Birthday surprise!

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Happy Saturday and welcome to another fun challenge at Addicted to CAS! Now, gather round and listen carefully please as Miss Jaydee comes forward to give you the code word for this fortnight!

Isn't that fun?! I decided to make a card featuring kids FOR kids and reached for an older set called Fly With Me by Clearly Besotted. The lego-style kids are designed to be put into the aeroplane in the set but I decided to have them leaping out from behind a birthday banner waving balloons!

I stamped the group of kids first, directly onto a card base, and coloured them with oil-based coloured pencils. The balloons were added by stenciling colour into a stencil made with a small circle punch. The strings were added with a fine-nibbed fineliner pen.

When the kids and their balloons were in place, I positioned Clearly Besotted's Sunny Day stencil over the group and gently sponged pale yellow ink through it to create a fade-out background. The banner is a favourite from Sugar Rush by Winnie and Walter (sadly no longer trading.) After stamping it, adding the sentiment and snipping it out, I added it to the card front using dimensional pads.

So now it's your turn! What does the word Kids inspire you to make? We can't wait to see! Do hop over to the Addicted to CAS challenge site to check out the team's ideas. You'll find the Linky Tool at the bottom of the post and you can use it to share your own creation with us. Don't forget to keep your card clean and simple with plenty of nice clear space!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking up with Addicted to Stamps and More where Birthdays is the latest challenge.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

A heatwave is sweeping the UK so we've been spending a lot of time on the river walks.

I leave you with a rare sighting of the Golden Hippo!

Sending hugs,

Birthday Bear at the Beach

Hello crafting friends!

After spending a day dodging showers today, I thought it would be fun to warm myself up with a sizzling hot beach scene! Come and see:

I started this card by sponging the centre of a card panel with distress inks to create a sky, sea and sand. The bear is from MFT's Safari Party and he normally holds balloons. I gave him a delicious strawberry ice cream instead, using the sun ray from Paper Smooches' Sunny Side Up for the cone, and doodling in the ice cream with a fine liner pen. I doodled him a nice stripy pair of swimming trunks too :)

Who doesn't enjoy a nice sunny day on their birthday? The sun from Sunny Side up cuts out nicely with a 1" circle punch I discovered and, in case my little bear got a little too hot, I provided him with a beach umbrella courtesy of Under My Umbrella by Stampin' Up. I coloured all my elements with Spectrum Noir alcohol markers and finished the card with a sentiment made from a combination of sets.

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD
... Well, not an award as such, but this card was mentioned honourably at As You See It!

CHALLENGES
I'm linking my beach card up with Just Us Girls, where the word this week is Sunshine; Festive Friday, where I chose Sun, Bright Colours and Vacation Theme from the inspiration list (as well as Patterns and Ice cream!); Seize The Birthday, where it's All About Summer; and As You See It, where we're asked to choose one of our favourite movies. Although my card doesn't represent anything about it apart from the beach, I've chosen Beaches - a film about the friendship between two women that is perfect if you feel like a good cry!

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I've been making ice cream using just fruit - have you heard of this? When bananas get over-ripe, I cut them into inch pieces and freeze them. To make 'ice cream', I just take out a few of the pieces, allow them to defrost very slightly and whizz them up in the food processor. You can make different flavours by adding other frozen fruits - strawberries or raspberries are delicious! - or you can add vanilla extract to the basic banana and chopped chocolate say, or chopped nuts. For extra decadence I add a little cream - still healthier than the sugar and sweetener loaded commercial stuff. It takes just minutes too!

Let me know if you try this won't you!

Hugs,

Bright and happy birthday

Hello crafting friends!

Have you still got your sunglasses on from yesterday's bright card? Oh good, because I stayed with the intense colours today :) Come and see:

I hope you're smiling right now because smiling is supposed to be contagious isn't it, and Mr Sunshine has got the biggest, fattest smile on his face! I used Paper Smooches' Sunny Side Up to make him, stamping the circle, adding rays all round it and then that big toothy grin inside. I coloured him with alcohol markers and fussy cut him.

I made masks out of sticky notes for the clouds so I was able to mask them off and stamp a cluster of them. They were given barely-there shadows with an alcohol marker and blender pen before being fussy cut. The final element was the pair of sunglasses - stamped, coloured, fussy cut and given a lovely shiny coat of Crystal Effects.

All these pieces were arranged on a turquoise textured card base with rounded bottom corners. The clouds were popped up on dimensionals and I added a block birthday greeting from Uniko.

CHALLENGES
Lots of my favourite challenges are doing their best to keep us cheerful, with The Paper Players looking for cards to Make You Smile, and Happy Little Stampers CAS challenge also going for a Smile theme. I'm also loitering around the drinks area at Watercooler Wednesday for an Anything Goes challenge :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS
We had a lovely games afternoon with the family yesterday afternoon. My grown up children are very good at finding fun online games and we use Zoom so that we can feel as if we've all gathered in the same room. We played Scribbl.io, which is a sort of online Pictionery, and a game which involved making up words and giving them dictionary definitions, which was a riot. I came last as usual. Everything was right in my world for a couple of hours :)

Did you find something fun to do at the weekend?

Hugs,

Introducing... the umbrella frock!

Hello crafting friends!

This is a looooong, picture-heavy post! Do you fancy a cup of something while you're here? Might as well get comfy!

After a long walk this morning with my floofy pal, and a bite of lunch, I settled down in The Craft Square Metre and had a lot of fun making two cards featuring an umbrella. Come and see:

I've kindly paper pieced the umbrella in the same designer paper, so that you can see more clearly what's been going on! The stamp set I used is Under My Umbrella by Stampin' Up and you can see that one of the umbrellas in the set can double up nicely as a frock!

CARD ONE
This is the conventional way of using the stamp set.

I stamped the wellies and the umbrella onto a card panel and coloured the wellies and the ground with alcohol markers. The umbrella was stamped again onto designer paper and cut out with the coordinating punch. The punch also has a handle, so I used it to make the hand grip in the same paper.

I stamped some flowers from the set onto off cuts of card stock, coloured them and fussy cut them. These were used to embellish my arrangement along with a die cut bow from MFT's Birthday Cocktail and a pink enamel dot.

The card panel was cut out with one of my Heffy Doodles Stitched Rectangle dies, and then a smaller one to cut the stamped image out. I replaced the smaller panel inside the larger one and attached them to a card front. A thin black strip of card stock was glued across the front and a block sentiment by Uniko was added to it.


CARD TWO
This is where, by the magic of stamping, the brolly turns into a frock! But first I masked and sponged a background, added flowers from Lawn Fawn's Easter party, and cut a panel out with a Stitched Rectangle die.

For my young lady, I started by masking off the pointy bit of the brolly and stamping it once on designer paper and then again on white card stock. The girl from Clearly Besotted's Fly With Me was stamped above these and I joined the two with a fineliner.

There were fiddly bits to deal with: she's usually a one-armed girl so I had to stamp her again so that I could give her a second arm, which I cut out and glued to her body. Also she didn't have legs so I doodled those in. After I'd reconstructed her (like the bionic woman!) I coloured her with alcohol markers, then cut out the designer paper dress and glued it over the top. She looks quite pleased with it doesn't she?!!

The sentiment is made from Easter Party (wishing you a very happy) and MFT's From Me To You (Birthday) and it was positioned using a stamping platform. The final details were the balloons, cut out of vellum with a balloon punch, coloured on the back with markers and given strings with my trusty fineliner.

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD
So delighted to be Honourably Mentioned at Freshly Made Sketches for my brolly and wellies card :)

CHALLENGES
It was the Rain/Umbrella theme at the Twofer Challenge that got me going on this so I'm linking both cards there.

Card One:
I used the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches as the starting point to this card; I'm also playing along at Allsorts, where the theme is Flowers and Showers and at Double D where Showers and Flowers are the theme and my card made full use of the gorgeous pink wellies and yellow polka dot bow on the mood board.

Card Two:
I'm joining in with Festive Friday where I chose red, blue, green, hearts and balloons from the inspiration list; I'm also linking up with Handstamped Sentiments where I was inspired by the balloons and birthdays featured on the mood board.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Today I went on a visit! I was returning a DVD box set that had been lent me by a lovely friend. Now before you send me hate mail and tell me I'm putting everyone in danger, I promise I thought very carefully about what I was doing. I went across my small town by car, stopped outside my friend's house, placed the DVDs in a carrier bag on the doorstep, rang the bell and then scuttled down to the bottom of her path. We then shared a short conversation from afar and then I got in my car and went home. I felt like a proper gad-about!

Have you had a good weekend?

Hugs,

Happy birthday alligator

Hello crafting friends!

It's another sunny day here in the heart of England and so peaceful it wouldn't be hard to imagine that all was well with the world. But instead of thinking about that, I did a little crafting. Come and see:

I stamped this adorable little alligator from MFT's Safari Party onto some white card stock and cut it into a tw'inchie on three sides. On his snout side, I cut as far up and down as possible using my guillotine trimmer and cut the rest with sharp scissors, allowing his snout to poke out of the square (yes, it's pretend partial die cutting, which I personally find much easier than actual partial die cutting!)

Inside the cut square, I drew a square frame, using a fineliner and ruler, and then coloured my alligator friend, and the background, using alcohol markers. The top and right of the square was masked off so I could stamp the sunshine which is from Hello Sunshine by Concorde & 9th

I wanted to add googly eyes but the adhesive ones in my stash turned out to be too big! No problem! I simply added two tiny circles cut with my cropadile and doodled black dots in the centres of them. The sentiment is from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks.

CHALLENGES
I've been thinking about Just Us Girls' Squares challenge all week and this card is the result of my ponderings, so I shall link up there. I'm also going to play along with the Sisterhood of Crafters, where they want to see cards for kids, and Addicted to CAS, where Animals is the code word.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Alligators are not the only wild animals around here today! Here's The Beige Beast about to savage a stick...

She's got what we call her 'smoosh face' on. It's where she's looking down at something and her ears flop over her face and she gets little puppyish wrinkles in her face! She is so adorable that it's astonishing I ever get anything done around here!

What are you up to today?

Hugs,

A flying visit

Hello crafting friends!

I'm so happy with the card I'm sharing today. It's for my daughter's 24th birthday and I'm sure she'll love it! Come and see:

This cute card is exactly my daughter's thing and I think it captures her adventurous spirit! The images are from Fly With Me by Clearly Besotted, a wonderful set I bought back in the summer with this birthday in mind :)

I stamped the plane and the girl together on an scrap of white card stock using Memento Tuxedo Black ink. The image was coloured with a mixture of Spectrum Noir and Stampin' Up Blendabilities markers and then fussy cut.

I found a snippet of cloud print designer paper and a strip of yellow 'watercolour wash' paper, and made a polaroid-style frame using a white card stock and a square die. These were layered up on the card base: the yellow strip first, the clouds next, then my aeroplane girl was partially glued to the clouds so that when I added the frame, the front of the plane could appear to be flying out of the front.

The frame was stamped with one of the curving sentiments in the Fly With Me stamp set before mounting it on dimensionals and attaching to the card base. I finished the card with some stars punched out of a scrap of orange card stock with the Stampin' Up Twinkle punch.


I was very much inspired by CAS(E) This Sketch this week and will link this card up there.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
It's been a wonderful long weekend here, celebrating my daughter's birthday and all being together in a way that just doesn't happen now that the children are grown up. It felt a bit like Christmas - lots of cooking and eating together, chatting, walking, playing and laughing. Here's someone else who was very excited to have her family back together and who is exhausted today!

Thanks for dropping by today. I'll be back tomorrow with an idea for presenting a jewellery gift. Hope to see you then :) Edited to add: I didn't get round to it the following day but here's the link - enjoy!

Hugs,