Sending Love - All About Challenges #2

It's time for a new challenge with All About Papercraft Challenges and this month it's...

My crafting journey began with scrapbooking, but discovering stamps - red rubber mounted on wood blocks in those days - got me hooked on cardmaking. They're so versatile!

For my project I've made a card with a faux postcard scene. Apart from the stencilling on the base card and a little masking, the rest is created entirely with stamps. 

My first step was stencilling the base card, then I cut the main panel to size. I began stamping with the four lines and the vertical break design using archival ink (to avoid smudging when I inked over them later). Then came the postcard header and the postage stamp, after which I stamped Bundle Girl. She's coloured with Copics, as are the hearts. I tore a scrap of paper to use as a mask for inking the ground and created another mask of the little girl so I could ink the blue portion. The sentiments in the lines were stamped next and the little heart and hugs and kisses in the "stamp" were my last step before mounting the panel on the base.

Materials used:

• stamps - Bundle Girl with Falling Hearts (Stamping Bella), Stamps #521 (Poppy Crafts), Sentiment Strips 2 (Altenew), Basic Sentiments (Pinkfresh Studio), Merci Beaucoup (Clearly Besotted), Hot Cocoa (Mama Elephant)
• other - postage collage colouring stencil (Waffle Flower), blending brushes, Copic markers, MISTI, craft foam

Pop over to the All About blog (just click on the challenge icon) to see more inspiration from my fellow design team members, then get out your stamps and join the fun!

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Kerry

The Card Concept #206 - April Flowers

Thanks for joining me for another challenge with The Card Concept. Hopefully our options will inspire you to create, whether it's for a birthday, wedding/anniversary, friendship, Mother's Day or perhaps just a 'thinking of you'. 

My clean and layered card was inspired by the gorgeous pink flowers.

My process was perhaps slightly different: I stamped the flower image first so I could then hold the background stencil over it and find what I considered the best layout to suit the stamp. With the stencil in place I coloured my pale blue background with dye ink, not worrying too much if I went over the stamped image because I knew I'd be using oxide inks to colour that, and they would colour over dye ink. Once the background was done I cut with the postage die and then used stencils to colour the image. Next I added the postage stamping, coloured my background piece, and die-cut a sentiment to fit perfectly within the delineated area, using vellum for the shadow so the stamped images beneath could still be seen.

Materials used:

• stamps - Garden Roses and matching stencils (Pink Fresh Studio), Postage Collage (Waffle Flower)
• card - distress white heavystock, vellum
• distress oxide inks - tattered rose, worn lipstick, picked raspberry, shabby shutters, peeled paint
• other - Postage Collage coloring stencils (Waffle Flower), blending brushes, MISTI, Blueberry ink (Altenew), Miss You die (stash), mounting foam

Check out my fellow team mates' offerings over on the Card Concept blog and don't be shy to share your own creations with us.

Thanks for calling in.

Cheers

Kerry

Missing You

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was asked to be a guest designer for the CAS on Friday challenge blog after being picked as winner for challenge #166. The theme for this time around is to Use a Frame.

Now, sometimes it takes quite a while for my brain to come up with a design for a challenge, particularly for a CAS card as this is not my natural milieu, so to speak. However, I'd barely been told the theme half an hour before an idea sprang to mind and later that day I sat down to see if it unfolded as I hoped. Unusually for me with clean and simple, I forwent a white background in favour of the truly gorgeous soft sea foam.

Materials used:

• stamps - Teeny Tiny Sentiments (SU), Hog Heaven (MFT)
• card - soft sea foam, basic grey, whisper white
• other - petal pink Stampin' Blends, stitched square dies, Big Shot, Dimensionals, craft foam, glue, Stamp-a-ma-jig

Everything looked a little bland and boring if I kept it straight, hence the tilt - I love how it gives that extra touch of whimsy. And is that little piggy just the cutest or what? 

If, like me, your cards are all about lots of layers and embellishments, you might like to push yourself to think outside the square and try a clean and simple card. Here's some definitions as a guide:

Clean & Simple - A design of card with clean lines, minimal embellishments, areas of white space and few or no embellishments.

White Space - An area of the card which has no image, layer, texture, pattern or embellishment. This can be any colour dependent upon the colour of the card blank.

I do hope you'll head over to the CAS on Friday blog to see what the design team came up with for this challenge and perhaps even give it a go yourself.

Thanks for dropping in.

Cheers

Kez