Trendy Metals

I have a couple of cards to share today.

Firstly, I managed to have a go at the WPlus9 birthday challenge which is all about trend watching. http://www.stampawaywithme.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/birthday-celebration-week-3-trend-watch.html

I think I may have thrown one too many trends onto one card lol!  I went with metallics, grunge, misting, diagonals and sequins!  I stamped and embossed the fish from Fish More in gold and die cut them with the matching dies and adhered them to a diagonal blue strip with sentiments embossed on the diagonal too.  I added some grungy splatters using a distress stain and them misted over that with some metallic blue spritz before running the dried piece through an embossing folder and adding some dotty gold washi tape and 3 sequin "bubbles"

My second card is my take on this week's LIM theme of "metal" and is my make for my Store's blog today.

I started with the super-cute owl from Papersmooches Hooties set - you get 3 in different sizes and there are dies to match so there's always an owl to fit your branch!   I die cut him from kraft, coloured him with polychromos pencils and blended with paper stumps and then redrew the lines in a shiny black pen for a comic book look.

For my branch I die cut a branch using a Clearly Besotted die as sadly PS didn't do dies to match the branches only the owl from some thin copper sheet and embossed it with a woodgrain folder.  The leaves are die cut from green metal sheet using leaves from WPlus9's Fresh Cut Florals (currently oos but more are en-route) and then the detail hand embossed with a ball tool.

I created a background for the branch with a die cut circle of striped blue vellum and added my traditional dotted line finish around it before adhering the metal with glossy accents.

Now, if there is one thing I think every crafter needs it's sentiment stamps and that's why I couldn't wait to get my hands on this new Happy Birthday set from Papersmooches - it's jam packed full of lots of lovely, interesting and unusual sentiments perfect for birthday cards for young and old, male and female.  I finished my card with one from the set which had the right shape and size to add balance to my CAS design.

Wiggle it!

Good morning all it's my day again over at Make the Day Special and I'm feeling in a masculine mood today - I think it must be all the Dr Who we were forced to enjoyed watching yesterday.....

So I've been playing with my favourite masculine stamp set Fish More and the companion die set.

I went for a faux embossing look by lining all the die cuts up across the card in rows and then added colour by stamping on top in a variety of blue and green inks.  Trimming off any die cuts that overhang the edges of the card.  For the sentiment I used a strip of vellum and embossed it with an opaque blue powder.  I also embossed the hook in silver before adding the fishing line both on and off the vellum with versafine.  There wasn't anywhere really to "hide" adhesive behind the vellum, but wackytac tape is pretty much invisible (I have a strip the whole way across) so that's a really useful addition to your craft stock if you want to use vellum and aren't handy with a sewing machine ;-)

One Layer Sport

That was the theme this week at Less is More - to create a one layer card featuring sport or exercise http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/week-102-olc-sports-or-exercise.html

I'm very late playing this week as it's been a rough one but I'm feeling a bit brighter this afternoon so sat up in bed for a spot of colouring as unlike lots of card makers out there who hate both one layer and masculine cards - I love them, and combine to two often!  So here's what I came up with - 2 cards in under 20 mins which has to be a record.

The first is a cricketer from Papermania stamped directly onto kraft card and coloured with my polychormos pencils.  The sentiment is from the same set stamped in red to draw your across to the ball and vice-versa.

Now I know lots of people don't think of fishing as a "proper" sport, but my Dad did and the sentiment would sum him up to a tee were he still with us so I just couldn't resist this set from WPlus9 when I saw it.  It has matching dies too and I just love it.