Type Hype

The trigger image for this week's Moxy Fab Tuesday Trigger really spoke to me as soon as I saw it, and I started my card last week - I've only just managed to finish it ahead of tonights deadline though!  http://www.moxiefabworld.com/2012/07/tuesday-trigger-type-hype.html

Aren't those keys totally fab!  I learnt how to type (many many moons ago when I took my secretarial exams) on a typewriter just like this one, only the keys were a lot less interesting as they were all deliberately black with no letters on them at all (you learnt to copy type properly this way as you were forced to look away from your fingers and your finger chart to the side!)  Anyhow the bright keys were what I wanted to focus on so I took my inspiration from those and the shape of the space bar and this is what I came up with:

It's a 3 x 3 inch card.  I stamped and embossed the Hello (Elzybells circular alphabet stamp set) in the colours of the keys from left to right and then added a layer of glossy accents on top for more depth and shine.  Super simple but it really makes me happy!

St Luke's Mid Month Reminder

Well it certainly seems like we've scared off our regulars over on the St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge Blog with our one layer challenge this month as we've hardly had any players.  So, as its one layer week over at Less is More I thought I'd combine their "use 3 stamps" with our "anything as long as its one layer" to see if we can prompt a few more players to join us.  We have a couple of lovely stamps from Lili of the Valley up for grabs....

My three stamps were from 2 sets - the flower and frame are both old ones from Elzybells whom I loved so much so am SOOOO pleased to see that she is now designing for Penny Black and that some of her old stamp sets (including the round flower set to match this one) are being re-released.  The sentiment is from a new set from Papermania by Lucy Cromwell.   I masked off a strip then stamped the flower and frame, removed the mask and added the sentiment into the gap - simples. 

See ONE LAYER DOESN'T HAVE TO BE SCARY.....................

One Layer Stripes

This week's challenge at Less is More is stripes, and as it's the second week of the month it's one layer week - so stripes but no layers - dang - I have lots of striped paper but no striped stamps! http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.com/2012/02/week-54-one-layer.html

A lot of head scratching and sorting through all  my drawers and I managed to find a couple of stripey things and have actually made 3 cards in the end.  These challenges are good like that, otherwise I just use the same stuff or new stuff all the time - this made me dig deeper and older!!!

This one is a bit outside the box, but I think the train track counts as stripes!  Stampin up wheel and TPC trains, planes and automobiles stamps.  I think this was in part a reaction to my blogging buddy Deborah's news - wish you lots of luck for your move to the States.  Wish we were coming too to share in all that US crafting goodness :-)

For this one I was inspired by Mandi's stamping stripes into nesties but I twised it up an stamped my stripes as a border strip after inking and embossing my nestie shape.  The flower is Hero Arts, clear embossed and glittered.  DI's blended and pearled to make the frame.  The stripes is actually a layer from my papermania cake stand stamp - told you I had to look at things hard this morning!  The sentiment is from an Elzybells set which has just been re-released by Penny Black (yeah!!!)

I'm not so thrilled with this one - very simple embossing folder with a sentiment stamped in the gap that is on the folder.  Just don't think the sentiment works, and I can see this being recycled with the sentiment covered for an non one-layer card.

That's it for a while as I have a very bad headache today - a phonecall at 4.30 am about the alarm at work is probably to blame....   Time for lunch and a quick nap I think!

Catch you later

LIM Week 21

It's Saturday morning, the sun is trying to break through and we have a new challenge to play with from LIM - so everything is right with the world.....

Today we have a sketch, a simple one naturally, 3 circles on a strip across the top third of a square card.  I had a couple of ideas straight off when I looked at the challenge at 8am but I had to do the shopping first.  The three circles made me think of a baby set I got in the sale when Elzybels closed that I haven't used yet so this is my first card for today.

Aren't the triplets so cute?  You can obviously customise to the sex but as I don't have a recipient in mind for this card I just went with the full set as it comes and I will put this card into my box of cards for the St Luke's Charity card sale I run through our challenge blog donations.  I just coloured with skin tone copics, and matted onto blue and pink card and added one of the sentiments from the set underneath.

I'm going to have my breakfast now but will be back with another go later.

Thanks for visiting and have fun with this weeks challenge.

Craftilicious x

Belated Happy Birthday

It was my fellow St Luke's DT member Deborah's birthday last week and I missed getting her card in the post in time for the big day, so I made a belated one and sent it a day late.  Hopefully it will have arrived by now so I should be safe to blog it.

The panel is an Elzybels stamp, coloured with distress ink in olive and edged with moss with some stickles on the flower centers.  The leaves in the background are another Elzybels set stamped directly onto the base card in moss.  The sentiment is from the snail set I used last week for my funny cards, and the gold butterflies are from my new stampin up emboslit folder.

Hope you had a good day Deborah.

Craftilicious x

Come Fly With Me!

It's the first of the month again which means another new challenge over at St Luke's Charity Card Challenge and this month we'd like you to fly with us!  You can make any style of card you like, you just have to include something that flies on it - a bird, a plane, a fairy or in my case and angel....

This is a lovely image from Elzybels (no longer available to buy sadly) and its a cute little angel sprinkling wishes, peace and dreams as stardust from her cloud.  I coloured her in a soft muted palette and added lots of glamour dust and glitter and matted onto silver mirri.  I added a sentiment to the bottom, matted onto more mirri with a top and bottom border of stars using a Martha Stewart punch.  Simple, but hopefully effective.

So dig out your butterflies, birds, planes, balloons or anything else that flies and make a card for this months challenge - our favourite card will win a fabulous bundle of ribbons and buttons donated by Ciara - and there's a bit of blog-bling in the form of our winners badge for the runners up.  So pop on over to the blog to check out the challenge http://stlukescharitycardschallenge.blogspot.com/

We've had over 300 cards donated to the hospice for sale already so your support of this challenge really is making a difference - thanks so much for joining us for our challenge with charity at its heart.

Craftilicious x

Addy tude loves her 'tinis

I made this card for my friends birthday a couple of weeks ago but have got behind on this whole blogging mallarky...... This is a tiddly inks stamp from Stamping Bella and I just love Addy Tude - this is the first of many purchases from this range I'm sure. It's coloured with copics and the glasses are glazed with glossy accents and the fur trim is sparkling with ranger rock candy spangles.

To go with her present (a saute pan) I made her a little something more personal, a jewellery set made with the gorgeous Elzybels floral stamps and shrink plastic. I've never had much sucess with shrink plastic in the past, but these worked beautifully.

I just love the dandilion clock in this set, so started with that, and used a brayer and rainbow big and juicy ink pad to get the soft graduated colour effect. Here's the before and after effect on the earrings.

This is the before shrinking shot for the bracelet, a mix of three of the oblong stamps from the set, with holes larger than required, pre-punched with my trusty crop-a-dile. The colours look really soft on frosted shrink plastic but they darken when shrunk as you can see in the second image of the finished bracelet. I used a thin coat of glossy accents on the inked side of the plastic once shrunk to ensure it didn't smudge when worn.

If you like these gorgeous floral stamps - and who wouldn't right? Then stop by Elzybells store over the Easter Weekend (2nd - 5th April) for some great Easter discounts http://elzybells.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/03/easter-special-offers-limited-time.html