My sun and my moon and my stars

Hello, crafting friends!

At CAS Colours and Sketches we have a brand new challenge starting today, and it's a sketch from this month's host YoonYoung!

Isn't it great?! I was intrigued by that crescent shape and my thoughts went straight to a moon and stars. I thought it would be the perfect motif to celebrate the arrival of a new baby.

I wanted a sky full of moon and stars so I opted to keep my panel small to keep plenty of nice clean space. To create the background, I painted a pale blue wash on watercolour paper, fading out towards the top of the panel.

The moon and the stars were cut out of watercolour paper too, using the Twinkle punch by Stampin' Up. I watercoloured my moon with yellow ink and left it to dry, then coloured the stars with wet blue ink and pressed them onto my background, creating a faint watercolour impression.

Once everything was dry, I glued the moon and stars to the panel,  mounted it on a scalloped mat in a slightly darker blue and added a sentiment from Clearly Besotted's Simply Said in grey ink. The card base was made out of the same watercolour paper.

So now it's over to you! My team mates and our guest designer PJ have some amazing inspiration for you HERE over at the CAS Colours and Sketches blog. We're all looking forward to seeing what you come up with - but please, don't forget that all important clear space on your design!

CHALLENGES

The technique for this card came from the CAS Mix Up challenge, which is celebrating its 5th birthday with fun and prizes! I'm linking up there; I'm also joining in at Color Hues where the colour combo is Blue and Yellow; and also at Happy Little Stampers Watercolour challenge where Anything Goes. The theme at Less Is More this fortnight is Baby, so I'm linking up there too.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

It was mild today and the sun was trying to come out as I set off on a walk with Eva. We headed off on one of our usual walks out into the countryside, following a disused railway line, and it was so pleasant that I decided to extend our walk a little and do a larger loop back into my little market town. Except I couldn't find the path that leads back and there wasn't a soul to ask! In the end, we had to make our way home the long way round using a back road I knew, and oh my goodness my legs ache! Eva seems pleased with me though. She's probably thinking 'At last, the human seems to have understood the level of exercise a wild huntress needs!'

Sending hugs,

Happy birthday baby!

Hello, crafting friends!

I definitely needed cheering up on this grey-sky day but some bright colours and the birthday of a tiny person perked me up no end!

I've been doing a lot of masking lately, which enables me to work on the card base itself rather than adding a layer. This card started with a mask and a soft blend of blue ink to represent sky. I stamped the elephant from MFT's Safari Party directly on top of that, and then again on a scrap of card stock which was then coloured with Spectrum Noir alcohol markers, fussy cut and glued over the original. 

The friendly looking flowers from Stampin' Up's Under My Umbrella work well with this elephant :) I stamped a few different clusters, coloured them and cut them out before arranging them at her feet. Finally, I added a punched heart and a sentiment created from an MFT and an Inkydoodles set.

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with the Day of the Month Card Club challenge where the theme is Elephant Appreciation Day and with AAA Birthday where the challenge is to use Animals or Critters on our cards. The colours come from this week's Green, Pink and Blue palette at Just Us Girls.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

On the subject of birthdays, six years ago, the youngest member of my family - and the floofiest! - was born. Here she is, when she came to live with us in 2014 and changed our lives for ever.

She has become an elegant grown up lady dog who has learned all her obedience skills (but sometimes conveniently forgets them) and has become a loyal and constant companion (except when those cheeky squirrels taunt her or if there's someone around with a tasty snack!) I love her with all my heart. Happy Birthday Eva, my sweet girl!

Sending hugs,

Rediscovering my inner LiMette!

Hello crafting pals!

Thank you for suggesting other challenges - I'm on a roll! Less is More is a challenge that I rarely used to miss four years ago and I'm delighted to see it's still going strong, albeit without Chrissie.

This week's challenge is to use small images on a CAS card.

Despite losing most of my stamps, I do seem to have found a few tiny ones so I was able to get stamping without too much deliberation! Come and see what I made:

This cute little duckie mobile image is from a Stampin' Up set that retired many moons ago, Punch Bunch. I have no idea what happened to the other stamps in the set - this is the only one I have left! I inked it up using Blushing Bride, So Saffron and Smoky Slate markers, huffed and stamped, then snipped round the tag shape. That was mounted with dimensionals onto a slightly larger Blushing Bride tag shape and a white twine bow added.

A tag can get lost in the middle of a card, so I anchored it with a doodled cord, decorated with stamped and punched little hearts.

We are all sweltering here in the heart of England. I'm taking Eva walking by the river so she can get plenty of exercise but still stay cool. She's brilliant at shaking the water off when she gets out! There were lots of people around today and I offered them a free shower but, although they all looked very hot, there were no takers! Odd! Eva and I just looked at each other and shrugged ;)

Thanks for popping round today. Do leave me a comment if you have time!

Little Sunshine to welcome some babies!

Baby cards are such fun to make aren't they?! I've been having a go with Stampin' Up's Little Sunshine stamp set - come and see what I came up with:

One for a boy, one for a girl! Well, sometimes you just don't know if it's going to be a boy or a girl - I know I always wanted it to be a surprise when I was having my lovely babies!

Crisp Cantaloupe and white with touches of gold is a perfect colour combo to celebrate the birth of a baby girl. I love this speech bubble sentiment and it looks really special in gold! As well as the Sweet Dreams washi tape and buttons which coordinate with the stamp set, I added some Stacked with Love washi, which has gold hearts on it, and a pretty flower from the trim in the Artisan Embellishment Kit on page 27 of the spring/summer catalogue.

For my boy card I decided to focus on the 'little addition' sentiment with the +1 - I can't get over how cute these are! I punched a circle in the Soft Sky panel and stamped the +1 into it with Lost Lagoon ink. Below the sentiment, I added one of the 'stitched' Sweet Dreams buttons on a piece of washi and as a finishing touch, echoed the stitched detail with my white gel pen on the number 1.

BUY THE SUPPLIES TO MAKE THIS CARD NOW!
Click on any item to be transported to my online shop!

Little Sunshine Wood Stamp Set £20.95	Sweet Dreams Designer Buttons £5.50	Sweet Dreams Designer Washi Tape £7.25	Gold Stampin' Emboss Powder £3.95
Artisan Embellishment Kit £8.95	Stacked With Love Designer Washi Tape £4.50	Card Stock A4 Crisp Cantaloupe £6.25	Card Stock A4 Soft Sky £6.25

My shop is open 24/7 so you can buy Stampin' Up products from me any time, day or night.

If you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

We don't have any babies in our family at the moment so I have to live on my memories of when my own hulking great teens were dots! They were all early talkers and I always melt when I think of their first efforts at conversation. Like my eldest son turning his huge blue eyes on me when his father left for work one morning and saying: "Daddy gone?" And like my youngest son who after many bedtimes with me telling him that mummy loved him very much, got in before me one night. "Mummy much!" he said. Ahhhhhhhh!

It's Artisan blog hop day tomorrow and the team has pulling out all the stops to inspire you so I hope you can join me then!

New baby card using the free Simply Wonderful stamp set from Stampin' Up

The Little Ones challenge at Less is More this week gave me the perfect opportunity to use the tiny flower in Stampin' Up's free Sale-a-bration set Simply Wonderful (click here to find out how to get your hands on it!) Come and see:

I thought this card fit the challenge on many levels - it's for a little one, I used a little stamp and it features a little panel in acres of white space (well, Very Vanilla actually!) 

I adore this sweet flower with its curls and think it's perfect for a baby card. I teamed it with a greeting from the Something to Say stamp set, punched it out with the Decorative Label punch and added some decorative piercing courtesy of a template from the Essentials Piercing Pack.

BUY THE SUPPLIES TO MAKE THIS CARD NOW!
Click on any item to be transported to my online shop!
Don't forget you'll get a free Sale-a-bration item for every £45 you spend

Simply Wonderful Wood Stamp Set £0.00	Subtles Stampin' Write Markers £23.95	Something To Say Clear-Mount Stamp Set £19.95
Decorative Label Punch £15.50	Essentials Paper-Piercing Pack £7.25	Smoky Slate Classic Stampin' Pad £4.95

My shop is open 24/7 so you can buy Stampin' Up products from me any time, day or night.

If you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

Snow has arrived here in the heart of England and a cute little someone from our household enjoyed it no end!

The grass had been cut on the field behind our house yesterday and Eva spent an rip-roaring half hour burrowing in the snow for clumps of it, throwing them up into the air and chasing them about like a loon!

There'll be another Artisan Blog Hop going on here tomorrow. It's a new month so we've been crafting with new goodies - don't miss it!

Celebrate Today - Stampin' Up Artisan blog hop

Yay! It's Thursday again and time for another of our weekly Stampin' Up Artisan blog hops! There are 16 Artisan designers from around the world in the team so there's loads of amazing inspiration! Come on - let's hop!

HAPPY BABY GIFT SET!

The Celebrate Today stamp set from the Stampin' Up spring/summer catalogue was designed to mark a variety of occasions - new babies, birthdays, graduations, weddings! I've come up with a little baby birthday set - come and see:

Clean white with So Saffron, Cherry Cobbler and a zing of Tangelo Twist - don't you just love these fresh happy colours?!  And this colour scheme means that this little gift set could be made in advance where the gender of the new baby is to be a surprise!

I love the bold balloons in the Celebrate Today stamp set and there's a string included which you can stamp straight or, because this is a photopolymer set, curved - whichever way you want it! I cut out a balloon using the coordinating framelits and used it to masked my stamped balloon so that I could stamp the dotty border.

The new Berry Basket Bigz die makes a cute basket that's the perfect size for a onesie. Before assembling the basket, I stamped the sides with the dotty stamp. then after assembly I gave the top a deep trim with So Saffron card stock. It's easy to do this by cutting two pieces of card stock just like the trim on the die, but wider. My strips measured 20.5cm x 5cm (8" x 2") and were scored in half lengthwise at 2.5cm (1") and widthwise at 9.75cm and 19.5cm (3 3/4" and 7 5/8")

You can see from this photo that I folded the trim over the top of the basket, tucked the tabs in at two of the corners and secured it with sticky strip. That gave a nice, neat finish and then I decorated it with stitched satin ribbon in mouthwatering Tangelo Twist.

A present of money or a gift card is often given on a little one's birthday so that the parents can get exactly what the baby needs,  so I designed a little gift card/money holder to go with the set.

Isn't this a fun way to use these stamps?! The balloon makes deep scallops and the tassel and bow stamps are perfect for decorating it.

Inside, the dotty theme continues on the pocket where you can tuck your gift card or a bank note or two.

I hope you enjoyed my happy baby project today. Now it's time to gather up your skirts for a gigantic hop across the water to Canada where Allison Okamitsu is waiting to wow you! Just click the button below.

BUY THE SUPPLIES TO MAKE MY BABY GIFT SET NOW!
Click on any item to be transported to my online shop!
Don't forget you'll get a free Sale-a-bration item for every £45 you spend

Celebrate Today Photopolymer Bundle £32.95	Berry Basket Bigz L Die £34.95	Tangelo Twist 3/8" Satin Stitched Ribbon £7.95
Tangelo Twist Classic Stampin' Pad £4.95	So Saffron Classic Stampin' Pad £4.95	So Saffron A4 Card Stock £6.25

My shop is open 24/7 so you can buy Stampin' Up products from me any time, day or night.

If you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

It was stormy here in the heart of England yesterday morning but my pup isn't concerned with weather so I wrapped up in warm waterproofs and took her out for a good old romp over the fields. The wind almost knocked me off my feet and freezing rain lashed in at us horizontally. When we returned (she with a big grin on her face, me like a miserable drowned rat!) there was a final squall and then, almost as soon as the front door closed, the sun came out and the sky became clear blue and cloudless. Ah the joys of dog walking!

See you tomorrow,