Clearly Besotted Day

I'm having a lovely crafting and reading day today - inside with the heating back on as it's blinking freezing in Yorkshire today.  I've played along in a few challenges - all with my new stash from Clearly Besotted.   Firstly, my favourite challenge of the week - the original CAS challenge - Less is More and this week is one layer week with the challenge of using a coloured base card.  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/week-119-one-layer.html  I went with a sheet of purple card from Stampin Up so cut it in half and made two sympathy cards.

I stamped and embossed the stunning orchid from Thinking of You in white detail and then embossed the large vase from Just Fabulous underneath.  I coloured the orchids with pencils - polychromos from faber castel - they work really well on dark card stock.  I finished each with different sentiments from Thinking of You and a little gentle splattering of watercolour paint using colours found in the flowers.

Next up, when I saw Lesley's challenge image over at Fusion, I knew I had to play along using my new My Cup of Tea stamps.  http://fusioncardchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/fusion-card-challenge-hypothesis-6.html

I decided to try the fusion approach and use Jackie's sketch as well and this is what I came up with.

I used two of the tea cup stamps in 5 different shades of ink and die cut them with the matching cup die.  Once adhered on the black backround I added some co-ordinating ribbon, made a flag with more black card and added a sentiment and die cut teapot on top to finish.

For the final card I used the same stamps but this time for the 10 minute craft dash http://prettypinkposh.com/2013/05/10-minute-craft-dash-17.html

Annoyingly, I didn't press stop on my phone stopwatch when I finished the card so I don't have my time clock to share, which is a shame, as it's my quickest one yet!  It was on 7 min 44 seconds when I thought I pressed stop!   Very simply die cutting, stamping and a couple of hand drawn stitch lines.  I love the teapot in blue - reminds me of Wedgewood.