A few challenge cards...

Well, it's been over a month since I posted (to be fair I was away for 2 of those weeks and then sick for another week)...

Anyway, nothing like some challenges to get the creative juices flowing, right?

I had a lot of fun with these two!
First up- the sketch challenge! I really enjoyed this one, as it is such a clean and simple sketch, which I am obviously a fan of!

I have to say, once I had my elements all together, it was a bit of a struggle to not flip the sketch. I really have such a comfort with white space in the bottom third, but nevertheless I stuck to the sketch! I started with this festive yeti and a hat from Beast Friends. I coloured the images with Copics and then cut them out (don't have the dies yet!). I grabbed a sentiment from Bitty Bears. I'm seriously loving the simple sentiments in that set (as if the adorable little bears weren't enough of a reason to pick up that set!)

To finish it all off, I die cut a few circles, the base circle using Smokey Shadow and the scalloped circle from Pure Poppy. The sentiment was stamped on a banner die-cut. Finally, everything got placed on a nice Kraft card base with the bottom corners rounded.

Here's a close-up of my colouring. I didn't do anything super extravagant for shading, but I did add little dots of white gel pen to each bulb. To make them really twinkle I also added a bit of shimmer using a Sakura gelly pen.

Next up, the colour challenge! Now when I saw these colours, they really shouted Halloween to me. However, this challenge was posted Nov 9- Halloween is over- so I really liked the challenge of making a non-Halloween card.

 I have to say, this card turned out even better than I had hoped! I used the bold letter Smile die. I cut it three times out of the white cardstock, making sure there was space between them to add in some greetings from the corresponding stamp set.

I set that aside and got to work on my background. I grabbed 4 Distress Oxides that were a good match for MFT's colours (Wild Honey, Spice Marmalade, Wilted Violet and Black Soot). I don't think I can really say it enough times, but the Distress Oxides blend soooooooo well. Seriously, I don't think I could get the same smoothness of blending with this kind of colour combination with other inks, at least not as quickly and easily.

I attached the smile layer to the blended background and thought I was done... Well wouldn't you know it, I got a yellow smudge on the white layer (GASP!). I refused to give up. I stamped a few flowers using the smallest flower from Large Desert Blooms. I fussy cut those out and covered the smudged area (and two other spots to help achieve a visual triangle). And you know what, the flower totally made the card feel finished. So yay for smudges, I guess??.

Here's a close up (that purple flower is the one that's hiding the smudge, lol)

Thanks for popping by!

WCMD MFT Challenges

It was World Card Making Day this past weekend, so I decided to play along with some of the challenges.

Here are a few My Favorite Things challenges

#1 ROYGBIV (Rainbow)!
This challenge wasn't too out of the box for me. I am already quite a fan of featuring a rainbow colour palette on my cards

I went with a fairly basic layout. I stamped one of the flowers from the Large Desert Blooms set multiple times in various colours and then added a greeting from Rainbow of Happiness. To add a bit more interest to the card I used white brads as my flower centres.

Supplies:

Stamps: Large Desert Blooms, Rainbow of Happiness (both retired)

Ink: Pure Poppy, Orange Zest, Bright Buttercup, Green Parakeet, Hawaiian Shores, Blueberry Sky, Amethyst Allure, Jet Black

Paper: White, Black, Bright Buttercup

Accessories, etc.: White Brads

#2 Die-Namics Design

This challenge was a touch trickier for me. The challenge was to use only dies- no stamps! I pulled out my new Smile die. I blended some Picked Raspberry and Black Soot distress oxide inks. I love that you can blend any colour with the black ink-it creates such a cool look! I paired the smile greeting with a few flamingos. To add some more depth I added one of the stitched scallop basic edge dies and some black rhinestones

Here's a look at the dimension of the letters. I cut out two layers from white and one layer from the blended inked paper.

Supplies:

Dies: Double the Smiles, Flamingos, Stitched Scallop Basic Edges 2

Ink: Picked Raspberry, Black Soot Distress Oxide

Paper: White, Raspberry Fizz, Black, Basic Gray

#3 By The Numbers- feature numbers or a numerical element on a card.

I just picked up last month's MFT order and the freebie dies were the Pop-Up Numbers. These aren't something I would typically choose for myself, but I decided I've got them, might as well use them! So I just started with a milestone number 40 and designed the project around that. The words and images all come from the Bitty Bears set. I masked off most of "birthday" to get the "TH", in case you were wondering.

It's a bit of a simple layout, but it was kind of just a test/learning the product kind of card. The numbers and bears were coloured with Copics.

Here's a close up of the numbers:

Supplies:

Stamps: Bitty Bears

Ink: Pure Poppy, Jet Black, Tuxedo Black

Paper: Pure Poppy, Orange Zest, White

Dies: Pop-up Numbers

Accessories, etc.: Copics

#4 Make and Mail- make a card and SEND it!

These Adorable Elephants were in my recent order and I thought, how cute would it be to just feature one and the little butterfly with a simple greeting. I made this one 4-bar size and stamped on the envelope as well.

Supplies:

Stamps: Adorable Elephants

Ink: Tuxedo Black

Paper: White, Spring Rain

Accessories, etc.: Copics

2017 MFT Superstar

I finally got two projects made for this year's My Favorite Things superstar challenge. I love the format change this year! I made for two of the categories- Clean and Simple Genius and Coloring Virtuoso.

First up- my clean and simple genius project.

I started with embossing a few of the chicks and balloons from the Happy Hippos and Beary Special Birthday sets onto watercolor paper with platinum embossing powder. I watercolored those with distress inks. Next, I watercolored a swatch of the paper and die cut the word Celebrate from that once it was dry. To make it pop a bit more, I covered it with clear embossing.

In order to add some other interest to the clean and simple design, I popped up all the chicks and balloons. I also had them extend over the one layer to make it more visually interesting.

Next up, the Coloring Virtuoso project. It's kind of funny, I wasn't really planning on entering this one. I have a lot of Copics and pencil crayons, but I hardly feel like a virtuoso with those mediums. However, after watercoloring the chicks and balloons on the previous card, I thought, hey whynot do that, but even more!

So I stamped and embossed even more images from the Happy Hippos and Beary Special Birthday sets. Once those were all painted and cut out, I figured out the rest of the card. I wanted the party scene to have a fun backdrop, so I used the Sun Ray Stencil and some Distress Oxide Inks. If you're wondering how I managed to get the longer rays considering the placement of the "sun" on this stencil- I did most of it and then rotated and realigned the stencil to get the rest of the coverage that I wanted.

Finally, the last step was adding a frame to help it all pop! I die cut 2 layers of the largest die from the Stitched Scallop Edge Rectangles dies and adhered that to my stenciled background and placed everyone and everything just so! I finally added a sentiment (also from Beary Special Birthday).

I've included another shot below, as the platinum embossing powder looks totally amazing as an outline in person, but it's a touch tricky to photograph.