All A Flutter over the lavender

It is the last week of term here and life has gone into overdrive, so I'm just popping in with a quickie today inspired by the fabulous Make My Monday challenge where purple and yellow creations are the order of the day. Come and see:

In a desperate attempt to bring a little summer into our soggy lives I stamped a lavender field, using inks in four different shades of purple, and made a pair of butterflies to live there.

One is stamped on water colour paper and the other on a scrap of Naturals Ivory card stock and they're both coloured with Watercolour Wonder crayons, markers and an aqua painter. The creaminess of the crayons gives the butterflies a lovely velvety look and the different card stocks give a subtle colour difference (the one on the left is the water colour paper). I cut my butterflies out with my sharp paper snips and attached them to the card front with glue dots.

This pretty sentiment from the Curly Cute set is stamped on thick vellum paper and embossed with clear embossing powder. The paper was wrapped around the top layer and secured with Snail adhesive at the back.

Here's what you'll need to make today's card:

Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes, All A Flutter, Curly Cute

Ink: Basic Grey, Concorde Crush, Wisteria Wonder, Elegant Eggplant, Perfect Plum, Daffodil Delight

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, water colour paper, vellum

Other: Markers, Subtles water colour crayons, aquapainter, clear embossing powder, heat tool, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. Your free brad and ribbon set will be added automatically to any order of £45 or more.

If you live in the UK it will come as no surprise to hear that sports day was cancelled yesterday due to... RAIN - yes folks, it's been raining again! We're going to have another shot at it today so I'll let you know how we get on... See you tomorrow when I'll have something very summery to show you (ha ha, splits sides laughing!)

Three bits of CAS sunshine!

Aargh! What a day! My husband is away today so I gleefully spread my crafting supplies around the house and got down to catching up with my favourite challenges. I was thrilled to see that the challenge at Less is More today is 'Three of Anything' which, I thought in my innocence, would fit in nicely with the new CASology challenge of 'Sun' and I could even use this week's gorgeous ColourQ palette... Here's the card I came up with (see if you can spot the problem):

Three sunflowers! I used my large square punch to make them into faux chipboard tiles by glueing together a stack of Chocolate Chip squares (am I making you hungry?) and topping with the flower image.

Before stamping the flowers, I coloured the rubber directly with Daffodil Delight and More Mustard markers. Once they were stamped, I blended the colours with the Daffodil one. The centres were stamped in Chocolate Chip ink on More Mustard card stock, cut out with my 1/2" circle punch and popped up with dimensionals. Using an image from French Foliage, I added Pear Pizzazz leaves after masking the flower and sponged round the edges of the tiles.

The tiles are mounted on textured card stock and then attached to a Naturals Ivory card base which had been scored to make a home for them. The sentiment is from the wonderful Pocket Silhouettes set and was added with my stamp-a-majig to make sure it was straight.

Of course you all know what's wrong don't you: while this card fits well with the Sun theme at CASology and the colours at ColourQ, it's one layer week at Less is More and I don't think Chrissie and Mandi will let me get away with this one! Grrr... of course I had to go off and make another card then!

This one uses the group of three tea cups from Tea Shoppe - very handy! I stamped them onto a Naturals Ivory card base and added definition with a blue watercolour pencil. Then I masked them and made a swirly tablecloth pattern with a couple of the Everything Eleanor stamps.

I was rather proud of my 'steam' - can you see it? To make it I squashed the lid of my Baja Breeze ink pad so that when I opened it there was a pool of ink in the lid, and used my aquapainter to paint a wavy line from each cup which fades as it goes up.

The cups needed 'grounding' so I scribbled shadows with a So Saffron marker and added a hint of blue. Finally, I stamped the sentiment, using my stamp-a-majig.

Well this is a mammoth post so I do beg your pardon if you've all gone to sleep and I won't list the supplies I've used as I would normally (just email me if you want more info). Instead, I'll leave you with a giggle: I was planning to take my youngest son to a party in Towcester earlier. "I wonder how long it'll take to get to Towcester?" I wondered aloud. "Oh, it's only a few seconds to get to the kitchen," said my daughter waggishly. Yes, this is the kind of smart talking I have to contend with!

Edited to add: Towcester, by the way, is pronounced 'toaster'.

Thanks for looking here today and putting up with my waffling. See you soon,

Golden Pocket Silhouettes

I suffered from Less is More withdrawal symptoms over the weekend - I was away and my phone wouldn't load the whole site so I couldn't see the challenge. It was so frustrating - and I'm sure a lot of LiMettes can sympathise! Anyway, it turns out that the challenge is to make a card using the colour gold. I'm obsessed with twinchies at the moment, as seen at the fabulous new challenge site Show us Your Twinchies, so I combined the two challenges to come up with this:

Twinchies are two inch squares of artwork and I've made mine in golden shades combined with gold embossing. It's mounted on a panel of Naturals Ivory card stock embossed with the Elegant bouquet embossing folder and wrapped with twill tape tied up with linen thread. I wanted it to be a burst of colour against a neutral background. Come and have a look at the twinchie itself:

This was supposed to be inspired by a long hot golden afternoon in a meadow but since I was working from an extremely distant memory you'll have to forgive any inaccuracies! The background was sponged with layers of colour before inking directly with the edge of a River Rock ink pad, then the plants were stamped over the top.

The final step was to add gold embossing which you can see more clearly in the photo above.

Here's what you'll need to make today's card:

Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes, Autumn Days

Ink: So Saffron, Daffodil Delight, More Mustard, Cajun Craze, River Rock

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Very Vanilla, Whisper White

Other: Versamark pad and pen, gold embossing powder, heat tool, Elegant Bouquet embossing folder, twill tape, linen thread

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. Your free brad and ribbon set will be added automatically to any order of £45 or more.

This was the scene at the bottom of our road yesterday morning as the olympic torch came past. My youngest son was given the morning off school to see it so my husband (who is much better in crowds than I am) took him out there. When they returned, my son was full of enthusiasm as always. When he'd gone upstairs to get ready for school, I asked my husband if he'd enjoyed it. He looked at me sideways. "Put it this way," he said, "I'll have forgotten all about it by lunchtime!" Where does my son get his positive attitude from I wonder?!

See you tomorrow,

Pocket Silhouettes and other wild flowers

I'm lucky enough to have been asked to be guest designer at Make My Monday this month and I've thoroughly enjoyed visiting all the entrants as well as enjoying the regular design team's samples. If you fancy joining in this week you'd be very welcome! The new challenge is 'Floral - featuring Wild Flowers and Grasses', so I thought it would be fun to rustle up one of my favourite sponged scenes. Come and see:

It is so quick and easy to make these kind of scenes and it looks as if you've spent ages over them! I sponged Pool Party ink over the top of damp watercolour paper and Wild Wasabi and Lucky Limeade inks over the bottom. The Pocket Silhouettes stamps were stamped over the top of this and then the edges of the card stock were sponged with darker inks.

This little cluster is a mixture of stamped and fussy-cut images, and a punched leaf, stapled to the sponged background and tied up with a piece of linen thread.

The sentiment is from Teeny Tiny Wishes  and is stamped into a frame in the Little Additions set. You can also see in this photo that I set the sponged scene inside a frame scored with my Simply Scored board which makes this kind of accuracy SO easy!

Here's what you'll need to make today's card:

Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes, Nature Walk, Autumn Days, Teeny Tiny Wishes, Little Additions

Ink: Basic Black, Pool Party, Wild Wasabi, Lucky Limeade, Always Artichoke, Soft Suede, Not Quite Navy

Card stock: Very Vanilla, Naturals Ivory, Whisper White, Watercolour paper, Always Artichoke

Other: Markers, small oval punch, two step bird punch, stapler, linen thread, paper snips, stamp-a-majig, Simply Scored

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Today's card reminds me of the first time we went camping. We'd practised putting the tent up at home so were pretty confident, but found that when it came to it, the tent had no desire to sit nicely on the pitch but preferred to lurch drunkenly into the hedge where there was a fine crop of stinging nettles! We had a lovely time though and I remember the children spent all evening quietly collecting grass seeds in bowls!

Happy Monday!

Pocket Silhouettes thank you

I thought the colour challenge at the ColourQ this week was crying out for geometric patterns but in the end I went another way. Here's the fabulous palette...

... and here's what I came up with:

I stamped a golden meadow using some of my favourite grassy stamps from Pocket Silhouettes and Autumn Days, sponging a little colour round the edges.

I expect you recognise the butterflies - I use them all the time! They're cut with my Beautiful Wings embosslits die and attached using glue dots. I wanted to add a little more black to the card so I doodled black bodies and antennae with the fine end of my black journaler.

The sentiment is stamped onto a strip of Whisper White card stock, but have you noticed the black border? It's made with the Postage Stamp punch and I rather like the effect!

I based my card on last Friday's sketch from Clean and Simple Stamping, although I've taken rather a lot of liberties with it!

Here's what you'll need to make today's card:

Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes, Autumn Days, Thank You Kindly

Ink: More Mustard, Cajun Craze, Basic Black

Card stock: Basic Grey, Basci Black, Whisper White

Other: Postage Stamp punch, corner rounder, Beautiful Wings embosslits die, journaler, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and can have them delivered to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. And don't forget to add a free pack of designer paper if your order is £45 or more (Offer limited to one pack per qualifying order - click here for details).

Yesterday I was talking about how to make your card making work to help others - for example playing along with the St Lukes Charity Challenge - but I know that a lot of card makers are also brilliant with other crafts. If you are able to knit, you could join in with making baby clothes for the Fish and Chips babies - babies who are sent home wrapped in newspaper as they are born into such poverty there's nothing else. Click here to find out how to help.

Rain is forecast all across the British Isles this weekend - whatever will we find to do? Happy crafting!