Playing with Picket Fence..

 

Hey,

Happy Monday!

Hope you all had a great weekend? I got some quality desk time in, so I am pretty happy about that.

Today I am showing you a couple of cards I made a while ago. I really like the Picket Fence Studios 'beautiful girl' set of stamps. I was lucky enough to get a bunch of them on sale - with their dies - whoop!

The main card uses the 'Dany Girl' stamp and I chose this one because my Aunt really likes Dragon's and I thought she would love this! The background is one of my many 'ready to go' ones and was created with Dina Wakley gloss sprays through one of her stencils. Finished off with a Taylored Expression simple sentiment strip.

I bought 'Kendyll Girl' (below) because during a craftgang playdate last year Lisette's card for us used her and I have wanted her ever since. I thought she worked with the amazing cover plate die - I have no idea who it is by, I bought a second-hand grab bag and it was in there! Again finished off with a TE sentiment strip and I added some bling to the cover plate.

Both pretty simple, but fun cards.

Cx

Motivational glaze...

 

Hey,

So I don't really use large stickers that much when I am crafting.

But this set of motivational stickers from Target for $1 were too good to walk away from, but what would I do with them..

As the stickers have gold text I thought it would be good to co-ordinate my backgrounds. Cue a bunch of backgrounds that I had ready-made (see Monday's post). I just cut them to size and added a little black square to made the sticker pop a bit more!

The backgrounds were made using Picket Fence Paper Glaze in Golden Rose, through stencils. SO pretty and I really like working with this glaze, it's very smooth, but not runny.

I made a bunch of cards, but only photographed x2 of them!

Always happy when a crazy idea comes together perfectly...

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge #142 Lets get Sketchy...

Hey,

Welcome to another fun Retro Rubber challenge.

We have a sketch for you this time.

You know how much I love a sketch!

I recently made a large background panel for chopping up, I used a Dina Wakely stencil and Picket Fence Studios Golden Rose paper glaze. I used a piece of it for my card, as you can see.

The sentiment is from a cute set by Jillibean Soup 'All My Happy', that I got in early 2019 when I was on a road trip. I love that a lot of the words come with a shadow effect die. I stamped parts of the sentiment onto white paper and trimmed them down to create little blocks to work with the sketch. The 'wishes' I heat embossed onto gold paper. 

It felt a bit flat and I decided to get a bit brave and pop some gold thread (I never do this technique) under the sentiments and it worked SO well.

I am so happy with this elegant card, a perfect addition to my stash.

Show us your interpretation of the sketch and pop over to Retro Rubber and get inspired by the things the DT have made.

Challenge ends September 4th.

Don't forget to tell us the age of your stamp, that is part of the fun of our challenge and please only enter 10 challenges including Retro Rubber.

Cx

Rescue time..

Hey,

Do you ever make a card and think I don't love this and keep it anyway..just in case?

Well, this was the case with this card. I actually coloured the image and then masked it off and blended over it, I really disliked the background, but because I didn't have the die, it was going to work if I fussy cut her out.

I got the die on sale and promptly cut her out of the hideous background and created a new one for her. Much better!

The stamp is April from the Picket Fence Studios Beautiful Girl series.

I thought she worked really well with one of the sentiments from the MFT Sassy Pants Birthday set. I love these sets and I have a couple of them.

It always feels great when I can rescue a card.

Cx

 

Kitty Cat Thanks..

Hey,

As tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of us owning Clint I wanted to share a card I made for our amazing Vet.

They are amazing, they were wonderful when we had to put our beloved Boscat to sleep. When we got Clint, they gave us great advice to help us understand what having an FIV positive cat would mean.

Late last year Clint got an infection and it was our first time dealing with illness in him and the first time after the loss of Boscat, so to say we were a teeny bit antsy is an understatement.

Fortunately they understood and guided us through it all and Clint is fine now (he did get another infection earlier this year, but we are learning how to deal with this now).

So I made them a card to say thanks and to apologise for our slightly manic behaviour!

I used the awesome Picket Fence Stamps 'I love your face' set - which I had discovered when Cheiron made us a 'Congrats' card for the arrival of Clint, using the same set. How cute is the cat in his bandana?!

The sentiment is by Hero Arts and I created the fun stenciled background using a Tim Holtz gradient diamond stencil (mini version).

I love how the card came out and they loved it too.

If you are looking for a vet and you are in the East Village area of Manhattan, I would highly recommend Urban Vets Animal Hospital - they are kind, caring and super friendly.

Cx

Not quite Florida Playdate..

Hey,

As you know I didn't make it to Florida over Labor Day weekend.

But I did manage to host a not quite Florida playdate at my house on the Sunday.

This meant that we could use the kits we had pre-made.

Basically the plan was that each of us (x5 of us, including Ava in Florida) would kit x2 cards (or projects) for the others to make.

The photo above shows the x8 cards/projects we made on Sunday.

I'll walk you through them starting top left with my cards :)

I was the most efficient of the group and I had sent my kits to Florida already..so I had to make a couple of quick cards for the girls to make on Sunday! I decided to put my Pinterest board 'Look What I Made' to use. And it came up good, with x2 straightforward cards for the girls.

I used the Avery Elle 'Sea-Prise' set for my pufferfish card, the girls were horrified when they realised it was one candle that had to be stamped multiple times, so there were a lot of variations on this one.
The Unicorn card is by Pink Fresh Studio and uses all the stamps and dies from their 'Unicorn Dreams' set.

Moving clockwise to top right, these cards were Cheiron's kits. I loved her Toucan card - using Flora & Fauna stamps so much that I CASEd it (coming soon).
The floral card, used Altenew stamps and was fun to watercolour and we got to use Altenew markers, which are amazing and I do want!

Bottom right, kits by Tiff. She challenged us a bit, by getting us to make a fun envelope. Sadly I dropped the Panda stamp after stamping him, so I have a big black line across him, but hey as I always say, it's handmade, you gotta expect a little oopsie here and there. The envelope board was by We R Memory Keepers, stamps and stencils by Simon Says Stamp.
The Fox card used all the techniques and looks AMAZING!! Background stamp is by Simon Says Stamp, Fox and sentiment stamps by Rabbit Hole Designs. I love RHD stamps, the caffeinated range is hilarious.

Finally bottom left, kits by Lisette. The first card with the girl was fun, I have never ever stamped in a lighter ink and then coloured over it, very clever and way out of my comfort zone. The girl is by Picket Fence Studios, not sure who the dots are by. I love this card and the snarky stickers really worked well here. The Mermaid card uses the super cute Mama Elephant Mermaids and I loved adding the chunky glitter 'sea'.

The best bit about making all these things, were all the techniques we used - masking, heat embossing, watercolouring, blending, colour plucking. It was a masterclass in all the things that we have learnt over the years (mainly from our resident teacher Cheiron).

A fun playdate was had by all and we all left with gifts and 7 cards/1 envelope.
It wasn't quite Florida but it certainly made up for it.

Cx