perfect pairs?

The challenge theme this week at simplystampin is 'perfect pairs' - think I am pushing the edges of the box more than a little here though!
The 'pairs' are the ships, the sailing one is from the new Open Sea set in the summer mini, and the speedboat from Need for Speed - sort of old and new together - can I get away with it please?
The card started out as a 6" square white: the background on white card,  was randomly  stamped with the other images from Open Sea using a retired ink really rust, then sponged with early espresso ink round the edges. The ship images were stamped in black on scraps of white card, sponged with night of navy, crumb cake and early espresso inks.
For those interested, there is a summer mini blog hop starting tomorrow, with two separate groups - group 1 starts with Alison and group 2 with Emily

colour challenge

The challenge at Simply Stampin is a colour one this week - about the only colour I had was the marina mist, and that was a marker pen.................so after much turning out of drawers and head-scratching, this is what I came up with. The base card is crumb cake, cut down to a square from A4, with a pink layer, then white layer.
The stamps are all from Everything Eleanor, which I haven't used very much so far. The scroll was stamped with crumb cake, and the leaves were punched from the rest of the crumb cake card from the base.
The flowers were inked using markers - I matched the pink marker as well as I could to the card, and the blue was my marina mist pen from the starter kit. All the flowers were cut out, pink ones glued directly to the card, and the blue ones on dimensionals.
As I haven't been able to keep up with challenges for a while, I was determined I was going to manage one at least this week- especially as next week looks busy too...............

alphatags again- month 4

it is alphatag time again at Chocolate Baroque - and desperation set in when I realised that I hadn't even started my tags while several people had already got theirs in the post................and deadlines were approaching far too fast!
It didn't help that my stamps are totally disorganized - if you don't count boxes full of 'orphans' waiting to be returned to their sets, that is - and I just couldn't track down the ones I had originally intended to use. these are the two I eventually came up with - H for Home and I for Infinite Love - after consigning several tags to the bin.
H involved my favourite sponging and a couple of stamps, and the I just had a faux pearl background and the image stamped and gilded (a real cheat!).

These 3 tags are the ones I got back last month - a very dimensional Easter egg from Sarah, beautifully simple Flowers  and the very pretty Girly & glittery both from Jackie - the scan is much better of these than of mine - suspect I will be buying a new printer/scanner soon.................
Sorry, did post in a rush, and didn't say how I did the pearl background - dabbed Tsukineko frost white ink randomly over the tag using scrunched up paper. Let it dry - only takes a few minutes - then sponge with DIs , tunmbled glass and shabby shutters in this case. Far easier than the white paint + mica powder mix we used when we did this at craft club for Christmas cards

just playing

 At an inter-federation WI meeting this week we were talking crafts, and inspecting everyone's samples, and having a lovely lunch (provided by the ladies of Suffolk West Federation) into the bargain.
Margaret from the host Federation showed us this little box, demonstrated how she made it, and kindly provided us with the template too - originally from a Craft Stamper article. I have checked the downloads on the mag website but couldn't find it, so can't give the designer the acknowledgement. I had to have a go that same evening, when I didn't really have the time to do a decent job, but this is how it turned out.
 Margaret recommended using double -sided scrapbook paper as the base, and it really worked well - originally it felt very flimsy, but becomes very sturdy once the card top, bottom and sides are added. I didn't have any mountboard, but found that a heavy sheet of card backing from a pad worked fine. I only had a gold Adirondack paint dabber, so used that to coat the card pieces instead of ordinary acrylic paint. For the top panels I randomly stamped a sheet of white card with 2 of the flower stamps from the SU Everything Eleanor stamp set in black, with second and third stampings without reinking to give depth, and then cut this up.I used more of this to cut the flowers out (from the blossom party die) and also a couple of layers in black to layer up for the lid. The seed beads I coated the central mini circle with did have some blue in the mix, but no way was I going to pick them out!    I shall be a lot more careful about cutting out next time   ......                                                                                                                        
The owl keyrings I saw on Jo's blog ages ago, got the instructions, and finally got around to trying to do them. I borrowed the nesties to cut out the backing as I didn't have a suitable punch, but had a great time playing with these - I used Anita's clear glaze to coat them with, and this dries in about 4 hours, which suits an impatient creature like me just fine.

wheels

The challenge theme for Make my Monday this month is men and boys, and the theme this week is 'wheels' - I used the colour scheme from Simply stampin of wild wasabi/daffodil delight/tangerine tango/whisper white - well, I would have if I had all those colours! Actually, I was only missing the green, so used a piece of DP in garden green instead and used some whispers markers to colour the car to match as well as I could get it.
Stamp is from the 'need for speed' set, with the foreground image masked with a post-it note and a second image stamped behind it.  The edges of the DP and the stamped image are torn, and I sponged black ink over the bottom of the image piece to create a road, and also around the edges. The sponging isn't as obvious as in the scan - think I pressed a bit too hard on the scanner lid when copying a large book last week!
greeting is from an old SAB set 'so happy for you' cut out using the modern label punch, and the backing bit is cut down from the decorative label punch.
This is a card for my son, who has a car very like this one, and has just moved into a new flat (and a new job)