Washi, bridges and sushi........

...Yeah not the obvious things to combine on a card, but I promise you it makes perfect sense to me!  A friend recently got a new job as a programmer for a company that makes software to do with bridge engineering so here I combined mathematical washi tape, with a die cut bridge and a sushi eating, happy dancing penguin who is "soy" happy for the recipient just as we are ;-)    See I told you it made sense!

The adorable little dancing penguin is from SugarPea Designs and is available in the UK now from Make the Day Special Stamp Store along with a lot of super cute friends.   I just coloured him with markers and fussy cut him out and stamped a matching sentiment onto card I coloured to match his bandanna.  The bridge is cut on my cameo.

I'm going to enter this into the Paper Players challenge this week which is all about washi tape  http://thepaperplayers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/challenge-192-cas-challenge-from-nance.html

Feathery Birthday

We have a new challenge this week on the Waltzingmouse Fanatics challenge and it's a really simple sketch that can be layered or simple.

I used the gorgeous peacock feather from the Funky Feathers set and stamped it with a couple of shades of ink before painting the centres with luminarte shimmer paint and stamping the dark blue centre over the top when dry.  I used the matching cut file to cut the feathers on my silhouette machine and cut a mat just larger in gold using a feature on the machine to make an outline larger than the original shape.   I decided a simple strip of dark blue card would set of the images well and paired it with a sentiment from Compact Sentiments using the same blue ink to finish.

Do pop on over to the blog and have a go at the challenge - we even have a set of stamps to give away as a prize this weekend.   http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

Wait for it

It's my day to inspire over at Make the Day Special Stamp Store where we bring you all the best of the US craft brands without the dreaded import costs....   Today I am playing with one of our newer brands CASual Friday stamps who have some fabulous sentiment based stamps and when I saw the new "Wait for it" set I knew I had to play with it.  If you're not a "How I Met Your Mother" fan, then this card may be somewhat lost on you, but if like me you're a fan then I don't think I have to say much more...

I started with a black DL base card and cut a white panel from which I die cut some chevrons allowing the black base to show through.  Apart from the sentiment the only other decoration was some chevron and dotty washi tape.  For the sentiment I split the word LEGENDARY to make space for the "wait for it" to go in between in a nod to Barney Stinson.  I think this is a fun card for a guy and there are lots of great sentiments in the set.

Inspired by Lilacs

So being stuck in looking after a patient recovering from surgery does have its advantages - I made another card today!

I decided to play in the current Clearly Besotted challenge which is "Spring" and my first thought of spring was Lilacs - I love when the trees come into bud.  I look the colours of lilacs and came up with this.

I die cut the rose die and embossed it with ranger verdigris powder.  I die cut it again from cardstock in lilac and darker purple and pieced the bits into the embossed version before covering them in glossy accents to give it a faux enamel look.  I finished with a very handy sentiment for when you miss a birthday like I did today.....

http://www.stampingsharing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/clearly-besotted-challenge-10-spring.html

I made stuff!

I'm stuck at home with my husband who had surgery yesterday but the upside is I actually found time to make a couple of cards whilst he slept this afternoon.

Firstly I needed a sympathy card for a friend who is going through her second close family bereavement this year so I wanted something brighter and cheerier than the normal sympathy card as she needs a little light her in life just now.  I thought the MUSE card this week was the perfect jumping off point.  http://musecardclub.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/muse-challenge-62.html

I used Water Blooms from Mama Elephant and paired it with a sentiment from Avery Elle with a tiny red butterfly from Stampin Up to signify life after the darkness.

I also wanted to play with this week's LIM challenge as I've missed a few and turquoise is one of my favourite colours http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/colour-week-166.html

I used the lots of circles stamp from SSS and used all teal and turquoise inks I have and stamped them within a masked off circle in the centre of the card.   I decided a simple die cut sentiment was all that was needed to finish it off and as gold pairs so well with turquoise I die cut "friend" by Papersmooches from gold mirri card.  

Right better get back to the patient.....

Mixed Messages

Our challenge this fortnight at Waltzingmouse Fanatics is all about getting more from your sentiments.  Clare makes some fabulous sentiment stamps and if you look at all the different sets there is heaps of potential to combine sentiments from different sets to make something extra special from them so that's what we want the fanatics to do - use at least 2 sentiments from 2 different stamps sets.   I used more than 2 and came up with this bleeding heart.......

I took lots of love related sentiments and stamped them into a heart I created by inking through a die cut heart frame.  The sets I used were:

• My Heart
• Compact Sentiments Part 2
• Compact Sentiments
• Country Labels 14
• Say it Loud (all year sentiments)

I decided I wanted to go a little grungy - not my normal style but I gave it a good shot!  I spritzed my heart with water and did a little spritzing around the edges with a distress marker and my hand spritz tool.  I stamped some splatters from "Splat that" and then sprayed some copper shimmer over the top.  I finished with the arrows from one of the hearts in My Heart making it fit my bigger heart with masking.

Right - over to you - let's see you getting sentimental!

http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/challenge-15-mixed-messages.html

Prize Challenge Tag

We're launching the first of our monthly challenges over at Make the Day Special Stamp Store today so if you're a fan of US stamp brands and want to get your hands on £15 to spend in store then check out the blog for details of how to join in http://makethedayspecialcards.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/monthly-prize-challenges-start-today.html

As we're starting easy with "anything goes" I decide to do something a little different and make a tag rather than a card....

To make the die cut happy all pink and jolly I went mad with washi tape and selected all the ones I had with pink in them (it seems I have quite a few!!!) and stuck them down in a random order with some overlapping and simply die cut the word using one of the happy trio dies from Wplus9.   I think this is a super quick and easy way to add a lot of interest to a simple project.

The rest of stamping is done with the companion stamp set - whole lotta happy - I added words (some over the washi) in black and pink and then added some of the stars in the same colours to draw the eye to the top of the tag.  I'm not normally a pink girl but I do like the new inks from Avery Elle and was drawn to the raspberry one - probably because I love raspberries but I guess I shouldn't try eating the ink lol!

You've got 3 whole weeks to play in the challenge and the only rule is that your project must feature one product we sell so I do hope you'll join us......     http://makethedayspecialcards.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/monthly-prize-challenges-start-today.html