently to make a birthday card for a 70 year old who does lots of baking and having given it some thought I decided to use something from Polkadoodles Picknix CD.  I printed off some background paper and a topper then a couple of embellishments in the form of a cup cake and oven mitt - both were   resized to fit - the cake was printed more than once so that it could be layered.  Die cut numbers were added to the rolling pin and the greeting printed on the computer.

A New Blog

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have observed that my Zentangle page has been removed - this is due to the fact that despite trying really hard I've not been able to work out how to post specifically to that page.  This of course meant that the post on that page just gets longer and longer so I decided to start another blog  otherwise there is far too much scrolling down to catch up with the latest posts. You can find it using this link (should you want to of course!!).

http://aquariustangles.blogspot.co.uk/