Old Salt

I have made a card today for a couple of challenges - this weeks' theme at LIM is Masculine so I've taken that and used the current colours from our Waltzingmouse challenge to come up with this:

I embossed the boat and sentiment from Ocean Bound in vanilla white onto a stitched edge journalling card and then stamped the hills from Way Out West in dark blue before blending the sky in purple (around a masked moon) and the sea in blue distress inks.  I used a pearl spritz to give the moonlight some shimmer in the sky and on the sea.   I used the rope from Tying the Knot to add a little decoration to the base card before adhering the panel.

You've still got until Thursday to join in with our colour at Waltzingmouse Fanatics...........

See you tomorrow for my Make the Day Special Stamp Store post.

Waltzingmouse Fanatics is GO!

So it's our inaugural challenge at Waltzingmouse Fanatics today http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/ and we have a lovely sketch to kick it all off with.
 
I decided to make a couple of projects - one masculine and one feminine.  For my first project there was only one way to go - Way Out West with a focal element is from Sheriff and all done in kraft to keep it masculine.

I cut a piece of kraft card with a curved line following the sketch and then stuck it to my stamp mat and stamped two of the backgrounds from Way Out West across it - the words in crumb cake (SU ink) and the stars in black.  I adhered that to a kraft base card and kept the top part plain except for a silver stitch line.  I used another piece of kraft card to stamp the sheriff's badge and embossed with pewter ink.  Once cool I added a swipe of picket fence distress ink and buffed it off with a damp paper towel.  I'm quite pleased with this one.


For my second card I went more feminine and used the new Funky Flowers set as my focal element and a couple of sentiments from Say It Loud to create my background panels.
 

I'm not as happy with this one - I was trying to be clever with my background stamping and this version is my third (and best) attempt.  I cut a panel as before but this time in white and stamped the word "birthday" from Say it Loud across it in black ink.  I stamped "happy" from the same set in grey ink on my white base card but despite my best effort they didn't line up quite as I wanted (and yet I drew pencil lines and no I can't do maths!)  So I added a nice thick black line with a copic marker to cover up the mistakes and make a more defined dividing line.

For the focal element this time I stamped the largest flower from funky flowers in tangelo ink and then stamped the smaller one in pool and layered them up.  To form the flower centre I stamped the medium flower in tangelo again on shrink plastic to add a little dimension and interest.  I finished with a couple of leaves in pear tart which is my favourite green ink ever.

So now it's over to you - visit the challenge blog and play along for your chance to win a £20 voucher for Waltzingmouse stamps - you have almost 2 weeks to play so plenty of time to get your mojo rocking http://waltzingmousefanaticschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

My First Special Issue :-D

If you've got the latest Special Issue from Paper Crafts Magazine - Holiday Cards and More Volume 8 - then please turn to page 66 as you'll see my first ever project to make it into a Special Issue :-D

Now this one is particularly special for me as it uses what are probably my all time favourite stamp sets - the wonderful Way out West and Back in the Saddle sets from Waltzingmouse - living in the middle of England, there's not much call for cowboys, but for some reason I just LOVE working with these sets so am thrilled to bits that I managed to get a card published with them.  Like the first time I made it into the magazine the card is also on kraft - also a love of mine so I guess it must be lucky for me.  The challenge for this submission was to make a Christmas card without using any Christmas imges - you were only allowed a single Christmas sentiment.

Here's a closer shot

It was simply a case of masking the top half of the cardstock and stamping the yonder star background in crumb cake ink for a tone on tone background onto which I stamped the row of stars which each got a tiny yellow gemstone centre.  I then stamped two of the backgrounds from Way out West onto the area I'd masked off.  The far hills in crumb cake and the foreground in chocolate pearl.  I added the cowboy on top in the same ink.  The yonder star sentiment was embossed in gold with a gemstone star and some glitter in the sky.   I edged the whole panel with gold ink and then added a couple of rows of twine and finished with a matching bow.