A Jolly Elf

A very quick card made for the Day of the Month Club Challenge #53 - National Simplicity Day.  I left lots of white space one element, a simple stamped sentiment and a simple colour combination of red, black and white.

I finally get around to using this NBUS die I ordered almost 18 months ago from Charlie & Paulchen - Wichtelreihe (Row of Pixies).  I was going through my sentiment stamps recently in the hopes of finding my mojo and found this lovely bold sentiment from WMS 'Tis the Season and thought it was perfect for this jolly little chap to use as a springboard!  Once I'd coloured him with alcohol markers and assembled him, I added glossy accents to his nose to make it bulbous and added glossy accents and glitter to the bobble on his hat.

There wasn't a lot to this card but I did use a snippet of white left over from a previous project to cut the elf so I'd also like to enter Challenge #459 at the Snippets Playground - the main reason I made my CAS card a Christmas one!

I'd also like to enter Merry Little Christmas Challenge #51 - Anything Christms Goes;

The 12 Months of Christmas Challenge #102 - Anything Christms Goes;

My Time to Craft Christmas #65 - Cute Christmas;

Christmas Kick Start Challenge #76

And also NBUS Challenge #52!

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

Blue Christmas

 

Challenge #144 has just gone live at The Holly and Ivy Challenge and now it's only 5 months to Christmas and I'm beginning to panic!  I've decided to go to Australia late October and as most of my cards are headed there, I need to have them finished before I go so I can take them with me!  And I won't have much time to create the rest of them when I get back either, so I really need to get cracking!  

I went through my stash of Christmas papers and found a 12x12 sheet of navy blue card stock with gold foiled snowflakes from which I was able to cut 4 panels.   I thought I'd make some quick spinner cards up but unfortunately this (unbranded) snowflake die was not a good choice - it's far too finicky plus there was a large hole in the middle which made made it very difficult to attach a magnet!  I did manage to plug that hole with a navy blue flat backed crystal that sparkles as it spins!  Seeing it finished, it does look magnificent but I will be using a different snowflake die for the other 3 other panels!

 Here it is in action!

I'd like to enter the following challenges

Sparkles Christmas Challenge #150 - include Gold;

Merry Little Christmas Challenge #51 - Anything Christmas Goes;

12 Months of Christmas Challenge #102 - Anything Christmas Goes;

Scrappy Mo's July Rudolph Challenge

Double D Challenges - Christmas in July;

Happy Little Stampers July Christmas Challenge - Anything Christmas Goes;

Little Red Wagon - Brrr.. It's Cold Over Here.

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

A Little Sparkly Unicorn

 Challenge #243 has just gone live over at Time Out Challenges and this fortnight we have a photo inspiration for you!

Lots of inspiration here and it was difficult to focus my attention until I spied the little unicorn on the second top shelf and used this charming set A Little Sparkle from Lawn Fawn.  I also used Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud Borders and cut one of the layers from pink vellum as a nod to the sheer pink curtain in the photo.

For extra sparkle, the unicorn's, horn, mane and tail were coated with glossy accents and sprinkled with glitter as well as the fairys' wings.  "SPARKLES" was cut from white glitter card stock and coloured with the same pink alcohol ink used on the unicorn and rainbow.

Here's another closer look at our inspiration photo!  How does it inspire you?  Are you ready to take some Time Out and join us?   Should you need more inspiration, my lovely and very talented team mates have plenty of inspiration and we're joined this challenge by Heather Heroldt as our special guest - why not drop by and say hi!

I'd like to thank our generous sponsor Lawn Fawn who are offering a $25 store credit to our Time Out Winner as chosen by the Design Team!  

I'd like to join NBUS Challenge #52 as the A Little Sparkle and Puffy Borders sets were NBUS.

The prompt for this week's Simon Says Wednesday Challenge is 4-legged friends.  I don't have a unicorn for a friend but I sure would like one!

I'd also like to enter the Fairy and the Unicorn Challenge since my card has both!

I'd also like to enter the Happy Little Stampers July Anything Goes with Dies Challenge!

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

Polka Dot Dress

Onefer:

This dress was inpired by Library Challenge #82 and it's ending soon.  For some weeks now I've been trying to find time to make up this party dress - but like my mother used to say, when you can't find time you have to make time!  Who needs sleep anyway?  

I love the Library Challenges - I love the inspiration a book title or cover photo might provide ... or the story itself if I've read it!

I haven't read this one but the cover and the title were enough to kick my mojo into gear and I just happened to eye a large piece of blue polka dot in my scraps from a previous project.

  

Some of you may recognize this dress - it was cut with one of the original Sizzix thick cut dies and must be getting close to 20 years old now!  It's actually on a dress making dummy but it's easy to trim off stand and you're left with this fabulous dress ... and the shoes!  I mean if you're going to have a fabulous dress, you've got to have a pair of matching shoes too - am I right!  There is a handbag too, but I always struggle to fit it on an A7 card front!

I love this cover plate die (Simon Says Stamp Bohemian Detail) because it adds a little background interest but I can still stamp a sentiment directly on the panel (before the detail cut is done).  The sentiment stamp is also very old - a no name mounted on a wooden block which I picked up in a bargain bin if my memory serves me right (which it rarely does these days I should point out)!  It still stamps well though (which worried me as I usually rely heavily on my stamping platform these days)!

The die also cuts pieces for the neckline and waistband and I thought I'd add a pop of colour!  The flip side of this DP has sunflowers so I guess that's where I got my inspiration to cut these in yellow ... and to add the sunflower corsage!  With the corsage, I thought it might work for a birthday or graduation - I know a few people who are graduating from high school this year!  This lovely teeny sunflower is from a recently acquired set called Garden Shed by Sophie Guilar (Sizzix Brand).  Amazon kindly suggested I might be interested in this die set on one of my recent visits - so nice of them to encourage me to buy new dies (like I need any help in that department)!  For this reason, I'd like to enter it in NBUS Challenge #52 (Darnell must be getting heartily sick of me over there but I've barely scratched the surface of things I haven't used)!

I'd also like to enter the As You Like It Challenge which asks Plain or Patterned Paper.  There's nothing like patterned paper for speeding up a project - whether it be for a background panel or for paper piecing a large die image as here!  

Challenge Up Your Life Challenge #160 also has a Patterned Paper Challenge!

And finally I'd like to enter the Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes with Dies Challenge!

Twofer :

This was a pretty quick A5 card made up over the weekend for a young woman just graduated from the European School and is off to follow her musical dream next September in London! If you want to know HOW talented she is, you can listen to two (so far) of her original songs on her YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChXrRlLvi1I1C3LiD7kZ9Tw) and Spotify - written, sung and played be her (did I mention she plays multiple instruments as well). 

I've known this young lady had talent since she sang a solo at her (and my youngest's) First Communion 9 years ago and it has been a privilege to watch her evolve as a performer!  She has a beautiful rich voice but mostly prefers to accompany our choir on the violin - if you listen to her singing you can only image how good she is on the violin!

I just figured out how to download a video her mother took of her Bac performance from Whatsapp and have added it here.  It's an ABBA song and the performance was A M A Z I N G!  Considering this is a live recording taken with her mother's phone, I can on;y imagine how good this girl is going to sound once she hits London and has access to the equipment at The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance!

Eva's favourite colour is green which is why the colour scheme if fairly monotonal!  This gorgeous butterfly (Memory Box Gypsy Butterfly) is meant to represent her beautiful self creating a melody as she flits back and forth on the treble stave - can you see the hidden channel in between the two highest lines on the stave?  Unfortunately it didn't spin as well as I would have liked which is why I didn't bother trying to take a video.  Plus I had very little time before I had to take it in and have all the choir members sign it on Sunday morning!  I could have used one of the more symmetrical butterflies die in my stash but this butterfly is sooo her - tall, elegant and commanding and it's NBUS as well!

I'd like to enter this card in the Triple B Challenge July Challenge!

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

Once Upon a Time

 

Challenge #242 at Time Out has just gone live and this fortnight it's an Inspired By Words Challenge with a quote from Albert Einstein.   You probably already know how an Inspired By Words challenge works but for those who may not be familiar with our challenges, it means you take the words from this quote we have featured and use them to inspire a creation!   You can use one word, multiple words or just the general idea of the quote and if it's not immediately obvious, please explain how you were inspired!  

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. 

If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” 

~ Albert Einstein

You might like to check out the Time Out Challenge Blog to see how my other team mates were inspired,  and this challenge we are joined by Kim Heggins of Cupcakes, Cards and Kim - I'm sure Kim would appreciate some comment love - don't we all!

No prize for guessing how I was inspired!  I am fortunate to live in a country with many castles - some in better condition than others.  Wikipedia says there are optimistically 130 castles in Luxembourg, but that a more realistic estimate is still over 100 - not bad for such a tiny country (just under 1000 square miles)!  After 25 years of living here, I never grow tired of the majestic splendour of the more famous and refurbished ones but even the ruined ones have their own sense of mystique about them! 

When I first saw this pretty, whimsical cottage (AALL Heart and Home), it immediately conjured up a fairy tale world!  I thought a clock might add some interest to the background (once upon a time and all that) and remembered I had this very ancient (and NBUS) Tim Holtz Stencil!  

I'm not great at colouring but fortunately, this brilliant stamp made it easy for me by shading the areas that fall in the shadow!   I stamped it first on the background, and then again on white paper, coloured this with a few shades of purple alcohol inks and fussy cut it out, ignoring the peripheral bits - that way  I didn't have to worry about cutting around those fiddly bits!  

I couldn't resist trailing Rapunzel's golden braid from the tower's window - this I had in mind from the moment I popped it into my shopping basket!  The braid should really have been a lot longer but it was late and I was going cross-eyed at this point!  However, it does almost reaches the ground, Prince Charming will just have to make a jump for it! 

The heart flowers in my garden were from another stamp in the set which I stamped along the base at different heights.  There is a sentiment included with the set - "live simply" but I opted for this text instead (Waltzing Mouse Half Pint Heroines) in keeping with the fairy tale theme and the inside includes another text from that set to complete the sentiment "and she was amazing".   

I were to do it again, I would definitely choose different colours for the stencilling and stamp the sentiment directly on the base panel.  And I'm not sure the patterned paper was a great idea either (although I did try plain white at the beginning and didn't like that either)!

AALL are sponsoring this challenge and have donated a $20 gift voucher to their store for our top pick (as chosen by our design team).  Our winner will also be asked to guest design with us in a future challenge.

I've used two NBUS items on this card - AALL Heart and Home Stamp set and the Tim Holtz stencil/mask - so I'd like to enter NBUS Challenge #52.

I'd also like to enter the July Stamping Sensations Challenge though not sure my little heart flowers qualify as summer flowers, so just the Anything Goes option!

I'd also like to enter the July We Love Stamping Challenge though again not sure my flowers qualify as  fabulous (though I think they're sweet) so just the Anything Goes Option!

I'd also like to enter the Crazy is our Fame July Stencil Challenge, though I'm not using their optional theme either!

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

Dove over Troubled Waters

Ready for some Summer Fun by the Water?  The theme for the July Challenge 613 The Avenue Create is 

Nautical

We want to see anything to do with the water - Boats Sand, Water, Beach ...

This was a card I recently made for an adult Baptism.  Since water is such a key element of a Baptism, I went with a DP that featured waves and a bible quote which referred to waves.  The Dove die is from a set of Framelits (unimaginately called 5pce birds but they're obviously doves) - this was the second largest in the set.  I hadn't tried this eclipse technique with a die image before, only with sentiments.  Once I had cut the dove from the background paper, I cut it twice from white card stock and stacked these under the patterned dove.  It still didn't stand out enough in my opinion, so I mounted it on foam tape.  This actually worked out well because I was able to put a floral sprig in the dove's mouth by tucking it under the beak (where there was no foam)!  The sprig was one of many lovely flowers in the Spellbinders Be Bold Blooms set and added a feminine touch to the card - it was for a young lady after all!

I would like to enter this card in the current As You Like It Challenge : Favourite - Plain or Patterned Papers.  I love patterned papers!!!  Some women have hundreds of pairs of shoes - my weakness is patterned papers!  The challenge for me is to actually use them rather than hoarde them!  

I would also like to enter  Card Concept Challenge #198 which has the following fabulous photo inspiration!

I'd also like to enter the following challenges

 Allsorts Challenge Week #735  - optional Summertime theme - despite spending the last 25 years in a land locked country, summertime still makes me think of the beach and waves I enjoyed at every opportunity during my teenage years! ;

 Make My Monday Challenge #203 - with a theme of On the Water;

Crafty Chicks Challenge #670 - Anything Goes;

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