#1004 – Mixed Media card

Hello and welcome! Today I have the honor of being the Guest Designer for the wonderful Color Throwdown challenge!

Its a color challenge that helped me groom my coloring skills when I first started card making, and continues to do so today. The design team always have such wonderful inspirations with any pick of color! Speaking of which, this is the color combo for this time –

Beautiful set of colors! And this time I took up a personal challenge to make the card look like its made up of ATC elements. Here’s what I made –

I used a lot of older stamps and die cuts on this one – and that made me happy as well! I used Tim Holtz’s stamp set that I got as a part of Alcohol Inks kit, Ranger Entomology, Nature’s Elements, My Favorite Things Bold Diagonal Stripes in the background, and to make the butterfly piece look like an antique piece, used stamps from Ranger Entomology and CrafTangles Halftone Dots and a couple of washi tapes. The die cuts are Paper Smooches Flower 2 and Sizzix Flowers, Branches and Leaves. I doubt most of them have been available for a long time now! The sentiment, from Altenew Label Love is probably something that’s available.

I used distress inks and with the help of brayer and gel plate, made butterfly panel a bit more variegated. I also colored the top wings of the butterfly in green, though I doubt its that visible. Well, once all the pieces were done, I just arranged them adhered them together on the card base. The only dimension being behind that BnW diagonal background.

I’m glad this card came out so quickly, given that I had been taking very long to make my cards until recently. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity – I had a lot of fun with this new design style of card making!

Do stop by the Color Throwdown challenge blog to checkout the creations of the design team, who manage to impress me, at least, every single time! 🙂

Thank you so much for stopping by! 🙂

#987 – Guest Designer at Timeout challenge!!

Hello and welcome!! I am so so thrilled to be over at Timeout challenge as the Guest Designer this time!!

This time we are CASE-ing one of the cards that the incredible talented Michele Ferguson has created. This challenge is also sponsored by STAMPlorations. Winner gets $25 in store credit and an offer to Guest Design with Timeout challenge for a future challenge! So don’t forget to join the challenge!!

Before going to what I made, here’s a closeup at Michele’s card –

Isn’t it gorgeous? Lovely shades of pink surrounding a beautiful heart. The CAS look, even when using so many die cuts! Love it!!

Here’s my CASE of her gorgeous card –

I picked the following from Michele’s card: the shades of pink and leaf die cuts, the center heart, the sentiment.

I used Simon Says Stamp Eucalyptus Leaves die to die cut multiple pieces from white cardstock and a few more from scrap cardstock. I then adhered one from each group to the adhere to get some dimension. After they dried, I sponged pink tones of distress inks on them, misted them with water, then added splatters of darker color on top. A lot of splatters. The splatters weren’t staying there because of the indentations the dies had, but a lot of splatters did the job. Well, once they dried, I adhered them on the card base.

I then added the heart – two layers of two die cuts using Winnie & Walter True Dotty Heart, topped with the ‘XO’ die cut using Winnie & Walter Typecast Cary Letters. I water-colored the letters using distress inks before adhering it on the card.

And that’s my CASE of Michele’s card. I thoroughly enjoyed making this one!!

Thank you so much to the Timeout challenge team for having me over!! Do stop by the Timeout challenge blog to checkout all the different wonderful ways Michele’s card has been CASE’d by the team!

And thank you for stopping by! 🙂

#928 – A Poinsettia Christmas

Hello and welcome! Today I have the honor of Guest Designing at the Addicted to Stamps and More challenge! I got this generous offer from Kylie after winning one of their previous challenges.

The theme this time is Christmas! Yes, Christmas in the middle of the year. I guess this challenge might give many of us a headstart at getting ready for the end of the year!

And this is the card I made –

I brought this pretty pretty poinsettia die set from Lawn Fawn recently, and thought it a waste that I wasn’t making Christmas card any time soon. So this challenge was a welcome opportunity! 🙂

Before I started die cutting, I thought making some pattern papers using the gel plate that I have had for so long! My sister uses it for her mixed media stuff, but me not so much. But I was very inspired by the recent videos regarding using gel plated with distress inks by Jennifer McGuire and thought it would be a great idea to try. I was anyway going to make a Christmas card with non-traditional colors, so I started my experiments. I used distress inks and few stencils and stamps and created a few beautiful prints, then used the dies to die cut from them and some white card stock as well. I then adhered the flowers together. Thinking that I might need some black too, I stamped a few images from the Winnie and Walter In Bloom: Elsa’s Flora in black ink and fussy cut them out.

For the background, I stamped an image from Neat & Tangled Landscape Textures with a light grey ink, then trimmed the panel diagonally. This I foam mounted on the white card base, and then adhered all my poinsettias with the leaves and added a white stone in each of the floral centers.

For the sentiment, I went with Neat and Tangles Art Deco, stamped it in black, trimmed the piece and rounded a couple of the corners and adhered that also using foam tape.

And that’s my card. Make sure to stop by the Addicted to Stamps and More challenge blog to get more inspiration from all the design team. And thank you, once again, Kylie, to give me this wonderful chance!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

#900 – Thanks with Pumpkins

Hello and welcome! Today is another day to be glad – I’ve been asked over to be the Guest Designer at the Retro Rubber challenge! This is a wonderful challenge where the main requirement is to use a stamp that is more than a year old in your creation – a great reason to get out those old stamps and put them to good use!

The theme for this challenge is a color theme – to use Black, Orange and White only, with the picture inspiration

And here’s what I made –

A fairly simple card to make! I first started with creating the pumpkins. I drew a rough outline and watercolored each of them. Once dry, I fussy cut them out. For the background, I used Concord & 9th Sketched Stripes stamp set and stamped it in Black Soot distress ink on a white card base. It didn’t stamp properly, but that ‘sketchy’ look was what I was going for, so that was perfect! 😀

Next, the sentiment came from Ranger Letter It: Thank You stamp set. I stamped this also in Black Soot and then fussy cut it. I foam mounted all the pieces on the card base. And that’s it – that’s my finished card!

I’m joining the following challenges with my card –

Global Design Project #263: Season of Thanks

CrafTangles October challenge: Masculine Projects

Inkspirational Challenge #224: Picture Inspiration (Fall Photo)

Stamplorations October challenge: Stamps + Autumn colors

Thank you to the Retro Rubber team for having me over! Step over to the Retro Rubber challenge blog for more inspiration from their awesome team!

Thank you so much for stopping by as well! 🙂

#892 – Color Hues challenge Guest Designer!!

Hello and welcome!! After becoming the winner of the very first challenge of Color Hues – which in itself is a big win for me – I even get to be the very first Guest Designer for the challenge!! What a big honor!! Thank you so much Nancy, for this wonderful opportunity!

This the the third challenge and here are the colors for the challenge –

That’s a beautiful and elegant set of colors! And here’s what I made –

I was inspired by this beautiful, elegant card by Therese Calvird. I chose rustic cream cardstock from Paper Trey Ink for the card base and the top most layer of the flower die cuts. The die cuts, of course, are from the Altenew 3D Rose Flurries die set. Those petite roses are just perfect for any occasion!

So, anyway, I used white for the first layer, vellum for the second (I used double sided tape on a piece of vellum and die cut it after), gold foil cardstock from CrafTangles for the third layer and the same rustic cream cardstock as the card base for the fourth layer. I used black and gold on the leaves to get some contrast on the otherwise plain card.

I am not so sure it is all that apparent on the images here – well, blame it on the cloudy weather and my overly used contrast image manipulated to counter it for it!! ;P

I used splatters of black and two kinds of gold – all of which I got from the Gansai Tambi watercolors – on the card base. I then adhered the die cut pieces on top.

For the sentiment, I used WPlus9 Fresh Cut Floral. My initial idea was to directly stamp this sentiment on the card base directly, but when I ended up moving the card on my Misti while stamping, I had to abandon the idea. Instead, I stamped it on another piece of the same cardstock, added some gold foil washi tape on another piece, trimmed them both and then adhered this to the card base. No loss there, and I loved that gold shine from the washi!!

And that’s my card! Head over to the Color Hues challenge blog for more inspiration from the Design Team – I assure you, they won’t disappoint!!

Thank you once again for having me over, Nancy!

And thank you so much for stopping by!