Happy Wreaths

I'm sure some of you know already, but I've never officially announced it here on my lil old blog, but 2014 is the start of a whole new adventure for me as I bought my very own stamp shop as I am the new owner of Make the Day Special Stamp Store!

We specialise in importing all the top stamp and craft brands from the USA that can often be hard to get hold of over here so if you're a fan of Avery Elle, CASual Fridays, Lawn Fawn, Mama Elephant, Newton's Nook, Papersmooches and WPlus9 then do check us out :-D

OK, advert over, time for some crafting and I've been playing with a couple of new WPlus9 sets.  Firstly I have an entry for the lovely sketch at this week's Less is More Challenge http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/week-156-sketch.html

I used a couple of markers to ink up the wreath in the Valentine's Wishes set and stamped it onto white card cut with the matching die.  I have to admit, I found this stamp a bit annoying as I have symmetry OCD so I didn't like the gap on the right where you are supposed to stamp a flower but it's easy to solve as I just hand drew a couple of leaves to join it all together ;-)   The sentiment is from the same set and I added it to the centre with a couple of extra flowers to decorate it and I added glitter to all the flowers too.  I stamped the extra sentiment which pairs with the main one onto a strip of card in the same colour as the flowers.  This is meant to go in one of the ribbons in the set but I quite liked it stand alone.

Whilst I was in the mood for wreaths, I had a play with Fresh Cut Wreaths, also from WPlus9 - these are cool as the flowers and leaves are separate but it's just a 2 stage stamp so quick and easy.  There are lots of little flowers you can add too so you can get different looks and it all matches my favourite Fresh Cut Florals set so the permutations are endless!  I stamped them onto watercolour card and did some distressing on the edges - same on the mottled DP and finished with some pretty sheer pink ribbon.

Happy Sunday!

Rustling feathers

It's time for another Waltzingmouse Fanatics challenge and this time around we have another sketch for you - pop on over to the challenge to see it http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.com/2014/01/challenge-10-sketch.html

My take on it is very loose but I think you still get the idea of the shape of it.

I created a simple one layer card by stamping 3 feathers from Fine Feathers in shades of green into the shape on the sketch.  The sentiment is from Funky Feathers and simply stamped in a darker shade of greeny-blue.

I do hope you'll join us - we'd love to see how you interpret the sketch.

I'm also linking it up to STAMPlorations challenge which is all about feathers http://craftilicious-yorkshire.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/rustling-feathers.html

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

Stellar Birthday

Sunday again which means only one thing - I'm bringing you inspiration on the Make the Day Special Stamp Store blog again today.

I decided to play with the lovely romantic inspiration photo over on the Mama Elephant January challenge but my screwed up brain saw romance and went for girly stars instead!

I stamped and embossed sentiments from Good Times and Say What first in silver and then with "vodka sparkle" embossing powders from WOW onto some pink cardstock.  Then I went to town with my die cutter and a couple of star shaped dies (MFT I think).   I used silver card, pink glitter and plain pink.  To get some very sparkly stars I embossed a couple of the silver ones with "bling bling" again from WOW.    Now I'm normally a CAS girl but clearly I didn't know when to stop with the stars and went for more is more this time!  I think it would be a suitable card for a tweenager though - they all love pink and bling right????

 http://www.mamaelephantblog.com/2014/01/me-challenge-january-2014.html

Funky Floral Canvas

We have a new challenge for all you Waltzingmouse fans today on the Waltzingmouse Fanatics blog and the challenge is to use FABRIC - incorporating it into a card or scrapbook page or taking it a different approach like I did and and stamping onto the fabric itself.

This is a natural coloured canvas bag which are very inexpensive to buy and very easy to work with.  I used memento luxe inks in angel pink, pear tart and elderberry and used the branch from two step spring (the veined version - I didn't think the two step would show so well on fabric) and 3 of the flowers from funky flowers and then I just went to town stamping up a flowing vine of flowers and leaves.   You do need to pop a piece of card inside the bag to make sure ink doesn't go through to the back but other than that, no special tools required.

Once dry (give it a good few hours or you can make a mess) then you can heat set the ink with a hot dry iron (no steam) and then the bag is washable at 30 degrees.   You can do the same thing with tea towels, hankies and even jeans ;-) 

I hope you're all inspired to get stamping on fabric - we can't wait to see what you come up with!

http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.com/2014/01/challenge-9-fabric.html

First Date

Today is the 19th Anniversary of my first date with my hubby - we used to celebrate it before we got married and have continued the tradition so now have two anniversaries a year (well this one will always be 12 years longer than our married one!)

As my new stamps arrived this week from Clearly Besotted and they fit their new challenge theme of love, I decided to use them to make card - actually I made a couple - one romantic and one which may look VERY odd - but this pumpkin man reminds me of Jack Skellington from the Nightmare Before Christmas and that was our first date ;-)

So "Jack" is from Kraftin Kimmie and is coloured with distress markers and fussy cut and mounted on a grungy background on black card.  I used Happy Anniversary from "Happy Everything" as my sentiment.

For the card for the challenge I went a little more traditional and romantic.......

I used the you & me from the gorgeous new "say it in style" sentiment sent in black and then used a selection of hearts from "Many Thanks" to create a scattering of love and colour in the background.

http://stampingsharing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/clearly-besotted-challenge-7-love.html

The thinking of you blues

It's Sunday, which can mean only one thing - it's my day to provide some inspiration with all the lovely stock that will soon be available again when we re-open the doors at Make the Day Special Stamp Store.  Whilst the store is closed we're still running an active blog so do follow us to get your daily dose of inspiration.

For my project today I've been inspired by a couple of challenge - winter blues colour theme at Less is More and Die Cuts at Addicted to CAS and for some reason this led me to a sympathy card.

I used my favourite floral set from WPlus9 - Fresh Cut Florals - the add on set to which is currently winging its way across the Atlantic ready to be stocked in the store :-D   I can't wait to get my hands on some more flowers!  I stamped the flowers in blues and the leaves in that blue-green colour of the lambs ear plant (not sure of the real name but I used to love rubbing the white furry stuff off it as a kid!) and then die cut them all out using the matching die set.  I then played florist and arranged them all in a die cut floral urn (Joanna Sheen), using the florists trick of 1, 3 and 5.  I mounted the whole thing on a woodgrain embossed background (sizzix) and then added a sentiment from the same stamp set on a blue-green banner.

I'm not sure such blue flowers really exist but I'm using my artistic licence!

I'll drink to that!

I managed to squeeze a few minutes in my craft room today amidst the organisational chaos that is going on in my house currently - I needed to escape for a little me time and I decided to play along with the current cue word at CASology which is "party" http://casology.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/week-76-party.html    Here's my take:

I used A la Modes Polished to Perfection from My Favourite Things and coloured the image in distress markers - I just love that's she's drinking a cocktail whilst sitting in one - that certainly says party to me!!!   After cutting her out I added glossy accents to the glasses (carefully as it can make the ink run).  I mounted her on a pink circle and added a scrap of black to match the one I stamped the sentiment on (using my new Unicorn ink from HA which I got for Christmas and LOVE as it really does work brilliantly unlike most white inks I've tried)   I finished with some dotted lines in black and white.

Retro Fairy

It feels like ages since I made a card for a challenge, so I'm starting the new year as I hope to go on - being crafty and creative!   So here's a card I made for the current sketch at retro sketches.

The main image is from the Stamping Bella Uptown Girls range and she is stamped onto watercolour paper and coloured with distress markers and a waterbrush.  The sentiments are from Hero Arts It's Your Day and the DP from papermania.  I didn't manage to get my sentiment around the fairy as in the sketch so I used fairy dust instead - hope that's OK.

I'm also going to enter this into the current "anything goes" challenges at KIS http://kis-challenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/kis-30-anything-goes.html and http://thepinkelephantchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-pink-elephant-challenge-tpe231.html