Birthday Ribbons

It's my blogging friend Anne's birthday today and I know she has received her card so I'm free to share it here now without spoiling the surprise.  I made her card using this week's sketch from Waltzingmouse as my starting point  http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/challenge-125november-24-2012.html

I stamped the Hyacinth from Vintage Garden Flowers onto white cardstock and a cut with a round die after painting with Luminarte shimmer paints.  The background is actually the packaing from some Verve stamps and was just too pretty to end up in the bin.  I embossed a sentiment from Compact Sentiments in purple onto this.  I cut some ribbons from purple card and stamped them with a darker purple ink using the lace border from French Country which is just about visible in the photo if you make it bigger.  I added a darker purple strip across with some light purple gems to finish.

Colourful Blog Party

It's blog party time again over at Waltzingmouse stamps and this month it's all about colour - and being close to Halloween, they've gone for a spooky palette of black, purple and orange.  Now as much as those colours would lead you down the Halloween path, I don't really "do" Halloween (it's not big in our area at all) so I've struggled to come up with an idea.

In the end, I went for a very simply tag card using the new Opera stamps and gorgeous matching dies, paired with a simple sentiment from compact sentiments using the suggested colours.  I would never have paired orange and purple but I kind of like it - even though none of my purples match!

I'm looking forward to seeing all the spooky offerings from the rest of the party goers :-)

Blue and Green Butterflies

We've had a bit of a rubbish end to this week as my father-in-law has taken a turn for the worst and we spent most of yesterday following him around local hospitals in search of a surgeon who wasn't on holiday!  Thankfully things seem to be looking up a little today so my hubby has gone back to work, I've got the chores done and can now squeeze in an hour of stress relieving crafting before visiting.

I decided to combine my two favourite weekly challenges - the sketch at this weeks Less is More Challenge with the colour challenge at CASual Friday's which was navy, lime and aqua.

I stamped a 6cm strip of white card with various butterflies from my new craftwork cards butterflies and blooms stamp set using 6 shades of momento ink.  I matted it onto some pearl aqua card and punched my favourite border (EK Sucess Agapanthas).  The large butterfly was cut from the same pearl card using my silhouette - I curled the wings using my fingers and popped it up with pinflair glue adding some green gems to the body.  Finished with a lovely Waltzingmouse sentiment in pear tart ink with 3 tiny gems to highlight it.

Catch you later - thanks for visiting.

Feeling felty

It's the blog party today (although a little delayed) which meant I had time to make something!  Those of you that know my blog will see stamps from the house of mouse make a pretty regular appearance - they are my go to sets in my top stamping drawer for ease of access, so I do love to play along in the monthly party of all things mouse :-D  The challenge this month was to use felt in your card.  http://www.waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/may-waltzingmouse-stamps-blog-partylets.html

I'd been avoiding this sketch all week as it terrified me, but last night whilst trying to think of something felty I hit upon an idea that I thought would work with it:

I cut 5 tiny pink hearts from an old sizzix die (it's actually the centre of the letter o in a LOVE die) from yummy dark pink felt and stuck them in place of the squares on the sketch, adorned with a tiny pale pink gem.    I then used two sentiments from Compact Sentiments part two (the eagle eyed amongst you may spot the different layout to the smile one - I VERY carefully cut the "you" off the stamp so I could put it where I wanted it - I can still use it as it's meant to be as well so don't panic) popped up with dimensional foam with gently inked edges.  I think it will be my anniversary card to my husband next month.

I'm also going to enter this into CASual Friday's dies and punches challenge and the Dies to Die for anything goes with a die cut challenge.

Can't wait to see what everyone else has brought to the party.

x