Friendly Flowers

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Happy Thursday to you :) I'm here to bring you a brand new challenge at Tic Tac Toe Challenge where I have created a fun board with all my favourite things on it!

 

This is what I made with the diagonal from top left, Friendship Theme/Flowers/Bright
Colours:

 

What a joy it was to bring out this gorgeous stamp from Waffleflower,  Poppy Hawthorn, and colour it with alcohol markers. The sun was out and I went for splashes of yellow and orange to celebrate! Once the colouring was finished, I fussy cut the cluster (I'm sure dies are available for those that are allergic to fussy cutting!)

 

Taking a thick card base and masking off a border with low tack tape, I sponged some blue inkinto the centre for a background. I removed the tape and stamped a sentiment using Uniko's Floral Vines, then glued the flower cluster in place, trimming off the bits that overlapped the edges of the card front. Very simple and lots of fun!

Now it's your turn! Here's how to play: Hop over to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge blog and check out the amazing inspiration from my team mates; Choose a row, column or diagonal from the board and make a card using the ideas; Share with us using the blue Linky button at the bottom of the challenge post. We can't wait to see what you make!

CHALLENGES

We Love Stamping has a theme of Fabulous Florals for their 15th anniversary challenge so I'm joining in there; I'm also linking up at I Spy With My Little Eye where the theme is Something Blooming Lovely.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

The European Cup football tournament is on at the moment and my OH and I are enjoying watching it with the golden girls. Of course we are armchair experts and are constantly yelling at the players to move faster and pass more accurately!

 

No need to tell this young lady to move faster. Lulu for the win! Poor Eva is still on the bench with her paw injury but is enjoying watching (and partaking of the snacks!)

Sending hugs,

Floral notes

Hello, crafting friends!

 

There's a new colour challenge in Blogland! It's called AAA Colourful and is the sister challenge to AAA Cards and AAA Birthday which we all know and love. The challenges start mid-month and close on the 14th so there's time to join in. Come on you crafters - let's show some support!

 

I missed the first challenge but here is the mood board for this month and I couldn't resist these gorgeous colours. Here's what I made:

 

There was a discarded piece of white card that had been die cut with an Arch die on my table, so I stamped it with Waffle Flower's Poppy Hawthorn stamp set which was also out on my desk. (Do you think I should clear up?!) I coloured the flowers with Arteza  watercolour brush pens (also out on my table!!) and left the panel to dry.

 

Meanwhile, I trimmed a piece of Stampin' Up gingham DSP to size and glued it to a card base, adding a coordinating strip of card on the top. The dry floral panel was stamped with a sentiment and a line and secured to the card front with dimensional pads.

CHALLENGES

I'll be linking this card up at AAA Colourful :)

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Eva has disgraced herself I'm afraid. We went for a walk at a location we haven't been to for a long time and she was so excited she had a little roll in something very foxy indeed. The drive home was a little er, 'fragrant' and I don't think my OH will be coming out with us again for a while! After a full shampoo and blow dry, normal nasal service was resumed, but Eva looked like this:

 

Sending hugs,

An accident and a snippety save

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Things have gone quite quiet here after the Easter celebrations and more rain has driven me back indoors. But the great thing is that my NBUS box contains some pretty florals I have been saving for a rainy day! One of my favourite ways to relax at the moment is to sit and watercolour flowers, so I pulled out some inks and Poppy Hawthorn from Waffle Flower and settled in.

 

The flower cluster was stamped with Stampin' Up's Sea Foam ink and the leaves and flowers watercoloured with Garden Green and Flirty Flamingo. When it was dry I fussy cut it, intending to lay it across a card base. But then I thought it would be better on a classic stitched rectangle panel and decided it would be a nice touch to trim the side of the flower cluster with the stitched rectangle die so it would look as if was part of the panel. I had to use the partial die cutting technique for this and I'm not sure whether it was because I was doing it in the semi dark or whether I'm just a Fool of the West, but it all went horribly wrong and I cut all sorts of bits off the flower cluster that I hadn't intended to!!

After all that watercolouring, there was no way it was all going in the bin so I sat down and, after a bit of arranging, head-scratching and re-arranging, I ended up with this...

 

... which was much nicer than what I was intending to do!

 

The flowers are layered up in the corner of the panel with a few stray leaves snipped off and tucked in. I finished off with a pretty 'thank you' sentiment that is part of the set.

 

Thought you might like to see the snippets I ended up with after my booboo!

CHALLENGES

Thought Miss Di and Head Prefect Sarn at the The Snippets Playground would approve of my refusal to bin the bits, so I'm romping over there with this card (and to find any stray eggs!); The colour palette came from Rachel's beautiful choice at CAS Colours and Sketches; Ann has a fun Tic Tac Toe board at The Paper Players and I chose the bottom row Flowers/Thank You/Pastels; and of course I shall nip over to Darnell's where I've not only got some NBUS to link up but have also remembered to join in with her IDEAS challenge - an encouragement for those who want to pep up their crafting life! This week is ink/colour mediums.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

The chocolate eggs may have all been eaten but my eldest son, who is staying with us, is still very much in egg mode. He popped into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich for a snack to keep him going until lunch time and couldn't understand why I dissolved into giggles when I came in.

 

Here is his mega egg sandwich - and he was just frying up some bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes to garnish it with. He did full justice to lunch too! In his defence, he is very tall and slim and needs a lot of energy. And for those that are wondering what the golden girls made of it, they sat watching him the whole time. But he is wise to their 'starving orphan' act and ignored their wide eyes sending 'I've never been fed, not even EVER' messages!

Sending hugs,