Papertrey Ink Christmas card

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to Candyly and East Shores Designs who are new followers this week.

We were unable to watch the Olympic Games opening ceremony on Friday as we had something else on so we had a little party at home last night and watched a recorded version. I absolutely loved it and now think that Danny Boyle is a genius. If you are into sport I wish you a wonderful couple of weeks indulging yourself.

This morning I slipped over to my craft desk to make a card for the LIM challenge which this week is to use the following sketch



I decided to make a Christmas card with a little bird who is not from a Christmas set, but the flowers on his body reminded me of poinsettias.

I gave him a party hat and some notes to have him sing a Christmas Carol! I'm still struggling with the LIM approach which is not to use lots of embellishments and leave lots of white space, but I hope practise will help.

I'm also entering this into the Cardcrafter's Circle challenge for a CAS card

Thanks for looking.

Hugs

Carol x

Papertrey Ink birthday card

Hi again,

Two posts in one day???? It's because I loved the PTI inspiration photo so much, I was inspired to try another card using those colours.

click to enlarge

For this one I used Botanical Silhouettes and the Half and Half die and sentiments. I wanted to mat the half and half die shape so I cut the mat in half and stuck it behind the focal panel. This left a gap at the bottom which I covered with that gorgeous button.

I cannot remember using berry sorbet before but I've discovered I love it and it will certainly be using it again. Now I'm off to start hopping myself.

Hugs

Carol x

Papertrey Ink birthday card

Hello everyone,

The sun is shining, the garden is looking  lush with blooms and that is my attempt at a cue for this month's PTI Blog Hop

The task this month was to use this gorgeous inspiration picture

and this is what I came up with.

I used a harvest gold base panel and stamped it with a Little Argyle in versamark before inking the edges with some harvest gold and summer sunrise ink. The leaves are in simply chartreuse, cut from a Marianne Creatables die, and the flower is from flower fusion 3 and was cut and stamped in different colours. I used a tiny flower tag in the corner to extend the sentiment.

Thanks for looking and enjoy the hop!

Hugs

Carol x

New baby card

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to Wanda who is a new follower this week.

Well I had a really busy day yesterday with a retirement party in the afternoon and friends round for dinner in the evening so I didn't have time to get in early with the LIM challenge, or follow the Papertrey Ink Stamp a faire day, but I have applied my bottom to the seat this morning and want to do some catch up. The on line Stretch your stamps class ends tomorrow and I still have a lot of homework to do so I decided to combine a couple of things to come up with this card. Day 3 of the class was on using alphabet stamps and Day 5 was using sentiment stamps more creatively. The LIM challenge this week is to use sewing on a card and I tried to make my baby card cover all of this.

I used alphabet stamps for the word 'baby', and selectively stamped one word from a longer sentiment for the 'little' and used 'sweet' from another set. I quite like this little grouping and will try to do more of this. I added a strip of patterned card to bottom of the card with my sewing machine.

Well I'm off to look at the PTI site now for all that I missed yesterday, and have a browse of all the wonderful entries you find on the LIM blog.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs
Carol x

Papertrey Ink male birthday card

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to Kathleen who is a new follower this week. I've been trying to catch up with the homework for the Stretch your stamps class but I played hooky yesterday and we went over to the Wirral to visit the Lady Lever art gallery at Port Sunlight. It was my first visit to the gallery but it won't be my last. We went on a gallery highlights tour with a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide and I then spent a long time in their touring exhibition room which was displaying works by Eleanor Fortescue- Brickdale, an artist  I had never heard of before. She was one of the last Pre Raphaelite painters and it was so good to see a whole exhibition dedicated a a woman artist for a change. Eleanor also illustrated books and had plates in  Palgrave's Golden Treasury which I remember looking a as a child, and I came over all nostalgic about the beautiful illustrations we used to get in books but are so rare now.

We had a bonus extra day on the class on Saturday, teaching about using dies with stamps on our cards. I came up with this card

click to enlarge

The star was cut out of the front of the card, over the fold, and then another one was cut and stamped to pop through the aperture. I really struggle with cards for men but I decided to go for more masculine colours on this one in the hope it would do for a man, but then I couldn't resist adding a little glitter to the star and the purple strip of paper!

Thanks for looking.

Hugs
Carol x

Papertrey Ink thank you card

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a good weekend and enjoying the sunshine if you have it. I am behind with my 'Stretch your stamps' homework but hope to catch up over the next few days. I'm having a break today to play along with the current challenge over at Less is More. Chrissie and Mandi have asked us to do the dreaded one layer card this week and use the number 3 in some way. Are you enjoying the strawberry season? I have been eating them 'til they are coming out of my ears this year. It seems to have been an exceptional year for bumper crops and the flavour has been wonderful. When I was browsing my stamps to find something for this challenge, I came across my strawberry stamp and came up with this:-

I kept it very simple and used 3 strawberries and three colours on the card before framing it with an embossed rectangle to add some texture. Do pop over and see all the inspiration on the LIM blog.

Thanks for looking.

Hugs

Carol x

Papertrey Ink Christmas card

Hello everyone and welcome to a lovely sunny day in my part of the woods. I should have spent more time outdoors enjoying it but I was tempted inside to follow Day 2 of the 'Stretch your stamps' class. They are actually on Day 3 but as usual, I am behind the times.

Today Amber showed how to get more from your stamps by stamping off edges to give a different look. I came up with this card:-

click to enlarge

I got the idea for the card because I have a crackle background stamp that reminds me of cracked ice so I  thought snowflakes would be a good match for it. I stamped off some of the ink before stamping the background and made a couple of mats for the centre of the card. I cut 4 circles with a 1.5 inch punch and stamped different snowflakes going off each circle. I added a couple of shades of ink onto each circle and glued them down with each snowflake facing a different direction. A few gems and a sentiment finished it off. 

Thanks for looking.

Hugs
Carol x

Papertrey Ink birthday card

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to Jill who is a new follower this week. As I mentioned yesterday, I have signed up for the on line card class 'Stretch your Stamps' and the first day was about using background stamps in a variety of ways. I was inspired by Lisa Carroll to come up with this card:-

I don't have many large background stamps so I used  PTI A Little Argyle as a border,  embossed it in white and then used Copics to randomly colour in some of the diamonds. Its a little difficult to see in this picture but I also used a background stamp on the sentiment panel using Versamark ink.

It was a great start to the course and I look forward to learning lots of new things over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs

Carol x

Papertrey Ink Christmas card

Hello everyone and a very warm welcome to Groovy Grommit and Sadilla who are new followers this week. Gosh this weekend whizzed by and I can't believe its Monday already. Our choir was singing at the Buxton Festival on Saturday, and yesterday we were up near Burnley helping out some friends who had their garden open to visitors for the National Garden Scheme. I wouldn't like to count how many cups of tea and cream scones I served up in the day, but the visitors all seemed happy with their time in the beautiful garden despite a few rain showers here and there.  The worst thing for me was that it coincided with the Wimbledon men's final with the first British man in the final for 74 years. And I missed it!!! Even though Andy Murray lost, I'm told that he played very well and I have the match recorded so I will still get to watch it. It won't be the same though....

The busy weekend also meant that I had to wait until this morning to join in the new challenge over at Less is More. This week was a colour challenge and Chrissie and Mandi asked us to use gold on a card. I didn't have any gold ink for stamping and my gold embossing powder is is called 'old gold' and when I tried it one white card it didn't look too good so I opted to make a black card :-

I die cut and stamped the tree in versamark ink and used gold perfect pearls over the top. This looked too shiny and didn't match the embossing powder I used for the sentiment so I rubbed the perfect pearls with paper towel to dull it a little and give a more distressed look. I stamped and embossed the candle baubles and raised them on foam to give a little dimension. I'm not sure that I like this one - a black Christmas card doesn't seem very festive somehow!

I'm starting a new on line stamping class today so I may be back more often in the next couple of weeks to share some of the things we make.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs

Carol x