Swan lake

Hello, crafting friends!

It's time for another fun challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches where we alternate between colour combinations and sketches each week. Shannon is hosting this month and this week she has come up with a great sketch for you to try:

That little cluster could be anything you like as long as we can clearly see three shapes. I opted to turn the sketch 90 degrees and chose a stamp set that had popped into my mind on a recent walk, The Riverbank by The Craft Consortium.

I stamped the swan onto a card base, masked it off and then masked off all but the central strip of the sketch, which was to be my river. Pale blue ink was sponged into it and then all the masks were removed and I used coloured pencils to add detail to the swan and the strip of water.

The lily pads were stamped on a separate piece of card stock, coloured with coloured pencils, and cut out with sharp paper snips before attaching to the card base. The sentiment is from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks.

So now it's your turn! As always, there's lots of inspiration to be found at the CAS Colours and Sketches challenge blog, from the design team and from our special guest designer Deborah, so head over there and check it out. You'll find the Linky Tool there too, ready for you to upload your own creation. Don't forget to keep your design nice and clean and simple with lots of white space, and above all have fun!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Stamping Sensations where the challenge is to make a card using your favourite style of crafting and complete the phrase 'I love...' In my case, it's definitely CAS, using masking, sponging, stamping and colouring - and there's often a bit of fussy cutting in there too! I'm also joining in at We Love Chocolate Baroque where the theme is 'Hand-coloured or Paper-pieced image.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Apologies for the quality of the photo but this really made me laugh and I wanted to share it with you, so I took a quick snap. Sometimes when I'm busy doing something, I'll get that feeling of being watched, and when I look round this is what I might see:

Eva loves tissues and can't resist stealing them from the coffee table or sofa. She takes time to shred them and then fixes her eyes on me with so much energy that I look round. I usually say something like 'Oh Eva, you are a minx!' but in a teasing tone so that she knows I'm not cross. Her ears go down and her tail starts wagging because she knows she has now 'earned' some attention. She has many different ways of asking for attention!

Sending hugs,