Ain't You Grand!

 

Challenge #313 has just gone live at Time Out Challenges and this fortnight we have the theme

Playing Music 

Playing music could be playing a musical instrument or playing music on a turntable or cassette deck or walkman, or a pair of headphones or a CD - whatever playing music means to you!

Challenge #313 is generously being sponsored by Gina K and they are offering our Top Pick as chosen by the design teams $25 credit to their store!  

The Top Pick will also be invited to join Time Out as a guest designer in a future challenge!  Speaking of guest designers, our guest designer this fortnight is Cindy Chui, one of our honourable mentions from Challenge #308!   You can check out how Cindy and my talented team mates have interpreted our Playing Music theme over on the Time Out Blog!

I had quite a few NBUS dies that I could have used for this theme but I decided on this Grand Piano die from Gummiapan and made a card for my choir director's birthday!

I snipped and stacked several die-cuts of the piano to give it dimension.  I winked it as well but it's not obvious from the photo. 

I had this lovely frame (Gummiapan) already cut and used it to showcase the grand piano.  I cut some quavers and semi-quavers to indicate music being played and coated them with Glossy Accents.

The sentiment (Spellbinders GLP-380 Must Have Sentiments) was foiled using black foil and mounted with foam tape.

The bouquet of yellow roses (Spellbinders Flower Cart) helped break up all that black and white - my choir director also loves flowers and her favourite colour is yellow!  I mounted the bouquet on double foam tape so it sat neatly on top of the piano - there's quite a lot of dimension to the piano!

Here's a closeup though it still doesn't show up the sparkle of the winking on the piano.

TWOFER :

Since I had the Flower Cart set out, I made up another card using the other bouquet from the Flower Cart set.  I added centres to these flowers with White Enamel Accents.

I hope you can take some Time Out and join us this fortnight for our Playing Music Theme - you have until the May 27th to link up your entries ... can't wait to see your creations in the gallery!

I and grateful for and would like to enter the following challenges

NBUS Challenge #86 - NBUS dies - Gummiapan Piano;

Inkspirational Challenge #367 - Inspired by the purple bouquet on the palette;

Triple B May Challenge - Just Blooms today;

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Use craft dies;

A Cut Above May Challenge - Anything Goes using Die Cuts;

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you go away a little inspired!   Your visits and comments are always a joy and always appreciated!   And if you leave a comment, I’ll know you were here and should be able to find you!

Kate

All Wrapped Up

 Sparkles Christmas Challenge 183 has just gone live and Sue has chosen Gifts as our theme for May!

This die (Sizzix Gift 2) is an oldie but a goodie!  It's one of those old thick original Sizzix dies and it cuts just the one piece - gift + bow!  However, as I wanted the bow to really stand out against the present, I cut it once from patterned paper and twice more from red cardstock, then snipped away the gift part from the bow part on the red die cuts, stacked them and laid them over the patterned paper die cut.  Then I added some glossy accents so the bow would shine.

Sentiment is also an oldie but a goodie too - Waltzing Mouse Stamps Compliments of the Season.

I decorated the inside and the envelope with a stamped image of a wrapped gift (Love2Craft)!

Don't forget to check out all the great Gift Inspiration on the Sparkles Christmas Challenges Blog and I look forward to seeing your creations in the gallery!

I am grateful for and would like to enter the following challenges:

MLCCB#68 - anything Christmas goes;

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - anything goes;

The Outlawz May Christmas Challenge - anything Christmas goes;

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you go away a little inspired!  Your visits and comments are always a joy and always appreciated!  And if you leave a comment, I’ll know you were here and how to find you!

Kate 

Sunset Collage

 Challenge #307 at Time Out has just gone live and this fortnight we have a

Photo Inspiration Challenge

Our lovely team member Deepti shared this photo with us of her trip to Durres Albania last Summer - here's a closer look!

Challenge 312 is being sponsored by Doodlebugs and they are very kindly offering our top pick as chosen by the design team a $25 store credit!

The Top Pick will also be invited to join Time Out as a guest designer in a future challenge and speaking of guest designers, our guest designer this fortnight is Fran Wing of FranMadeinOregon - our winner from Challenge #307!

You can also see how Fran was inspired by our photo as well as my talented team mates over on the Time Out Blog!  I do hope you can take some Time Out and come play cards with us this fortnight!

I took this opportunity to pull out these Waffle Flower Postage Collage dies and Waffle Flower Postage Collage Block Dies.  I had a hard time finding a European distributor for Waffle Flower but finally found a distributor in Germany (no English on the site but thankfully I know enough German to get by and Google translate helps).  You lucky USA people don't have that problem as our wonderful sponsor this challenge stocks most of the top brands - including Waffle Flower!

  Eventually I hope to buy some of the matching stamp sets to go with these dies but for now I "made do" with some wonderful images from an old WMS stamp sets (My Island and North Shore).  I also added some die-cut seagulls (Frantic Stamper) which I suspect may also be NBUS (found them when I was trawling through my nautical stash)!

To create the sunset backgrounds, I blended several Distress Inks on a large white background and used the Blocks die to selectively cut out the images.  then popped them back into the negative as a jig and stamped them with various images!   Then added the blocks to a Collage background.

I am grateful for and would like to enter the following challenges

NBUS Challenge #85 - NBUS Postage Collage dies and Seagulls;

Traumfabrik Challenge #149 - Code 3 (Use at least 3 colours);

Shopping Our Stash SOS572 - Up, Up and Away (Things you would find in the sky);

Make My Monday Challenge #276 - Birds and or Eggs;

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes;

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you go away a little inspired!  Your visits and comments are always a joy and always appreciated!  And if you leave a comment, I’ll know you were here and how to find you!

Kate