Summer Card Camp Week 4, part 2

Here's an ATC I made for the colour challenge this week at Summer Card Camp. I thought it would be fun to try an ATC using a piece of background paper I made. I started with a piece of Heather's 130 lb cardstock and wanted to try my new stamps from Crafty Individuals that I won with the Gothic Arch challenge (thank you!). I stamped one of the flowers in white paint and let it dry. Then, I brayered on shades of fluid chalk ink (Colorbox), in the challenge colours. I think I used French Blue, Ice Blue, Lime Pastel, and Ice Jade. Then, stamped on more floral motifs with Deep Lagoon. Set aside, made yesterdays card, and came back to it tonight. I used the floral motif tree and embossed in white, adding colour with Tombows and detail with seed beads. (These were glued on as after thoughts, but realistically I was never going to sew them on.) The bottom is some grass punched with the Martha Stewart grass punch, and the words are clipped from a Darkroom Door wordstrip. I also accented parts of the tree image with a Sakura glaze pen. The image was whiter until I sponged over some Deep Lagoon chalk ink. Note to self - this stuff does not completely rub off white embossing powder. Next time I'll use dye ink for that little step. I matted the piece on some black and felt done. I think I wish the tree were a bit whiter, but I am not going to start from scratch all over again. I like it well enough. I need to get to bed - I have an important meeting to go to tomorrow and will need my wits about me. Speaking of work, I am really enjoying my new job. It's completely different, which is lots of fun, and I am using so many things I learned in the other job over the past ten years. I do miss the great people where I used to work, but I am getting to know some people at the new place, so that's good. The main thing about the new place is my "international" keyboard. The punctuation is all in weird spots and the shortcut functions are in different places, so my touch typing is really getting messed up. It's the little things that drive you crazy, isn't it! You never know how much you use an apostrophe until it is in an awkward spot (right right finger, lower row + shift). It's easier to type the yen symbol on my new keyboard than the apostrophe.

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Summer Card Camp Week 4

According to the descriptions, this week's colours include a soft denim-y blue, so I chose this cardbase (Memory Box) and punched out a large number of small flowers from white linen paper. I glued them down into a rectangular area and popped up the top layer of flowers. To bring in the other colours of the colour scheme, I added centres using stickles and dimensional pearls in lime green, blue and teal. The sentiment (A Muse) finishes off the card. Simple!

Summer Card Camp Week 3

Here's the colour combination for this week's project at Summer Card Camp. I was stuck in Christmas theme cards, but couldn't bring myself to do a Christmas card. It's July!

Speaking of July, we have started getting our veggie box from a local farm (Foster's Farm). We've been enjoying the most delicious fresh vegetables. Tonight was beet greens, sauteed in flavoured butter I had in the freezer thanks to Jamie Oliver. The greens were delicious and I swear you feel healthier just cutting them up, inhaling the antioxidants and enjoying the emerald green leaves and ruby stems.

Back to the card. Here I started with a scrap of off white paper, stamped the quote (Fred Mullett) and embossed it in Bavarian Bronze (metallic brown). I thought I would incorporate the stone and butterfly imagery from this poem and stamped my Stampotique stone (large and small sides) here and there in Lake Mist. I antiqued the edges a bit with distress ink and matted it on some brown card and some medium brown Bazzill. The card base is 3 1/4" x 6 1/2" and stamped with a butterfly and the word Papillon (both Quietfire Designs). I used a bit of fancy Japanese paper for red accent behind. More red elements are the red eyelets (I knew they would eventually find a home on a project!), some crochet cotton and a button. The button was a late-game addition, added on this morning before I went to work. This description makes it sound like the card came together in a hurry and part of some master plan, but really it came together like all the others, trial and error, and hemming and hawing, trying different things. I like how the butterflies came out - stamped in Toffee versafine, and the lovely "papillon" from QF, hand lettered by the owner, Suzanne Cannon. A long time ago I dabbled in calligraphy and have always loved it. As for that poem, well, it came in a lovely parcel of Fred Mullett stamps, as the English translation to the Japanese calligraphy stamp I bought. I presume someone more cultured than me would be able to plumb the depths of that poem, but for me it was the ideal shape for this card, and had the words "stone" and "butterfly". More opportunistic than cultured, granted. Still, maybe one of my readers will enlighten me. In the meantime, I'm pleased with how this turned out even if I don't have the faintest idea who I'd give it to.

Well, off to enjoy an episode or two of Game of Thrones with hubby. Sean Bean....now there's a reason to pay for extended cable!

Summer Card Camp Week 2

Hello! Here's my card for Summer Card Camp, Week 2, featuring this week's colour combination (pale yellow, rusty orange, poppy, lime, grass green). I'm also using this card for this week's Bellarific Friday at Stamping Bella. I placed the three daisy stamps on an acrylic block and stamped them down the length of a 3"x6 1/2" piece of Bella's Bestest paper. I chose Copics in this scheme, or as close as I could get. I don't have a juicy yellow green like that - all mine are a bit greyer. I love that juicy lime colour - you can almost smell the lime zest! Anyway, I coloured it and then had to figure out the layout, which has to include ribbon for this week's Bellarific challenge. You know me and ribbon (love-hate releationship - I love ribbon, it hates me). Anyway, I finished off the card by matting onto some So saffron (SU) and Poppy Parade (SU) in an oblong card. I embellished the flowers with matching stickles (lime green, yellow, copper, Christmas red) so they're quite sparkly in real life.

NSR: Two notable family achievements today: DD2 (age 5) rode her two-wheeler today for the first time, no one holding on, no training wheels, just free-wheeling down the street and pleased as Punch. She must have gone up and down the street a dozen times (Hubby's going to be sore tomorrow - jogged alongside). Second notable achievement, different scale, different continent, different generation. Grandpa is due to reach the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro at sunrise, which is some time in the middle of the night tonight my time (see earlier post on baffling nature of timezones). He was going to try to send a text, but wasn't sure whether it would work. Part of me hopes that at least mountain tops are unsullied by digital traffic. But part of me hopes it works. Apparently he's having a great time and really enjoying himself.

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Summer Card Camp Week 1

Hello!

As you can see by the image below, I'm doing the summer card camp I saw advertised on Jennifer McGuire's blog (link in sidebar). This week's colour challenge is shown below and was a real stretch for me, as I don't normally go for such bright colours. But that's what challenges are all about - stretching creativity.















Here's the card I made, with a stamped image on Heather's 130 lb cardstock. I will have to check where the image is from, but I got it at Heather's Stamping Haven.


I coloured it with Copics, keeping to the scheme, and added some pencil crayon for depth, and stickles for sparkle. The orange piece is embossed, and the sentiment (Stampin' Up) is punched with an SU punch and accented with the perfect Swarovski crystals - they are pink or purple or orange depending on how you look at them. The card base is rich razzleberry and stamped with a dotty flourish (Impress Rubber Stamps).


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