House of Cards Term One Blog Hop

THIS IS A STICKY POST - so if you've come for Waltzingmouse Fanatics or Make the Day Special - please scroll down - thanks :-D

Welcome to the House of Cards Term One Blog Hop!

If you've come from Sue T's blog then you are in the right place!   If you have just stumbled here and would like to participate then hop over to the House of Cards Challenge blog to get started.  We've got some fabulous sponsors that are providing prizes, so make sure to leave comments at each stop for a chance to win!

For the hop, our challenge was to use one of our sponsors images and to be inspired by the photo below.

I was lucky to get a a fabulous image from Dilly Beans - #516 Framed Snowmen http://sillydillybeans.blogspot.co.uk/  and I used the cool colours and lots of sparkle from the photo to come up with this.

I coloured the snowmen entirely in grey copics and added a hint of blue in the background.  For the sparkle I used silver stickles and some blue and silver beadazzles.  I added a ring to frame the snowmen as a nod to the plates and to contain my greeting which I stamped inside.  The card base looks grey in the photo but it's actually a silver pearl.

Here's a close up on the snowmen so you can see the glitter detail better - I love the tiny blue beads in the beadazzle.

Unfortunately, this will be last post as part of the House of Cards DT as I have a massive new project coming this way in January which unfortunately means I've had to step down.  Thanks to Mynnette and Ruth for having me - it's been great fun ladies and I wish you all the best for the new term :-D

Thanks for stopping by!  Please join in the fun of our hop and make your way over to Vicki's blog!
 

House of Cards Poppies

 

This month at House of Cards we have a colour/photo inspiration for you to follow through the weekly style challenges and this week it's the Clean and Simple style.   You can chose to be inspired by the colours (at least 3) or by the photo but as you can see from my card above I decided to use both.

I used the orange and green as mats for my focal image which was entirely created with a memory box die.  I cut it from some black card and then used the waste as a stencil to ink through flipping it over to give me a bud on either side.  I then cut the black die cut apart to create a different shape and glued it down with a fine glue pen.  The sentiment (sorry can't remember which set its from) was stamped onto dark green card stock to get more of the colours in.

Now it's your turn - hop on over to House of Cards and play along with us :-)

A CAS approach to a sketch

It's the CAS team's turn to take on this month's sketch at House of Cards today and I thought I'd try and show you that you can take what looks like a full-on layered sketch and turn it into a one layer CAS card but still with lots of interest.

It's very easy really - you just need to work back to front, starting with the foremost "layer" and then masking everything off and stamping to put the next layers "behind" the focal image.  So I began by stamping the Camellia from Waltzingmouse and embossing it in white and heat setting.  I stamped it again in black onto post-it tape (fully sticky all over) and fussy it cut it out to create a mask which I stuck onto the stamped flower.  Next I stamped a leaf from the set over the mask and onto the base card on either side to represent the dots on the sketch - again embossing (after taking the mask off).   I stamped two leaves onto post-it tape again and masked off the flower and leaves this time.

To create my circle, I used a new stamp from IndigoBlu which just drew me to it at a recent show as I thought it would be useful for this sort of card.  It's called "square peg round hole" and I simply stamped it in wet cement ink from Hero Arts.  Again I stamped it to make a mask (this time onto copy paper as the post it tape isn't wide enough) and roughly cut around it to make the circle shape on the sketch.  To create my "band" I stamped a triple stripe from the Basic Stripes set from Clearly Besotted in black ink.

Once all the stamping was done, I went back to adding interest to my focal flower - I used a quick water colouring technique (hence the embossing in the first place) - I just used two pink shimmer paints and two green, painting the lightest on the outside and darker in the middle and quickly blending.  I used the smallest amount of water I could get away with to ensure the card didn't buckle as I wasn't using water colour card stock.

I finished with a decent sized sentiment (Hero Arts) to give the large card some balance but still giving an overall CAS feel.

So now it's your turn - hopefully I've inspired you to give CAS a go!

Cherry Feathers!

So today is my first ever DT post for the Clean and Simple Team over at the new challenge site House of Cards.   What's that you say - what is this great challenge of which you speak?  Well my friend, where have you been these past months?   The House of Cards is a genius little idea of a challenge where each month we set a theme, for example this month it's a colour theme based on the delicious bowl of cherries above, but rather than a month long challenge, we change teams each week and ask you to make a card in a different style but still based on the ongoing theme - geddit?   Cool huh!

I am on the CAS team and we're up this week with a whole goggle of gorgeousness to inspire you so do make sure you check out the inspiration from my teamies http://houseofcardschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

Despite the colour palette featuring 3 of my favourite shades of teals and aquas I decided I really wanted to stretch myself so I chose to use not just 3 of the colours (as per the challenge) but to add the delicious cherry reds too.  After an awful lot of failed attempts with stamps and inks, I finally settled on paper and buttons and here's my cherry-feather card:

I cut the 3 feathers on silhouette cameo from 3 different shades of blue card.   I stamped the sentiment using stamps from Clearly Besotted's Fancy Feathers set and mounted the white strip onto bright cherry red.  I mounted the whole white panel onto some dark burgundy cardstock and finished with 3 cherry red buttons.

I hope that I've inspired you to play along in our first CAS challenge at House of Cards and can't wait to see what clean and simple designs you can come up with based on our cherry colour scheme so hop on over and play along - you've got all week  http://houseofcardschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

New Blog on the Block

Today is the day I can finally reveal the secret I've been keeping for a couple of months - I am going to be joining the Clean and Simple Team over at the brand new challenge site House of Cards.

This is a genius of an idea for a new challenge site created by Mynnette and Ruth where each month we will have either a sketch, a colour or inspiration photo for you to play along with for the whole month but each week we ask you to interpret it in a different style:

Week 1 - Fun and Cute
Week 2 - Clean and Simple
Week 3 - Classic and Elegant
Week 4 - Shabby & Vintage
Week 5 - Anything goes

You can either just play in the week that suits your style or choose to stretch yourself play each week in a different style.   Our first challenge goes live on Monday 1st July and then I'll be popping up on the blog on the 8th July along with my CAS teamies to inspire you with our clean and simple interpretation of this months theme.

I hope you'll check out the blog http://houseofcardschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/  and sign up to follow us so you can check out fun challenges.  Each challenge goes live on a Monday and you have until Sunday each week to play.  I can't wait to see what you make of our challenges!