simply stampin 52

There is a sketch challenge this week at Simply stampin, and this is my version.
Square base card is old olive, cut down from A4, and the backing started out as whisper white randomly overstamped with stamps from French foliage in certainly celery and pear pizazzz inks. The tree from Lovely as a tree was stamped in black on white, punched along the bottom with the spiral punch, then torn along the sides. The edges that weren't punched were inked with old olive and crumb cake to make the stamped panel stand out a bit. The ribbon is old olive grosgrain.

totally tags

Well, one tag to go with the totally tags challenge this week on Simply Stampin.  A very simple tag after the Chocolate  Baroque ones, but it seemed to take forever to do!
I used the regals designer paper patterns stack in always artichoke and night of navy as backing, I wanted 2 almost matching bookmarks for a friend who is retiring from being a Markets producer at the end of the month - one for her and one for her husband, (who will be retiring from his duties as chauffeur and general go-fer!) hence the initials.
As they are both gardeners and bird lovers as well as avid readers, I used my bird punch for only its second outing. Jean's tag has a double-sided flower on the end of the old olive grosgrain ribbon - am not sure yet what Roy's tag will have on the end of the ribbon, maybe the owl punch.
The flower was made from the stack of kraft packing paper that came with the starter SU kit - I cut out loads of small flowers using my Tim Holtz die, fastened them together with a brad and then crunched up the layers. I tried it without spraying the layers with water, and it worked fine, just making a softer flower than using card did. I rubbed the finished flowers over the night of navy ink pad before glueing them onto a matching flower cut from the DP and onto the ribbon. I think next time I will spray the flowers with re-inker or glimmer mist to give more colour.

alphatags 3

 These are the latest in the alphatags challenge at Chocolate Baroque - a bit of a rush, as I did two, carefully put them away while I wrestled with the third tag - and promptly lost them! So I started to redo them, and they ended up completely different to the originals- not sure if they are better though!
E is for Elephant - and Nellie the elephant (showing my age here aren't I!) was the cause of the trouble, she went AWOL for a few weeks, and then wouldn't work the way I wanted. The tag is actually mostly grey and blue, with the Indian script stamp in the background stamped in grey, then blue ink sponged through a glimmermist mask before adding the elephant, stamped on black card with flitterglu and gilded then painted with H2Os.

F is for foliage and flourish, started out with a grey and green glimmer mist background , with old olive  ink sponged round the edges. The flourish from the butterfly swirl stamp set was also stamped in old olive ink. The panel from eastern grasses was stamped in black ink, overstamped with more grasses in I think spiced marmalade, before covering with versamark ink and clear embossing powder.
G is for green grungy brocade, and started out as a green tag sprayed with green glimmer mist and sponged with forest moss ink round the edges. The grungy brocade stamp was again stamped with flitterglu and gilded. The flowers were made using the TH die - the gold one was originally wrapping paper sprayed with gold glimmer mist and dusted with green ink, the green one was grungepaper with green glimmer mists.

Sorry for the rather poor scans - either that or even worse photographs!
The last tags are the ones I got from Jacqui for C and D - surprising how random selection got me two tags from the same lady, wonder what the odds were against that happening!
Mine go in the post tomorrow morning, and the swaps will be on their way to me next week....................

simply stampin wk 50

 Simply stampin have a colour challenge this week - crumb cake/poppy parade/baja breeze/ very vanilla. Crumb cake and baja breeze I have, and I also used real red and a bit of ready embossed cream card.
The square card was cut down from A4 in crumb cake, with a mat of red and the top note diecut from the cream card. The images from My Friend were stamped in blue and red onto whisper white card, and die cut using an x-cut die before matting onto a piece of blue.
I love these flowery/grassy  silhouette stamps, and am hoping a similar stamp available in the US makes it here this summer..........
The second card uses my new build a cupcake set of stamps - well, I had to try it out, and this colour scheme just says choc chip to me...........

Same card used, and the topnote die again for the cream card. I used the cupcake wheel across the A6 base card using whisper white ink, but it doesn't show up too well, so I coloured the cupcases in with blue marker pen and added glitter to the cakes with a sakura clear stardust pen. I cut the greeting out with the decorative label punch - it was a bit of a fiddle getting the small piece back in to cut the second time, but I was quite happy with the result.

spring thanks

A card for the Make my Monday challenge,  which this week is for a spring card for Mothers day or a thank you. As you can see, I  chose the thank you option.
All the supplies apart from the scallop card base are Stampin up this time. The torn strip of white card was stamped randomly with all the leaf stamps from the French foliage set, as well as the small script stamp from the same set, all in pear pizazz ink, which I thought was a nice springlike green. The flowers are from the Greenhouse garden set in baja breeze and black inks - I had to make a stamp positioner using acrylic blocks to get anything like a decent image with this two-stamp- one-image set. I think this set could be quite addictive once I get better at using it.............the leaves were again from the French foliage set, this time stamped in old olive ink  cut out and glued under the flowers, which are on dimensionals. the top leaf isn't quite at the intended angle, I caught it on the dimensional pad under the flower , and couldn't move it.
Greeting from an old SAB set So happy for you (but new to me since I won it in a raffle)

thinking of you

As today is a miserable, dull and drizzly day, I decided to cheer myself up with some crafting. I started out working on my next set of tags for the Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap, thanks to Moira finding her AWOL elephant stamps - while the glimmer spray was drying, I made this for the latest Simply stampin challenge, where there was a sketch to follow this week.
The base card is cut down from A4, I think in garden green (really must leave the card in the pack so I know which colour is which!), and the lace ribbon punch in white card, with one strip mounted onto baja breeze card and narrow silver ribbon threaded through.
Centre image is 4x4, brayered background in baja breeze, night of navy, pear pizazz and old  olive inks. the silhouette stamp from 'just believe' stamped in black 3 times across the bottom, the greeting is from 'so happy for you'  SAB set, embossed in white EP.