Just keep swimming

Hello, crafting friends!

 

After a long walk on Saturday morning with Eva and her spaniel pal, I thought the rest of the morning would be good for ignoring the chores and instead having a catch up with some challenges that have caught my eye this week! Please don't judge! 

 

So this card was started by cutting a panel and taping an arch die cut upside down onto it. I then positioned Uniko's Tiger Print stencil over the top of that and sponged blue ink into it. The stencil was taken away but before removing the arch mask, I sponged more blue ink over the top of the stenciling. I wanted it to look like swirling ocean waves.

 

In the upside down arch shape, I coloured a sky and sea with more sponged ink and some coloured pencils. I stamped a fish from Clearly Besotted's Under the Sea on a snippet of white paper, coloured it with coloured pencils and fussy cut it. The sentiment is from MFT's You're Fin-tastic, stamped in dark blue ink and heat embossed and the fish was popped up on a dimensional pad next to it. The panel was glued onto a yellow mat, attached to a card base and the card finished with some lovely shiny enamel dots for a bit of extra detail :)

CHALLENGES

Jen Mitchell's sketch at Freshly Made Sketches intrigued me and I had to join in there; The inspiration photo at Inspired By dictated the theme, along with Allsorts where Brenda's challenge is All (Real) Creatures Great and Small; I'm also playing along with Happy Little Stampers Stencil challenge where Anything Goes.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

When Eva found out the title of this post, she assured me that she has every intention of keeping on swimming!

 

I think she's enjoying her summer!

Sending hugs,

Birthday fishes

Hello, crafting friends!

My youngest nephew will be 15 in a minute which seems crazy to me - did I fall asleep for ten years or something?! Anyway, I wanted to make him smile and thought a punning little card would do the trick:

I started this scene off by sponging pale blue ink down two thirds of a card panel, adding yellow and kraft inks for 'sand' and finally adding depth with a darker blue ink round the edges. The sunlight-through-water effect is achieved with a sunshine stencil (Sunny Day by Clearly Besotted) positioned upside down and with that pale blue ink sponged into it over the initial inking. Once I'd finished the inking, I clapped wet hands over the panel to create a bit of texture and movement.

The fish and seaweed are from Clearly Besotted's Under The Sea. You may have noticed that I use coloured pencils a lot at the moment, and this is where they really come into their own. No need to stamp, colour and cut out with oil-based pencils; you can simply stamp directly onto an inky background and colour over the ink as they are pretty opaque.

I trimmed the card panel to size with a stitched rectangle die, then stamped the fun sentiment from MFT's Your Fin-tastic. The panel was then attached to a card base. 

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD

So happy that this card won the Watercooler Wednesday Rockstar award!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card yup with The Sisterhood of Crafters where the theme is Water Water Water; also Watercooler Wednesday where Heidi is hosting the All Things Masculine challenge; and As You See It which is also looking for Masculine cards.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I'll leave you with this photo...

"Waiter, there's a puppy in my soup!"

Sending hugs,

Golden hugs

Hello crafting friends!

In these days of not being able to see loved ones it's nice to be able to send hugs through the post. Since Eva misses her human family as much as I do, I thought she could join in today. Come and see:

This is almost a one layer card and is fairly unfussy, so I thought it would be good for the males of the species. I started by stamping the golden retriever (an ancient retired stamp) onto card stock and colouring her with a combination of inks and markers. I cut her out and gave her an elegant bow courtesy of WPlus9's Silver Bells that was out on my desk.

She needed a field of golden wheat to do some zoomies in, so I used the Scenic Borders stencil from Funky Fossil for that, with their Distressed Diamonds for extra interest. She was popped up on dimensionals to bring her into the foreground and I trimmed away her tail to make her look as if she was coming into the card from the right - do not try this with an ACTUAL golden retriever!!!

The sentiment is from MFT's You're Fin-tastic, which is a set of punny greetings based around fish. I'll happily use them with fishy stamps but I confess it was the 'You're Golden' one that really sold me! The solid banner is a very useful stamp from the Uniko Simply Said Blocks set. I stamped it in yellow ink and added the 'golden' over the top, then added the 'Hugs' from MFT's All Occasion Sentiments.

CHALLENGES
When I saw the Pets theme at Allsorts Challenge  I naturally had to join in! I chose the monochromatic yellow colour palette from Color My Heart Color Dare so I'll also link up there.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
The golden retriever in my card is a very golden girl but my own blonde bombshell is a pale cream colour and she is a beauty. She and I are very close - she helped me through a long illness and I helped her overcome her many fears. She is the friendliest of souls, both with other dogs and with other humans, and is a delight to walk with - we do a lot of that! I love her devotion to her family, the way she wags in her sleep, the way she politely asks to come up on the sofa, the way she plays with toys like a puppy when she thinks I'm not watching, the way she puts her head on one side when I ask 'Would you like...?', the way she takes treats so gently and delicately, the way she makes frantic little hen noises when one of us comes home after being away, the way she goes on scouting missions upstairs to retrieve shoes and items of clothing, the way she's so grateful when I groom her, the way she gets very excited when we do training, the way she 'helps' me with chores... I could go on and on but you are possibly already asleep!

Left, Eva at a couple of months; Right, Eva now at 5 1/2 years

Sending golden hugs to you!