Sewing Room

 I was inspired by seeing a lovely sewing room card made by the talented Lesley HERE so no prizes for guessing that I felt I needed just a few more dies to add to my collection ... and this after I'd decided NOT to add any more 🤣🤣.  No doubt you've all been there.  My card is very similar to Lesley's one but with a few variations - difficult to think of another way of building up the scene with these particular dies but I'm working on it.  Thanks very much for the inspiration anyway 😀.  

Most of my die cuts were cut from cream card and coloured using Distress pens but the fabric bolts and rolls also had a layer of patterned paper added instead of being coloured.

Dies used - from Gummiapan
Sentiment and faux stitching - stamp set which came from a magazine give away years ago

CAS - the Plain Version

 I've made a second CAS card very similar to the one posted previously but this time I left the background plain. No embossing here and I do prefer this version which has a couple of snails instead of the bee.  

A CAS (clean and simple) card

 I've been following videos produced by the talented Chrissie HERE and today's card is based on a couple of her more recent ideas but using dies which I already own.  I'm getting low on white card blanks so this one is cream on cream with just the tiniest touch of gold on the die cuts.  I started off using a plain background but decided to run it through an embossing folder before assembling the card - not so sure now though.  I think it would probably have been better to leave it plain but I can always make something similar without the embossing.  In fact it does look better 'in the hand' than in the picture which is often the case.

Bee and Flowers - dies from Gummiapan
Sentiment - unbranded die from Amazon
Embossing Folder -  a magazine giveaway which I've had for a while

Layered Butterfly

 I spotted a very pretty card on a friend's blog HERE which inspired me to have another go at this technique but there was one problem - I don't have a large butterfly die.  I do, however, have a pad of LOTV floral images so that was a start and after pondering I thought I'd try something slightly different and use the largest butterfly die in my collection.  I have to admit I was nearly tempted to order a larger one but I really am trying hard not to keep adding more and more 'stuff' to my stash.  Having selected a suitable image  (in duplicate) I cut the butterfly motif from one and then carefully lining it up, cut a circle from the second image.  I then selected some card and paper to tone with the image, printed a sentiment and that's it - my take on the card which inspired me and all achieved with materials from my stash.

Image - from a Lili of the Valley floral pad which I've had for some years
Background - paper printed from a download, also from years back
Butterfly Die - Tim Holtz, again not a recent purchase

Snippets Playground Challenge #457

 Time for another challenge in the Snippets Playground and my offering this time is a Christmas card which might seem an odd thing to make in this weather.  Spurred on by my experiment making a word cloud to cover birthdays it was suggested to me that a Christmas one could be a good idea (you know who you are!!) so of course I had to have a go 😉.  Of course I was unable to use snippets to print the words because it had to be done on an A4 sheet but after trimming to size I have even more white snippets for future projects..  A card blank was used but everything else came from my snippets mountain starting with some red glitter left from last year which was trimmed to fit the card.  After printing and trimming the word cloud I embossed it using a 'snowfall' E/F to give it a bit of texture.  The Santa is built up using quite a lot of small snippets and that's it - another successful word cloud and a few more snippets used up.  There are some brilliant prizes this time so why don't you rummage through your snippets to see what you could make.

These are some of my snippets

Word Cloud - produced using Craft Artist
Embossing - E?F from Stampin' Up (retired)
Santa - die which came free with a Die Cutting magazine (last year I think)

Happy Mail

 Yesterday  I received some 'happy mail' which was lovely.  A very generous blogging friend had offloaded  gifted me some of her snippets in the form of some die cut parcels.  I had recently seen a couple of cards using this die with a background of a stamped 'word cloud' and had thought that surely I could produce my own word cloud on the computer so I set to work and this simple background is what I came up with. Also, unlike a stamp, my cloud can be re-sized to suit. Incidentally, I've since discovered that there is software readily available which will do this easily but on the whole I'm quite happy with my results and I did enjoy 'tinkering' anyway.  After printing the background I used an oval die to cut a shape and luckily I had some DSP which toned with the colours in the die cuts which I'd been sent.  I was warned that there were some seriously tiny pieces in the envelope (the infill for the small bows in particular) and putting the group of parcels together was a bit of a challenge but I did manage not to lose any of the pieces. A fairly plain card but I did add a scattering of toning gems.

So, thanks to inspiration from blogging and the generosity of a friend (you know who you are), I've tried something different to keep my old brain working 🤣

Word Cloud - produced on the computer using Craft Artist
Parcel Die - from Gummiapan

Ladybird and a Touch of Mixed Media

 I have a card to share today which is the result of playing around with a few mixed media ideas on a tag. I started by sponging the tag with a little green ink and then dug out a few stamps, most of which came from a magazine give away probably at least a couple of years ago.  I partially stamped some numbers overlaid using a crackle stamp with a grey inkpad then used black ink for the dandelion seed heads.  The leaves were die cut from some scraps of green card and the ladybird cut twice - once in black and once in red then trimmed the red part to overlay.  Some gloss was added to the wings.  A small red bow and a die cut greeting and we have a clean and simple mixed media (sort of) card.

Crackle stamp - a very old wood mounted one
Numbers and dandelions - from a Phill Martin magazine kit
Leaves - from a Stampin' Up die set
Ladybird and Hello - dies by Gummiapan