There She Goes Mother of All Blog Hops

Welcome to the 3rd annual Mother of All Blog Hops sponsored by There She Goes Clears Stamps!   Over the next two days, we (customers and trendsetters!) will be featuring some of our favourite There She Goes Clear Stamp sets!   Not only that, we’re going to give YOU a chance to win some fabulous prizes!

To find out how, please go to the There She Goes’ blog and read the simple instructions.

 

I'm really excited to be playing along for the first time as I LOVE TSG stamps and was really lucky to get to be able to showcase probably my all time favourite stamp set - the LOVEBOTS!

I used 4 of the 7 stamps that come in the set on my card.  I started with a little film strip die into which I stamped the tiny shadow image of the weighing scales bot, showing more of him in each frame to give the illusion of it being an actual film strip.  I then coloured and fussy cut the matching outline image and placed him over the film strip.  The chevron background was embossed before diecutting with an "industrial" folder.  I stamped one of the sentiments between the two robots directly onto the card - I'm quite a CAS girl so despite having a huge stash of DP I don't use it often. 

For the larger robot, I stamped him 3 times, coloured with copics and decoupaged areas of him so that the hearts really were flying out of his tummy doors (you can see the dimension in the photo below better)  It took a little time to fussy cut the hearts but with the aid of some tweezers to hold the little pieces it is possible and the effect is worth the effort!

 

Please click on the InLinkz below and follow it to the next blog!

 

I hope you love the robots as much as I do - when you hope around you may some of his friends ;-)   Good luck in the prize contest.

 

Happy Birthday CASual Friday

It's the first anniversary this week of the CASual Friday challenge - can't quite believe I've been playing along every week for a whole year (I think I missed maybe 2 or 3 challenges tops).  To celebrate the challenge this week is to create a birthday card - http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/cfc51.html

I used a couple of sets from There She Goes - the super cute Birthday Bots and Numbered Days.  The main image is part coloured with copics and part paper-pieced.  I used a smaller present stamp from the same set, coupled with a dienamics filmstrip die to create a little "movie" of the present arriving just by stamping it as an outline inside each cell by masking off the others as I went along.  Finished with the sentiment and a couple of drifting balloons.

I am also entering it into the celebration challenge this week at One Stop Craft Challenge http://onestopcraftchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/challenge-181-celebrations.html 

Happy Birthday CASual Fridays - looking forward to another year of great challenges :-D

Green Ribbon

I decided to have another go at LIM this week - I do love green   http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/week-62-colour-challenge.html  and it seemed like a good opportunity to combine it with this weeks challenge at There She Goes which is to use ribbon  http://tsgclearstamps.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/tsg151-ribbon-time.html

The very first set of stamps I bought from There She goes was one of their gorgeous sentiment sets of which the above is one.  I love how large and flourishy it is and thought it would look great with little else on the card so I selected 3 shades of green ribbon in different thicknesses and fixed them behind a smooth panel on a textured base card.

CASual Song Inspiration

This week's challenge at CASual Friday's is to make a card inspired by a song - I decided to take one of my husband's favourite bands Kraftwerk for my inspiration and their song is called "The Robots".

I used the super cute set designed by Torico from There She Goes stamps - I have all her robot sets they are just wonderful.  These 2 are best friend robots - I stamped them onto grey card, shaded with pencils and then added some googly eyes before fussy cutting them out.  The stamps also come with a smaller solid block matching stamp which I stamped repeatedly to make a background before adding one of the sentiments from the set.


http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/cfc46-and-last-chance-for-dt-call.html

When looking for this set, I pulled out another one of theirs so decided to make another card for this challenge and also this week's challenge at There She Goes which is to use metal embellishments.  This card is inspired by the Christmas song "Little Donkey".

I don't think its particularly clear from the photograph but I have decoupaged the "butt" on the donkey, with and extra layer for the tail and the fluffy hair, stamped on kraft card and shaded again with pencils.  I added a strip of metal embossed with stars and also die cut some large stars from the same metal - the stars fit the theme at TSG and also echo the sentiment.

http://tsgclearstamps.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/tsg150-metal-embellishments.html 

CASual Contrasts

This week's challenge at CASual Fridays is to contrast bold black with soft pastels  http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/cfc45-and-dt-call.html

I decided to make a little card for my husband who has been great during my recent health scare - I really wouldn't cope without him and think this sums him up perfectly.

I made a paperpieced row of pastel crayons using my new There She Goes stamp set and created my sentiment on the computer.

Sweet Peas

I've been browsing around the new release at There She Goes this weekend and can't wait for some of the new sets arrive :-)   They have a new challenge too, which is a lovely sketch so I dug out some of my older TSG stamps and played along.

Here's the link to the challenge if you want to play along - you can even win a voucher to spend on their stamps http://tsgclearstamps.blogspot.com/2012/02/tsg145-sketch-challenge.html

I've used the lovely sweet pea stamp and inked it up in green and coloured the flowers in mostly in my softest copics with a hint of deeper pink at the centres.  I added the definition stamp in a matching pink ink and created some layers to match the decorative papers I chose (my favourite ever My Minds Eye set - Pretty Please).  Nice quick make and perfect for Mother's Day and as Paper Play want cards for mothers or female relatives I'm entering their challenge too  http://paperplaychallenges.blogspot.com/2012/02/12-week-8-for-mother.html

Flowers and Butterflies

We have a birthday club at work and pay a couple of quid each to buy a gift for each others birthdays - since I started card making, I make the cards so that we don't loose half the present to the cost of a card!  I need one for Thursday and decided to go floral after seeing this weeks inspiration challenge at There She Goes:

I have a lovely set of floral stamps called garden of friends from There She Goes so I thought the jug image would be the perfect match for the inspiration photo.  However, somewhere along the lines I went more purple than pink...  Hope this still counts!

I coloured the image with copics, cut with a nestie using the overflow the frame technique, added a couple of mounts and then stamped a background on vellum (I only had lilac vellum...) using two different stamps and shades of ink.  I did a little spritzing to distress the corners and add some shimmer.  Finished with ribbon, a tiny sentiment in pink (which barely shows up on the photo) and a couple of pink butterflies - one die cut, one sticker.

I'm also entering this into Flutterby Wednesday where the challenge is to include embossing on your butterfly, fairy or "thing with wings"   http://flutterbywednesdays.blogspot.com/2012/01/flutter-by-wednesday-187.html  My butterfly has embossed detail to it, but again it doesn't show very clearly on the photo.

I'll be back later with my card for our new Challenge over at St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge.....

Chemistry!

I got a new supply of stamps from There She Goes yesterday and immediately played with them for their current challenge which is a colour challenge - grey and yellow plus a neutral - which fit perfectly with one of the sets which just happened to be the one I wanted to play with first :-D

Sorry its not a great image - its a scan not a photo and its not showing the "white space" around the grey.  But I really loved this little image and sentiment "I love you beyond measure" 

 

I wanted to play with more of the stamps, so this one doesn't quite fit the challenge as there is no yellow, but I just couldn't resist making another little card - these are super tiny new card blanks from papermania - just 3 x 3 inch and make gorgeous mini cards or gift tags.  I just added a little embossed background detail to this one as its narrower than the other.  Expect to see many variations on a theme with this set!

These also fit the theme of "for the boys" at St Luke's this month.

To finish - I've just found out that one of my cards made the top 3 - I'm behind on my blog reader so only just found out today that I can add a new badge to my blog for this card - I love this range of cat stamps :-D

 Catch you later alligator ;-)

There She Goes Birthday Doll

There She Goes is celebrating a birthday this week, and have come up with a cool and quirky challenge which ends today but I've just managed to make the deadline.

Day 1's challenge was to use one of their stamps to create a paper doll - I have a few of their sets but only one with a character so the choice of doll for me was 1 from 1.  Here she is:

Day 2's challenge was to take your doll out on the town and photograph her.  So today we went to the supermarket, which also has a clothes store in it, so I decided she was the kind of gal who would like shoes so here she is photographed trying on a snazy pair of leopard print pumps.

Day 3's challenge was to take her into the great outdoors - well the weather hasn't been great here, so the best I could manage was to photograh her in the bushes in my garden before the strong wind blew her away.

Day 4's challenge was an interesting one - she had to be "in the spotlight" so I decided to photograph her with Hugh Jackman, she is obviously worthy of hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite - I also used a torch to add a spotlight to her.

Day 5's final challenge was all about partying - well my doll's idea of a great party is a cocktail party and what better way to celebrate a birthday than with a classic martini - so here she is in the martini glass with a birthday banner.

I hope you enjoyed my little doll's exploits - thanks to TSG for such a fun challenge (even if I did get some VERY strange looks in the supermarket!)

Less is More Week 10 - One Layer Sentiment

It's Saturday again, which means only one thing - a new challenge over at Less is More brought to you by the LIMettes Chrissie and Mandi :-)

This week it's One Layer Week, not everyone's favourite, but I'm getting the hang of it, and this time we have to make the sentiment the main focus of the card.  I ended up doing something which may be a bit too similar to Chrissie's inspiration card but I got this new set of stamps from the US that are just sentiments and I really wanted to use them and they needed the musical background.  Sorry Chrissie.
 

 

I used a DL at the base, and embossed a double nestie in the middle about 2/3 of the way up.  I then cut the large mount from scrap card and covered up the embossed shape so I could stamp the musical background "behind".  I stamped the sentiment in the middle and embossed with clear gloss.  I used a polychromos pencil to outline the nested shapes and followed with an embossing pen to add the same clear gloss.  I then used the scrap of paper to cover the outside of the nested shape and cut the smaller shape out to cover the middle, then used a star-flower tapestry stamp to create a pattern in between the two frames.  Then I made a mistake.....   I decided to dry and wet emboss a border around the whole card, but I didn't realised that the embossing pen would dry blue....   However, I think it may be one of those happy accidents as I don't hate the purple and blue colour combo.

If you were reading my posts last Saturday, you'll be pleased to know the cakes and all the cards got made - here are the 3 mothers day cards - forgot to take a picture of the cake - it didn't last very long ;-)

 

Don't forget we have a new charity card making challenge on The St Luke's blog - say it with flowers - so pop on over and play if you've got the time.

Have a lovely sunny weekend :-)

Craftilicious x