Simply Oriental

In recognition of Chinese New Year on 3 February - it will be the year of the rabbit - this week's challenge on Daring Cardmakers is to produce something oriental or featuring a rabbit.

This is also for Stamp man 15 'oriental', Asian/Chinese New Year for My Sheri crafts 42 and Chinese new year - celebrate Asia for Sentimental Sundays (sorry the sentiment is tiny, but the love sentiment is there in Chinese and English text).

For this card I used a piece of textured paper from the DCWV Far East stack - I do love these papers, but haven't used any of them for quite some time, so I enjoyed making this card. Because the paper has so much already on it, it's not necessary to add much to it and it would detract from what's there already.

I used some PM oriental stamps that I bought a while ago and hadn't used up until now. I stamped The hanging lanterns on the left towards the top with tattered rose DI, which only just shows up, but is in keeping with the other pale pinky images already on the paper. I then stamped the tree in the bottom left corner and the symbol with the word love in the top right corner. The addition of a few coins finished the card.

I'm really tempted to add more, but it doesn't need it, so I'm leaving it as it is.



I'm also linking this for Flourishes timeless 102: add some kind of hardware (the coins)

white winter birthday

This is for this week's sketch on Anyone for Anya:


Because the card is mostly white it is difficult to get a photo - if I try and whiten it more then you can't see the snowflake embossing on the righthand side - unfortunately, it ends up with a blueish tinge, but you get the general idea and I assure you it's white irl.

I've used one of my favourite Greeting Farm Anya stamps, just using copics for hair, face and clothes, leaving the coat white and adding crystal ice stickles for the fur.

This is for:

Incy wincy 78: winter wonderland - but no Christmas cards
Stamp something: winter somethings
Die cut dreams Christmas 51: winter birthday
Drunken stampers 52: birthday bash
2 sisters 24: girls just wanna have fun
All that scraps Wednesday: let it snow
Fun with shapes and more 75: snow or ice (die cut snowflake stickers)
Cutie Sunday 129: white
Double Dutch 60: white wishes
Hodge podge 7: white on white
CCEE 1104: white on white
Wags n whiskers 46: white
Crafts and me 22: monochrome
Frosted designs fabulous Friday challenge: monochromatic
My time to craft 125: emboss, emboss, emboss - dry
Totally Gorjuss 65: as you like it
Penny's 45: anything goes
Woodware 11: anything goes
Let's ink it up 8: anything goes
Shabby tea room 46: winter wonderland - photo inspiration:

Thinking inking

It's the end of the month once again and time to get the next circle journal into the post tomorrow for the group on BF forum. This time I had the pleasure of contributing ny DLO to Hels' 'thinking inking' CJ - an opportunity to get inky fingers (yes, they are very inky!).

I used a couple of text stamps from the Tattered Angels rockin' renaissance that I received as part of a prize - you can see them here. I also used some printed flowers Hero Arts stamps - stamping on to acetate and then using alcohol inks on the back - a mixture of stream, red pepper and wild plum, although very little of the red pepper seems to have survived!

I distressed the edges of the pages with stormy sky and dusty concord DIs. I ran the acetates through my xyron to stick on to the pages. I stamped some white flowers with a Hero Arts flower print stamp and used the DI to colour them - and a bit of stickles in the centres.

The flash photo makes the stormy sky colour look lighter than it actually is irl.


The sign in tag, using some of the same stamps and DIs:

I'm linking this for:

Dragons dream tags TIO 66: make a statement - the text on the tag
Crafty Ho's: no designer paper
Wednesday stamp: inky backgrounds
Stamptacular 96: whateva
Paperminutes 150: flowers
Pixie cottage 54: flowers
Tuesday throwdown 33: distressing
Crafty purple frog: a distressing challenge
Crafty Emma 21: bold and bright
Crazy 4 challenges 72: vintage or shabby chic
Paper romance: anything but a card
If the shoe fits Fashionista Friday 64: anything but a card
Penny's 45: anything goes
Woodware 11: anything goes
Let's ink it up 8: anything goes

A touch of lilac

Oh dear - I entered a couple of cards for this week's Play Date cafe challenge 66: colour splash - lilac, but, unfortunately, I didn't look properly and failed to see that the card should have been black and white with a splash of lilac.

So here is a card that I hope fits the challenge. The paper and the large topper was from a pack by 'red line' - when I bought this I thought the toppers were die cut, but they weren't, so I had to cut by hand. I then mounted on to a piece of DCWV textured lilac card and cut round that - the result: a very simple card. The topper is so big that there isn't room for anything else, even though it's a 6 x 6 card - and it hides most of the swirly paper underneath. I added a couple of PM ribbon bows just to add a further little splash of lilac.

This is also for:

Kort o mania 32: create a fantasy (ohhh, when I went into Kort o mania to find the link, I discovered that I'd won a prize for challenge 31 - yippee!!)
ABC: M is for magical
Pollycraft 77: black, white and 1 other colour

Look what postie brought me this morning

In August it was announced that I was the July winner on Creative Prompts challenge blog - you can read about it here. The prize was $20 to spend at Let's Capture our Memories online store. Because of various things going on at the time I didn't actually choose my items until the beginning of December and then there was a hiccup with the post ... all sorted out by the lovely Tanya from Let's Capture our Memories ... and this is what arrived this morning:

I'm so glad I chose these items - I can't wait to start using them. In fact, I need to make a commissioned card today for a 40th birthday and the request was to include pink/purple, so I think some of these gorgeous primas are going to be put to good use straight away.

BF January inchies received

Here are the lovely inchies I received this morning from the group swap on BF forum for January 'green and orange'



Thank you, girls, for the lovely crafting.

White on white

This is for Card Patterns 99:

There are a few challenges around atm calling for a lot of white to be used, so this is for:

Double Dutch 60: white wishes
Flutter by Wednesday 139: white on white + butterfly
Hodge podge 7: white on white
CCEE 1104: white on white
Wags n whiskers 46: white
Crafts and me 22: monochrome
Frosted designs fabulous Friday challenge: monochromatic

I'm afraid I had to resort to a scan which makes the card look grey in parts because of the various depths of ribbon and card - everything is white irl with various textures. The image ( Funstamps 'swirling wings' stamped with versamark and heat embossed with detail silver) and surrounds were cut with nestie labels, the surround being cut from glitter card. The embossed dots were embossed with a Crafts-too folder with my cuttlebug.

Updating with this photo, although, unfortunately, I think this is worse than the scan - lol! It's so difficult to get a picture of white on white.



This is also for:

Creative stamp friends 17: shapes - die cuts
Crazy amigo: labels (the nesties)
My time to craft 125: emboss, emboss, emboss - both heat and dry
Crafty creations: 103: let's heat it up (heat embossing)
Anything goes: butterflies
Pals paper arts 78: bows - clean and simple with a bow
Some odd girl: scallops galore (cut on my rotatrim)
Crafts4eternity R4 technique/theme recipe: polka dots
Gingerloft 10: things that fly
Creative inspirations 51: celebrate (birthday)
Penny's 45: anything goes
Cutie Sunday 128: anything goes
Woodware 11: anything goes
Let's ink it up 8: anything goes