Marianne's cards 'n stuff

Sunday, 9 October 2016

Merry in pink and in rainbow colours

I've been spending lots of time in my craft room this weekend and managed to finish and create a bunch of cards. Yay! Many of them were inspired by the challenges that were posted last weekend at the Winnie & Walter blog in honour of World Card Making Day.

First up, I have two Christmas cards to share. The first one features the poinsettia from the W&W stamp set In bloom: Elsa's flora and the Merry die by W&W.

I started this card a while back, but finally managed to finish it this weekend, just in time for this fortnight's challenge at Jingle Belles. As always in October, they are hosting a PINK challenge.

In their own words:

Woohoo! It's time for our favorite prompt of the year, Pink Christmas! If you've ever hung out with us in October, you already know the drill, and there's an FAQ type post just above this one, but basically: each year in October, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Stephanie and Lauren host a challenge where we ask everyone to make holiday cards that are, (as the title suggests, lol) *PINK*... and then we each donate $2 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for each card that gets linked up.

The card itself was inspired by Lydia's card for the Winnie & Walter Rerun No.14 challenge. You can view her card here.

I added a little glitter glue for some addition sparkle.

I'm linking up this card up at:

Jingle Belles - PINK Christmas

W&W - CASE with Lydia

W&W - Background building with Shay

The Flower Challenge - 1 Anything goes

(this is a brand-new challenge that is all about flowers)

My second card features rainbow party hats turned Christmas trees from the Ring in the Celebration set by W&W (part of one of the earlier Stamp of Approval collections). The sentiment is from the Merry Everything set by Simon Says Stamp.

I'm linking up this card at:

W&W - Rainbow colours with Gayatri

W&W - Stretch your stamps with Kelly

W&W - CAS with Kate

Virginia's View - 24 Focal point

I'm also linking up my card at

W&W Rerun No. 15 - It's a wonderful Pennant. After seeing Kelly's challenge prompt last weekend, I thought it would be fun to use the party hat as a Christmas tree and then later this week I saw Gayatri's card for the new Rerun challenge. So fun!

Friday, 7 October 2016

Christmas in turquoise and lilac

Less is More was having a fun colour challenge this week, namely turquoise & lilac. Since I love these colours, I had no excuse but to play along. In addition, my Stamp of Approval box arrived on Wednesday, and I could not wait to ink up some of the stamps of this holiday collection, called Candy Cane Lane. So here goes.

I heat-embossed the Merry sentiment and several of the tiny snowflakes and stars from the Hip Holiday set in Silver pearl embossing powder (Ranger) onto some watercolour cardstock (Crafter's Companion) and then used my Winsor & Newton watercolour paints to add colour to my background. To finish off, I added a few clear sequins (SSS) and mounted my panel onto a side folding A2 sized card from Fog cardstock (SSS).

Challenges:
LIM - 296 Colour: turquoise & lilac
ATCAS - Watercolour
CAS on Sunday - 93 Heat embossing
HLS October Christmas challenge - Embossing
Virginia's View challenge - 24 Focal point

Saturday, 1 October 2016

Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop

On the very first last day of the hop I finally managed to create a card for the 2016 Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop, using some of the supplies that I bought earlier today.

Earlier this week I discovered (after more than 7 years) there is actually a shop in Heraklion that sells scrapbooking supplies and some other craft supplies, and this afternoon my husband and I went to check it out. It was amazing to be in a brick and mortar craft store here on the island of Crete. It may not have a big selection of stamping stuff, but I was really happy to find gilding flakes and Viva Inka gold, the latter of which I used on my card today.

I had fun rubbing Inka gold in copper and antique gold onto some Neenah cardstock using a blending tool and then adding a few coppery streaks to the gold using a piece of paper towel. I die cut the coffee cup (Simon Says Stamp, NBUS) from a part of my panel that had both the copper and the gold. The label (CAS-ual Fridays) was cut from a snippet of water colour cardstock that I had used to dab up the Inka gold that was left on my craftsheet. I had spritzed some water onto it to clean it up and then thought I might just as well try to put it to good use.

The background panel had been created several weeks ago, using distress inks and Clarity brushes onto watercolour cardstock. Before mounting it to my card base, I spritzed some water onto it and dabbed with a paper towel.

The sentiment is from a STAMPlorations set (Literary Caffeine-ations, designed by Becca Cruger) that I purchased last month. To finish off, I added a piece of twine and a few (coffee) brown sequins.

Love the soft sheen of the Inka gold. Hope you can see it in the close-up below.