Paper towel background

Hello everyone. I have had a few busy days crafting to create a few cards for some favourite challenges.

At CAS Mix Up, this month's challenge was to use paper towel. When I was trying to do some organising in the craft room, I found a few saturated paper towels from earlier projects. I first tried transferring some ink onto a card panel, but the colours were too soft to work as a background for my die cut wild flower frame, so I decided to use the paper towel instead. This has the added advantage of providing some texture as well. I sandwiched the paper towel between my flower frame and a square of white cardstock, trimmed off the paper towel and foam-mounted my panel onto a soft grey card to which I had added some score lines. To finish off, I stamped the sentiment in Versafine onyx black, applied a little shimmer to my black frame using a SN sparkle pen and adhered a few gems.

I'm playing at:

CAS Mix Up - Stamping, paper towel background +

die cutting, scoring, shimmer, gems

SSS Wednesday - CAS

HLS Anything goes with dies

Twofer shells

Now that I'm finally feeling more crafty again (at the end of my 3-week break from work), I'm trying hard to finish up a few cards for some of my favourite challenges.

I had several ideas for this month's Twofer Card Challenge, which has a nautical theme. In the end, I decided to finish up this pair first, so that I did have something to show for.

I started my first card by stamping the shells from my Apple Blossom set onto a panel of Neenah desert storm and heat embossing it in white (SSS). The sentiment was heat embossed onto a scrap of vellum. To make the sentiment stand out from the background, I blended DOI on the back of the vellum and also added some water splatters to give it a more weathered look (which does not really show up in the photograph). Before adhering the sentiment strip using glue dots behind the text and a thin strip of double-sided tape at the right-hand side, I coloured in the shells using a Spectrum Noir clear shimmer pen. I also added a few splatters. To add a bit more interest, I then added some 'shading' using a gold Wink of Stella shimmer pen.

For my second card, I took one of the shell stamps to create a circle of yummie ice-creams. I stamped them in Archival black ink and coloured them in using Tombow markers and a watercolour brush. The sentiment is from an old Stampendous sentiment set.

My friendship card is also playing at:

ATSM - #355 Photo inspiration 

(I focused on the sand and the shells)

My ice cream card is also playing at:

SSS Wednesday - CAS

Colour Crazy - #33 AG colouring

HLS Watercolour - AG

MFT Camp Create - days 1 and 2

Hello everyone! It seems I'm finally getting around to enjoying some play time in my craft room again. I have managed to create a few cards for the current Camp Create event at the MFT blog.

First up, I have a card for Day 1 featuring inlaid die cutting.

Afterr masking off a panel and creating a subtle sky background using an MFT cloud stencil, I used the MFT balloon shaker dies and MFT papers to create my inlaid balloons and then added the die cut Hello (Wplus9) on top and foam mounted my panel to my card base.

I'm also linking up this card at:

HLS Anything goes with dies

Day 2 was about Magnificant Masking, and just like Stephanie, I created two cards using both the inside and outside masks that I had created using the MFT Christmas tree die and an older background stamp by Hero Arts (Magical Background). I love how the combination of simple masking and emboss resist gives a whole new look to your background stamps.

I'm also linking up my Christmas cards at:

SSS Wednesday - Clean and simple

HLS Christmas - Anything goes

ABNH - Stretch your stamps

CCAYR - Add a tree