Black and White (and Grey is Okay)

That's the January challenge theme at the One Sweet Challenge blog and I thought I'd incorporate this into my creation for Sweet Pea Stamps this week. :)

 

I've been feeling quite arty lately and the black and white theme made me think of the contrast between black ink and white paper so I decided to do a doodled card.

 

 

I used Helena Reis' adorable Joy Is... A Basket Full Of Cats digi stamp and shaded it simply using a HB pencil. I then carefully cut around it.

 

 

I rounded the corners of a 7x7" card blank and cut a panel of card slightly smaller than that and rounded the edges too. And then I just went to town with my Uniball fineliner, doodling a frame over which to place my image, a greeting and some pretty flowers and butterflies. Finally I added a simple border around the cardstock panel.

 

 

To finish the card, I simply adhered my doodled panel to the card front and attached my cut-out image using foam tape. :)

 

This lovely stamp is available in red rubber or digi format from the Sweet Pea Stamps store - and don't forget there's currently a sale on!

The challenge at One Sweet Challenge runs for a month so enter now for a chance to win yourself some Sweet Pea Stamps! :)

Going Green

I have a new card to share with you, dear Reader, but first of all some exciting news - well, exciting to me, anyway! :)

I've thrilled to bits to have been invited to join the Design Team at the Sweet Pea Stampers challenge blog. I luuuurve Sweet Pea stamps and the last time I plucked up courage to count how many I have, it was 40+! Whoops! :lol:

So I am very happy to both have a bit of extra motivation/inspiration to use my Sweet Pea stamps and also to have the chance to - hopefully - inspire and motivate others to try out some of Sweet Pea's gorgeous images and join in the challenges.

The next challenge goes live tomorrow and is my first as a DT member - the theme is "recycled":

I've gone kind of "green/eco" with the whole theme of this card. I used one of my newest stamps - a gorgeous image by Meredith Dillman. I coloured her in forest colours using my Promarkers and cut her out. I used a kraft card blank and pretty K&Co papers - my recycled element is the distressed, inked piece of kraft paper behind the image... it's cut from a Muji paper bag that I am slowly cannibalising for various craft projects. :lol:

I also tried out my new Spellbinders bitty blossoms dies on this card and had lots of fun making these flowers. :)

I'm also entering this card for the April challenge at the One Sweet Challenge blog where, coincidentally, the theme is also "recycled"! :)

Steampunk

I've had this gorgeous, Steampunk-themed stamp from Sweet Pea Stamps for ages and never quite gotten around to using it... however the current challenge at Sweet Pea Stampers is "vintage" and it seemed the perfect opportunity! :)

It was also a good opportunity to do the "monochrome" challenge at One Sweet Challenge. I coloured the image with my Promarkers and matted it onto corrugated card. I ran bronze coloured card through my BigShot with a cogs stencil and used papers from a steampunk paper pad by Kanban on a kraft card blank. Oh and I tried out my new Memory Box die for the first time and added a flower and some TH Idea-ology bits to finish.

I'm also gonna go mad and enter this card for the current "Anything Goes" challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show. :)

Distressed Kraft Card

Here's a pretty card I made last night. I'm entering this into two blog challenges - the theme this week at Passion for Promarkers is "distressing" and the theme at One Sweet Challenge is "kraft":

I started with this gorgeous stamp from Sweet Pea Stamps - it's called Keep My Secret Well and it's by Anna Marine. I've had this one for a while but not used it before so it's been lovely to finally have a play with it. I coloured the image with my Promarkers and then distressed and curled the edges. I then cut pieces of plain and patterned pink paper to size, used an Edgabilities die on the patterned paper, inked all the edges and attached them to a kraft card blank. I added a piece of pink lacy ribbon and then cut a piece of Tim Holtz patterned kraft paper to slightly larger than the coloured image, distressed and curled the edges, and attached this and the image to the card.

To finish I cut Tattered Florals from pink patterned paper and patterned kraft paper, curled the petals and fixed them together with a jewelled brad. I attached the flower using a hot glue gun and then cut butterflies from the patterned kraft paper, folded the edges up and attached using Glossy Accents.

I rather like how this has turned out. It's got a lovely shabby, vintagey feel to it with muted colours. And, of course, the image is just gorgeous! :)