Best Fishes!

(Catchupmageddon Post). Wanted to make a swimming themed card for my Nephew and ended up with fishes! I've had this Lawn Fawn Fintastic Friends stamp set for a while but this is the first time I have had the chance to play with it.

The card above is my intended layout and the card below is what I made with all the left over bits! I used distress oxides for the water backgrounds and coloured the fish with copics.

I added some dots of glossy accents around the fish to represent some bubbles and add a new texture to the card. 

Greeting was included with the stamp set.

Owls - freebie download from Making Cards Mag.

I really like the challenge of using a limited group of items to make a card and the freebie download packs from Making Cards Magazine are a fab way to do this! Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed by choice and ideas and it results in a lack of productivity and creativity! I always feel like reducting the stash I use makes for much more interesting cards.

I love the January download pack featuring soft watercolour owls! I paired them up with some 6x6 papers from my stash, kraft card, and two different types of bling. The one embellishment set is Shimelle Glitter Girl Collection by American Crafts and the others are adhesive wood-effects gems I think from docrafts, will check!

I decided to make a set of 4 cards using 6x6 white card blanks as the bases. This was just for convenience, I have lots of them ready to use!

Because the set doesnt come with any greetings/sentiments I printed out some round ones and banner ones on the computer using two fonts, Caneletter Script and Bernadette Rough.

Several of the 6x6 papers came from a Chalk Studio Set from My Minds Eye. I can spot at least one section from a Lawn Fawn Plaid Set and a few pieces my friend Amy sent me when I worked on her Design Team, thanks Amy!

On all of the cards I added glossy accents to the Owl's eyes (Customers always comment and like it) and I added some stickles to the centres of the flowers. The bunting I used I think is a docrafts product I got from the Range.

Thanks for joining me today, I hope you like this set of Birthday cards, they were quick to make and fun to do! If you want to check out if they are still available to download you can use the link below. Making Card Magazine has a great facebook page that alerts you to offers and freebies too.

https://www.hobbies-and-crafts.co.uk/Blog-Card-Making/

Tropical Part-tay!

It's another Tuesday post for Witt and Sass and the fabulous new stamp set - Tropical Party! Featuring my favourite Witt and Sass bird, Carmen Miranda Flamingo. (CMF)

The set has five cool sentiments to pick from and loads of extra images, so I added a little pineapple chap to my wording banner.  I also used the background building stamp called grassy hill to define the outline of the grassy mound CMF is stood on. 

I coloured CMF in copic pens and some white posca pen. I added stickles and glossy accents at the end too. The background was an experiment using lace as a stencil with distress inks. I thought it looked like that sparkling-water-swimming-pool-bokeh? It probably has a proper name, but I hope you get what I mean!

When cards are very heavy, you can move them across your crafting table using tiny straw logs...just like how they built the pyramids! ;) I suppose I should now mention the MAJORLY GLITZY element of this card, the rhinestone palm tree. I know, it's a bit much, but when I saw it I couldn't resist. The dragonfly bling was in the same set.
Bling and Straws were from The Range, Background Paper was a magazine freebie.

They're quite a few of us on the Witt and Sass Design Team, people you might not already know, would you like to have a look at their blogs? I figure if you read this far, you might like something fun and inspiring to do? They are all incredibly talented bunch, I am really having to up my game!

Sean Scrappy Boy

Adam on Facebook

Marcia at The Frolicking Fairy

Jill at JK Taylor Cards

Mindy Beverly Art Studio

Amy Young at A Thousand Sheets of Paper

Rachel at R Winn Creates

Amy at The Amy Doodle Of It All

Extra LBBS post!

Popping by with an extra Little Blue Button Stamps post this month! (X-post to the LBBS Blog) Excited to share with you Miss Lilly Kitty. Inspired by my friend Grace's KPop Top! :D

I normally avoid black, if I can, I find it's much slower to build up enough black for it to be clearly black but also enough shade so it's got highlights and shadows. If you get it wrong it's just grey. This is using polychromo pencils, as normal.

I did the fur technique on the hat and loved how it came out! I think it night be the star of the show, so I tried hard to match the awesomeness in her outfit too! lol! I found a Shimelle bling heart to use for the nose, thought it was a more interesting change in texture than leaving my coloured version.

Here she is in the shop so you can see how she looked before I went in with the black and rainbow! She was super easy to colour, loved doing her and think I could use her for loads of different occassions, adult and kids cards alike.

Just popped on Pinterest to find a quote about being Awesome that I thought my friend would like :) The Font is Scooby Doo, I used it as an outline too for the rainbow lettering.

The Stars are stickers from one of the poundshop places. They are actually really nice and enamel feeling so if I see some more I will be buying them! :) Background paper from the stash.

There are a lot more creations by the DT team and customers if you go to the LBBS facebook page. Loads of inspiration too! Click the link below.

Little Girl, with flowers!

Hi all, this is the final installment from the four part set for Sweet Escape Digis, and this is "Little Girl".

***Newsflash - Right now there are two fab offers in the Sweet Escape Digis shop you should know about. One offer is 50% off your purchase if you use the coupon code "HELLO50" within the next week. The second is five digis for $5! (Check out the shop listing for details.)You can't use both at the same time, but both are incredible deals!***

Isn't she pretty? :) I wanted to make a feature of her flowers, so I took a zoomed in picture of her bouquet and then pasted it into two strips either side of the central panel. When I placed the little girl I overlapped one of the edges slightly, to give her the appearance of being slightly 3D. I tried my best to colour the two strips to match the parts in the main digi they related to.

Also when I printed the image out I added some text using the font Teutonic. This could easily be a single layer card but I prefer to mount it as a topper and use the layering as a border.

When I finished the colouring (with polychromo pencils), I used some stickles to highlight the centre of the flowers. I added some glossy accents to her earrings so they catch the light. And finally I added some white posca pen highlights to her eyes.
This is her in close up:

And here she is in the shop if you fancy colouring her (Remember, especially whilst the deals are on, she is part of the four part set featuring all the Sweet Escape Digis I have coloured recently) :

I have really enjoyed doing this set of four stamps, they were all fun to colour, and I shall quickly use them up sending them to friends and family! Thank you Sweet Escape Digis for letting me create with and share your super stamps!

The other three images are blogged here:

Melissa Reading

Coffee

Photographer

Such a nice prize!

Was so stoked to win a prize from Sheepski Designs with my Disco Sloth card! I chose this super Winter Robin digi to colour up and it was really good fun to do!

Coloured with Polychromos on kraft card! No surprise at all there hey? :) The berries are so much darker on the photo, not sure why, how odd! :)

The font is Kilsonburg, thought it would make a nice change. I mounted the kraft topper onto a spotted card base with 3D foam. I also added glossy accents to the berries (More for interest than anything else) and some stickles to the snow.

I had a great time colouring it, thanks for the prize Sheepski Designs! :)

Entered for the Sheepski Designs Challenge 8 - Show Us Your Wings

2 Cute Ink Week

I am officially declaring it "2 Cute Ink Week" on the blog and am lucky enough to have three new cards to share with you, each with a 2 Cute Ink digistamp! (Thank you Heidi!)

Today I am going to share with you the delightful Sunflower Bunny!

Isn't he delicious!?? He makes me smile soooo much! :D Obviously he also needed to be rainbow coloured!

I used polychromo pencils on kraft card, and some glossy accents on his eyes, nose, feet and flower. The background paper is ancient and from the stash. I didn't add any bling for a change, I thought he was rocking it without additions, lol! The font I have used is called Candy Buzz BTN.

If you are keen to buy, here he is in the shop!

Yeti - Part 3!

So I posted the other two Yeti cards I made using the Crafting Desert Diva's Yeti to Party set that Norms kindly stamped me, back in July, but had to save posting this one as I wanted to send it to my SIL.

I love these Yetis! They are so much fun to colour. I used copics and a white gel pen to colour them up and added some glossy accents to their eyes.

The background is distress inks and oxides splashed with water. The stitched hillside is from The Crafty Kitty Cat Shop. Fonts are Courier and Lobster Two. Washi tape is from Hobbycraft. I added some stickles to the hillside to embellish.

Yeti Part 2.

The second of the Yeti cards I made from the Crafting Desert Divas Yeti to Party set, that Norms kindly stamped for me to colour. I kept this one in blue/green tones so it might be suitable to send to a boy.

Yeti coloured with copics. Background in distress inks/oxides splashed with water. Hillsides are from The Crafty Kitty Catshop. Washi tape is from Hobbycraft. Background patterned paper is from Tonic "Mid Summer Mornings" 8x8 pad. Fonts are Courier and Lobster Two. Added stickles and glossy accents at the end. :)

Baked with Love.

Been dying to use this stamp set by Lawn Fawn called "Baked With Love" (Helen got it for me for Christmas! Crafting friends are the best!). It's ridiculously cute! I saw this gorgeous card by Chari Moss and decided to use the basic layout to make a card using the same set. Being very careful to credit her on this, her work is amazeballs.

Stamps - Lawn Fawn Baked with Love
Coloured with Copics.
Papers: Lawn Fawn 6x6 Perfectly Plaid Fall.

Added: Stickles and Glossy Accents.
( A good match to this Lawn Fawn font, that I used inside the card, is CAC Pinafore.)

Mini Review!

This card also gave me the chance to use my new "Press to Impress" stamping platform from crafts-too.com. It's basically a much cheaper version of a Misti, but seems just as awesome.
Here are a couple of photos of how I used it for this card.

Placed all the elements on the section of the card that I wanted to stamp, including the clear cling stamp greeting, straight and central, where I wanted it to go.

Then I closed the lid to pick up the stamps. Inked them up in black ink and then closed the lid again to stamp the greeting! This is brilliant for so many reasons, and reduces the "is it straight" angst and the "omg a bit didnt stamp well, can stamping it perfectly over the top to fill in the gap?". I am sure other crafters must have faced that a few times! It's not just me is it?

And the result! And as you can expect, it stamped perfectly first time, and I didn't need to redo it, but if I had, it would have been easy peasy! :) I am sold on this gadget. Worth every penny. (I am not handy enough to make one from dollar/pound store products but there are plenty of people that do if you want to track down how to make one yourself!).

Fiki's Blogiversary!

Had a great time colouring this freebie digistamp from Fiki to celebrate her blogiversary! I decided to print it faintly on kraft card and colour it in realistically with polychromo pencils, hoping I stuck to the original closely enough, it can get hard to see the lines!

If you know Fiki and would like to take part you can pop to her blog and see how to enter.

Added stickles to the hats and glossy accents to the eyes and balloons. The font is "Mister Sirloin".

Entered to the Show Us Your Pussies Cat's Only Challenge

Final Challenge of the Year!

Final challenge for 2016 on The Crafty Addicts Challenge Blog! Challenge 31 is optionally themed " Let it Snow" or Anything Goes, as normal :) Super sponsor this time, Lemon Shortbread, offering 3 free digis to the winner, tbh it will be very hard to only pick 3!

I used Poinsettia Girl by Lemon Shortbread for my DT inspiration card, if you enjoy colouring hair, she is fabulous to tackle!

I have to admit, I was going to do a black and white card with just a pop of red in the poinsettia, but then remembered It has to go with the theme "Let it Snow!" Doh! So it's now somewhat more colourful. I just used the copic cool greys and black to colour her on smooth cardstock. She's 3D foamed to add some dimension to the card.
The snowflakes are from a hunkydory christmas kit.
The stamp is one of the set called "Hand Drawn Greetings" (JGS457) from Woodware.
Background paper is from "Tis the season" collection by BoBunny.
With added Stash Bling, Yellow Stickles, Glossy accents etc.

Close up of the card.

This is the first time I have tried to colour black hair with copic pens. I can see now where I need to get more light/shine, but I think it was ok for the first go! :)

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Springtime cards for Challenge 12!

Back again with a challenge inspiration card! It's Challenge 12 on The Craft Addicts Challenge Blog and this time the theme is "Springtime/Anything goes."

This challenge is sponsored by Oddball Art Co and I have chosen to make a "Get Well Soon" card featuring Lizzy Love's Big Eyed Girl - Stormy. The Prize for this challenge is 3 free digistamps!

The card is coloured with polychromo pencils onto kraft card. I used a Joy die for the clouds and added glossy accents to the rain drops. Inside it says "I hope you have a spring in your step soon."

This is my first try at "no lines colouring" and I printed a very feint version of the digistamp onto the card before colouring it. I was worried I would lose a lot of details, but I don't think it's too bad. Some polka dots has gone missing, and a few eyelashes, but nothing major :)

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