Get Well....Dad

Hi there,

back with a really simple card that was oh so quick to create.

My dad has just had quadruple by-pass surgery on his heart. So I just had to make this card.

So a heart shape was a must. I then zig- zag cut it up the middle. Punched holes either side of the

 zig-  zag. I then stitched the 2 halves  together (see what I did there?) with some red and white striped linen thread. I had a band-aid stamp ( retired Stampin'UP stamp) with the sentiment "recover rapidly"  underneath the image. I I separated the image and sentiment so they could be stamped separately. The stamp featured a heart, so I punched out a red heart and popped it up on a dimensional.  I brushed my Wink of Stella over the top of the heart  so it's shiny!!! It's a pretty basic card, but I'm sure my dad will see the funny side of it all, he has a crackin' sense of humour.

A close up so you can see the details. My ever shy Wink of Stella wasn't shy today so you can actually see it in the photo lol

And one last photo for your viewing pleasure.

Hoping your day is fantastic.

Cheers Donna :)

A Long Long Time Ago......

Hi there,

back again with another card.

 This one was for my darling daughter's friends 16th  birthday. What a mouthful, try saying that fast 10 times!

I was given a design brief and there was only one option. I suggested a few ideas, but the answer was a BIG" NOOOOO Mum!"

 Apparently, my daughters dearest friend, they first met at primary school when they were 5 years old, loves space- scapes ( read that as the sky in outer space - sorry for the silly explanation. My mind has already gone to sleep and words are not forming in my brain....lol either is my spelling, just about every word I type has that horrible red squiggly line under it and I have to spell check everything....ahhhh!)

 But I digress, here is the card again , maybe from a slightly different angle  or not ;)

A couple of weeks ago I saw a card on Pinterest with this type of background and it led me to a wonderful tutorial on blending  inks to create this type of background. The lovely Amy over at The Craft Bunny created this type of background on her card, she even has a video tutorial. Amy's card also has an awesome stamped image of the moon . Click HERE to see Amy's amazing card and video.

As you can see there is lots and lots of sponging. I started with a bit of Melon Mambo, then a bit of Daffodil Delight, then some Rich Razzleberry, Night of Navy, then Black inks. I finished it off with some flicks of white ink and then threw some dazzling diamonds onto the wet white ink and hey there presto a space - sky- scape. I did try to put a sentiment onto the card front ,but they just didn't work for me, so I left it plain.

You will be pleased to know that my daughter was delighted with the card as was her friend ......thank goodness for that hey? I did make a tag that was the same as the card that was tied to the gift bag my daughter had put the present in to. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph it, you will have to trust me that it looked good. The photos  of the card don't really do it justice, it looks so much better IRL.  

Thanks for visiting xxxx

Cheers Donna :)

PS GALAXY is the word I was looking for, not space-sky-scape.......oh my what was I thinking? Forget my brain being asleep, clearly my brain had left the building!

Seaside Shore Interactive Card

Hi there,

it's been a while, but have I got a special card to show you.

 This card was inspired by the lovely Jessica Williams over at The Paper Caper. Click HERE to see her gorgeous card that I have been just champing at the bit to CASE. I was actually going to copy her whole card, because I absolutely love it. But then a funny thing happened ( more on that later). As you can see I didn't copy it exactly, BUT I did  copy  quite a few elements of Jessica's awesome card, especially using the Beautiful Branches thinlets for the coral!

 OK, so onto the funny thing that happened. I happened to come across an interactive/moving card tutorial with accompanying video (Awesome! My kind of tutorial) on the wonderful France Martin's blog, Stamp & Scrap with Frenchie. France also includes all written measurements and dimensions on her blog as well as in the video tutorial.Click HERE to see the tutorial and France's card. France calls it a peek-a-boo card. The minute I saw the tutorial I knew I had to make a card with the Seaside Shore stamp set. I have seen lots of cards using this stamp set on pinterest that feature a porthole and I just had to make the coral like Jessica Williams did, so my card was born. 

As you can see something happens when you open the card.

There is a panel that moves across and it reveals the sentiment. How amazing is that? I just love it!

Here's a close up of the sentiment and my attempt at drawing seagulls....the top one is a bit on the dodgy side lol

A couple of extra close up photos  to show some more details.

The fabulous coral!

The sentiment attached to some kitchen string I looped and knotted, no fancy knots here my friends!!!

So that's my card. What do you think?

 Don't forget to  pop over and see Jessica William's card and France Martin's easy to follow video tutorial for the peek-a-boo card and the birthday card she made using the tutorial.

Don't forget to leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Cheers Donna :)

Sail Away!

Hi there,

I hope you are keeping warm if you are in Melbourne Australia! It certainly is the weather for staying indoors and crafting. So crafting I have been. 

 The crafting frenzy brought on by the cold weather has produced these 2 lovelies.

 I cannot claim this design as my own. I saw THIS card on Pinterest and  followed the link to Kathie's blog, "Stamp with Kathie." Click  HERE to visit Kathie's lovely blog where you can see how she also decorated the  inside of her card as well. 

So this was the first card I made. I put the dapper denim CS behind the  the By the Shore DSP at a jaunty angle. This jaunty or wonky angled piece of CS seems to be quite the rage on cards at the moment......my lost hours viewing of Pinterest suggests that it's "bang on trend." I don't know how I really feel about this trend. I said in another post that I'm not entirely sold on this look. I tend to like things lined up and in straight lines.

So I made another one with everything lined up lol!

I do like this one better. I asked my hubby and kids  separately which one they preferred. Funnily enough they all liked the "all lined up straight card" too!!! I laughed. 

Hopefully you can see from this photo that the DSP and yacht were raised up on dimensionals on both cards.

Once again here are both cards for you to see.

 So which one do you prefer? Are you all for the wonky/jaunty angle or do you like everything all lined up?

Thanks for visiting. Don't forget to leave a comment and say hello!

Cheers Donna :)

Seaside Shore!

Hi there,

well I found myself with an unexpected day off today.....which meant that I got to craft for several hours without interruption......sigh ah bliss!!!!!! 

This meant  I got to play with my Seaside Shore stamp set from Stampin' Up. For a few weeks I've been scouring Pinterest for ideas and inspiration. Click HERE to see the card that inspired my creations. It's the top card out of the two cards. It was created by Katina from Loving Life's Little Blessings. Click HERE to go to her post that features the cards and her lovely blog.

The 2 cards I made  are slightly different to each other. 

. Here's the first card.

 FYI my card was not photographed on a hill, nor is there a slope on the window ledge....sadly the angle I must have held the camera as I crouched onto the floor to take the photo, makes it appear that way lol.  Why was I crouching on the floor you ask?  Because I have ceiling to floor windows.

 Any whoo.... I was going to actually copy Katina's card pretty closely. I got all my supplies cut the DSP popped it on top of the red CS and then......OMG I had cut the DSP in "portrait mode." As this paper has a design that emulates wavy sea water it's not the kind of DSP I could just rotate 90 degrees. So my cards had to be "portrait mode."  This necessitated some layout changes and I must say I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

 All the fish on this card were stamped in black ink. The 2 smaller fish were then coloured in using a blender pen and real red and crushed curry ink.

Here's the 2nd card.

You may have noticed the gradient colour on the DSP has been turned up the other way on this card. It starts darker at the top getting lighter as it graduates down the card. This gradient  colour change was noticed by my hubby and he did point out that it should be lighter at the top and get darker towards the bottom to emulate the sea.  Whilst this is true I pointed out you couldn't sea the seaweed as much with the darker colour at the bottom and he said, "Yeah, but it looks better that way."  Oh well, that's his opinion. I haven't made up my mind which one I like better yet. 

 Both cards have crumb cake ink sponged at the bottom of the DSP. The seaweed was stamped in wild wasabi ink and then coloured in with a blender pen and ink from the ink pad. I masked the seaweed in this 2nd card so I could then stamp the anchor in real red ink. 

The smaller fish is stamped in black ink and then coloured with crushed curry using a blender pen. The larger fish was stamped in night of navy ink.

Hopefully from this close up you can just see that the little fins on the smaller fish have been stamped again and then popped up with a bit of a dimensional and stuck on top of the fish. The word "swimmingly" has been re stamped in real red and also popped up on dimensionals on both cards.

Here are both cards once again for you to see.

So what do you think?  Which card do you prefer? 

Have a lovely day!

Cheers Donna :)

Pootle's Colour Challenge 006

Hi there,

 I'm on a roll at the moment with taking part in  challenges. This challenge is run by the lovely Sam  over at Pootles. 

Sam runs a colour challenge that comes out every Saturday, this is her 6th challenge. Click HERE to see what it's all about.

This week's colours  are Night of Navy, Emerald Envy and Sahara Sand. You can choose to use all of them or just some of them, it's up to you.

Well I suppose you'd like to see my card.......

I have used all 3 colours with some of my new goodies.

Here are the details-

1. Night of Navy card base top with a white card mat.

2. I cut out Sahara Sand CS with one of the  Swirly Scribble thinlets.

3. I used the Swirly Bird stamp set to stamp 2 Night of Navy and 1 Sahara Sand smaller scribbles ( the second smallest), 1 large and 2 small leaves with Emerald Envy. The Sahara Sand scribble was popped up on a dimensional. The leaves were curled slightly so they stick up from the CS, they are just glued at the base.

4. The sentiment was stamped with the Thoughtful Banners stamp set in Night of Navy. I popped the sentiment up with dimensionals.

5. I scribbled over the 3 scribbles with my Wink of Stella, that is still being coy about being photographed.

6.  Oopps almost forgot, I stamped with Sahara Sand, using the stamping off technique once before stamping onto the card using the grungy spots from Swirly Bird as well. And yes I actually did that when I had finished the card- hoping I was not making a mistake by adding one more thing lol. Do you ever do that?

A couple of more photos for you.

In this photo you can just see how the leaves curl out from the card base and that the sentiment is popped up with dimensionals......well I hope you can!

I do hope you like my card, let me know what you think.

I was hoping to do more crafting with my  new Seaside Shore stamp set, but I couldn't resist taking part in some challenges. Hopefully tomorrow I can do that.

Cheers Donna :)

Strawberry Sketches #SS004

 Hi there,

I'm back again with another sketch challenge that I am participating in.  The lovely and super talented Sarah Berry has a new  sketch challenge  every Wednesday called Strawberry Sketches 

Click HERE to visit  Sarah's challenge Strawberry Sketches #SS004

Here is this week's sketch.

I was hoping my new Thoughtful Branches would have arrived, sadly it had not . Insert  a very sad face!   My basic idea for the card was the same.  I just substituted one of the tree images, from Thoughtful Branches that I had in mind with  an image from the ever faithful, Lovely as a Tree  stamp set  instead.

It's sooooo shiny and glittery!

 The details of the card are fairly obvious from the picture. But just in case you want a break down of all that it entails here you go:-

1. Softly Falling embossing folder used on the white card base and the elegant eggplant  angled piece of cardstock.

2. A piece of white cards stock, sponged with Rich Razzleberry, Night of Navy, Marina Mist and Coastal Cabana ink.

3. I flicked water from the tap with my fingers over the  sponged card to give the impression of falling snow. They are  rather large snow flakes aren't they lol?

4.Once CS was dry, I used my markers, chocolate chip and garden green to ink up the stamp and then stamped over the sponged card.

5. I put drops of glue on the branches and then sprinkled dazzling diamonds over the top - my version of blingy snow!!!

6. Sentiment from Jingle all the Way (I think that may be retired now. I don't have any current smallish Christmas sentiments). The sentiment flag was popped up on dimensionals.

Here's a bit of a close up to show some more detail.

I took some photos of the card standing up, but you couldn't really see the embossing properly, so I had to make do with taking the photos of the cards lying flat on my window sill!

I'm not sure about the piece of angled elegant eggplant CS. I was going to not have it and I did prefer it without. But when I looked at the sketch again I noticed a large piece of CS sitting at a jaunty (love that word) angle. I did try a larger piece of angled CS initially but I  didn't like it. I think it's just me though, liking things in straight lines. I have noticed having a larger piece of card angled is all the rage at the moment. I'm not entirely sold on the whole idea of that though.

 Anywhoo, after trying a smaller angled piece of CS I could just sort of live with it. So that's the story of my card.

What do you think? Have I met the sketch brief ? What's your opinion on the angled piece of card that's so popular at the moment?

Have a lovely weekend. Don't forget to pop over to Strawberry Sketches #SS004

Cheers Donna :)