Phoenix Rising

Hello there.

 

Thanks for stopping by. How's your weekend going? 

 

A little bit late today because I've been busy sorting out my distress inks.

I don't know if you are like me, I started with good intentions of keeping the blenders separated for each ink pad but then I ended up just grabbing the nearest pink, or blue or whatever when using them.

 

Oh boy, it was one holy muddle! 

 

So, now I've attached a tiny bit of Velcro to the bottom of my inks and have stuck one blender onto each pad.

 

Let's hope that keeps me more organised!

 

Anyway, while all those scrummy ink pads were out, I just had to play.

 

 

I CAN'T HELP MYSELF!

 

I was going to keep this blog for my CAS journey, but sometimes, you know, you just have to go with the flow.

 

What can I say?

My name is Sharon and I'm a bold colour addict!

 

And this has given me the little fix I needed.

 

I think that lovely curly bird looks just like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

 

This little card is for 2 challenges:

The Chocolate Baroque Challenge No 20 which has this gorgeous inspiration photo.  I was hooked as soon as I saw those colours!

 

 

I think I'll also enter this as a second entry into the Addicted to Stamps and More challenge #182 Make your mark. I've used pens and a white pencil to highlight the bird

 

Here's a closer look at the pencil marks

 

And hopefully this shows the shine from the perfect pearls that I applied and the subtle background stamping.

 

Items used:

Chocolate Baroque Curly Birds set

Chocolate Baroque Gothic Fragments

Chocolate Baroque sentiment from Damask Squares (this one I think is discontinued now?)

Distress Inks: Mustard Seed, Carved Pumpkin, Picked Raspberry, Fired Brick

Distress Pens Picked Raspberry and Carved Pumpkin

White Polychromo Pencil

Perfect Pearls mists - Mandarin

Stampendous clear embossing powder

Memento Tuxedo Black Ink

Few tiny gold gemstones.

 

Hope you like it. Thank you for your visit and I hope to see you again soon,

 

 

Hugs,

Sharon

Whoop! Happy dancing.

Hello everyone, 

Thanks so much for stopping by.  How are you all doing?

Well my week was a great one and it is certainly ending with a bang!

I am so incredibly lucky and honoured to have been invited to join the Less is More DT.

Whoop! Whoop! 

Still pinching myself as I can't really believe it!

Congratulations to Susan and Sarah who made the LIM DT too.

It's recipe week at Less is More and we'd love to see you feature or use some wire on your cards.

Well, I didn't have much time to think about my first DT entries, so these may be a little predictable, but I so wanted to join in today.

 

Wire Xmas Tree 

For this first one I twisted some silver wire and made it into a scribble Xmas tree shape, threaded on some beads and hot glued it to some card. The mats were hand pricked. Sentiment is from Spellbinders decorative curved star set.

 

I'm entering this one into:

Crafting with Attitude Challenge 12 - Anything Goes

ABC Christmas - D for Don't overdo it

 

 

Bee Happy

For this second card, I stamped the bee image from Inkadinkadoo Morphic Bugs set and coloured with distress pens (scattered straw, squeezed lemonade, wild honey). Added black wire through the back of the card to create the bee antennas, okay it's not a lot of wire, but it is a bit of wire nonetheless. Glossy accents applied to the bee. Sentiment was computer generated.

 

Entering this one into:

Addicted to stamps and more - Make your mark

Inspiration Destination - Anything Goes

 

 

 

Birthday Balloons

The final card was made by stamping a Magnolia balloon in Pink, Mint and Cinnamon Versacolour ink and fussy cutting it out. The Tattered Lace sentiment was die cut and inked up in the same colours. Wire was attached to the sentiment and balloons. The balloons were raised on 3d pads and the sentiment adhered to the card stock.

 

 

Entering this into Seize the Birthday - Anything Goes

Colour Throwdown #381 - pink, light green and kraft

 

 

Hope you like these quick makes and that they give you some inspiration for using wire on your CAS cards

 

Thank you so much for looking,

Hugs,

Sharon

With Love

Good Morning.

 

Just a really quick post today for a little CAS card that I made yesterday evening.

 

This was fast to make.

 

I simple stamped randomly on the bottom part of the base card, created a fancy edge on the top white card with a spellbinders die, adhered that to the base card and then added the die cut sentiment.

 

 

This is being entered into:

Through the craft room door - 23rd Feb challenge - Anything goes

Creative Fingers Challenge

The Card Concept Challenge #49

 

Items used:

Adirondack Inks: Aqua, Sunshine Yellow, Mountain Rose, Peach Bellini

Stamps: sorry, I didn't make a note of this stamp set

Words - Tattered Lace die

Spellbinders Radiant Rectangles die

 

Thanks for looking,

Sharon xx

Just a bit of fun

Hi there,

 

How's your week coming along? 

 

Mine is going terrifically. 

 

I did say each new week is full of excitiong possibilities, didn't I? 

 

Well so far:

• My new stamps arrived (Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! don't tell my OH. Oh blow! forgot that he was the one that signed for them! haha!)
• My crazy bird card was a winner at CAS colours and Sketches. Yippee!
• I had an honourable mention at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown. Fab!
• And I am 1 pound off loosing a stone in weight. Incredible really because my OH tries to nobble me with butter, milk, bread, cream, chocolate etc.etc every time he makes a dinner. Thank goodness for syns!

YAY!!! Happy week!

 

As I'm in such a good mood,  I made a card just for fun. Sometimes we take our card making too seriously, don't we? Well I hope you like this frivolous one (Yes, using the stamps that arrived today)  ;-)

I love this cat's expression.

 

 

I'm entering this into:

52 Christmas Card Throwdown February Theme - Baking (hope the Xmas Pud counts!)

One Layer Christmas Card Challenge # 26 - Anything Goes 

 

To prove it is one layer, here's how I made the border with a ruler and pen (note, only 2 edges have been done here)

 

Items used:

Stampers Anonymous Crazy Cats stamp

Papermania Silent Night stamp - the Xmas pud

Distress Pens: Antique Linen, Old Paper, Frayed Burlap, Pumice Stone, Lucky Clover, Festive Berries.

 

Thanks for stopping by,

Hugs,

Sharon xx

Triple embossing and some notelets

Good Monday Morning to you!

Was your weekend fabulous?  Ready for another week to begin?

A new week is always filled with exciting possibilities.

(I do hope mine brings my new stamps amongst other things!)

I'm here today with my 3rd Less Is More Texture challenge card (are you ladies getting fed up with my entries yet? Haha)

And I also have some notelets for the Fusion Card Challenge.

First, my 3rd LIM card.

This one uses triple embossing to add the texture to the card

Here's a close-up of the texture:

Items used

Versa Colour inks: 22 Fresh Green, 28 Pacific, 40 Mint, 42 Lime

Versamark Watermark ink pad

Stampendous Clear Embossing Powder

Heat it Up Silver Embossing Powder

Stamp: Stampers Anonymous Diamond Harlequin Border w/ Flourishes

Sentiment: Tattered Lace dies

Clear Gems

Now for my note cards. 

This is being entered into the Fusion Card Challenge (Pretty in Pink)

I was inspired by the colours, the patterns and the flowers and leaves.

Items Used.

Ink Versa Colour 33 Pink

Versamark Watermark Ink

Stampendous clear embossing powder

Mask: ClarityStamps

Stamps:

   Text stamp Studio 490 Wendy Vecci Botanical Art

   Flower: Penny Black - Allegro

   Leaf: Personal Impressions - Fauna

Thank you so much for stopping by. Do call again soon!

Hugs,

Sharon xx

Serendipity

Hello,

As promised, I am back with 3 cards and a tutorial.

This is for:
Addicted to stamps and more challenge #181 - Anything goes
Through the craft room door challenge 16 Feb - Anything Goes

These are also a second entry into the Less Is More 'Texture' challenge.

I wanted to do something a little different from the usual heat or dry embossing, debossing, texture paste etc.  So I had a look through the ideas and inspiration book that I keep and came across serendipity cards. 

 

It's a terrific way to use up scraps because there are so many different layouts that you can use to incorporate this into cards.

Here are the cards that I made for the challenge.

 

 Here is the tutorial. (I will also paste a link to this post and add it to a tutorial page on this blog)

TUTORIAL

 

Equipment:
Base card -  piece of A5 card (and A4 cut in half)
Scraps of card
Glue
Paintbrush (for applying glue)
Ink Pads
A die or two
Embossing powder
Stickles

Method:

 

1. Grab a load of scraps

 

 

2. Tear them into little pieces

 

3. Glue them onto the card randomly without thinking too much about it, until most of the card is covered. Overlap pieces.

 

4. Die cut a few pieces and stick these randomly onto the card. Then leave it to dry.

 

5. I missed this stage out on my piece) Choose some stamps to work with and stamp all over the design with chalk or dye ink pads. The colours do not matter too much. Leave it to dry - or dry with a heat gun.

6. Choose another stamp and either pigment ink or versamark stamp it all over the page. Cover with bright metallic embossing powder. Shake off the excess and heat emboss

 

7. (Optional) Repeat step 6 with a different stamp.

8. Squeeze blobs of stickles randomly over the sheet and spread it with your fingers. You are looking to achieve a thin random coverage.  Leave it to dry. then cut up an use on your cards.

 

Here is the piece that I keep in my inspiration book to remind me of this technique.

You can obviously use any colours/colour combination that you fancy.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and that you will give it a go.

Thanks for coming by to visit.

Hugs,

Sharon xx

Dragonfly

Hello. Who would have thought I would be back so soon?

Ha, Ha! I'm really on a roll today!

 

It's Less Is More challenge day today and the theme this week is 'Texture'

 

oooh-er! I've already made 5 cards for that challenge and there are still another couple of ideas in my head.

My goodness....think I'll have to lie down soon! All this creativity coming at once is just not normal.

 

Anyway, I've popped on to show one card which used my initial idea, and tomorrow I'll be back with either another card OR a tutorial which 3 of my cards use.

(Not sure which to post yet and whichever one is not lucky will be posted on Monday).

 

 

 The texture on this one comes from pearlescent texture paste through a sweet poppy metal stencil. The sentiment is just heat embossed.

 

I think this photo picks up the texture pretty well

 

 

The dragonfly was made with alcohol inks on acetate.

 

 

Items used:

Sweet Poppy dimension paste - pearlescent

Sweet Poppy stencil - Cornflowers

Docrafts PMA 10096 Sentiment stamp

Stampendous White embossing powder

Alcohol inks - Wild Plum and Stream

Memory Box Willow Dragonfly die

 

 

Thanks so much for looking,

I do hope you'll be back again tomorrow.

 

Hugs,

Sharon xx

Baby Boy

Hi there! Thank you for stopping by. 

 

Happy Saturday to you.

 

How are you today?

 

I'm very, very happy to be blogging today because we lost our internet for a couple of days.

Frustrating, huh? 

 

Especially when someone (not me; my OH) has to climb up onto the roof to re-boot the internet box, for us only to realise 2 days later that it was the hub inside the house that needed

 a kick up the xxxxxxxx

 erm, a reboot.

Oh how we laughed!

 

Anyway, I'd better stop waffling and get onto today's card because that's why you are here. 

 

Got up at the crack of dawn today to make this quick card and I'm back to a CAS style again. 

 

I need to build up some baby cards so this is the first of the boy cards. I think it'll look just as nice in pink too.

 

 

 

 

I'm entering this one into 3 challenges:

 

CAS(E) this sketch challenge 160

 

Inkspirational Challenge #102 - POP (I was inspired by fizzy soda pop, hence the bubbly back ground and the polkadots 

 

 

ColourQ challenge #329. (hope the 'spot of colour isn't too much)

 

 

Items used:

Heat it up black embossing powder

Stampendous detail white embossing powder

Sentiment Waltzing Mouse Stamps - Say It Loud

Background stamp - Penny Black - Trims

Mermaid Lagoon Distress Ink

Mask - Creative Expressions, That Special Touch Mica Mask - Small Polkadots

Nappy Pin Die - Marianne Creatables No LR0217

 

Okay, I'm off to look at some more challenges to see what inspires me.

 

But before I do that....

a quick Thank You to Karren from the Fusion challenge

for picking one of my cards as an honourable mention in their paper hearts challenge. I am so happy!

 

Thanks for popping over to see me.

 

Hugs,

Sharon xx

Love and Cherish and a Star Book

Today I'm sending a bit of warmth and sunshine your way

in the terms of the colours and images on my card. 

I really hope these colours brighten up your day a little.

This one is being entered into the Clarity Stamp monthly challenge where February's theme is 'Love'.

Also entering this into Simply Create Too Challenge #102 where the theme is Love or Valentines.

I've had enough of making valentines cards so this love card would be suitable for anyone lucky enough to jet off and get married in the sun, or it could also be used for an anniversary card.
 

 

Items used:

Claritystamp Coated Cardstock

Claritystamps Clear Stamps: Stampstamps, Wee Folk 6 Wedding, Wedding Line Sentiments

Distress Inks: Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Candied Apple and a tiny bit of Tumbled Glass

Versafine Onyx Black ink pad

Black Fine Liner Pen
 

Method:

Stamp the stampstamps in Versafine onyx black, carefully masking the ones that you want to appear in front.
Ha! I used masks made from post-it notes and got right to the end of the main topper before I remembered that I'd bought the stampstamps masks! Would have made this much easier if I'd remembered that in the first place. Hey Ho!)

Stamp the silhouettes inside the postage stamps with Versafine onyx black.

Mask all the stamps and brayer the background with mustard seed, spiced marmalade and candied apple distress inks.

Brayer the card blank with the same inks (I did both front and back).

Sponge the backgrounds into the postage stamps using the same inks and a touch of tumbled glass in the middle image for some water.

Stamp the sentiment in versafine onyx black ink. Doodle a deckle edge with a black pen.

I stuck the topper onto a black mat (didn't trust myself to do a good black line round the edge freehand) and then stuck that onto the card blank.

et Voila!
 

Star Book

After I made this I was really in the Clarity mood so....

 

...I also had a quick go at the star book that Barbara Grey gave us the instructions for here.

 

Think I will enter this into House of Cards Challenge - Shaped Cards

 

This one is probably going to my granddaughter.

 

I love it! These are so sweet!

 

It doesn't show up very well, but the stamping is a two-tone blue and green.

 

And actually, doing the stamping for this one reminded me that these clever corners are really, really clever.

They make beautiful patterns.

 Think I'll be getting a few of them out more often.

 

Anyway, back to the star book.

 

I didn't have any mount board to make the covers with, so I improvised. I found some little tiles of Stampboard so used 4 of those for each cover.

 

Items used:

Stampboard

Claritystamp clever corner - think this one is Victorian. Still available in a set of corners.

Claritystamp Happy Words 'With Love'

Archival Brilliance Inkpad, Peacock

Plain paper and a piece of ribbon.

Rightie-ho, I'm off to see what you have all made today.

Thank you so much for stopping by. It was lovely to see you.

Hugs,

Sharon xx

Crazy Bird!

Hello there.  It's so nice to see you again.

Well, I was soooo busy yesterday that I didn't get round to any commenting. :-(
However, normal service will be resumed today so I'll be popping over to see some of your cards and leave a little love. :-D

Ssshhhh!

I've been naughty!

 Don't tell my OH.

Somehow a whole lotta crazy bird stuff toppled, sidled, fell, leaped, nay Jumped with a capital 'J'
(off the springboard with a double twist with a half pike)
 into my online shopping basket whilst browsing a website.

Then, believe it or not, my debit card took it on itself to make the payment and add my address too.

How very, very cheeky!!! ;-) (Grins)

 

Actually I've been dying to try out these crazy bird stamps ever since they arrived in a parcel from the UK. I absolutely love them. 

 At the moment I'm trying to think up some really funny sayings to pair with the images...if you have any I'd be eternally grateful if you left a comment with them. These images are crying out for cheeky sayings, aren't they?

So, today's card is being entered into 2 challenges:

CAS Colours and sketches #160 who gave us this sketch (Hope you are okay with me taking the liberty of adding the birdie in the background)

.

Also Happy Little Stampers - Who are running a birthday celebration on their Facebook page so the theme is Birthdays

 

 

Items used:

Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Bird Crazy stamps & thinlits dies

Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Crazy Things stamps & thinlits dies

Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Crazy Talk stamps

Spectrum Noir Pencils: Primaries set

See....I did say a whole lotta crazy bird stuff...!

Ssssshhh again!

Crazy cats and mini crazy birds are on their way too!! Yikes!
 

Hmm...you can see that the balloon strings have been hand drawn there. oops!

Well, that's all from me for today.
 

Thanks so much for popping by,

Hugs,

Sharon xx

Rose is for love

Good morning everyone.

A really quick post today, with a really quick card.

 I have a whole heap of housework to get done before I go out today, so....

No waffle.

No stories.

Just a simple card.

This one is being entered into 4 challenges:

ColourQ #328 which has this gorgeous colour combo.

CAS(E) this sketch #159 - with this lovely layout

CAS on Sunday - Valentine

and Creative Fingers #102 - always Anything Goes

Items used:

Sentiment from a Graphic 45 Secret Garden Set

Stampendous detail gold embossing powder

Paper rose and daisies

Coloured card for matting.

Hope you like it.

Thanks for stopping by and looking.

Hugs,

Sharon xx