Alcohol Ink Birthday..

Hey,

Last day of January already! This month has flown by.

I have enjoyed blogging this month, I have stuck to my 'no pressure' attitude of 2019 and it's made me relax and post a bit more!

Today's card is a fun one.

I LOVE alcohol inks and we did a fun class with Cheiron last year.

Lisette bought me a bunch of new colours for my birthday and so I had a play and created the fun background you can see.

I stamped over it using archival ink and added a happy birthday die-cut.

It felt a teeny bit flat against the black card blank, so I added some glitter paper and that made a huge difference.

I have loved the discovery of metallic alcohol ink mixatives, they add such nice touches and shimmers to these alcohol ink pieces.

Cx

The Paper Players 475: Dino-mite..

Hey,

Last weekend, I was looking for a challenge to play along with.

I really like a sketch challenge and the current Paper Players sketch made me want to play along.

I thought it would be fun to use the cute 'Dinky Dinos' set by Heffy Doodle.

I decided to colour the Dinos in all different colours for a bit of added interest. I heat embossed the sentiment from the set (it comes in parts, so you can build a variety of sentiments) and die-cut it using a banner die.

The scalloped, stitched, dotted die that I used for the white panel is from a random shop I like in the UK that sells a really random mix of stuff, I always pop in there when I am home in London.

A nice easy make for a Sunday.

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge #127... Tic Tac Toe..

Hey,

Welcome to another fun Retro Rubber challenge.

This time we have a fab Tic Tac Toe board for you!

I love Tic Tac Toe - even if several of us choose the same row, the cards are so different.

I went with the top row - green, twine, pattern paper. To be 100% honest, I was unpacking my suitcase from London and I bought a mini pack of paper that happened to have the gorgeous green and gold paper you see on my card and it inspired my whole card and row choice.

I wanted to maximise the amount of the paper that you can see on the card, as it is SO pretty IRL. I decided to keep it all as CAS as possible.

I added the gold twine to tie in with the paper and I stamped the sentiment, by The Ton (which I have had since 2017) onto coordinating green paper, that I die-cut using a Avery Elle banner die.

The Fashion Lady stamp, I have had since 2015 - I bought a 'grab bag' of stamps and got like 60 stamps!! I donated some, gifted some and kept a few. This is my fave one from the whole bag of stamps and works so well with the sentiment. I coloured the Lady in green tones, to fit the row.

A pretty fun, funky card that will make a great birthday card for one of my stylish friends.

Which row are you going to choose? Can't wait to see your makes, also pop over to Retro Rubber and get inspired by the things the DT have made.

Challenge ends Feb 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

30 Days of ATStamps...

Hey,

Happy Monday!

Hope you had a good weekend?

I have been having a lovely time in January with my blog, I have posted quite a lot and a lot of it has been end of 2019 makes, which is nice. I have entered a few challenges, so new stuff has been made, but it's been nice sharing some of the things I made towards the end of last year. I got a bit of Christmas fatigue and really just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm for my blog!

Today I am showing you a really cool project / challenge that I did last November.

Carabelle Studios hosted a 30 days of ATStamps. I saw this post on The Kathryn Wheel blog and was totally hooked and had to join in.

Here are the prompts for the 30 days -

The prompts were great and the rules were reasonably loose - each ATStamp had to be 6x4cm, and had to resemble a postage stamp. Using Carabelle Studio stamps was optional and as I only had x5 of their stamps at the time, I mixed it up a LOT.  Mid-way through the challenge, I managed to acquire x3 more sets on sale. Also you could make more than 1 ATStamp per prompt and I did do this for some of them, as I had so many cool ideas in my head!

Here is a little glimpse of my ATStamp's -

From top left clockwise 1) close-up of the ATStamps, 2) a cent for scale as most people on insta thought they were much bigger! 3) the permanent home in my art journal for the ATStamps, they were too much work and too gorgeous to give away.. 5) my fave monster ATStamp 6) all of my ATStamps - I ended up with 38

Kathryn of The Kathryn Wheel, gave me a good idea for how to get started. I dug out all the scraps and stamped backgrounds, gelli plate backgrounds, smooshed backgrounds. I cut approx 40 6x4cm pieces from these backgrounds and they formed the 'base' for all my ATStamps. Some of them I didn't overly embellish and others I did a lot to.
I didn't have the Carabelle postage stamp base, so I used a Simon Says Stamp one from the 'Ho Ho Postage' set that I also have the dies for, I stamped and cut all of these and affixed the decorated piece to this.

The main photo today is of my fave ATStamp - Day 13 'Drink' I LOVE Monsters and I love Coffee too and this Monster stamp by Whippersnapper always reminds me of me in the morning.

This was one of the ATStamps that needed a bit of work.. I chose a green and orange background piece and stamped over it with a Carabelle text stamp. Then I prepped my Monster -

Sadly, I had to lose his bunny slipper! After I had trimmed down the Monster to fit the background panel, I added a sparkly M to his mug, as I suspect like me Mr Morning Monster might like a monogram ;)

Finally one fun fact for you, I didn't discover the challenge until 8 days in!! So I spent an entire Saturday afternoon prepping and making the first 9 ATStamps! Here is a photo of the first 9 -

I loved this little challenge, it was SO out of my comfort zone and I was really pleased that I decided to take the leap and join in. It was also fun breaking out my acrylic paint markers and using dots and lines to embellish these super small 'canvases'.

More projects like this in 2020 please.

Cx

CASE: Floral Llama Car Birthday..

Hey,

So last weekend as it was a long weekend I decided to CASE a card I have had on my Pinterest board for a while.

I knew that it wouldn't be a quick make, so needed to save it for a time when I had oodles of desk playtime.

This is the card I CASEd - by Rejoicing Crafts.

I loved the colour combos and just the fun and unusual nature of the card.
Yoosun used all Flora & Fauna stamps to create her card, but I didn't have all of those, so I dug out some Neat & Tangled and MFT stamp sets to supplement the F&F that I did have. Also Yoosun stamped all her flowers and leaves first and then added the watercolour aspect and I did it the other way around.

Here are photos of the first two steps -

As you can see the watercoloured panels don't really look that great, then add flowers and leaves and wow! it really comes to life.

I used a F&F car die and die-cut x2 cards out of white watercolour paper and then watercoloured them in red and blue to coordinate with the backgrounds better. I stamped and die-cut the Llama's from F&F's 'Llama Garden' set and affixed them to the cars before I popped them up on foam tape and added them to my card.

The sentiment is also by F&F and from their 'Birthday' set.

I am so, so happy with these cards, they came out so well and it was fun to CASE a card using a mix of things I already have!

I get so hooked on the beautiful cards that design teams make to help sell products, I always want to rush out and buy the products, but this year I am trying to mimic what I see, using what I have.

It's working out really well and this makes it easier for me to not be tempted to open my wallet!

Cx

p.s Other stamp sets I used were - Neat & Tangled's Scandinavian Prints (no longer available), MFT's Pretty Posies (available here) and My Cute Stamps 'Spunky Nature'(no longer available)