Calendar Challenge Week 3

March's page for the Craft Barn Calendar Challenge has to have some green, yellow and white. This week the DT on the Craft Barn blog have been highlighting the use of oil pastels. I bought some of these a while ago so was interested to see how the DT had used them. I was particularily keen to try using them with Sansodor as Jane has done here. My base card is  pearlescent Bazzill in a creamy yellow colour embossed with a Cuttlebug paisley folder. I coloured the Hero Arts tulip stamp with Whisper markers in green yellow & orange and spritzed with water. I stamped off the first image onto scrap paper, sprayed again and used the second image. I then spritzed a gold shimmer spray over the image which is giving a slightly blotchy appearance to the tulips. The mat behind the image and the strip behind the calendar is made of 3 different green oil pastels scribbled diagonally and then rubbed with Sansodor. This year I am planning on binding my calendar with my Bind-It-All so I am leaving a 2cm  allowance at the top.

LIM 89

Thanks to everyone who commented on my entry last week. Hopefully I'll be able to visit more of you this week. The one layer challenge on the Less Is More blog is wings. All the stamps I've used are by Katzelkraft and were stamped with Stazon stone grey. The images were coloured with Coloursoft pencils and Sansodor.
Edited to add - my duh moment - I know my bird is meant to be a hummingbird but for some reason I decided to give it a kingfisher's colours!

Katzelkraft Card of the Week

This week we had to take inspiration from a Dior perfume advert (see below) with the added requirement of using layered papers. Being in autumn/winter mode at the moment I found it really hard to focus on spring colours but if it doesn't require some use of the little grey cells then it isn't really a challenge is it? I finally came up with the above card. The green BG is embossed with a Cuttlebug bloom dots folder to which I added some punched retro flowers and gems. The Suzy Blu image was stamped with Brilliance pearlescent beige and cut out. I then restamped parts of the stamp on various other paper/card and pieced the image together. The legs, skirt and collar were stamped with Impress cherry pink on pink card. The top was stamped on Crafty Individuals patterned paper. I cut out a hat shape from pink card and stamped it with a patterned stamp and gave her a pink belt. I have a Memory Box die for making rolled roses but it was too big so I punched out a small circle from pink card, cut out a spiral shape from it and rolled it into a rose. I sponged some cherry pink ink onto the edges of the rose for shading. The text is by Katzelkraft.

LIM 88 Take 2

My 2nd entry for this week's Less Is More Challenge is a quick card using Tim Holtz's hanging sign Sizzix die. I have glued the post and left the sign hanging free from it's jump rings. The number font is Sizzix Retro Metro and the little dingbats are cut from a Cuttlebug typewriter alphabet die.

Calendar Challenge Week 2

Bright colours are required on this week's Craft Barn Calendar Challenge. February is usually a grey and dismal month so I'm sure some brightness will be just perfect for a February calendar page. I wanted to give a nod to Valentines Day but I didn't want that as my main theme (I'm getting too old for all that stuff!). This Crafty Individuals stamp fitted my requirements with a few hearts in the background. The page background uses the Stazon technique (basically rubbing a few Stazon colours randomly on the page). I used mustard, azure and blazing red over a Cornish Heritage Farms stamp. I highlighted some parts with a white pen - I have a Sakura white pen, an Inkessentials white pen and a Uni Posca white marker pen but I never seem to get the results I want from them. The Uni Posca is the best but I need to get a thinner version so that I can add detail more accurately. I left the image and month tab plain white because I wanted a contrast to the bright colours and it also helps pick up the white in the BG. So that's it for today  - a welcome touch of brightness on this wet and miserable day.

LIM 88

Apologies for the blurry pic. I have not had a chance to take part in the Less Is More Challenge for a few weeks. This week's challenge is 'Silver'. As I haven't got around to making a single Christmas card yet I thought this was the perfect opportunity to make a start. Because of the various demands of Royal Mail I make thin cards for the UK, normal cards for India (the local postage is relatively cheap) and small, light cards for overseas. The card above falls into the last category. I bought this Marianne die in Holland this summer and cut it out from silver card. I made a small mask and used a splatter stamp with dusty concord DI in opposite corners. A bow finished off the card. Quick & simple which is just what I need for the stack of cards I have to make.

Katzelkraft Card of the Week

This week's card is a sketch using at least 1 Katzelkraft stamp. I used Crafty Individuals paper for the background, a TH lace border die and swiss dots embossed card. The butterfly and text are both by Katzelkraft and stamped with Stazon rusty brown.