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

Washi-washi

We've been busy out enjoying the sunny bank holiday weather so I'm late to the LIM party this week.   We spent the day at Hardwick Hall today - I'd share photos but my photography isn't great when it's not on macro for cards lol!  It's all about Washi tape at less is more this week and I decided to try and do something different with it http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/week-134-recipe-washi-tape.html

I started with a base panel of DP and edged it with pink after rounding the corners.  I added more white over the top to keep it CAS and stamped one of my favourite ever sentiments (clearly besotted) in the same pink ink.  I made a fishtail banner out of washi tape by sticking two pieces side by side onto cardstock first and tucked that under the main panel.  I used scraps of the banner to die cut some tiny hearts and added a couple of extra layers behind to give them a chipboard feel.  For my main element I decided to use some floral washi tape to make rolled roses.  I die cut a couple of circles and then just twisted the washi tape around making sure bits of the sticky side stuck to the circle all the way around.  I stamped 3 green flowers and then stuck the roses in the middle of each so the outers of the flowers became leaves of sorts.

There are some wicked ideas in the gallery this week - my love for washi-tape is somewhat renewed so I may even have another go later.

Chalky Thanks

As I had a chalk board card made but not blogged - I thought I'd link it up to this week's Daring Cardmakers Chalkboard challenge http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/chalkboard-creations.html.  This was actually one of the cards I recently submitted to Paper Crafts Magazine but it was rejected so I am now free to feature it on my blog.

I used what is fast becoming one of my favourite new stamp sets (even if you haven't seen it on my blog before - I've used it for a few card submissions) the beautiful Many Thanks set from Clearly Besotted who are fast becoming one of my favourite stamp brands too - have you seen the sneaky peeks of what's coming?  Be still my beating heart :-)

I decided to go for a dark maroon chalk board instead of the normal black and stamped the sentiment twice - firstly in versamark which I then heat embossed in white and then secondly I stamped over the embossed sentiment and just down and to the right with a pearl white ink to create a subtle shadow.  I die cut and embossed the sentiment using labels 25 (I think but don't quote me on the number) and used a white pencil to trace the edge and the embossed centre line.  I added a few more soft scribbles of pencil and blended them out with a stump to get the chalky effect.  I used the same card to create my card base (it's actually a line embossed card so I used the rear for stamping on) and added a layer of DP from MME.  I added a layer of blue to match the flowers and cut the end like a banner and stamped half of one of the other sentiments from the same set to the top.  I framed this sentiment with a line of twine and a couple of tiny bows and  stuck over hearts stamped from the same stamp set  which were fussy cut.

Hope you like it more than the editors of the magazine did!