Strawberries, Cream and Grass....

Well it's my final day to guest over at Make My Monday - thanks so much for having me ladies.  This week we are being inspired by all things Wimbledon and have a red, cream and green colour challenge for you and that's where the strawberries cream and grass come into it.  Being a bit of a tennis fan I decided to take the theme a bit more literally and add Wimbledon (the championships start today btw) into my card inspiration.

I love this little guy from the Magnolia Winner Takes it All release (in fact it was my favourite Magnolia release so far so I have quite a few of them!)  I coloured him in copics and then paper pieced his outfit and the ball.  A little matting and layering, some craft candy dots and a nice strawberry coloured based card and he's ready for the opening rounds (although his outfit would be frowned up at Wimbledon as they like you to only wear white!)

Have fun with the theme, and watching the championships if you're that way inclined.  It's the only sporting event I follow properly so I'll be glued to the little TV in my craft room for the next couple of weeks - maybe this year will be Andy Murrays?  We can but live in hope.....

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Well good morning all and welcome to a new week and with it a new Make My Monday challenge - my 3rd as a Guest DT member.  Here in the UK, it's approaching midsummer with our longest day of daylight fast approaching - pity the weather didn't get the memo though as the rain feels much more autumnal!   The girls have the theme this week as "a midsummer nights dream" to tie in with midsummer's night using the Shakespeare play of the same name with it's fairies and surreal scenes as inspiration - after a lot of head scratching - this is what I managed to come up with.

My starting point was the gorgeous topper sent to me by the lovely lady behind Cardmakers Delights as I thought the two fairies in the teacup were quite midsummer night's dreamy.   I layered it onto a pink nestie lable, tied some vintage seam binding ribbon around it and added a couple of pearl pins.  I mounted it onto a card covered with DP and added a dream themed sentiment and some sequin butterflies.  I mounted the lable at an angle and added some diecut swirls and some paper roses.   I don't tend naturally to this style - I love it but find it hard to do and am much better at CAS but this became my Sister-in-Law's birthday card and she loved it so I must try to do fussy more often!

I do hope you'll join in with this week's challenge - I think it's a great fun challenge to start off the week.

Flowers, stockings and peas........

I've had some extra time to play this week as I'm on holiday so I've done quite a few challenges so I have a couple to show you today.

Firstly I made a "white" flower for this weeks Make my Monday challenge http://mimchallegeblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/mmm-week-48.html

The literal challenge was Lily of the Valley as it's this months birth flower and all I know about this flower is that it is NOT one of those!  I have no idea what it is, or what colour it should be, but I think it looks OK in white so lets go with it ok....   I just did very quick watercolouring with distress inks (bundled sage, forrest moss and peeled paint with a hint of spiced marmelade for the stamens).  I did use a tiny bit of  bundled sage on the "white" petals to give some subtle shading.  I used an embossing folder for the mount and cut it by hand after embossing and finished with a craftwork cards sentiment.

Next I made 2 cards using the great sketch this week at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown (I'm loving this challenge and have almost a full shoebox of Christmas cards already and it's not quite half way through the year). http://52cct.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/sketch-challenge-5.html  I made one card with the sketch as is, and a second with it turned on its side.

For this first card I used my favourite Christmas pun stamp "peas on earth" coloured with copics, some paper from My Minds Eye 12 Days of Christmas and a fab greeting one of my local stores got made up so we can do localised greetings.

For this one, I turned the sketch sideways, used an old Magenta framed stocking stamp, stamped twice and paper-pieced the second layer of stockings in pink cardstock coloured with pencils to match the paper (same MME stack) and finished with a No Peeking sentiment from Waltzingmouse.

Right - off to get some jobs done.  Catch you later.