Sunday 26 April 2015

White and Ombre


A quick card to share - I needed to make a thank you card for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who hosted the "after-party" for my husband's 50th a couple of weekends ago. I was inspired by a couple of challenges: CAS on Sunday where the theme is white and CAS-Ology where they are focusing on ombre. 





I started by stamping the ombre "thanks" ( Altenew) in SSS Cobblestone ink - I love that the stamp itself is designed to give the ombre effect - how easy is that! I then die cut the MFT Wild Greenery a couple of times from white cardstock layered with Stick-It. This was my first time using Stick-It and I was pretty impressed. For the most part, the dies cut all the way through (this is issue that I always have with BeCreative sheets). The only hard part was separating the adhesive backing from the die cuts. I added the die cuts around the sentiment and then die-cut the whole panel with a MFT stitched rectangle die. I mounted the card front onto the card base with a layer of fun foam for some dimension. Finally, I die cut some SSS butterflies in vellum and then coloured the backside with 3 different shades of Copics to create some ombre butterflies

I will link this card up to:


   

and 

CAS on Sunday for the WHITE challenge.

Thanks so much for stopping by!
Jill



There's A Hole In My Card!!



It's time for another fun challenge at AAA Cards - and the theme for this fortnight is "There's a hole in my card". It is a technique game where you are encouraged to keep it CAS and add a hole as one of the design features. 


Sounds pretty easy right? Well this was a challenge that I actually found to be more difficult than it should have been - and I'm still not entirely happy with the final result... I started out by combing through my dies (I have a lot of dies!) and chose one that I thought would be fun and easy to work with - the SC camera. I also found an old HA/SC greeting of "oh snap!" that (after being cut apart and stacked vertically) would work perfectly in the camera lens opening. It was the rest of the card where I struggled - trust me - this card has been taken apart and put back together more times than I care to admit. I finally ended up using some black washi tape, a strip of patterned paper, and some MME enamel dots to pull it all together.




And here is the inside of the card (I need a few of these types of cards!):



Now this challenge should not have been that difficult since I have created many cards with holes in them so it gave me good personal insight. I learned that I am just not that good with technique games, and that my preference is really word and picture challenges... probably the engineer in me needing stricter guidelines on the creative process:)  I'm interested in whether other people find this as well - or whether it's just me (I'm betting on the latter!).

So now it's your turn to join in the challenge - link up HERE and be sure to check out the amazing cards of the rest of the DT - really great stuff - I especially love Jane's giraffe (so cute!).

Thanks for stopping by!
Jill

Sunday 12 April 2015

New AAA Challenge - Springtime

I am actually writing this from Copenhagen where the sun is shining and the temperature is amazing - a perfect Spring day! We are here for the weekend to celebrate my husband's 50th Birthday - he is an identical twin so together they have a combined age of 100 - how could we not come here to celebrate with him?! 

In the spirit of Springtime celebrations, AAA Cards this week is challenging you to create some Spring themed cards:



Here is what I came up with:





I actually made this card last Easter Sunday - and it was snowing outside!!! I started out with a lot of inlaid die cutting - the silver frame is from Simon Says Stamp, Hello is from Studio Calico, and the flowers are from Clearly Besotted. I wanted to keep the base of the card flat but then layer the flowers to make them stand out (literally and figuratively!). The background was sponged with Tumbled Glass and a small amount of Broken China and then splattered with a small amount of Calico White (snow!). For the flower, I stamped it multiple times on patterned paper. I then fussy cut and layered the petals with clear foam adhesive - as shown below:



I will link this card to a few places:




Thanks so much for stopping by!
Jill


Monday 6 April 2015

Dino-Mite

It is another busy Birthday time of year for my family so I needed to make a few cards. This one is for my dad who is turning the big seven-oh on Friday. He has a good sense of humour so I thought that he might appreciate this dinosaur asking him how old he is :) The stamps are from the CB Dino-Mite set - a fabulous set for all kinds of cards - the last one I made with this set was for my seven year old nephew! 





I started out by stamping the dinosaur and the speech bubble in black ink - and then I took out my Copics... Copic colouring is still a work in progress for me but I`m quite happy with how the dino came out. I then stamped the dino and the greeting on some masking paper and fussy cut them out so that I could cover my images while I worked on the background. I used a Crafter`s Workshop Numbers Collage stencil over the masked images and sponged some neutral colour Distress Inks to create the background.

This card started out as a one-layer card but I found the background to be "too much" so I cut it out with a Stitched Rectangle die and mounted it on a white card base with some foam. I tied a bit of multi-coloured Hemptique twine around the top of the card for a finishing touch.

I will link this card to a few challenges:


Thanks so much for stopping by!
Jill