With love from me to you

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I obviously had that loving feeling today because I've made a valentine! Come and see:

 

I get very inspired when I see the wonderful backgrounds people make and for this card I had a go myself. I painted a square of plain water onto a piece of card and added diluted purple and red inks in horizontal strokes. To create dimension, I clapped wet hands over it and then tapped a brushful of each colour ink over it which gave a confetti effect. When my background was dry, I trimmed it to size with a square die from Stampin' Up.

The main part of the sentiment is from Uniko's Big and Bold Love which I stamped in red and heat embossed with clear embossing powder for a nice bit of shine. I paired this with MFT's From Me To yYou from the stamp set of the same name, heat embossing it in white on a bright red banner. This set me off humming a very famous tune (which I'll embed below because it's bound to cheer everyone up!) The Colorado Co's Get Well set features some cute hearts which I stamped above the sentiment before mounting my panel on a purple mat and attaching it to a square card base.

CHALLENGES

No prizes for guessing that I was inspired by the purple and red colour duo at the current Color Hues challenge! I'm also joining in with Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge where Anything Goes.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

So this is the Beatles song that I can't get out of my head since making this card:

 Just look at those young lads having fun! Where on earth does time go? Enjoy!

 Sending hugs,

Hearts and Showers

Hello, crafting friends!

Happy Saturday and welcome to another fortnight of fun at Addicted to CAS! Love is in the air this time as Nancy hosts our new challenge with the code word Hearts.

This is not the year to hold back on sending love to all those we care about and I liked the idea of a whole deluge of heart rain! I started by inking pale blue ink from the top of a card panel and fading it out a third of the way down. The same ink was used to stencil some hearts on the ink blend using an old Stampin' Up stencil from many moons ago, then I added tiny stamped hearts from Uniko's Big and Bold Love.

The umbrella and sentiment are from Stampin' Up's Under My Umbrella. The umbrella was stamped in red, the canopy coloured with an alcohol marker and I used that tiny Uniko heart again to over-stamped it with a heart pattern. Once the umbrella was cut out and positioned on the panel, I used a stamping platform to stamp the sentiment. The edges of the panel were scored before attaching to a card base with dimensional pads.

So, what do you think? Are you ready to make a card featuring hearts? You'll find heaps of inspiration from my teamies, and from this fortnights special guest designer Joyce, here on the ATCAS blog. Don't forget we are a clean and simple challenge so make sure there's plenty of breathing space on your design! I can't wait to see what you  come up with!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Happy Little Stampers CAS challenge where Love Is In The Air!

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I have posted more valentines cards than I have ever in my life this year! I really do think sending someone a card to tell them you love them and appreciate them is a very good thing to do. I notice that Galentine's Day (where women celebrate their girlfriends) has become more and more popular, and now Palentine's Day has taken off so you can celebrate ANY of your friends!

And yes, Eva, that does include you!

Sending hugs,

A love of pastels

Hello, crafting friends!

I do love a pastel don't you? I don't mean a fruit pastel (although they're very nice too) I mean pastel colours. They make me think of ice cream and sugared almonds and spring and Easter, and they just generally cheer me up.

This card features three hearts from Uniko's Big Bold Love, stamped in pastel colours on a paler background, then fussy cut. The focal heart is from Stampin' Up's Wreath Builder dies. I didn't have the colour card stock I wanted, so I used a lavender alcohol marker to colour some white card and cut the heart from that. The 'LOVE' gets cut out of the heart when you die cut it - isn't that fun?! I cut another of the hearts out of pale yellow card stock and refilled my lavender heart with the yellow letters.

When I arranged my hearts across the card base they looked silly just floating about there! It took me ages to  work out a nice way to ground them, but eventually I masked off the edges of my card base and blended a little grey ink in from the edges. For extra interest, I added itsy bitsy die cut hearts in pastel colours, using my Tiny Cuts Dies from Neat and Tangled, and a fussy cut 'you' I found in the snippets box.

CHALLENGES

I'm linking up with The Color Throwdown, where I was inspired by Lynn's mouth-watering colour palette; I'm also joining in at Happy Little Stampers CAS challenge where Love Is In The Air; Little Red Wagon where the theme is Total Eclipse of the Heart; and CAS on Sunday where the theme is Love.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Talking of delicious things to eat, one of my friends has been cheering her neighbours up one mince pie at a time! Just before the Christmas before last, she held an informal drinks and nibbles party at which her new neighbour tasted mince pies for the first time. She told my friend that she couldn't imagine why we don't all eat mince pies all year round! So after this Christmas, when everyone was struggling with more January blues than usual, she surprised her friends by leaving little tins of mince pies on people's doorsteps. I applauded her for what I called her 'Mince Pie Therapy'. I eat gluten free, so I wasn't expecting to get involved, but this morning, the doorbell rang and when I opened the door, there on the doorstep was a tin of the prettiest little gluten free mince pies ever!

Sending hugs,

Sending love across the miles

Hello, crafting friends!

If you're looking for some colour inspiration, look no further - it's time for another CAS Colours and Sketches challenge! Julie is our host this month and she has come up with a lovely bright colour palette this week:

I thought they would be perfect colours for a long distance valentine.

To make the background, I masked off the top and left hand borders of a thick card base and blended Pacific Point ink from the corner to a fade. On top of that I stencilled a postage stamp and a post mark using the Funky Fossil Postage Frame stencil.

I wanted a focal heart so I stamped the map heart from Uniko's Big and Bold Love in green ink, and coloured the rest blue before fussy cutting it. Once the heart was glued in place I stamped some of the smaller hearts from the set and added a few clear gems. The sentiment is from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks, heat embossed, snipped out and popped up on dimensional pads.

Are you feeling inspired yet? You'll find lots more gorgeous projects from special guest designer Valérie and my team mates over at the CC&S blog, and you can link your creation there too. I'm looking forward to seeing your take on these colours but don't forget to keep your card clean and simple with plenty of white space!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Perfectly CAS where the theme is Use a Stencil and they want to see CAS cards using up to a third of the card front. I'm also joining in with Uniko's linky party to celebrate their ninth birthday :)

AND IN OTHER NEWS

It took me ages to make today's card. Not because it was hard, or because there were any time-consuming techniques or anything, but because I spent ages trying to work out which part of the heart stamp was land and which part was sea! Nope, still absolutely no idea!!

Sending hugs,