A note about pansies

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I always feel so grateful to pansies as they carry us Brits through the dark, dismal winter months, providing much needed colour in window boxes, pots and garden borders. And then they carry on blooming among all the bulbs as they come out too. Today's card is a bit of a tribute to this humble flower!

My pansies come from an old favourite set, Pretty Pansies by Clearly Besotted. I wanted them to be a proper splashy pink so I stamped them on watercolour paper with Stazon ink and coloured them with my Arteza watercolour brush pens - which I'm just leaving out on my desk at this stage as I seem to use them every day! When the image was dry, I fussy cut it with some sharp paper snips.

 

As I wanted this to be a clean and simple card, I thought some subtle embossing on an angle would make a good background. I chose the stitched design of the two embossing folders in Stampin' Up's Little Details set and ran it through my Big Shot using a silicone mat to avoid harsh lines. The panel was trimmed to size with a stitched rectangle die from Heffy Doodle.

 

I spent a while looking for the right sentiment and finally landed on this gorgeous curvy one from Scripted Sentiments by The Greetery, finished with an enamel dot to create a 'group of three' of the bright pink. The panel was mounted on dimensional strips and attached to a card base.

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Colourful Options where Pink is the inspiration colour; also Simply Clean and Simple, where it's Anything Goes with an optional theme of Pink; and Allsorts, where Dena has chosen Shades of Pink as her theme this week; from the inspiration list at Festive Friday, I chose, Pink White, Embossing and Supportive sentiment; and Linda's sketch at Freshly Made Sketches was my starting point for this card. I've flipped the sketch but that was only because I kept debossing the background instead of embossing so in the end I gave up and just turned the panel over!!

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Remember that rhyme 

 

Rain, rain

Go away

Come again another day.

Well I'm past 'come again another day' I can tell you! It can go away and stay away as far as I'm concerned! On the plus side, I've still got some chocolate-dipped retrievers left from Valentines Day ;)

 

Yummy!

Sending hugs,

Autumn Mums

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Fancy a little Thursday crafting inspiration? How about 8 crafting suggestions? That's what you get at the Tic Tac Toe Challenge! Here's the fab new board dreamed up by Felicita this week:

 

 

 Some of you will dive straight in to the Halloween suggestions, but I thought I'd go for something a little less spooky!

 

 

I thought of a new way to use my SU Little Detail embossing folder! I embossed a panel with the folder, then cut a large label shape in the centre. The result is a little textured border at the top and bottom of the label with a space in the centre for a focal point...

 

... - in this case a Clearly Besotted crysanthemum coloured with alcohol markers and coloured pencils then fussy cut. I added an offset sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks, stamped in dark brown ink, snipped out and popped up on dimensional pads. Finally, the card was finished with a few coordinating gems.

Right, now it's your turn! First, hop over to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge blog to check out the samples the rest of the team have made to inspire you; Second, choose a row, column or diagonal from the board; Third, create something gorgeous using the board ideas and share it with us using the Linky Tool at the bottom of the challenge post. We can't wait to see what you make!

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at Can You Handle The Pressure where we must use embossing folders with an optional theme of Bees; The challenge at Little Red Wagon is to use at least three Layers - a massive challenge for me but as well as the card base I managed the die cut label, the fussy cut flower AND the sentiment! Try Stampin' On Tuesday #625 is challenging us to use old stamps and the crysanthemum stamp I used is so old I can find no trace of it online!

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I am looking forward to becoming an Autumn Mum :) Last weekend I horrified my neighbours by announcing that I was having a baby and had to hastily explain that the baby in question was of the canine variety! I'm sure she's going to be a wonderful influence on Eva...

 

... or perhaps not!!

Sending hugs,

Little flowers

Hello, crafting friends!

 

What a glorious day it has been here! The blue skies and bright sunshine have inspired me to reach for the bright colours and join in with some fun challenges.

I recently acquired a pack of two odd-sized embossing folders by Stampin' Up called Little Details and I couldn't wait to experiment with them. The folder I used on this card creates a charming panel in the centre of a C6 card front which I bordered with a couple of scorelines. I coloured the raised details with water-based markers and stamped a colourful sentiment using two Uniko sets.

 

This video by Jennifer McGuire, inspired me to use a pretty little flower from a Sissix wreath die set in a repeat pattern for impact. I cut six of them, coloured them with water-based markers, positioned them on my background and finished them with enamel dot centres.

This card will go in my stash for a summer birthday next year :)

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with Little Red Wagon, where the challenge is Small or Large; Can You Handle The Pressure, where we must Use an Embossing Folder with optional Poppies theme (I haven't used that); The Flower Challenge where the challenge is to Use a Die on our flower themed cards; and Happy Little Stampers Birthday challenge where Anything Goes as long as it's a birthday card.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I felt so sorry for the children in our area, heading back to school in this gorgeous weather today. Hopefully, they weren't issued any homework on their first day back and were able to get out and enjoy the sunshine before tea!

 

We walked in the cool of the woods earlier today and Eva found a nice little house to shelter in :)

Sending hugs,