Fusion Card Challenge - Lemon Hydrangea...

 Hey,

Welcome to another fantastic Fusion Card Challenge.

This time we have 'Old MacDonald' for you! As always both the sketch and the inspiration image are awesome.

Which will you try?

I loved both, so I fused them! The lemons were my inspiration and we all know I love a sketch.

I cut a scrap panel to match the sketch and blended Squeezed Lemonade distress oxide ink in the cutaway.

I then stamped 2 different lemons from the Sassy Crafting 'Feeling Fruity' set over the top of the blended area, using Mustard Seed distress oxide. 

To finish it off and add a bit of impact, I added a large sentiment from Concord & 9th from their 'Big on You' set.

Super fun and I am a teeny bit impressed with my creative use of the sketch ;)

Make sure you check out all the rest of the inspiration by the DT over at the Fusion challenge blog, and play along with your own creation! When playing along you may use the sketch OR the photo to inspire your makes. OR, if you are feeling adventurous, you can fuse them together (see what I did there!).

Can't wait to see your makes. 

Challenge ends on August 3rd.

Cx

ATC Swap Fun...

 

Hey,

And welcome to June FINALLY.

It was a super busy May for me, work wise and personally. 

I have loved getting back out into NYC, as things open and my friends become accessible again!

My little Craftgang and I started doing a ATC swap this year.

The first theme was Beach.

And as I am heading to the beach this week and the ATC's have all arrived, I thought I would share the ones that I made.

I had such a fun time making them. 

I smooched a large piece of watercolour paper to create the background for the ATC and then cut them to size. I then blended in a bit of yellow for the 'sand'.

The stamps were perfect and are by Hero Arts 'Beach Please' I added a teeny tiny Lil Inker Sun die.

They came out so well.

Here they all are together. 

Clockwise top left, Lisette, Me, Cheiron, Tiffany

Love it when we get to make fun things for no reason.

Have a great weekend. Hubby is in the UK - WHOOP, finally we can go home, I am here with Clint Catwood, having a fun solo week off.

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge #157 Time to get your Sketch on...

Hey,

Welcome to another fun Retro Rubber challenge.

We have a sketch for you this time, created by me!

You know how much I love a sketch!

I actually can't provide a link to the stamp I used here, as it was a free gift from a Mama Elephant event in 2016 and I couldn't actually make it and my friend Lisette gave me hers, as she knows how much I love a monster!

I love this stencil cloud technique (stencil is by MFT and I have it in both sizes) - it is getting some serious overuse LOL. 

Here I stamped and masked my Yeti - I am a big fan of masking and then I blended the clouds in. I decided at the last minute to add the stars and little birds, but it worked out fine. The sketch is so simple I just used little scraps of patterned paper and an enamel dot to complete my card.

I'm crushing on this card a teeny bit!

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 May 7th

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

Critter Crowd Birthday...

Hey,

Happy Sunday to you!!

This set is one of my all-time faves - Critter Crowd by Simon Says Stamp for Stamptember 2019.

I love using it, it makes such gorgeous cards. These ones are for charity, Scrapbook.com run Cards for Kindness and I like to send a bumper box of approx 150 cards every 3 months. This time they were requesting kids birthday cards. This set is perfect for that subject.

Pretty easy to make, I stamp and watercolour them (watercolouring bigger batches of cards is much quicker for me than colouring with markers), blend the bottom of the panel, stamp the sentiment and then assemble.

I always make a few extra for myself, but I am running out of little kids....

Cx

 

Paw You...

 

Hey,

Just before Christmas 2020 my work colleague's small Daughter got Covid (she is fine now).

But it was rather upsetting for the whole family and I thought a small child would be very confused by what was going on. So not to downplay the situation, I made and sent her this little card, in the hope that a piece of mail just for her would cheer her up.

Apparently, it worked and she carried the card around for a while, how sweet is that?

I LOVE Clearly Besotted stamps and this cute 'Paw You' set was perfect for this card. I have this amazing die by Simon Says Stamp that cuts 3 circles in a row, so I cut it twice to create the 6 aperture's for my card.

I blended over the panel and then stamped the cats and the sentiments into the openings.

For a quick, random make it came out well and I liked the doubling up of the die.

Cx

Blended Star Birthday...

 

Hey,

Happy Friday!

I am pretty excited today - a) I only did a 3 day week - whoop! Love me a short week and b) tonight I am doing a zoom craft session with the craftgang! YASSS.

I love MFT stencils and my cards today use a star stencil by them, it also comes with the star if you want a white space where my blended star is.

I used x3 colours of distress oxide ink to blend each star and I stamped over them using the amazing Inkadinkado 'Marquee Birthday' stamps. They look amazing over the star and it all just pops.

So pleased with these.

Have a great weekend.

Cx

Carabelle Cat...

 

Hey,

I am a big Birgit Koopsen and Carabelle Studio fan.

So when I saw this amazing Cat by Birgit for Carabelle last year I really wanted it!!

I finally got my hands on it, during the Summer and this card was actually made for a friend's Daughter in September last year.

I heat embossed the cat using white powder and then blended over the top of it. I can be a bit hit and miss when using this technique, but it came out really well here.

Easy peasy make, finished off with one of my fave Taylored Expressions Simple Strips.

Cx

p.s you can find Carabelle products in the US - Simon Says Stamp, Scrapbook.com, Joggles, TopFlight, etc

Blended Alien Stars...

Hey,

Happy Monday!

In our house we are all about recycling and as minimal waste as we can manage.

So when I was making cards for charity, I had the offcut stars from when I used this die. They sparked an idea, because I also had some spare Aliens from a earlier batch of cards.

I blended them with 2 shades of distress oxide and spritzed them with water to get a bit more of a space feel and voila! fancy blended stars.

Because the stars were so fun, I kept the card super simple and just added an Alien and a sentiment - both of which are by Lawn Fawn from the 'Beam me up' set, which has certainly earned its keep this year!

Gotta love an easy bulk make, especially one that uses offcuts.

Cx

 

MFT Stencils..

 

Hey,

Happy Saturday!

I hope you have fun (and safe) weekend plans. I will be at my desk, working out and watching NFL with Hubby.

I love stencils and currently I have a bit of an obsession with ones by MFT. They had a few sales and a couple of amazing ones had to be mine!

The main photo and the one below use the 'Show Me Your Stripes' stencil. For both cards, I used 4 different colours of distress oxides and blended each stripe using 1 colour. As I am not massively careful when doing this, they kind of blend into each other, which I really like.

They make really impactful backgrounds that I can stamp large sentiments over and adding Tayored Expressions simple strips sentiments is always a winning formula.

The next two cards use the 'rectangle trio' stencil. I am a big fan of straight, clean lines, so this stencil was a must-have, and as you can see it is super versatile. I rotated it for two very different looks.

The card below I blended 3 different distress oxides to create a mini ombre effect (inks used from right to left broken china, peacock feathers and mermaid lagoon) 

I love all of these cards, and I hope it's given you some ideas about how to use stencils in different ways.

Have a great weekend.

Claire

Rainbow, Unicorn, Sprinkles...

 

Hey,

Can you go ever go wrong with a card that has rainbows, a unicorn and a sweet sentiment?

I don't think so!!

I love this card and it went to my Goddaughter for her birthday.

I love the Rainbow stamp and stencil by Taylored Expressions and it plays so nicely with the Unicorn and sentiment from Ellen Hutson, I am a HUGE fan of Julie Ebersole critters.

I blended distress oxides through the stencil and stamped over it using x2 of the provided fancy rainbow arch stamps.

The Unicorn is an old fave and I think I could colour him blindfolded!!

Cx

16/11 - Happy Anniversary..

Hey,

If you have been visiting my blog for a while you know a) my wedding anniversary is Halloween and b) I always celebrate the anniversary of our first date - 30th October.

This year it's 16 years together and 11 years married!! 

The photo is from our anniversary early morning boat ride through the water park/conservation area last year in Cancun.

Being a cardmaker, I use these x2 anniversaries as an excuse to make Hubby elaborate cards. 

First up the 16 year card.

I love the 'Bacon' set by AALL & Create - a brand that I discovered earlier this year, whilst I was at home in London and they have been such a great find. I blended Worn Lipstick and Picked Raspberry distress oxides to create my background and then stamped the awesome bacon stamp from 'Bacon Break' by Sweet Stamp Shop. I added a few hearts for fun.

I mean how can he not love a card with a bacon background?! AND not a pun in sight (he very much dislikes a pun card, and I give them to him to wind him up - hee hee).

And here is the 11th Wedding Anniversary card! It's not strictly a pun, but it is kind of because it's Halloween...

I love all the amazing cloud blending I am seeing and I need MUCH more practice at it. But I am SO happy with how this came out and now I need a black blender brush..

I used an MFT Cloud stencil, Crate Paper 'After Dark' stamps and Papertrey Ink 'Keep It Simple: Anniversary' stamps. The inks are distress oxides in Black Soot, Carved Pumpkin and Wilted Violet.

We would normally be in Mexico right now celebrating, but you know global pandemic.. So we are going to our fave restaurant in NYC instead (hoping we don't freeze to death outside). 

I would just like to say that even though the last 7 months have been very strange, there isn't anyone else I could have been trapped in a small apartment with. Hubby and I have had so much fun at home, watching random crap, eating our body weight in cake, perfecting our fave recipes, and hanging with Clint Catwood. 

If you choose your life partner carefully, all storms can be weathered with humor.

I love you Mr G, you are my man, love, thing for life and beyond.

Cx

Hippo Queen...

 

Hey,

I love Clearly Besotted stamps.

I saw this great 'Love London' set of theirs on sale and had to have it.

I wanted to make a fun card for a friend who is based in London and this set made me laugh, with all the possibilities.

I stamped the bus and the taxi first, then masked that off and blended the blue bottom panel, using Chipped Sapphire distress oxide.

I stamped and fussy cut the Hippo wearing a crown. When I was getting ready to pop her up ontop of the bus, it felt like something was missing, so I added the little heart scatter from another Clearly Besotted set 'Happy Days'.

Fun, and a little bit crazy. Like my friend.

Cx

4from1: Flora & Fauna

Hey,

It's been a bit crazy in my work world, so my posts have had to take a back seat.

But today I thought I would share 4 great cards that I made using a mix of Flora & Fauna 'Llama Garden' (now retired) and Taylored Expressions 'Whole Llama Love' - which is a sentiment set.

I started by creating the backgrounds for each card. Two of them I created a fun masked, blended circle, One is a full blended panel and the final one was blended around the edges and I stamped flowers and leaves for a bit of interest.

I used the flower/leaf edge technique on one of the circles too.

The backgrounds came out so well, it was then really easy to add the Llamas to them and the fun sentiments. I am really loving adding glittery accents to my cards using Sakura Gelly Roll Starburst pens - they are SO glittery and they work really well on blended areas, meaning you don't need to colour the whole stamp/image.

I often find it easier to start cards by creating a focal point or a background, then I can decide which stamps I want to use.

I also tend to make cards in fours, it means I get a lot of use out of a stamp set in one go. I have forced myself more and more to use all the little stamps in a set, not just the bigger ones that made me buy the set in the first place.

Cx

4 from 1: Paper Smooches Space Cadet..

Hey,

During my period without the Big Shot, I decided to play with a smaller format.

I think the US size is 4bar - it's one I use mainly for my Christmas cards - smaller surface area is handy when you are making a ton of cards.

I created my own mask (see my Saturday 9th May post about this) and blended distress oxides through the aperture. I used Twisted Citron, Picked Raspberry, Carved Pumpkin and Peacock Feathers.

I haven't pulled out my Paper Smooches 'Space Cadet' set in a while, but it is one of my all-time faves and I have had it a very long time.

I used the little Alien from the set and I added sentiments from Unity Stamp Co, Hero Arts, Concord & 9th and Ellen Hutson. The little dots are by Simon Says Stamp and are a flower centre - way to stretch my stamps!

So simple and a lot of fun!

Cx

Birthday Calories..

Hey,

Welcome to December!

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. Hubby and I had a very chilled one, it was lovely. I am sure I did far too much BF sale shopping, but hey that's what I work for right!?

As I have now completed x2 different 30 day challenges in tandem, I can resume normal blog duties.. It's been quite a busy month, more about that in another post.

Today I wanted to use one of the (never seen before) cards from the 30 day colouring challenge as my entry to the current Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers challenge -

My card uses the awesome sentiment from the CAS-ual Fridays 'Whole Shebang' set. I combined it with the various ice-creams and lollies that I had coloured - they are from the Waffle Flower 'Sweet Ice Cream' set.

I had originally planned to colour the Waffle Flower set for the whole 30 days, but to be frank 15 days in I got bored! So I have actually made 15 cards from this set - to be shown in another post.

This one I kept super simple with just a subtle background ink blending to make the ice-creams pop. But I really wanted the sentiment to shine.

I'm off now to watch NFL ALL DAY LONG - whoop!

Cx

Simon Says Stamp: Stamptember Critter Crowd..

Hey,

Happy Monday (from Mexico).

I love Stamptember over at Simon Says Stamp, there are always so many fun collaborations.

This year I bought two sets, one of them I used on today's 'Critter Crowd' - the other set, you'll see soon.

I started by stamping and watercolouring the critters and the balloons. If you follow me on Instagram, you will have seen my little video about this step - I am attempting to make videos, they are a bit janky right now, but practice makes perfect ;)

I then stamped the Happy Birthday and created a little mask for it, so I could blend over it to create the pretty pink and orange background you see. I watercoloured the sentiment too and then added my critters and the balloons, all popped up using foam tape.

Such a pretty card, I can't wait to play with this stamp set a bit more.

Cx

Perfectly CAS: Happy Birthday Bridge..

Hey,

Today I am playing along with a new challenge Perfectly CAS.

The idea of the challenge is to use one-third of your card, alongside the theme.

I love a CAS card and the idea of using just a third of the space on my card appeals to me.

I used this as an opportunity to pull out an older stamp set that I haven't used in a while 'Wherever You Go' by Stampin' Up - sadly no longer for sale.

I started by putting my stamp onto my white cardstock and marking where I wanted the blue panel to go.

The Wendy Vecchi 'Make Art Stay-tion' came into it's own when I was doing this, as I could hold my panel and the masks down firmly (I use post-it's for masking).

I blended x3 distress ink colours from left to right - Tumbled Glass, Broken China and Faded Jeans. The paler Tumbled Glass, kind of got absorbed by the Broken China..

I am so happy with how this came out, the blend is pretty much the ombre I had envisioned - how rare is that!

I stamped the bridge from the set over the blended panel and then added a simple Happy Birthday sentiment at a slight angle.

Then I just had to die-cut it using a stitched rectangle die and affix to my card blank.

Perfectly CAS = me perfectly happy.

More playing along with this challenge.

Cx

Sticker Magic...

Hey,

So I lied..here is a bonus post for you whilst I am on vacay..

I really wanted to show these cards, but sadly my photo is a bit washed out.

I bought these great stickers by American Crafts on sale in February.

I love stickers, but sometimes I get a bit stuck with how to use them and I saw a great idea on Pinterest that used a masked and blended circle, sentiment and a sticker.

So I made a ton of these using my sticker pack, the x6 cards here are my fave from the batch.

By just using a coordinating colour, the blended circle brings the sticker to life! I added simple sentiments that I thought worked well with the stickers. I created the mask using a circle die and one of the card backs that come with stamp sets, I keep these for masking, because they cover your whole card and you don't accidentally get ink anywhere and you can create one for each colour and get a few uses out of them.

Fun and super easy peasy to do and a great way to use a random purchase!

The white panel was die-cut using a Tim Holtz and Sizzix deckle edge die, I LOVE these dies and I bought them on sale because I saw them and had to have them, they are going to be super handy for Christmas cards I think.

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge #112... Buttons and Bows...

Hey,

Welcome to another fun Retro Rubber challenge.

This time we are looking for buttons or bows on your card.

The minute I saw this theme, I knew which sets I would be pulling out of the archives ;)

First I created the background, by blending x2 shades of blue distress ink through a fave Andy Skinner bubbles stencil.

I stamped, coloured and die-cut the shoes from the Waffle Flower First Step set (I've had it since 2016). I decided it would be fun to use spotty papers for the bows, so I stamped one of the bows from the set on a spotty scrap and die-cut them out.

I added the shoes to the background panel and die-cut the entire panel using a stitched rectangle die.

I stamped the sentiment from The Ton Shoe Wardrobe (I've had this since 2017), I thought it suited the shoes perfectly.

Great use of two stamp sets that have been really neglected.

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

Challenge ends June 14th.

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

Happy Snail 40th...

Hey,

Happy Friday!

This week was pretty awful as a working week, but as a personal week it was a nice one.

About to get even nicer, as it is Memorial Day weekend here in the US, so no work on Monday WHOOP!!

And Hubby and I are going to an all day dance party tomorrow - double WHOOP.

Today I thought I'd share a card I made for a friend's 40th. A lot of my friends are turning 40 this year, so I am mixing up my ideas for what can be used as a 40th birthday card!!

I make this card over and over again in various forms. It started here as a CASE of a card by Marion Vagg - one of my all time craft crushes and now I blend a circle and add the cute little snail and the appropriate sentiment.

This time I used 'boy' colours as the card is for a male friend.

Super simple and a great use of the Avery Elle stamp that I just fell in love with years ago and had no plans for!

Have a great weekend.

Cx