Belated Wishes

Good Morning!

I hope this post finds you all well ;)

I've had a little play around with my new Lawn Fawn 'Year Two' clear stamps.  I am still new to stamping & inking and getting the 'feel' of my inks and stamps but came up with this little A2 (US) size card!  The inks I used were Tim Holtz's Distress inks as they were in reach! I hadn't planned to make this card when I made it - postie had dropped the crafty goods off & it was a case of opening the stamps and thinking ..Ooooh, I have a belated card to make.....hence, stamps were out, inks reached for and away I went....hehe.... I had fun playing, I know there are bits of the presents not stamped enough but believe me, I am taking note of my errors lol  The main thing is, I had fun! If you didn't know already, these little stamp sets have their own matching dies! They are so handy to have.  As much as I enjoy fussy cutting, sometimes my hands do not, so having these dies is so much easier for me! 

I decided to to play around with my own background using the small present stamp - I randomly stamped away till I got the desired look I was after.  I then decided I needed to stamp something in between the presents and that's where they little heart came in (I can't remember where the heart stamp came from, sorry!).  So, once all the stamping and die cutting was done, I then coloured the little blue inked presents in, using  the 'Cool Aqua' promarker pen.  I decided to leave the yellow presents as they were.  I did then decide to go over all the presents with my Clear Wink of Stella brush, just to give them a subtle sparkle! The little tortoise & his hat were coloured in using my Promarker pens, along with the single present.  By now, I  had the idea that I would have some balloons drifting over the tortoise, carrying the little present - so, I found my balloon die (Frantic Stamper), die cut the balloons and string out and then coloured them with the same colours used for the tortoise itself. So, once everything coloured I then played around with positioning of the little fella and the balloons.  Now, having played around, I kept coming back to the same issue, I needed something resembling ground ...I don't possess the dies that cut out the ground slopes etc (watch this space ...lol) but what I did have was some Spellbinders curved borders Two, so I played around with them to try and get a curved border effect from my grass ground.  It kinda worked lol When I was happy with how it came out I then coloured the ground using the Pine Promarker pen. Having put everything together, I then needed a sentiment, so I stamped the HAPPY text and cut it out.  I wanted just the 'happy' on the front and for the inside, I stamped the 'belated birthday'.

So, there you have it!  I've had a few days to look at this card and as much as I like the colours used & all the stamps - I just wished I'd spent a bit more time playing with the positioning of the balloons and hanging present :/ BUT, as it's a learning process for me, I know, looking back I will see the error of my ways LOL

Anyway, here it is:

So, I hope you like!

I would like to enter this card into the following challenge(s):

Simon says stamp ~ wednesday challenge ~ Anything goes

That's it for now,

See you soon!

Mandy :)

Items used: Stamps & Dies: Lawn Fawn Photopolymer clear stamps ' Year Two' & coordinating dies. Tim Holtz mini Distress Inks, Mowed Lawn, Mustard Seed, Salty Ocean. Promarkers: Olive Green,Yellow, Pine, Azure, Cool Aqua. Balloon Die: Frantic Stamper die - Helium Balloons (set of 4 dies).  Curved borders: Spellbinders curved borders Two. Wink of Stella, clear shimmer.

Have a 'Hoot' of a day!

Good Evening, all :)

Dropping in to showcase another card that I put together.  This was created for my Sister's birthday - she loves owls & it was such a pleasure (& distraction) making this for her. (I lost my 13 year old pooch last Saturday - I knew it was coming but didn't expect it this quick.  I am devastated beyond words, I miss her presence so much,  Her and our cats have been my constant companions through everyday life & it's goings on...I know you animal lovers will understand how hard this is... :((( 

Bonnie 2002 -2015

She will never be forgotten!

<3~~~~~~~~~~~~<3

On to my card...

first, I stamped my image onto some water coloured card, plus another piece of paper to make a mask.  I then placed the mask over my stamped image and then proceeded to water colour my background.  I used my water colour paints for this, blue, green & purple was my colour choice. Once background was finished, I heat dried it (impatient) and then proceeded to colour my stamped image. (List of colours used will be down below).  On finishing colouring, I wasn't too happy & thought the owl looked far too lonely, plonked bang in the middle of my background - so I found another stamp which had a stem & leaves on.  I masked up Mr owl and then stamped to the left of the branch, and stamped more of the leaves onto seperate water coloured paper. After removing the mask, I then coloured the leaves in with Promarkers (again, colours will be listed below) plus the  other stamped leaves. Once I was happy with the colouring, I decided to decoupage some of the leaves.  I also decided to add leaves where I felt they were needed.  I was quite happy how it turned out.  I then chose my sentiment stamps, in this case, two separate stamps - the main sentiment and then the word 'sister'. I quite liked where I decided to stamp the sentiment but on looking at the whole picture, I felt something else was needed at the top - this is where the clouds come in.  I found an embossing folder that had clouds on, so, reaching for some white card stock I proceeded to emboss and cut out.  On placing the clouds at the top of the card I felt better about the card.  In fact, I really liked how it turned out! Like I said above, it was a good distraction! To finally finish, I added glossy accents to the Owls eyes and little dots on it's chest.

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I'd like to say a big THANK YOU for visiting my blog on my last post! I hope you will continue to pop back here to see what I get up to :)

See you then,

Mandy :)

I would like to add my card into the following challenge(s)

Simonsaysstamp ~ weds challenge ~ anything goes

ITEMS USED:

Promarkers: OWL: Cocoa, Henna, Cinnamon & sandstone.  Leaves; leaf green, Pear green, Olive green. OWL Stamp , Leaf & stem stamp & Sentiment stamp by clearly besotted stamps (free with Simply cards & papercraft magazine) 'SISTER stamp, To stamp owl & sentiments, Background - unbranded water colour paints from stash. Embossing folder: free from Simply cards & papercraft magazine. Glossy Accents

Birthday Meows!

Good Morning, All :)

On to today's card....

A little bit of stamping,

A little bit of colouring,

A little bit of embossing...

And,

A little bit of die cutting,

along with

A little use of washi tape

A little use of twine

all together produced  on 

Kraft card resulting in

my

Little card for today!

Thanks for stopping by :)

Mandy :)

Items I Used: kraft card, cat stamp, text stamps, heart die, star die, 'Happy' word die, Chevron washi tape, Twine, Embossing Powder 

Pens

Welcome to my new blog!

Hello! 

Welcome to my new blog! 

I am wanting to learn more about stamping, using inks and other mediums, as opposed to just using card kits for my card making. I still love using the kits I have & I will be showcasing them off at my other blog, Crafty Cat Designs. Of course, along with learning stamping techniques I will be incorporating dies too.  I just love the new wordy dies that are available - I so need to build up on those!

The cards I have today to show you are just a few of the 'Thank you' cards I made for friends & family that were gifted to me at Christmas! I think there were 15 or so cards that I made. They were repeat designs of the ones showing below. My inspiration for these designs comes from some wonderfully talented designers; Kristina Werner & Jennifer Maguire.

Having wanted to make the cards quickly so as people would receive them quite close to post Christmas,  Luckily for me, I found some patterned A2 (US) sized cards ready to use,  That helped big time! SO, I die cut the 'Thanks' scripty die from Lawn Fawn, I cut 40 of these! I wanted to add three layers per word, for more dimension when on the card.  I then, when all three were stuck together, (fiddly but worth it), embossed the top of each word with WOW clear embossing powder for a shiny finish! five sets of the die cut words were coloured with a brown Promarker pen & then clear embossed.  I then found some heart shape dies (in my stash) I apologise because I can not recall who the dies were made by (and the die I no longer have), I positioned them on to the card to see where I wanted them & to make sure the 'Thanks' die cuts would fit on the top of them without going off the card.  Before I stuck them down, each heart was stamped with the ' so much' stamp from Jennifer Ellory (it was a free stamp from a magazine, along with her vintage floral flower papers). I positioned the 'Thanks' die back on the heart first so I knew where to stamp. Once all were stamped, the hearts were adhered to the card blanks before adhering the 'Thanks' on to the hearts.  I then took a brown thin nibbed pen to draw dashes inside the heart.  I also did this with the other hearts with a white uniball pen (which isn't showing up in the pics).  So for pretty simple cards, the longest part was the die cutting as using one die alone forty odd times was a little time consuming!  All in all, I was really pleased with the cards. 

The recipients have all received there cards now & complimented me on them!  Happy I made them, happy they liked them :)

                                                                     That's all for now!

                                                                       See you soon,

                                                                            Mandy

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