Birthday Owl

This was made for the Mum of a friend at work who, apparently, loves owls. I used the Owl Punch to make the little character along with the Bird Punch for the wings and she is punched from Crumb Cake. Her dress is made from some retired DSP, just because it is pretty and matched the Rose Red cardstock I used for the heart, flowers and butterflies. The branches she is sitting on are stamped with a stamp from, the now retired Borderlines, stamped in Old Olive and then stamped again without re-inking to get the different shades of green. The butterflies were made with the Beautiful Wings Embosslits die and the flowers punched with the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack. The Happy Birthday is from a SAB set and the Mum is from For my Family. The card front is matted onto Old Olive cardstock and then onto a white square card blank. Some Basic Pearls were added to the centres of the butterflies and flowers.

Two Challenges

A quick second post for today as I wanted to show you a card I am entering for two challenges. The first is ColourQ where the colours for this week are shown in the inspiration picture above and the second is a new challenge site called Twisted Tuesday where each week there is a challenge with a 'twist'. This week's challenge is called 'I never promised you a rose garden' and the twist is that the card has to have flowers but NOT roses! As you will see ColourQ are asking for Poppy Parade but, as I don't actually have this colour, I have used Real Red which I think is probably the closest colour. I started by stamping the leafy stamp from Borderlines in Lucky Limeade, and re-stamping to give a lighter shade, in the bottom corner of a piece of Whisper White cardstock which was then matted on to Basic Black and then on to a plain white card blank. The flowers were made with the Boho Blossoms punch and I stamped the small 'stamen' stamp from Greenhouse Garden onto Pumpkin Pie and Real Red cardstock, using Basic Black, before punching the flowers out. The sentiment is from a recent SAB set (no longer available) also stamped in Basic Black.

Do come back tomorrow to see the last (well maybe!) of my case'd punch art - I promise I'll move onto something else soon :0)

Butterfly Trees

This card is one which uses minimal supplies - and I mean minimal! A great way of using even the tiniest of scraps that, if you're anything like me, you never throw away. I started by stamping three trees from Trendy Trees, in Early Espresso, onto Whisper White and then punched out with the Oval punch. These were then matted onto Scallop Ovals punched from Wisteria Wonder cardstock. Before fixing these to a white card blank I stamped a border from Borderlines (available in the Spring Mini until the end of April) in Wisteria Wonder across the centre and stamped a sentiment from Petite Pairs in the bottom corner. Once fixed to the card I added three tiny butterflies, from the Beautiful Wings Embosslits die, to each tree - three in Elegant Eggplant, three in Perfect Plum and three in Pink Pirouette, with a tiny Basic Rhinestone added to the centres. (Two Wisteria Wonder butterflies were added to the end of the border to cover an ink mark!!)

Totally Tags

My card today is one I've made for the Simply Stampin' challenge which, this week, is Totally Tags. Usually when I see the challenges an idea springs to mind but for some reason that didn't happen this weekend. I struggled with an idea for both this and the LIM challenge yesterday but, not to be beaten, I was determined to come up with something this morning- and here it is!

I needed a sentiment that was long and thin and this one fitted the bill perfectly, it is an old retired SU stamp but I never get rid of sentiment stamps and will use them retired or not - sorry. I stamped this in Rich Razzleberry onto Whisper White cardstock and cut out, this determined the size for my other tag. For this I used the leafy branch stamp from Borderlines (be warned this set is only available in the Spring Mini until April 30th) and stamped in Certainly Celery and, after stamping once, I stamped again without re-inking. The tiny flower from Flight of the Butterfly was stamped over the leaves in Rich Razzleberry and I added a few to the sentiment panel as well. Both panels were matted onto Rich Razzleberry cardstock, a hole punched in the top and some Whsiper White grosgrain ribbon threaded through. I didn't want a bulky knot in the ribbon so I just folded the ribbon over and used a flower, punched with the Itty Bitty Shapes, to cover the hole and added a tiny Basic Pearl to the centre. I played around with some ideas but decided the tags looked best on just a piece of Rich Razzleberry DSP from the Rich Regals Paper Stack. I added three more punched flowers to the bottom corner just because it looked a bit bare!

Have a lovely Sunday and for those of you who are Mum's - Happy Mother's Day x

ColourQ Greens

I struggled with the ColourQ challenge this week which, as you can see from the inspiration picture above, is all about greens. I made the card shown below first but was not at all happy with it, too much green for my liking, so moved on to make the card shown above 

which is much more my style!                           

I used one of the stamps from Borderlines and stamped on Very Vanilla cardstock with Certainly Celery, Wild Wasabi, Garden Green and Basic Gray - and stamped again with each colour without re-inking. This was matted onto Garden Green cardstock and then onto a Vanilla card blank. The sentiment was stamped in Garden Green, punched with the Word Window punch and matted onto a Garden Green Modern label with two tiny Basic Pearls added. Three butterflies were diecut fron the Beautiful Wings Embosslits die using Certainly Celery DSP from the Subtles Paper Stack, a Basic Pearl placed in the centres and added to the card. If anyone's interested, the card on the right was using all the same colours with the Certainly Celery panel embossed in the Elegant Bouquet folder and the addition of Certainly Celery Grosgrain ribbon.

Reject!

If you saw the post yesterday with my entry to the Simply Stampin' challenge you will know I ended up with a reject (well I began with it really!) and I promised to show you what I did with it. Well here it is, probably the simplest & quickest cards known to man which, as it's neutral, I am putting in as my second entry for the LIM challenge. It could equally have gone in last week's challenge for 'Scraps' had it been made then :0)
The card started out with the darker leaf spray going horizontally but it was too far down the card so that was the reason it was rejected in the first place. However once I had finished the card I had intended to make, and with the stamp and ink pad still on my desk, I thought I would experiment and attempt to turn a useless piece of card which was destined for the bin into something I could maybe use. As I have the Borderlines set in clear mount it was easy for me to see where I was going to place the branch and whether it looked right so I inked up the stamp with Early Espresso and stamped the image diagonally and, without re-inking, I stamped part of the branch twice more. The sentiment is from Hopeful Thoughts and the butterflies were cut from a piece of scrap Early Espresso DSP using the Beautiful Wings Embosslits die with Basic Pearls for the bodies. This card must have taken all of 5 minutes and I think I probably like this better than all the other cards I made yesterday - typical isn't it??