Butterflies for Less is More

It's a long time since I played at Less is More, but I has a spare hour or two so decided that I would join in with their current challenge of butterflies. I also needed a female birthday card!

 

I searched through my dies for some butterfly ones - I think these are some very old ones from Spellbinders and also rummeged in the snippets drawer and found a piece of brusho'd paper that had been much of a success. I cut the two embossed butterflies out and glued them flat straight onto the card blank. Then I had just enough left to cut out the openwork top layer of both and attached them by just glueing the body down. The hemp card blank is another old item from my stash which came from Card Creations before it changed hands, sadly I don't think they stock them any longer.

 

Challenges:

Less is More - Butterflies

Allsorts - Butterflies

Moving Along With The Times - Anything goes

Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge - Anything Goes

HLS Watercolour Hare

It's time for the March challenge at Happy Little Stampers. There are no optional twists this year and I'm finding it really hard to think of what to do.

 This is my second attempt. The first went in the bin! I started by making a Brusho background in blues and yellow. When it was dry I stamped the Pink Ink Hare in Versafine Clair Nocturne and added some extra colour to his ears. I still wasn't happy with it so used some of the smaller stamps from the set to fill in the background.

I added a blue mat and called it finished.  Do pop over to the challenge blog and see what my fellow team mates have come up with.

Inky Jellyfish.

Welcome to the new challenge at Cardz for Guyz. Sian has tasked us to use ink or paint. I have quite a few backgrounds made when I was having an inky play some time ago.  This was one that I made using Brushos and shaving foam. It really gives some quite fun backgrounds that change as the paint gets more mixed in. This was an early one before it got too mixed up.

I stamped the Visible Image jellyfish in black and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder to make it stand out more.

Sadly this is my last post for Cardz for Guyz as I am taking a step back from some of my DT commitments, but I'm hoping to find more time to join in with some of the many challenges in blogland without the commitment.

Birthday Cat

Hello and welcome to a new challenge at Happy Little Stampers. It's the start of the month so time for the watercolour challenge.

 

I have had this cat's face stamp from Visible Image for ages and not used it, so now was the time. I actually made this card for my step-daughter's 40th birthday in October. She's cat mad, although hers are black and white not ginger!

I started off with a Brusho background using brown. The face was stamped in black and clear heat embossed. The eyes and nose were coloured with brushoes as well. I mounted it onto black and then copper mirri card. The inside had the big 40 number rather than the outside. Didn't want to spoil the cat's face!

What animals have the rest of the team used, if any?

Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge

Here we are in December already - where has this year gone? So it's time for the last watercolour challenge of the year at Happy Little Stampers.

 

Our winner for this challenge will receive a $20 coupon to spend at the shop! Check out all the details HERE.

IF YOU USE STAMPS BY HAPPY LITTLE STAMPERS AND YOU ARE OUR RANDOM WINNER, YOUR PRIZE WILL BE DOUBLED!

Do you ever decide to use something and find it really doesnt turn out how you wanted it to? Well that's what happened with this card. This is about the tenth attempt to use this Dreamweaver stencil on a brusho background. I just could not get a good result with the embossing paste at the botom of the stencil. The top worked fine. I even tried turning it round and going from bottom to top, but it was the same. The background is a

bit spotty as I didn't use watercolour card, but I quite liked the effect of the different colours, just using green.

Be sure to check out all the other fab inspiration on the challenge blog.

Cardz for Galz

The new challenge at Cardz for Galz is to use dies and or punches. I had just gor hold of the new copy od Diecutting Essentials and decided to have a play with the free die. Somehow it just cried out to me to use it as a silhouette, and I was very tempted to just use it on a plain white card.

But then I found this piece of card that had been sprinkled with brushos and thought it worked quite well behind the bird. The setiment is also diecut and is I think a Joanna Sheen die.

Please go and check out my teamies creations - there are some fab designs.

Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge

It's time for a new challenge at Happy Little Stampers Watercolour challenge, as always it is anything goes with an optional twist.

Our winner for this challenge will receive a $20 coupon to spend at the shop!
 Check out all the details HERE
 IF YOU USE STAMPS BY HAPPY LITTLE STAMPERS AND YOU ARE OUR RANDOM WINNER, YOUR PRIZE WILL BE DOUBLED!

I decided to use a new stencil from UNIKO that arrived just as my craft room became unusable with the Brushos that i'd eventually found after putting them in a "safe place".

I sprinkled rainbow colours over the stencil and spritzed liberally with water. I did use all the rainbow colours apart from indigo, but unfortunately the vellum is hiding the green and yellow!

Do come and join in the fun and check out what the rest of the team have made.

Messy card for a Teen!

The new challenge at Make My Monday is to use a messy background. Now I always think they look great when other people do them, but I'm never so sure about mine! Anyway I had a rummage through my box to see if I had anything ready made and found the last piece of a Brushos background created at the HLS retreat back in November.Having found it I then had to think of something to do with it! I decided a large sentiment was the way to go and dcided to emboss it with  a metallic green embossing powder. Needless to say it was a disaster - I just couldn't get a decent image. Back to the drawing board.

So I mounted it on to orange then cut a band of the same orange to cover up the disastrous embossing, stamped the sentiment in black, fortunately using the Misti as I had to stamp it three times before getting a clear print. Some enamel dots finished it off and it went on its way to Roy's great-nephew who has just turned thirteen!

CAS Watercolour - Snowflake

I have been meaning to join in with the challenge at CAS Watercolor  for ages and was determined to make a card for it this month. After all it didn't look difficult  - watercolour and a snowflake.

How wrong was I! I started off doing an emboss resist piece but the embossing didn't work very well on watercolour paper, so it went in the bin. Then I made a Brusho background which was quite nice but I wasn't sure where to go with it. A few days later I remembered this snowflake die which hadn't been used and thought I could put the Brusho background behind it, but a) it was too pale, and b) it was too narrow. So back to the drawing board and I found a piece of vellum, wet it and sprinkled it with brushos, now this looked much better behind the snowflake. I rather like the way the light comes through but I think it will have to have some sort of insert to hide the inside before I can use it next Christmas.

Up, Up and Away at Cardz 4 Guyz!

At Cardz 4 Guyz we are back after all the festivities with a new challenge. Joan has chosen the theme Up.up and away to start us off.

I chose to use these cute kites from Simon Says Stamp.I lengthened one of the tails to join onto the birthday wishes stamp, with hindsight I should have joined them both up! The background is a snippet of card from a play with brushos.The kites and clouds were also snippets of white. So I will be popping over to the Playground with this just to make sure Parsnip doesn't still have a hangover!

Sarntangled Art Journalling!

I finally managed to find a few minutes to have a play with my new Sarntangle stamps which arrived yesterday. Sarn has produced a limited run of stamps of her super tangles - if you're interested pop over and see if she has any left! i think you need sunglasses for this though!

I liberally sprinkled scarlet, lemon and yellow brushos on my page then sprinkled with water - quite a lot actually, mopped some of it up with kitchen towel then dried with a heat gun - I didn't have time to wait for it to dry naturally, and added a touch of Worn Lipstick distress ink to the edges.  Then set to with the stamps and some additions of SU's Gorgeous Grunge stamps. I coloured some of the dangles in with alcohol pens to give a bit of depth.
 

Brushos and Shaving Foam!!!

Be warned- this is quite a long post and photo heavy - so if you just want to see the card I made scroll down! I finally succumbed to buying some Brushos last week and had a quick play with some water when they arrived.

 

This was on watercolour paper but don't like it - too splotchy. Then I tried ordinary white card.

Quite nice but prettier with the addition of some SU Vanilla Smooch spray. Then I wondered whether I could just use that instead of water and got these.

Blue and turquoise with vanilla then

black with vanilla. Think I need a bit mote powder and a bit more liquid but I do like the colour mix.

Now a couple of weeks ago I'd bought some shaving foam with the intention of trying out the "shaving foam technique" with re-inkers. I've still not tried it but while languishing on the settee yesterday I got to wondering whether the Brushos would work. This morning I set to with a large plastic tray, lots of kitchen towel and shaving foam. I cut my card into A6 just so that if it was a total disaster I hadn't wasted too much card. I sprinkled a smallish amount of ultramrine and emerald green into one half of the foam - being economical here - then swirled it around with a pokey tool and swished a piece of card through, swirled it again, then another piece until I had these four pieces. The lightest one being the last.

Then I tried lemon and scarlet.

Next I added the coloured foam with a palette knife and used both the red mix and the blue.

Now to mix everything up.

Still mixing between bits of card I ended up with a very muddy looking mess! But I ladled it onto card using the palette knife as though icing a cake!

Not very inspiring is it? But look what I got when I scraped it off.

And finally

It reminds me of those marbled papers you used to get in the front of books.  At this point the muddy looking mess got washed down the bathroom sink. But I had to make something out of one of the pieces - so using the red and blue one I made this - it reminded me of a sunset over the sea.

I mixed the scarlet with some water to use as paint for the sails. And after that long post I'm taking this over to Pixies Playground as the black card was out of my snippets box. I did think I mught join in Darnell's NBUS challenge again as the shaving foam was never before used schtuff but thought that was a bit cheeky!

Edited to add Di has persuaded me to link to Darnell's challenge!