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.

Need a lift?

My cousin had some routine surgery yesterday and will be off work for a few weeks to recover so I thought I'd send her a card.  I never think "get well" is the right sentiment for these sorts of situations as the person isn't exactly "ill".  So I decided to pull out the balloon image from the new(ish) Waltzingmouse Heroines set as the sentiment to go with it is more uplifting ;-) 

As I was using a WM set, I decided to use this week's sketch challenge as my inspiration for the design - I didn't make it quite the same as my card needed to be portrait as the tag was too big to fit landscape.  Hope it still counts.  http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/challenge-108july-28-2012.html

I stamped the balloon onto a tag, then stamped the balloon and basket elements again onto DP and paper pieced them.  I stamped a kaiserkraft background grid stamp over the kraft card on the basket to make it look woven and then pieced the sandbags out of darker brown card.  I edged the join in the balloon with a thick layer of glitter glue - it reminded me of the Montgolfier Brothers balloon with its gold brocade.  I created a background with blue card using a cloud embossing folder and secured it before adding strips of decorative cloud washi tape (my favourite roll)  I stamped the sentiment onto the same DP as I used for the top of the balloon and gave it the ribbon end treatment.  I finished with some die cut glitter clouds and some teeny-tiny heart buttons.   My hubby thinks I went a bit OTT with the clouds but I liked them and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome :-)

Centenary Sketch

The Jubilee may be everywhere this weekend, but it's not all about the Queen's 60th - yesterday, Waltzingmouse launched their updated sketch challenge website with their 100th sketch - so that's a kind of Centenary right?  Here's the sketch:

I have a card commission to make "something nice" for a lady in her 70's so I decided to use the sketch as a springboard for inspiration and this is what I came up with:

 

I used several different co-ordinating papers from the First Edition New Leaf paperpad.  I used the lace stamp from the French Country set over one of the sheets and used two different sentiment sets to form the Happy Birthday.  The border die is PTI, the leaf is Cheery Lyn and the frame is a Spellbinders label.  The flower I created myself using two different sized scalloped punches, water and scrunching (as per my earlier tutorial - see the link at the top of the page)

Here's the link to the challenge if you want to play along  http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/challenge-100june-2-2012.html

Sketchy colourful thanks

I needed to make a special thank you card today for my Aunt, and for my special cards I always go first to my Waltzingmouse stmaps so I thought I'd check out this weeks' sketch challenge for inspriation  http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.com/2012/02/challenge-86february-25-2012.html  and in the spirit of trying to be more daring with my colours I went to todays lovely CR84FN which are kraft (love!) yellow and grey  http://cr84fncolorchallenge.blogspot.com/2012/02/cr84fn49.html

I stamped two layers of the nestie lable stamp in two shades of yellow chalk ink on kraft paper, cut out the central square and layered it up, cutting the circle out so the sentiment is stamped on the bottom layer.  I added the darker ink to the floral elements of the frame, overglittered it and added smoe gems.  I stamped the grey background with a hero arts stamp, layered with a tiny yellow border and created the shape on the sketch adding some looped yellow ribbon for added interest.  I finally brought the detail from the frame to the base card using the cleverly co-ordinating stamps from the same set.  The thank you sentiment is from a paula pascal set.

Can't wait to see the rest of the WM sets that are about to be released - todays samples were awesome.