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,

In the wildflower meadow

Hello crafting friends!

Nothing gets my mojo going like some lovely bright colours at the moment. Oh, and a new stamp set...! Come and see:

The wild flowers are from In the Meadow by Funky Fossil, a set I just 'HAD to have' the minute I saw it! I used water-based markers from Stampin' Up to colour my stamps.

This works well if you huff on them before stamping, and you can always add detail to the stamped image with other colours and even alcohol markers afterwards.

Wild flowers often grow in grass so I pulled out my Scenic Borders stencil, also from Funky Fossil. While I was inking through this I realised that I'd not masked the bottom of my card panel properly, resulting in a white band and a rogue strip of green. Whoops - ruined!

But no, there's no such thing as mistakes, as someone once said, only opportunities and that band of white turned out to be a great place to stamp a sentiment! I teamed the curvy 'because' from Uniko's Just Because set with 'I love you lots' from Clearly Besotted's Marvellous Mums.

I cut the panel with a stitched rectangle die from Heffy Doodles then reached for some left-overs to finish the card. A panel of orange card stock I'd been cutting letters out of made a good mat for the floral panel and I attached that to a card base I'd spoilt by dropping an ink pad on it! Finally, a few enamel dots.

Destined for the recycle bin but rescued just in time!

CHALLENGES
The colours I enjoyed using so much came from Lisa's challenge at Just Us Girls; I'm also joining in with Uniko's May/June challenge where the theme is Anything Goes, with an optional twist of Bright and Happy; I'm playing along at the Snippets Playground too, as I've upcycled bits and pieces that would've ended up in the bin; and hey, this is another one for the NBUS (never before used schtuff) Challenge!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
I went to pick up some dog food yesterday. I get frozen food from a local small independent pet supplies shop, which currently has a sensible 'one customer at a time' policy with social distancing in place. When I got home, I tipped the frozen packages into the freezer, straight from the boxes. And then I couldn't find my keys... Yep, you're right. After taking everything back out of the freezer I found the chilly little keys at the bottom - and if you're looking for ways to cool down, I highly recommend it!

How are things going where you are?

Hope you are safe and well. Hugs,