Moxie Fab Thanks

Well I know I am not alone in feeling a lot of sadness when I read this post from Cath about her decision to leave Paper Crafts and the Moxie Fab World blog that she hosts so brilliantly - I know I am not alone because there are hundreds of us sharing projects today to show how much we're going to miss you Cath.  I hope you're having fun hopping even if you too are finding it a little hard and a little sad.   I also feel sorry for whoever is going to take the blog over when it reopens in December, boy do they have some BIG shoes to fill!  The Moxie Fab World is going to be a very different place without you!

I was trying to think of what I'll miss most - I think it will be my nightly fix of  "Oh my Moxie Fab" as it was often the last thing I saw before I went to bed so it was my "goodnight John boy" moment.  I'll miss the trendwatching too - especially the amazeballs way you could round up the whole of CHA in a few blog posts and all those pictures of the new trends so we felt like we were there too.  My proudest ever challenge win was getting to be a Trigger Target so I'll miss playing along with those too.

My card tribute is simple and says it all really - you are WONDERFUL Cath!

This card uses the Camelia set from Waltzingnmouse stamps with the small flower stamped repeatedly in grey on a kraft base card to make the background.  The sentiment is stamped onto multicoloured thread which was wrapped tightly around a piece of cardstock covered with double sided tape so you end up almost with material.  The largest flower from the set was stamped onto white card using grey ink and coloured lightly with copics.  The same multicoloured thread was then used to hand stitch around all of the petals to keep with the theme.  The die cut leaves are Wplus9 folk art florals.

If you are following the hop then you should have come from Lorena Canto http://paperella.typepad.com
 and your next step on the hop is Joscelyne Cutchens http://www.cutchens.com  or if you've only just found it then start at Moxie Fab World or you can follow the whole hop from the links below:

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!

Wonderful you!

It's been a while since I've had time to play in the weekly Waltzingmouse sketch challenge but as WM are my favourite stamp company and I just received my stash from their latest release this Friday I had a go with this week's sketch http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/challenge-119october-13-2012.html

I used the ADORABLE new floral stamp set Camellia which I just love for its versatility.  I stamped the small open flower onto white card and embossed it with white powder and did the same with 3 of the single leaves.  I then used some luminArte paints to create a quick water colour effect with lots of shimmer (which I can't get to show on the photo as much as it shows IRL) and then cut them out - this is a great technique if you need to colour quickly - just blob the paint on, swish it around and then dab it off the embossed with kitchen paper.

I used some hessian effect paper as a background mounted onto my favourite kraft card and little distressed green DP for depth and to draw the eye to the vibrant pink vintage seem ribbon bow.  I finished with a sentiment made up of words from the Camellia set in a pink ink to match the flowers and ribbon - et voila!

Hope you like it as much as I do.   I have plans for these flowers and this colouring technique for a big wedding cake card too so watch this space....

Edited - I finished the wedding card so thought I'd share it here....

I cut the cake shaped card on my cameo, embossed a pattern over the front using the Market Street Stamps punched tin background stamp with white EP.  Simply finished with the same seam binding ribbon and a host of the flowers - some of which I trimmed to get even more size variety.