W&W belated 2nd birthday bash

Winnie&Walter are celebrating their second birthday this month with a huge giveaway and 10 fun challenges. Since I had quite a bit of play time this week, I let myself be inspired to play along and once I got started, the inspiration kept flowing. Such a rare and wonderful feeling for me, since normally my crafting sessions are short and far between. But maybe I should simply loosen up and go with the flow.

For my first two cards, I was inspired by Taheerah's inpiration image challenge, but I combined it with elements from several other challenges. After seeing the floor covering in the inspiration image and Taheerah's use of the yet to be released stencil, I just had to play along using this exact same stencil, which was included in Catherine Pooler's first Stamp of Approval collection (the Friend collection).

On the first card, I used Hero Arts soft granite ink and the Ranger mini blending tool to apply the ink onto a soft stone cardbase (Papertrey Ink). For the flower panel, I heat-embossed the flower image from the W&W In Bloom: Anna's Flora set in white embossing powder (SSS) and then applied a heavy coat of distress inks (Dusty concord and Chipped sapphire) and then bleached out the flower image using a water brush. After that, I dropped in a little Picked raspberry. You can find a detailed explanation on this technique, including a video, on Jennifer McGuire's blog.

I cut the strip right up to the flower and then fussy cut around the top and bottom of the flower. I finished my design off with two small strips of lime green cardstock, a heat-embossed sentiment (W&W Winter Woodland and The Big, the Bold and the Merry), and a few sequins. And clear Wink of Stella on the flower of course.

I really liked how the flower turned out, but I really wanted to make a soft pink version to mimick the decorative element on the table in the inspiration image.

Therefore I decided to make a second version, this time using Memento Smoke blue ink for the background and Memento Elderberry for the narrow panel. I stamped the flower image onto a separate piece of cardstock and used softer pinks this time around. The sentiment (from the EH Mondo Magnolia set) was heat-embossed in Ranger silver pearl embossing powder to tie in with the smoky blue background. As in the first card, I used strips of lime green cardstock, clear Wink of Stella and a few sequins as a finishing touch.

W&W - Taheerah's inspiration challenge

W&W - Lydia's floral challenge

W&W - Gayatri's background challenge

I'm also entering my cards into the following challenge:

Seize the Birthday - no toppings for me

Stamping Sensations - Anything goes

Kathy's 4th 30 day colouring challenge

Magnolia

So happy I managed to create a few cards this week. I had taken the week off because my husband was scheduled for surgery, but surgery has been postponed for at least two weeks until his condition is better. So instead of running to and from the hospital, I could stay at home and play (and taking some rest now that I'm fighting a cold).

Anyway, I had a little play with my new Zig brush markers onto some Bristol smooth cardstock. Some people seem to like this combination, but of course this cs does not take water as well as watercolour cardstock. I stamped the Mondo Magnolia stamp (Essentials by EH) twice and played around to see how the Zig markers worked. The first image did not turn out the way I wanted (too much colour, too little water) but the second one turned out quite nicely. So I cut out a square containing the part I did like (using a SSS stitch rectange die) and matted that onto a square of black cs. I then used my MISTI to stamp the image again onto my card base making sure to line it up with the image on my square. To finish off, I cut the MFT hello die three times from black cardstock and adhered them together using Multi medium matte. And of course I could not resist adding a little clear Wink of Stella.

Challenges:

Kathy Racoosin's 4th 30 Day Colouring Challenge

ATCAS - 81 Bloom

Allsorts - 349 Clean and Simple

Penny Black and More - Anything goes with a stamp and a die

Just saying hello

Such an appropriate title for my first post of 2016. I had intended to create and post at least one Christmas card per week, but sometimes life gets in the way.

On the first Sunday of the year, my husband was hit by an infection and this hit him extra hard because of his chemotherapy. The last treatment was supposed to take place last week but was postponed because my husband was too weak and yesterday it was decided to call it off altogether. So now he can concentrate on getting his strength back and regaining some weight. What he wants most of all right now is to be able to start walking the dog again, something I've been doing for the past couple of weeks.

I treated myself to the Altenew watercolouring class and have been playing around to create a few background panels, and last night I actually managed to finish a card. Yay!

I started by creating a wash of colour using Altenew inks (the first red I used was a trifle too pink to my liking so I added some darker red at the top) onto a panel of watercolour cardstock (Crafter's Companion). I then masked and stamped the flower and leaf images from Altenew's Henna Elements in Versamark onto a piece of vellum and heat embossed using white embossing powder (Simon Says Stamp) and fussy cut the image. I also heat embossed the sentiment from Altenew's Painted Butterflies in white onto a piece of black cardstock. I popped up the sentiment strip using foam tape and used this and a few drops of multi medium matte to adhere my flowers to the trimmed watercolour panel. I adhered my panel to a top folding card made from black cardstock (Crafter's Companion). To finish things off, I added a little shimmer to the black strip using clear Wink of Stella and adhered a few clear sequins (Pretty Pink Posh and Simon Says Stamp).

My card also fits the new theme at CASology, where this week's cue card is 'CLEAR'

And I'm just in time to link up to the ombre challenge at Simon Says Stamp.