Color Hues #37 - Guest Designer

Hi all. As my card was lucky enough to be picked for Color Hues challenge #35, I get to be Guest Designer for their new challenge.

 The colour combo for challenge #37 is

For my card I kept it very simple, construction-wise. All the work is in the smooshed background and watercolouring of the butterfly. And speaking of, how gorgeous is this butterfly in yellows? I'm lovin' it!

I used SU's coastal cabana for my pale teal. Originally I tried pool party but it came out too green, so I switched. The base layer is quite watered down to make it paler, then the deeper shades are with no water added. I tossed some (neutral) tea dye distress ink in there too for a bit of variety and to tie in with the card base. Little splats of yellow ink over the background give a connection to the butterfly. 

Materials used:

• stamps - Specimen, Entomology (both Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous)
• card - crumb cake, watercolour
• inks - coastal cabana (SU); tea dye, squeezed lemonade, mustard seed (all TH distress)
• other - stitched rectangle die, MISTI, craft foam, Dimensionals, aquapainter, water spritzer, heat tool, Idea-ology Label Stickers (TH), black embossing powder, black marker, Big Shot

There are plenty of gorgeous samples to look at from the Color Hues design team so be sure to follow the link to the Color Hues blog to view them. 

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kerry

JAI #581 - Just Add Legs

Welcome! It's time for another weekly challenge with Just Add Ink and this time around we want you to

So many possibilites - we can't wait to see what you come up with!

I decided to feature a creepy crawly with lots of legs (could have been influenced by the huntsman spider that's been wandering around my place for the last few weeks, lol). Now, as luck would have it, around the same time I began to think about creating, my new distress colour arrived and was needing to be used - you know how it is ;-D My first play was to combine this luscious purple (villainous potion) with the gorgeousness of orange (crackling campfire) and when I saw them together - oh wow! Immediately a vision of a card came to mind - and the rest, as they say, is history, lol.

My grunge side has definitely come out to play with this mixed media card - take a look, then I'll tell you all about it.

My first step was to create the background on thick watercolour card. I sprayed with villainous potion and crackling campfire oxide sprays and once they were dry, did a little stamping in black before stencilling with distress crackle paste. I wanted fine crackles, so applied only a thin coat here and there through my stencil. Once it had done its magic, I rubbed distress crayon into the crackles to highlight them then sponged black ink around all the edges to create a border and draw the eye in to the centre. The last step was to add some paint splatters in both black and white. Just love all the speckly, crackly goodness!

I made a second background in predominantly orange ink with some purple speckles, cut out a piece for my tag, stamped my creepy crawly on it and again on plain card. It was coloured with a distress marker then I added glossy accents to give it that creepy, shiny hard shell look. I added a few pieces of ephemera and a remnant rub to the tag as well as some grunged-up mummy cloth. 

Like I said, I really got my grunge on! Not my usual style but it's fun to step outside your box every now and then, don't you think? 

Materials used:

• stamps - Fragments, Damask, Entomology, Specimen (all Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous)
• card - watercolour, basic black, basic white
• distress oxide sprays - villainous potion, crackling campfire
• distress oxide inks - crackling campfire, black soot
• distress paint - black soot, picket fence
• distress marker - mowed lawn 
• distress crayons - black soot, crackling campfire
• other Tim Holtz products - distress crackle paste, Harlequin stencil, Remnant Rubs-Specimen, Ephemera Pack-Field Notes, Halloween Trimmings
• other - water spritzer, heat tool, tag die (Kaisercraft), Crop-o-dile, MISTI, craft foam, Dimensionals, embossing stylus

We'd love to see your creations in our gallery. Meanwhile, head on over to the JAI blog to see the jumble of legs my fellow team-mates have created to inspire you!

Thanks for calling in.

Cheers

Kerry 

Be True to You

 

I do love me a slimline card, so taking part in the Just Add Ink challenge this week was an easy decision. What wasn't so easy was deciding what type of card to make! So many style choices and I mentally skipped through quite a few before settling on a shabby chic look. It's been a while since I crafted as I've been recovering from an accident, so it felt amazing to be creating again and using some of my favourite techniques. Here's my card:

I began with a gorgeous sheet of paper from Stamperia's Spring Botanic collection which had the flower and splodges already on it, added some script and leaf stamping, then distressed and inked the edges. I stamped more leaves and cut them out, attaching them with mini dimensionals for added depth. The butterfly was stamped with archival ink on watercolour paper and coloured with aged mahogany oxide ink first, then SU's merry merlot which is a deeper burgundy. I really love how that turned out. After shaping the wings with my bone folder I adhered it with dimensionals, lastly adding the quote chip and some sequins.

Materials used:

• stamps - Very Versailles (SU), Specimen (Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous)
• card - crumb cake, early espresso, watercolour, Spring Botanic designer paper (Stamperia)
• SU inks - crumb cake, early espresso, merry merlot
• distress oxide inks - aged mahogany, bundled sage
• other - sequins, mini glue dots, TH quote chip, distressing tool, Dimensionals, aqua painter, ground espresso archival ink (TH/Ranger)

Hope you like it. Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kerry

Edited to add: I was lucky enough to be picked for the JAI challenge. Many thanks to the JAI team.

Bold and Beautiful Butterfly - CAS on Friday Challenge #199

Hi everyone and welcome!

It's time for another clean and simple challenge with CAS on Friday and this time around I got to pick our theme. Inspired by summer here in Australia, I decided on a colour challenge of turquoise/teal, orange and white. 

Such bright, cheerful colours that look stunning together - I hope they'll inspire you as much as they did me.

For my card I couldn't resist the opportunity to use this gorgeous butterfly from Tim Holtz's Specimen set, adding a little ink blending and stencilling for my background. The pattern in the centre of the inspiration picture gave me a Middle Eastern/Morroccan vibe, so I picked a trellis design along those lines for my stencil.

And there's plenty of shine and shimmer when it catches the light.

Materials used:

• stamps - Specimen (TH), Fancy Sayings (Clearly Besotted)
• card - whisper white
• distress oxide ink - ripe persimmon
• other - trellis stencil, distress embossing dabber (TH), crackling campfire embossing glaze (TH), heat tool, blending brush, craft foam, Stamparatus, alcohol markers, clear Wink of Stella, clear sequins

My fellow DT members have some beautiful samples to get your creative juices flowing over on the CASOF blog, so pop over to take a look. And, of course, we'd love you to join us in the challenge.

Thanks for calling in.

Cheers

Kez