My First DT card - Its a Girl

Hi there everyone,

yep the title says it all. I was delighted (translation excited jumping up and down accompanied by squeals of joy) to recieve an email from the lovely Makeesha to ask me to be the first guest design team member for her weekly challenges. I will be on the DT for the month of June so I will look forward to saying hello each week and hopefully hearing from you all as well!

Now I have discovered that I find colour challenges the hardest to work with - imagine how daunting it was to start off my tenure with a colour challenge. This is the colour combo that Makeesha picked this week.

I did do a fair bit of fiddling and in the end made two cards. But the one I have decided to select as my DT card is right below.

A family friend is expecting a baby in the next few weeks - so my start point was a baby card, given the involvement of Pink Passion - one for a girl. Overall its actually a fairly simple card. My main colour decision to was when possible to space the Celery between the Pink Passion and Pumpkin. I found it gave better contrast for both of them. So starting with a Pink Passion layer, I added a Celery one on top then a Whisper White that was stamped with Polka Dots to match the dotty Pumpkin DSP at the bottom. The main element is the Pink Passion elephant, dressed up with a Celery brad for its eye, glittery Pumpkin ear and a Pumpkin felt Fusion flower. To dress up the Celery ribbon below I also added a row of Pumpkin felt fusion flowers with alternating pink and Celery brads. In the process I discovered that Tombow and Crystal effects just did not want to stick the flowers down but some glue dots and sticky strip later I got that problem solved. Lots of scallops, some piercing and "Its a girl' for the flower stalk and it was all done. The inside was also just finished off simply.

Ok having seen my official card here is the second one I made for the colour challenge.

My starting point for this one was to use the most recent (at the time) Mojo Monday sketch and also to use the same layering as I did for the first. The points to note here are that I used the stripy Background sampler stamp to make the Pink Passion strips on the bottom, then using markers added in Pumpkin and Celery stripes. I got the colour effect on the largest flower, by colouring the centre with a Pumkpin marker and the edge with a Pink Passion one, then used a blender pen to pull the Pumkpin out into the Pink, I did go over after with an aquapainter and a little ink from the ink pads lids to deepen the colour. The top flower was simply rock and rolled and Dazzling Diamonds was added to the Celery flower. The opened up pink brads was accidental really, I opened one up flat just so I could see if the Pink brads were right for the card - size wise and looked and went - hmmm Ok I might keep it this way.

I want to finish today by saying a big thank you to very good friend (and now upline) Sam who kindly lent me Polka Dot, Background Sampler and Petals Pizzazz.

You can check out the brilliant creations from the other DT members here.

Karen

Amy

Renee

Cindy

Kirsty

"Its a Girl"
Recipe: All SU unless otherwise noted
Stamps: Wild About You, So Many Sayings, Polka Dot
CardStock: Pink Passion, Certainly Celery, Pumpkin Pie and Whisper White
Ink: Pink Passion, Certainly Celery, Pumpkin Pie
Accessories: Scallop Edge punch, Wide and narrow Certainly Celery grosgrain ribbon, Pumpkin Pie felt Fusion flowers, 2-way Glue pen, Dazzling Diamonds, Certainly Cerlery brads, Pink Bo Bunny brads, Mat pack and piercing tool, Glue Dots, Sticky Strip, Double sided tape, SNAIL adhesive, Dimensionals

"Thank You"
Recipe: All SU unless otherwise noted
Stamps: Petals Pizzazz, Background Sampler, Simple Wishes (retired hostess set)
CardStock: Pink Passion, Certainly Celery, and Whisper White
Ink: Pink Passion, Certainly Celery, Pumpkin Pie
Accessories: Certainly Celery DSP, Cuttlebug Distressed Stripes folder, Ice Rhinestone brad, large pink Bo Bunny brads, wide Certainly Celery grosgrain ribbon, 2-way Glue pen, Dazzling Diamonds, Dimensionals, Double sided tape, SNAIL adhesive, blender pen

Be Happy

Hi there,

this week as her inspiration challenge, Makeesha, had a lovely girly bedspread. Here's the pic.


My card for the challenge has turned out bigger than Ben Hur, not my original intention - it just worked out that way. The actual dimensions are 13.6 square or 5 3/8 inchs square. My original concept was to make a card with only the scallop circle ( from Pepe's Paperie). It has very similar dimensions to a carousel note I suspect. However I discovered that I had bought only one, rather than ditch the idea completely I decided to back the circle with a square card. Here's the card.

I started by trawling through my DSP stash and could not find any red check anywhere!! But I did come across this old bit of retired green check, and actually if you look at the photo there is quite a bit of green check in it too. The DSP was Celery, my scalloped circle matched to Pretty in Pink and to those I added Rose Red and Baja Breeze to make up my colour complement. Aside from the DSP I also wanted to use some chipboard flowers I had in my stash. When I started covering the chipboard, to my delight, I discovered that even the chipboard sizes match the SU punches. Anyway I played around (alot) with what colours where, crimped some leaves, added glitter (of course). I do like the way the Baja chipboard layer came up with it. Did lots of piercing, and on the scalloped circle used my white gel pen to do faux stitching. Added, ribbon, brads and a button (did the little thread of cardstock through the button trick). Then finally added three lady bugs. Ok the inspiration pic only had butterflies but where you have butterflies you get lady bugs - right! And they matched up with the dotty DSP too!

Then I finished it off with some punched flowers on the inside.

All I had to do then this morning was to wait till the clouds vanished put shoes on Mr 1 who was dying to get out the door and take the card into the garden to take some pic's.

Recipe (All SU unless otherwise noted)
Stamps: Linen, So Many Sayings, Winged Things
Card Stock: Pretty in Pink, Baja Breeze, Whisper White, Certainly Celery, Rose Red
Ink: Rose Red, Baja Breeze, Pretty in Pink, Versamark
Accessories: Sarah DSP (retired), Rose Red DSP, Blosson Scallop Circle (Pepe's Paperie), Mat pack and piercing tool, White Gel Pen, Crimper, small Filigree brad, Pretty in Pink brads, Button Bouquet, Certainly Celery Twill, narrow Certainly Celery grosgrain ribbon, 1" Rose Red double stitched grograin ribbon, Glue dots, Dimensionals, SNAIL adhesive, Double sided tape, Heat and Stick powder, 2 way glue pen, Dazzling Diamonds, and a lot of punches!

Three Little Rocketships

Hi there,

I hope everyone has had a nice Easter. My Miss 4 had stacks of fun searching for Easter eggs at a friends place. She kept running around holding up her basket, which was absolutely gorgeous and made by Sam, whose place we were visiting, saying "look at all the eggs I found" with a huge smile on her face.

Now onto my card, I had a bunch of ideas to try with the latest Mojo Monday sketch, but funnily enough what I ended up doing wasn't one of them. It was a last momment - opening of the stamp cupboard inspiration. What I have ended up with a birthday card for a three year old boy. Anyway here is the sketch.

Using some DSP scraps as colour inspiration I decided on Tempting Turquoise as the base and then layered the next two panels in red, one then has a cuttlebug panel layered over it and the other some DSP. The kind of overall theme is dots, stars and rocketships. One point to note is that the chipboard was pressed into my Real Red ink pad a couple of times and once dry then covered with crystal effects. I had my first go with colouring with Copics, which turned out OK I think but I need more practice. Once coloured the rocketships were highlighted with crystal effects on the yellowish windows and nose cone and I used a atyou Spica clear glitter pen to add some subtle sparkle to the blue clouds. Ok here's the card...




Here is a close up of the crystal effects and spica glitter. Even with the close up its hard to see the glitter. But its there - really!

$%*^&%$ Just discovered that I missed the Mr Linky cut off - oh well I hope some of you, my regular(?) viewers enjoy it.

Recipe:
Stamps: Birthday Whimsy, So Many Sayings, Boatloads of Love and a Studio G rocketship stamp
Card Stock: Tempting Turquoise, Real Red, Whisper White
Ink: Real Red
Accessories: Copics(R27, R29, YR23, YR24, B02, B05, B06), Bella chipboard miniz, Paper Mills star brads, Crystal effects, atyou Spica clear glitter pen, Cuttlebug Spots and Dots folder, narrow Real Red grosgrain ribbon, Silver Hodgepode brads, small star punch, East Coast Prep DSP, Dimensionals, SNAIL adhesive

A little something polka dot

Hi there,

I wanted to do Kristina's challenge this week as I decided to skip last week - and with a day to mull it over I had loads of ideas, I was trying to keep it simple, because I don't have alot of time to do the challenge. But this card turned out so much simpler than anything I had envisaged. When I opened up my stamp set cupboard my eyes fell on Polka Dot Punches and I just had a flash of an idea and decided to follow it through.

Firstly, these are the colours Kristina picked for this week.

While the card is simple, there are a few little touches that take time and points to note - I used Basic Grey and Basic Black markers to colour in the stamp, then at the end went over some of the dots with a clear glaze/aqualip pen. The sentiment is also stamped in versamark and then embossed in white. That about sums it up so here is the card.

I have thought about tinkering with it- ie adding more complexlity as that is what I naturally lean towards - for example you could punch out various layers of the stamp in black, white or gray and then mount them on dimensionals so the flowers/tree are more three-D but I don't have the time so I will have to leave it in what I hope is a state of elegant simplicity.

Recipe:
Stamps:Polka Dot Punches, So Many Sayings
Ink: Basic Gray, Basic Black, Versamark
Card Stock: Basic Gray, Whisper White
Accessories: Scallop Circle punch, White narrow grosgrain ribbon, white embossing powder and Heat Gun, Dimensionals, Snail Adhesive, Sakura clear glaze/aqualip pen

Paisley Petals

Hi there,

Makeesha set a colour challenge this week (sorry I can only get it to link to the whole blog today ? not the actually post). Here are the colours she picked.

I'm not quite sure why any more but for some reason I decided to go back to my Pick a Petal set - perhaps because its been all of three weeks since I've used it. On pondering - possibly in the middle of the night as we are still up every night with a coughing Mr 1 the thought occured to me to kiss the Paisley stamp onto the solid block petal - so thats what I did. Almost by accident I kissed the same spot and got the same flower motif - and that decided me to try repeating that on all the petals. You could almost say this card is a homage to a couple of our retiring backgrounds - Paisley and Linen, which actually only came into my possession yesterday afternoon - fresh from my retiring list order.

I have a very grumbly Mr 1 at my feet so I'm going to have to try to wrap this up quick. A couple of points to note - the petals are all clear embossed - very hard to see in the photos and the Linen background is also over sprayed on the edges with red marker using the colour spritzer tool.

The end of the petals are also up on double thick dimensionals as you can see below which really lifts them off the card.

Finally the is how I finished off the inside.



Recipe:
Stamps: Pick a Petal, Paisley, Linen, So Many Sayings
Card Stock: Real red, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, Whisper White
Ink: Real Red, Blue Bayou, Versamark
Accessories: Word window punch, 1" circle punch, Double thick dimensionals (from Kmart), 1" clear round button, Tombow Multi, Snail adhesive, clear embossing powder, Heat Gun, Scallop edge punch, Colour Spritzer tool and Real Red marker, Piercing tool, Clear Kaiser rhinestones