Clearly Autumnal

I had a play with the new challenge at Clearly Besotted over the weekend, but today has been the first day I've had chance to blog it.  http://www.stampingsharing.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/clearly-besotted-challenge-5-colour.html

The challenge was to be inspired by the autumnal palette below and the colours as well as the flowers led me down the watercolour route but I went with lilies as I'd not inked them up before.

I started with a piece of cream watercolour paper and stamped and embossed the lilies with Stampin Up's really cool grey embossing powder - I love that there is a mat grey now as sometimes you don't want silver and white's not right either.  Here the grey fit the palette perfectly.  Next I embossed the vase in gold over the stems of the lilies.   I set about the easy task of water colouring then - the embossing prevents you going outside the lines ;-)   I used a few shades of luminarte shimmer watercolour paints.   I used the same shades to colour a strip of the watercolour paper ombre style before stamping a sentiment onto it in black.  Simply finished with a scallop die cut strip of black card before mounting onto a kraft base card.

I'm keeping a watchful eye on the blog for news of restocks as lots of Stephanie's brilliant new stamps sold out within 18 hours of going on sale this weekend!  Way to go Stephanie - may your venture go from strength to strength but can you quadruple your stock levels next time please ;-)

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.

Embossed Felt

Even though it's been a 3 week trigger, I've only just found time to play along with the gorgeous image that Kath chose to inspire us all http://www.moxiefabworld.com/2013/04/tuesday-trigger-pretty-little-petits.html

I really loved this image (well it features cake and I LOVE cake!) but I really liked the thick texture of the woodgrain icing background and I really wanted to replicate that element of it in my card.  So to get the depth I wanted, rather than embossing paper with my SU Woodgrain folder, I decided to try embossing felt - the problem was it doesn't "hold" the detail, it just springs back to practically flat and normal.  So I was toying with the idea of trying a diluted pva on it but I was worried I'd ruin my folder, when I hit upon the idea an old fashioned household product - spray starch!   (Apparently you use it when ironing, but as I don't really know where the iron is kept I wouldn't know about that lol!)   However, it does work BRILLIANTLY in this instance.   I simply trimmed an oval of white felt, sprayed it heavily with starch and then popped it in the folder and through my big kick.   I rolled it back to the centre to keep the fold shut and left it there for 20 mins so it could "dry" in situ.  It came out a little damp still so I left it flat to air dry over night and washed the folder straight away.  In the morning I had a beautiful little crisp oval with deep embossed detail (it really doesn't show up nearly as well as I'd like on the photo) with lots of thick dimension from the felt.

For the rest of the elements of my card I took inspiration from the pretty cherry blossom flowers on top of the petits fours - I stamped the cherry blossom twig from the delightful Happy Everything stamp set from Clearly Besottted and embossed it with white EP and then coloured it with watercolour pencils and a waterbrush adding a gentle blue highlight around with a broken china distress marker.  I fussy cut it leaving a border and mounted it over my felt oval.

I brought in the darker pink from the flowers for the background to my sentiment which is also from Clearly Besotted, this time the newly released Just Fabulous set.  I then made one large pink petits four as a pink mat behind the oval and mounted onto a small square card.  This is one of my favourite recent makes - much more girly than my normal style but really pretty.

I'm also going to link it up the "just add woodgrain" challenge over at Just Add Ink this week - http://just-add-ink.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/jai165-just-addwoodgrain.html

It's turning out to be a Clearly Besotted Day - will be back with another post featuring more of their new stamps shortly.