Love You More Each Day

Well I'm back. Sorry for the double post so close together but as I said in my last post I have done two cards for the Less is More Challenge. Inspiration hit and probably would have kept coming if it hadn't been so late in the evening so lets go onto the next card.

There are a couple of features that are similar to the last card, the 'Love' word die from Papertrey is the same. The frame that is stamped and white embossed and die cut is different to the other card and again I can see I need to make sure I use this more often. I think I will need to make a pile of these a colour in a selection of different colours to remind myself how beautiful they are.

In this instance I didn't quite line up my die perfectly so it is out a little but not enough to matter I felt. coloured with blended Distress inks from the purple range. I then added some flowers that I had coloured in mainly purples with just a touch of pink or orange to add contrast and grey for the leaves.

These stunning looking flowers are from MFT (My Favourite Things) and I just love them. They are fussy cut out and really easy to cut out.

I added roller tape to the back of the frame and flowers and leaves and just played around till I felt the design worked. I love the look of the flowers over the top and under and out the side. Finished off with the 'Love' sentiment die and stamped inside with 'You More Each Day' for Valentine, Birthday or Just Because I Love You card.

Challenges:

Less Is More: Challenge #362 Purples

CAS on Friday Challenge #124 Love Make a card for love/Valentine's day

Penny Black and More - January Something New

The Frame was Stamped and diecut

the flowers stamped and the Love diecut was New 

and not used before.

As you Like It Challenge: Favourite Die and Why

My favourite die changes week to week probably because 

I have too many and I keep getting more but at the moment I

have gone back to an old faithful that I had forgotten just how beautiful

it was. It goes with a stamp, there are two in the set, two stamps to dies

and they look stunning stamped and embossed in white, gold, silver, platinum 

and even in multicolour inks. I have used in the last couple of posts and you

can see just how wonderful they look.

Thank you so much for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.

Love to You on Your Birthday

I think Im back on form. I just made two cards that I can use for the Less is More Card Challenge as well as a few other challenges I have seen, so I will need to do two posts and of course they are closing in a couple of hours so I have left it to the last minute for inspiration. I haven't even had time to go and look on the blog but I have seen a couple of cards through Feedly that peaked my interest and quickly looked to see if I had time to still enter. YES there were still a few more hours.....cool.

This card was my first inspiration. I was looking through my pre stamped and embossed pieces (which I have many many of) and saw this frame which is from Papersmooches and has not been used enough because I struggled to line up what I had white embossed on white card stock.

Today I thought to draw pencil lines out from each of the points and that made it much easier to line up the die and tape in place to cut (of course I have the Misti and could probably use that now but remember I said I have many many pieces I had pre stamped and embossed). So anyway I die cut and it came out pretty well. I then used the two lightest purples in Distress Inks to blend some colour onto the die cut piece and then wiped over with a baby wipe to remove excess and clean the white embossing.

.

The butterfly is a Hero Art Butterfly Digital that I printed up and coloured with Copics and a bit of Wink of Stella, it does sparkle. Drew on the stamina and added a couple of gems

Finished off with the 'love' die cut from Papertrey cut from purple metallic look paper and stamped inside 'to you on your birthday'.

Love the softness of the look and how CAS it is.

Challenges:

Less is More: Challenge #362 Purples

CASology Week 283 Glimmer

Had to come back and add this challenge as my card

has a perfect touch of glimmer with the 'love' die cut

made from purple glimmer shimmer paper.

Seize the Birthday without the Topping

 as I added a Diecut

Birthday wishes inside the card.

Simply Create Too Challenge Embossing Wet or Dry #134

White embossed the stamped image for the frame before die cutting.

thank you so much for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.

The Flower Challenge #16 January 2018 Reminder

It's time for a another card for the Flower Challenge #16. It's half way through the challenge

and the team have all done another card to remind you how easy it is to make a card using the 'Spotlight Stamping' technique.

For my card I have used this wonderful stamp from Simon Says. It took me ages to get this stamp as I had to wait till a company that I bought through carried it so I didnt have to pay high postage. I have seen this stamp coloured so many different ways and have already done so myself and cant wait to share in future posts.

Spotlight Stamping here means minimal colouring. I stamped the image on the front of the card. then cut out a section of the image with a circle die with the stitched edge. I then coloured the cut out piece with Copics and once finished glued it back in place. So simple and yet so eye catching. I love this idea.

Now its time to see what the rest of the design team has done at The Flower Challenge and see if their designs can get you inspired. We would love to see your cards entered in our challenge this month.

Thanks so much for coming to have a look and I hope you come again soon.

Two Cards for a Few Challenges

It's nearly time for the Flower Blog Challenge Reminder Post to appear but I have a couple of cards I wanted to share before the challenges close. I finally got myself into my craft room and motivated to do more than The Flower Blog Challenge but I left myself short on time for the cards I wanted to do.

Here I have used a sweet image from LOTV that I have stamped and clear embossed then coloured with Copics a little baby boy. He is giving his teddy a Hug which is perfect for the CASology challenge for this week which is HUG. 

I used a die that cuts out around the image and punches out all those wee little circles that I then have to clean up from all over the floor but it does look neat. I attached some patterned paper to the card front (making it perfect for the Simon Says Challenge) then the die cut panel which I love attaching at an angle then I don't need to worry about if its straight or not. I then die cut the 'hugs' 'hearts' and 'xoxo' and attached them with Mondo glue.

Very clean and simple card.

This next card is for the Time Out Challenge which is all about being Thankful. I think its also perfect for the Addicted to Stamps and More Challenge which is CAS as its so simple and clean. I have used words all related to 'Thanks' and attached them to the Misti and used a stamp pad that had inks from very pale bone colour through to very dark brown. I only needed to stamp twice for full coverage but its brilliant being able to use the Misti to ensure placement of the stamps.

I used a square die cut that adds x stitch lines around the outline then attached this diecut piece to a piece of black fun foam for dimension. I went with a coloured card base and thought dark brown would look good and lined the inside of the card with white thick paper for writing on. The fold cracked the card stock a bit on top so I added the twine in a couple of layers to cover the cracks and tied off in a bow and finished off the card with the gold sparkle dots.

Challenges:

CASology Week #282 : HUG

Hug

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge : Pattern Paper

Hug

Time Out Challenge #100 Thankful

Thanks

Addicted to Stamps and More Challenge @274 CAS

Thanks

Thank you so much for coming to have a look and I hope you come again soon 

Hugs Aileen

Christmas Cards From Friends

WARNING: LOTS OF PHOTOS

We received the most amazing handmade cards from friends in Blogland and Instagram. Being in Australia we received some of our cards after Christmas which means we have our cards on display longer than most and then I put them up in my craft room for future inspiration.

I have finally got myself organised and decided to photograph the cards and share them here then I can share them on Instagram for those who go to Instagram only.

Firstly I got this beautiful card From Maria for Thanksgiving

and it was much appreciated and as always so beautifully done.

Then came Christmas:

Karen Snippets

Karen KarrenJ-Stamping Stuff

Maria swimbikerunandstamp

Michele I Card Everyone

Cheeky Ruth Crafting While The Baby Naps

Shona  Twine Around 

Therese Lost in Paper

Tina tina.mypop

Anna cards by_anna

BozenA Art Card Box

Cornelia fun stamping blogspot

Darnell djkardkreations

TaeEun  Rainbow in November

As I said a wonderful collection of cards from a wonderful group of people who made myself and my family feel feel a lot better during a time when things have been feeling low.

Christmas was hard with mum disappearing further into her Alzheimers; her twin passing away and dad no longer able to understand what was going on with mum due to his own dementia meaning that we had to make that final step of separating my parents and moving mum into a secure area.  

One thing I have found that has helped during all this time has been receiving the wonderful cards and reading the beautiful words inside from friends I have never met, yet can spare the time to be so nice to me and my family.

I asked people on Instagram if they would send dad a card and say hello from across the world just to help pick up his mood and Jessie called me yesterday to say I was in for the shock of my life when I get there tomorrow with the amount of mail he has received so I hope to share that with you all soon too. What a wonderful world this crafting world is hey!!!

Well time to sign off so thanks for sticking around till the end and I hope you come to visit again soon.

The Flower Challenge #16 Spotlight Stamping

I have set this post to go live while I am away camping and I have no internet access so here's hoping it happens. If not well, I won't know till I get home and nor will you lol. Looks like something went wrong and it didnt post so doing it now. Better late than never, sorry everyone.

It's time for the Flower Challenge to have its next Challenge and this one couldn't be easier

What that means is you use a flower stamp, you stamp it then you just colour part of the image. If you go to The Flower Challenge Blog you will see that each of us has done it a different way so that confirms that there is no set rule for 'Spotlight Stamping'.

In my instance I used a full floral stamp. I love this stamp and only recently purchased it and have to give myself a pat on the back for having used it already. Its from Pink Fresh Studio designed by Inna Moreva and called Floral Background and a lovely easy stamp to colour in. Anyway in this instance since I am 'Spotlight Colouring' what I have chosen to do is use a circle die to cut out a section of the stamped area.

At first I cut a small circle out then realised that it was just too small for the size of the stamped area so I stamped the image again. Die cut with a bigger circle die then used another circle die from a different set that was only slightly bigger to cut a black circle out to add further contrast.

I coloured the flowers with Copics using 3 of each colour each time for shadow and contrast. The black behind the coloured panel really gives a great contrast and finishes the card off perfectly.

 Finished off with a gold 'Happy Birthday'

See, how easy is that!!! All that image and so little to colour in. Now go check out what the rest of the team have been up to  at The Flower Challenge cause I know that if you want to you can colour/ paint/ stamp even less than I have and still get that same effect. Come and join us in this Challenge. I cant wait to see what you do.

Thanks so much for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.

My Favourite Cards From 2017

How to pick out which cards I liked best from 2017?????

What a challenge, so I decided to look at each month and pick one from each month. I

 have added the photo here with a link back to the original post so you can read about

 how I made the card if you are interested in having a go yourself.

I am amazed to see that in 2017 I managed to post 127 times which is fantastic considering what was going on in our lives last year. Mind you a lot of the time I post 3 or more cards at a time. I hope that 2018 will see more card posts and less family drama. So here we go.

JANUARY

Friday 27th January

FEBRUARY

Wednesday 8th February 

MARCH

Sunday 18th March

APRIL

Wednesday 5th April

MAY

Monday 29th May

JUNE

I Couldn't decide between these two so you get see both.

Friday 2nd June

JULY

Wednesday 5th July

AUGUST

Two for this month as I couldn't choose between the two.

Saturday 5th August

SEPTEMBER

Monday 4th September

OCTOBER

Wednesday 4th October

NOVEMBER

Sunday 5th November

DECEMBER

Sunday 17th December

Well I never realised it would be so hard to pick a favourite card even with my own. But I finally got there, so I hope you enjoy looking and find some inspiration amongst the cards you see here.

Tomorrow is the start of another year of The Flower Challenge and lots more posts from me I hope. Thank you so much for following me in the last year and I look forward to another year of us catching up.

Hugs Aileen