Engagement

I've long been a fan of LOTV images (Lili of the Valley) and thought that this one would make a good congratulations card for an engagement.  I found some scraps of patterned paper and a piece of dotty ribbon for the layout, die cut the image and a larger circle.  I then re-sized another of Annette's sentiments  (she has a selection to suit most occasions) so that it would fit a punch and finally punched a couple of tiny hearts as extra embellishment.

Image - from Lili of the Valley
Papers - from my stash
Sentiment - download from Netty's Cards, resized using My Craft Studio

New Home Card

It is a very warm day today so once I'd done a few essential domestic things I decided to stamp and colour some images to give myself a rest.  I have a set of house stamps from Chocolate Baroque although I think they might well have been from way back when they were known as Elusive Images and I'm not sure if they still even have these stamps.  Stamped onto watercolour paper the image was coloured using Polychromos pencils before being die cut along with a larger layer to go behind.  Searching through my box of browns/oranges/yellows I found a piece of brick patterned paper large enough to use as a background here with another strip left for a second card which you might see another day. A scrap of patterned paper was added for interest and a die cut key completes this card. The sentiment is another one available from Annette.

Image - from Chocolate Baroque (Elusive Images as was)
Key - die from Couture Creations
Sentiment - free download from Annette (link above)

Hearts

I'm still wading through various bits and pieces of card and paper to top up my box of cards to sell for charity and/or to send to friends and family. I started with a piece of paper from an ancient Tim Holtz Vintage shabby paper pad and I dread to think how long I've had this. From my many scraps of cream card I found enough along with some pink to die cut the various layers of the hearts and the two leafy sections; two small flowers left over from another project were brought into play with extra pink centres added and finally a sentiment was stamped onto another scrap to complete this card which could be for Wedding, Anniversary or maybe Engagement.

Background - Tim Holtz Vintage shabby paper pad
Hearts - Tonic Dies
Leafy Swirls - Sue Wilson Dies
Sentiment -  free set of stamps from magazine

Baby Card

I've made two more baby cards for the box and this is the boy version in blue.  Is it just me or does anyone else have problems trying to source - and match up - what I call true blue papers and card.  I find that such a lot of the card around seems to be more of a pale turquoise rather than baby blue.  This in itself would be OK but patterned papers seem to come in quite different shades of blue and are so difficult to put with the card.  I've just found that pinks can be just as difficult to match papers to card - lots of card seems to be peachy rather than pink - sigh!!

Anyway after much trawling through my stash I've managed to find enough card and paper which goes together to produce this card.  The background papers are actually from a free book of  double sided papers which came with a Christmas magazine and the blue card was a small card blank which has been lurking in a box for more years than I care to admit.  The rocking horse was a lucky find in The Works - well worth taking an occasional look at their selection of dies at very reasonable prices and they do cut well. The little teddy was punched out of the final scrap of the blue card using a punch I'd quite forgotten was in the drawer - does anyone still use punches nowadays I wonder??? I added a sentiment which was a free download from the generous Annette who has lots to offer on her blog.   Do pop along and visit her blog to see some of her so lovely and beautifully coloured cards - she is a dab hand with Distress Re-inkers for colouring!!

 Having been card making for some years it is interesting to look at my stash and see just how things have moved on from the early days when it was 'punches and peel-offs', no such thing as all the wonderful dies and machines which we have available these days.

Rocking Horse - die from The Works
White panel - free embossing folder from magazine on Centura Pearl card
Sentiment - free download from Netty's Cards
Background papers - free from magazine

Monochrome

My little collection of inky backgrounds was still on my desk so before tidying them away I selected one to use for a card and would you believe I actually had to cut into a whole new sheet of toning card for the die cuts - this of course has resulted in more snippets for the oddments boxes!!  I had thought that the dies would fit nicely onto a 5 x 7 card but they are just too wide so I juggled them a bit to fit my  favoured 6" square card  blank instead.  The inky background was a bit pale in places so I added a touch of darker ink so that there was more contrast between the layers and I managed to find a fairly large scrap of a darker tone to frame everything.  The flowers were cut from the left overs of the background and they have a dot of Stickles in the centres.  The card looks a lot brighter on my screen but in fact it is more subtle in real life.

The weather has been fine and sunny (also quite warm too) for a couple of days despite the forecast saying that we were in for rain and thunder storms all over the Bank Holiday - I hope you've all been lucky with the weather too and enjoyed the break.

Die - With Love Die Set from Tonic - a good 5" wide
Card Used - sheet of Pool Party from Stampin' Up
Inky Background - mix of Pixie Powders and Distress Oxide inks (I think)

Two Challenges Covered

I have a card to share today which covers two challenges - Pixie Snippets challenge #327  and the Butterfly Challenge which has reached # 100.

Firstly this card for the Playground uses quite a lot of snippets, some very small if you look at the multi-layered flowers.  The dies used came as a set with a recent Die-cutting magazine and my card is based on one of the ideas within the magazine, so not entirely original!  The die set contained a circular die (I've just used part of it to form the 'sun' in the top corner) and a selection of butterflies, tiny flowers and leaves.  I used another snippet of green along the bottom so that the flowers had somewhere to be 'planted'.  The sentiment was stamped using a freebie stamp from a set I've had for quite a while  The only thing which isn't a snippet is the base card.  I'm writing this post on Saturday so I've not yet seen what the lovely Di has to share with us this week but rest assured her blog will be well worth a look and whatever was used to create her card will be offered as a prize to a lucky entrant.

Now onto the Butterfly Challenge where of course the card must have at least one butterfly and there is a wheel from which to choose from three colours and three themes starting with the letter 'H' and you can select one or all of them - there are also prizes on offer here as well if you check out the blog (just follow the link).  I've selected the three colours of hot pink, harvest gold and hunter's green.  Some of the layers in the tiny flowers are hot pink, the sun is harvest gold; the strip across the bottom is green but not too sure if it is dark enough to class as 'hunter's green' but at least I have three butterflies fluttering over the scene.

Flowers, Leaves, Butterflies and Sun - free dies from Die-cutting Magazine
Ground - Stitched scallop basic edges from My Favourite Things
White square - Sue Wilson Noble pierced squares die

PS - I was right there is a great prize on offer in the Playground, in fact a bumper one this time and of course a selection of prizes from the Butterfly Challenge dependent on how many sections of the 'wheel' are used in your creation.

Mainly Diecutting

This is another card which I made quite a while ago but haven't shared. As a couple of the more recent makes are being kept for challenges here it is - hopefully I can remember what I used here.  I started with a piece of black card, die cutting corners at the top and a fancy border at the bottom, rubbing the lacy areas with copper gilding wax.  This was layered onto a piece of text backing paper and onto a card blank.  The words were die cut from scraps of black and popped onto a plaque made using some of the text paper and the frame cut from copper pearl card.  A matching flower  was die cut and a swirl which was just lying around on my desk were added. 

Thankfully we are back to more nice sunny weather after a fierce thunder storm with torrential rain on Monday evening - a bit of rain and the grass grows like mad though!!

Corners and Border - Crafter's Companion dies
Words - Crafter's Companion dies
Plaque - Sue Wilson dies
Flower - also a Sue Wilson die
Swirl - Marianne die (I think)