Summer or Autumn?

Evening all

For those of you based in the UK I’m sure you can relate to my pondering of whether it is still summer or are we now hitting Autumn early? We’ve had some lovely hot sunny days this week but the mornings and evenings are cold and the leaves are falling off the trees in abundance. 

I’m enjoying the autumnal colour challenges and the colour scheme for this card came from CAS Colours & Sketches challenge #388.

For this card I have die cut and layered many pieces of the top of the Gemini tree die (see right of photo) in the green colours specified by the challenge to make an autumnal wreath. I backed the wreath with a suitably coloured patterned paper and stamped the sentiment directly onto it with Lawn Fawn ink.

Whilst I was making this card I remembered that the current Twofer Card Challenge theme is trees so I created a second card using the same die.

This time I just cut two trees (thankfully!) and offset them before attaching to a piece of autumn leaf card that I have up cycled from a monthly snack delivery pack. I added two offset chairs below the tree and this time I was able to add another colour since I’m not entering this one into the same colour challenge. I didn’t add a sentiment to this card as I didn’t feel it needed it, but of course one could be added later if necessary.

Here’s a shot of the two cards together as required for the Twofer challenge #31. 

And last but definitely not least, Uniko have just published their latest challenge #61 and it’s a lovely ‘Anything Goes’ challenge with an optional twist of ‘Thanks’ which helped me select the sentiment for the first card!

Thanks for visiting.

Love Steph x

Color My Heart Color Dare #412

Morning all

Here we are back again with another fabulous challenge from Color My Heart Color Dare, challenge #412. The colours for this challenge scream autumn and with the weather turning colder in the UK I’m sure there will be no lack of inspiration outside your window! 

I decided to combine my colours with a very important birthday card for my niece who turned 18 in early September. 

I had the Gemini die set lying around on my craft table and thought it would make a perfect 18th birthday card. To make it a little more special I took advantage of the option to use gold card and I made it into a shaker card. 

I started off by cutting the glass outline from gold glitter card and added a piece of acetate to the back. I followed the outline of the aperture and placed foam pads all around with no gaps. I then cut a sundance card inner to be the liquid in the glass and added a slightly larger piece of French vanilla card to be the backing of the shaker element. Before sealing to the foam pads I added some gold and canary coloured flower sequins into the shaker.

It took me a while to decide what colour to make the main background but since I’m having a bit of a Deco phase the black just stood out better than the rest but to tone it down a little I layered it onto sundance card. 

I cut the fruit wedges from the various colours of card available to the challenge and added them to the glass and card front before cutting the sentiment from gold and black, offset layering and adding across the stem of the glass.

Please do pop over to the challenge and see the rest of the design teams wonderful work and hopefully be inspired to join in. 😁

Much love

Steph xchallenge

All that sparkles...

Morning all

Well you would have though that with the children going back to school I would be posting more to the blog but the opposite has indeed happened! I'm certainly doing more craft but those precious six hours they are at school for seems to evaporate (a bit like the weekends!) and I'm not finding time to update the blog. So today I'm having an 'admin' day and the laptop is out rather than the Big Shot.  

As it's September my mind has turned to Christmas. Yes, I am indeed one of those awful people who start Christmas shopping in Sept! I fact this year I think my mind has been in Christmas mode since 'Christmas in July' was upon us, at least from a card making perspective. So the Christmas cards will be sorted this year but will we be able to actually spend the festive season with loved ones? Who knows??

Today's Christmas cards are all about sparkle! I wanted to maximise the amount of glitter but I really, really hate actual glitter which seems to find it's way everywhere. To get around this I use glitter card but I've only got silver and gold in my stash at the moment. I wanted at least three colours for this card so I made my own glitter card by using glitter washi tape and laying it across card before die cutting. It's amazing how well it has worked! I have tried colouring glitter card with alcohol markers previously but I've never achieved a very good look this way. 

For these cards I used a die set that came with issue 31 of Die Cutting Essentials magazine. I cut it from silver glitter card and then the pink and teal glitter 'card' that I created from washi tape. After lots of patient paper piecing I had three large glittery snowflakes. 

With the teal snowflake I created a diagonal easel card base and layered up with more glitter card. For the easel stopper I cut smaller snowflakes from all three colours and layered them for impact.

The great thing is that once you have all the bits cut and paper pieced its pretty quick to make a further two cards. For both the silver and pink snowflakes I layered them onto circular card bases.

I will be entering the easel card into the following challenges as they are both 'everything goes as long as it's Christmas'.

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge #506

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge #78

Much love

Steph x

Color My Heart Color Dare #410

Morning all

I am thrilled to announce that I have joined the Design Team of Color My Heart Color Dare, a weekly craft challenge. As the name suggests it’s a challenge all about colour (sorry had to revert to the UK spelling!!) but it has some fantastic twists so please do go check it out here. 

My first challenge as part of the DT is challenge #410 which calls for red, white and blue. 

All three colours must be used but you can also add in black, gold, silver and neutral colours. Neutrals are detailed in the rules section of the challenge blog but for reference here they are white, cream, black, grey, Kraft and brown(s).

So without further ado, here is my card:

When I first saw the theme for challenge #410 I was inspired by a tunic I recently purchased!! It’s funny where we get our ideas from but this tunic has a red and white pattern with a really striking blue embroidery on top. 

To create the background I took one of the smaller stamps from the Uniko Marvellous Mehndi set and stamped it randomly onto a red piece of card with versamark ink. I then sprinkled with WOW! brilliant white embossing powder and set with a heat gun. 

The rest of the stamps are from a set I received with a magazine subscription here in the UK but they are part of the Ranger Wendy Vecchi design range. I repeatedly stamped the herringbone in blue to create two longer pieces and attached to the red panel as shown. I then stamped two of the flowers in blue and coloured in using a slightly lighter blue alcohol marker. Using the same marker I created a light blue panel and stamped the sentiment on top in the darker blue ink. I attached both the fussy cut flowers and sentiment using foam pads.

So now that you’ve got this far, please do come join us and enter your red, white and blue card for challenge #410 at Color My Heart. 

Good luck!

Steph x

Something a little different - Up-cycled Suitcase

Morning all

It’s a quiet one here. I think the children are making the most of the last lie in before they go back to school tomorrow. Either that or the very long walk I took them on yesterday has completely wiped them out!

I’ve finally been back in the craft room but not for card making. About three years ago I rescued an old wooden suitcase or travellers box from a bonfire. I spotted it on a pile that was being set up for a community event and it was just too good to burn. I figured no one would miss it as they had thrown it on the bonfire. So for the last two days I’ve been up-cycling it.

Here’s the before photo:

I removed the old hard leather from the corners and removed the tacks and screws where possible. Others I just had to hammer further in to get rid of the sharpness. Out came a power tool and I sanded the whole thing down and painted with grey paint we had left over from painting the shed! I found some black metal paint which was ideal for the handle. 

Stage one photo:

Looking much better already! 

Following this I decorated the top with some left over wallpaper (literally never throw anything away!!) and then I set about making new corner details. Now I didn’t have any leather so I decided to use black card die cut into a circle, embossed it and used gilding wax to give it a leather or even metal look. This worked really well so I also added some ‘straps’ to make it look like you could fasten the case. In true crafter style, this last portion of the work took me the longest...😂

And the finished product:

I’m really pleased with how it turned out and glad I was able to save it from being burnt on the bonfire. It’s going to be used to store the girls keepsakes and also as a TV stand in our guest room as we need something low with it being the attic room. 

Hope you like it too and thanks for visiting. 

Steph x