Random Card # 824

Ok, so maybe it's not #824 but I've made quite a few over the last 11 months! I fancied to do a spot of colouring this evening, with no real idea of who I needed to make a card for. Sometimes I find this a lot easier than if I have a person in mind, as I don't need to worry about a persons particular taste in colour or image, and I don't need to try and fit in a sentiment - which can take me literally hours! So, does that mean that tonights card is a true reflection of my taste? Honestly? I have no idea! I do like green though....

I also like colouring the Sarah Kay images - I find they have enough detail in them that it makes it easier to colour, as you can add depth to the colouring without having to think to much about it! I've coloured it in with my alarmingly rapidly expanding stash of Promarkers (69 and counting) and inked the edges with Victorian Velvet Distress ink.
Handily, it just so happens to fit a couple of challenges (it would be rude not to....)
I Love Promarkers - Anything Goes
Tuesday Morning Sketch #104

If anyone wants a card, just ask....

Rain, Sea & Sand

Seem to be following the trend and not posting anything crafty today :)
Instead I'm going to show you some photos of today's family day out to the beach in deepest, darkest Fife (well it was very cloudy). The weather has been truly awful this summer but it's got to the point where you just have to say - there's no such thing as bad weather, just people who are badly dressed for the weather. So off we all went in our two car convoy laden with a picnic, blankets, fold-up chairs and lots of raincoats. The temperature peaked at 13C/55F and we had a couple of rain showers, but we still managed to get sand in our shoes and paddle in the sea. Although we skipped the ice cream and had hot chocolate instead.

Christmas? In July? You gotta be kidding me...

I guess I have to get used to the idea that all the Christmas cards I need to send cannot be produced in one day - unless I buy a box from Tesco. Let's face it, that's not going to happen, so I better get started.

My recent experimenting with silhouette digi stamps inspired me to search for a Christmas one, but I couldn't find one I liked in digi format and so I searched for, and found, a reasonably priced polymer one from Visible Image Stamps who I'd never heard of before Mr Google tracked them down for me, but I have to say I was impressed with the quality of the stamp and the clarity of the image it produced (look at the reins on the sleigh).

My new stamp arrived today, so after small person went to bed, I hauled out the distress inks and got messy. Here is the result

The moon was just a post-it note mask punched using a 1.5" punch, and I used the Stormy Sky and a touch of Peeled Paint Distress Inks to make the background. I did wonder about making some stars using embossing powder or something but for a first attempt I'm rather chuffed with the way it's turned out. I kept the rest of the card very simple, after all a picture paints a thousand words, right? The inked panel is simply mounted up on some dark blue Bazzill card stock, then green and finally some silver mirri card.

I would like to enter into the following challenges:
ABC Christmas Challenge - N is for No Nonsense
Creative Inspirations Challenge - Christmas in July
Papercraft Planet - Anything Goes Group, Christmas in July

Not to put too fine a point on it.....

Birdhouses. Correct me if I'm wrong, but birds find it mighty tricky to open doors? So why would birdhouses have doors? Who knows.... However, it is still a cute digi image from the new Polka Doodles CD and it looks very effective water-coloured with distress inks for a soft muted effect.

Tonights card creation is a new home card for my friend Rosie, who has quite literally catered to the stars (not sure if that includes the DO). She's one of those people you meet that seems to have crammed so much into her life you wonder when she ever slept or ate. She lived in France for years running a catering business, then she became a touring catering manager for the likes of Michael Jackson, REM, U2 and countless others and now she runs the best little cafe in a small town in Scotland. And she always gives me free cake when I visit.....

I would also like to enter into the following challenges:
Pollycraft Monday Challenge - The Great Outdoors
One Stitch at a Time - Anything Goes

Adventures in Grunge

Grunge is the new Black, and Tim Holtz is a Hero, blah, blah, blah. A body can't help but see marvellous grungy creations and altered items popping up all over blogland, but I suspect it's not for the faint hearted, or those who like things clean and simple.....Distress inks are not "clean".
With the Dunderthal's birthday rapidly approaching, I figured a card was in order, and as he likes "old stuff", then a grungy collage was going to be attempted. Not so easy.
Choosing my focal image was a lucky strike - the nice lady at Create with TLC had this freebie on Friday which is just perfect for him. I  had some newspaper print backing paper and some postage stamp backing paper which I could hack to pieces, already in my stash. I also made a load of panels of text using dictionary definitions from various sites of words like "Vintage", "Classic" and "Antique", and also printed off some slightly larger quotations about cars and aging etc. Some string and buttons were thrown into the mix and I started layering it all up. That's when it all went downhill. I just could not fill the card with all these bits and bobs - I can't do clutter!
So, after deciding a grungy collage was going to be a bit of a failure, I settled for a very watered down version, which I can just about live with. I still have two more evenings of crafting time available, so this may not be the birthday card the Dunderthal eventually ends up with.....

Handily, the challenge on Crafty Catz this week is for a Vintage Look so all is not lost.

Inky Fingers

Working my way back to crafty happiness, but strangely not feeling the urge to colour-in images, so I spent a happy couple of hours trawling through the Stitchy Bear Shop and settled upon some silhouettes. Being a gal who prefers to make cards Clean & Simple, I think silhoutte stamps are marvellous, I have a couple in rubber and love to play about embossing and distress inking, as I did with yesterdays post. So I was curious to know if I would enjoy them as digital images, as embossing and shadow stamping would be a bit of a task. Well what d'ya thunk?

I did blast it with a heat gun to (hopefully) heat seal the printer ink, and then inked it up using "Wild Honey", "Fired Brick" and "Bundled Sage" Distress Inks, and kept away from the main image in case in did smudge, which it did a little but nothing too drastic. It's then been mounted on a couple of contrasting layers of Bazzill cardstock. The card blank has been inkified using my marvellous Damask Cover-a-Card stamp from Impression Obsession, and "Brushed Corduroy" Distress Ink. Really quite a quick and painless experience. So much so, I made another card nearly identical, but used the "Summer Fence" silhouette instead of the "Pheasant".....

I would like to enter the following challenges:
Quirky Crafts - Make your Own Background (Just for fun, as I'm a GDT this week)
One Stitch at a Time - Use a digi

A moment in time

Well, howdy to all my Groupies! My mojo decided to go on vacation (without warning) and I have been remarkably disinclined to attampt anything for at least 4 days. And in my world that's a really long time. I haven't watched this much TV since I was a teenager, and the DVD's I borrowed 3 months ago have now actually been watched (Eat, Pray, Love should have been called Dull, Dull, Dull in my opinion).

After tonights movie of choice (Jane Austen's Persuasion) I decided enough was enough and I was going to get inky fingers and see what happened. It also got me thinking about various crafty people I have "met" over the last10 months in the world of internet craft forums. Some of whom appeared from seemingly nowhere and disappeared again almost as quickly, and others who I  hope will be friends forever. So with fondness I smile, and present tonights achievement which will be sent to one of those ladies who appeared and disappeared, but who I still think of, and wonder how she's doing.....

Quirky but Nice

Evening all! I'm turning into a regular blogger now, P will be so pleased! I have another card for you all which I made for a GDT spot on Quirky Crafts Challenges which this week is sponsored by Stitchy Bear Digital Stamps. They have such a huge range of digi stamps and papers, all of which are marvellously affordable, you really could "fill your boots" in that shop....

The Challange this week was to create a card without using any patterned papers - a real Do-It-Yourself job (without the hammer and wonky shelving).

I chose a lovely image from Stitchy Bear called Camelia's in a Watering Can, which I've coloured with my trusty Promarkers. To create the background, I used a fabulous new stamp of mine from Impression Obsession, called the Damask Cover-a-Card stamp. At nearly 6" square it certainly does exactly that.

I inked it up with Tattered Rose Distress Ink and stamped it onto a 135mm square card blank, and then used some clear embossing powder over the top, and blended a bit of Old Paper distress ink on the edges of the basecard. I die cut the image and a piece of green (pistachio, I think) Bazzill card stock with Nesties Labels 1, and mounted it all up on 3D foam pads. A sweet sentiment and a couple of gems and it's a done thing.

Make sure you check out the other DT's beautiful cards and blogs and have a go at the challenge yourself.

Box? What box?

Ok just a quickie tonight (no, not you dear... I have a headache) here's a card I made for the latest Sassy Cheryl Challenge which was to leave part of your image overhanging the edge of it's frame. I hadn't tried this before and watched a youtube video which made it look sooooo easy. However, I still managed to make a complete hash of it!

I ended up using my Nesties label as a stencil and cutting it out by hand, but think it still works ok?

Not more watercolouring? Oh yes!

And so on and so forth, another A Day for Daisies image coloured again using tombows and a sprinkling of glitter. The backing paper is also glittered so it sparkles quite nicely.

I'd like to enter this into the following challenges, and then I will give the whole watercolouring thing a bit of a rest for a while!
The Outlawz - POM Anything Goes
Digi Doodles Shop Challenge - Anything Goes