Another Appeal card

Here is another card I have made for Jo Street's Candlelighters Appeal and uses the A La Carte stamp Elebration. If you haven't already seen the appeal on Jo's blog then click here to read it. I stamped the elephant in Basic Gray onto Whisper White cardstock and then coloured in the image using my blender pen. I matted this onto a piece of Bashful Blue cardstock and tied a knot of (retired) Bashful Blue ribbon around. The card is a white A6 blank with a strip of the dotty DSP taken from the Subtles Paper Stack with the sentiments punched with the Word Window and Modern Label punches. The pearls are from my non-SU stash.

A Challenge and an Appeal

My card today is a dual purpose card and uses the cute Young Vermillion. The challenge this week at CAS-ual Fridays is a CAS card using a bird and I also wanted to make some cards for a charity appeal so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone so to speak. As you will know by now I am a huge fan of Vicky (aka Crafting Clare) and when I visited her blog yesterday she had written about an appeal by Jo Street (view Jo's blog here) - this is what Vicky wrote;

I always like to feel that our crafting can help others. I was reading this post by Jo Street of Dinky Daisy Designs yesterday - she has been devastated by the plight of a little girl at a playgroup her son attends. Jo wants to do something to help so she's holding a sale of cards to raise money for Candlelighters, the organisation which will be caring for the little girl and supporting her stricken family. It seems to me that it's easy to make two cards if you're making one and I think lots of us could spare some from our stash, so do pop over to Jo's blog and offer your services.

I completely echo Vicky's last statement so if you can spare a card or two please get in touch with Jo and let's help her raise a lot of money to help this very worthwhile cause.

Now onto the card - I stamped the bird onto a piece of Naturals Ivory cardstock in Early Espresso and blended the colour with a blender pen then I embossed the bottom section of the cardstock with the Stripes Embossing Folder and tied round some Linen Thread before matting onto a piece of Cherry Cobbler cardstock and fixing to a white card blank. I made a frame from Cherry Cobbler cardstock using the Framelits dies and positioned this over the bird using silicone glue to raise the frame up a little. The sentiment was punched with the Word Window punch and matted onto a Modern Label.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and the sunshine (while it lasts!) x

Shades of Green

The Less is More challenge for this week is '3 Shades of Green' and this is my entry. Now, if you can't say anything else about it, you can say it is very definitely clean & simple and it took less than 10 minutes to make!!

I started by stamping the flower stem from the Simply Soft Hostess set in what I thought was Old Olive but I'll come back to that later, then matted this onto Certainly Celery and then on to a piece of textured Garden Green cardstock. A knot of Old Olive Narrow Taffeta was tied around and then the panel was fixed on to a DL card blank. The sentiment was punched with the Word Window punch and matted onto an Old Olive tag cut with the Lots of Tags die.

Right, back to the stamped image - I thought I had an Old Olive stamp pad and merrily made my card, however when I came to stick the sentiment onto the tag I noticed it was a different colour to the cardstock. On further investigation I realised that, in my hurry to make my card, I had got the Wild Wasabi ink pad instead of the Old Olive. The colours all looked ok together and as the card was practically finished it seemed a waste to start again. So my apologies for the '3 Shades of Green' actually being '4 Shades of Green' but maybe you wouldn't have noticed anyway :0)

A bit of a fun card to show you today using my much neglected Owl Punch. I love this little owl but he has been pushed to the back of my punches and forgotten about - not any more! I don't know if I'm the only one who does this but I tend to use the newer things and get hooked on those and forget about the older stuff, anyway he's out now so I will explain how this card came to fruition.
The DSP is from Well Worn and reminds me of tree bark so I cut a strip to stick down one side of the card and cut a hole with a circle punch before glueing to the card blank. I lightly sponged inside the aperture with Crumb Cake and a sponge dauber so it didn't look too white and then started assembling my owl. His body and the smallest and largest part of his eyes were punched from Chocolate Chip, with the middle size eye pieces punched in Very Vanilla. His front was punched from another pattern in the Well Worn DSP pack and two branches punched with the Bird Builder punch using Crumb Cake. These were glued into place and a sentiment, punched out with the Word Window punch, was matted onto a Modern Label and positioned on the card. Easy peasy but quite cute!

Sprinkled Expressions goes Neutral

I have three cards to share with you today which I am entering for the Less is More challenge, which this week is neutrals. Just recently I have been making cards which are more 'fussy' than my usual style so today I decided head back towards the style that I love - which is very definitely clean and simple.

I have used the SAB set called Sprinkled Expressions for all three cards using different colour combos but sticking to the neutrals. 

The first one is using the flower stamp which I stamped in Soft Suede onto Very Vanilla and, without re-inking, stamped twice more with the images overlapping. The sentiment stamp was inked using a marker as I wanted the flowers underneath the sentiment, not on top as they are on the stamp. I punched three tiny flowers in Soft Suede with a punch from the Itty Bitty Punch Pack and placed these onto the stamped images and added a tiny Basic Pearl to the centres. The whole thing was matted onto Soft Suede cardstock and then onto a cream card blank.

For my second card I used Basic Black and Whisper White and again stamped three images without re-inking onto a Top Note die cut. This was matted onto a piece of Basic Black cardstock and a knot of Basic Black narrow taffeta ribbon tied around before layering it onto a card blank.

The sentiment was inked using a marker as, this time, I did not want the stars which are on the stamp at all and punched out with the Word Window punch.

On this card I added a small Basic Rhinestone to each star and two on the sentiment

The last card is using River Rock which I am not too sure counts as 'neutral' in Chrissie & Mandi's eyes but is in the SU Neutrals collection so who knows? (In the photo it looks like Crumb Cake anyway!!)

This time the image was only stamped twice (somehow didn't seem right having THREE hearts on a card) this time with the sentiment stamped as it comes. The tiny hearts were punched from River Rock with the Owl Builder punch and two were added to the stamped hearts and one next to the sentiment. At this point the card was a little to CAS, even for me, so I added a knot of Soft Suede Taffeta ribbon down the side with three more punched hearts.

Rather a long post today so I'll just finish by saying I hope you all have a great weekend (despite the weather!) x

Quick'n'Easy again

I have a really simple card to show you today using a scrap of DSP, from the SAB freebie pack, Everyday Enchantment. A strip of the DSP was glued to a slightly wider strip of Riding Hood Red cardstock and then run through the BigShot in the Square Lattice Embossing Folder before fixing to a white card blank. The sentiment was stamped onto Whisper White, punched out with the Word Window punch and then matted onto a punched Modern Label. A tiny flower was punched with an Itty Bitty Shapes punch with a Basic Pearl placed in the centre. Very quick and very easy!