Colour blocking

I've been quite busy over the last few weeks with getting my shop back online but I was determined to do a little stamping this week.  One of the cards I'm short on is sympathy cards as I've unfortunately had to use a lot of them recently.  I thought the current colour blocking challenge at CASual Fridays would make a good base for a sympathy card so I had a go http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/cfc126.html

I used some scraps of purple card in 4 shades to cover my card front and create my colour blocks and then stamped and embossed the flower and vase from Clearly Besotted in white.  I coloured the flowers with my Polychromos pencils and added a little lemon pearl to the stamens.  I finished with a suitable sentiment and a white dashed line border.

At Lizy's suggestion, I'm linking this up to the sketch at CAS colours and sketches too http://cascoloursandsketches.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/challenge-58-sketch.html

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.