Our Little Furry Friends

Well, it's the 1st of the month which means time for a new challenge over at St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge and I hope you will all be much happier with this month's theme of "something furry" than you were with our one layer challenge last month which seemed to send most of you running for the hills with your decorative papers clutched firmly to your chest..........

This challenge is super easy - you can make a card for anyone, on any theme, as long as it features something furry - cat, dog, teddy bear or even a furry monster!   For my inspiration card I opted to go for the super cute retro Chester the monkey digi stamp from Pollycrafts (if you like him, be sure to nip over to the shop this week as sadly, it's closing it's doors for ever on the 8th June :-(  so if you want to get any of the great images you've only got a week to buy them before they disappear  http://pollycraft.co.uk/shop/page/1?shop_param=  You can currently get a fab closing down offer of 100 images for less than a tenner which is kind of a no brainer in my book.....

I used the sketch from Paperplayers as my base for my design  http://thepaperplayers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/paper-players-97-leannes-sketch.html and colouring him with copics before cutting and matting with nestie circles.  The sentiment is from Waltzingmouse and I think it's highly appropriate for the image!

Speaking of Waltzingmouse - they are our FABULOUS sponsor again this month so if you enter our challenge, you can win this gorgeous stamp set.  If you've not tried them before you'll be stunned at the quality of their clear polymer stamps - they are so much better than many clear brands out there - there's no "squish" to them and the results are perfect every stamp!  So enter your furry creation into our challenge by noon on 30 June and you could win this gorgeous set of wonderful and very useful background stamps:

I'm entering this card into a few other challenges - mostly masculine ones to match the theme as there are a few of those around at the moment with father's day coming up fast:

http://tuesdaythrowdown.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/tuesday-throwdown-100.html 

http://herecometheboysblogchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/challenge-28-anything-goes.html

http://onestopcraftchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/challenge-184-for-boys.html

Pollycrafts linky party  http://pollycraftdesigns.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/its-party-time-come-and-link-up-your.html  you can link up any card here featuring a Pollycrafts image but it's only open until the store closes on the 8th.

Looking forward to seeing what you all come up with over on the challenge site.

Manly paper

The challenge this week at CASual Fridays is to use Decorative Papers on masculine cards http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/cfc54.html   Well as I am trying to make some more father's day cards for the St Luke's Summer Fair on 9th June, this was perfect timing so I've made a couple for this challenge.

On this first card I've used a couple of different digi papers, the background strip is a Sherry K digi and the dotted kraft is basic grey.  The sentiment is from a couple of different waltzingmouse sets and the big stars were die cut (mft die) from double sided sticky sheets and covered with gilding flakes (I'm loving this technique - you need to run the sheets through your die cutter 2 or 3 times but it makes easy and dramatic embellishments).

 

For this second one I used another of the Sherry K digi papers as the basis for the design and used my favourite masculine stamps from the Crafts Meow to match - I stamped and cut the moustache onto a die cut circle and added a sentiment from the same set underneath.  The strips of paper were from my snippets box and the sentiment circle was cut from another Sherry K sheet.

It's the first time I've used digi papers and I have to say I like the flexibility they offer and they certainly help me get over my "but if you use it you won't have it any more" issues.....   If you like them, she is currently having a 3 day 50% off sale and there are even 3 packs you can get for free:-)  http://www.sherykdesigns.com/shop