Colour Creations: Pretty Peacock

 Hi!

It's Colour Creations Creative Showcase time! This week we are featuring Pretty Peacock - pretty by name, pretty by nature! It's a gorgeous, deep teal that is fast becoming a favourite. I will be very sad when it retires in a few months. I may have to stock up on some of the cardstock before it does!

Such a gorgeous colour doesn't need much else to dress it up, so I stuck to a Pretty Peacock and Gold Foil combo. The feature panel is a piece from the Forever Gold Specialty Paper pack. I just popped it out, added a heap of Black Mini Dimensionals to the back, and layered it over my Subtle-embossed card front.

The sentiment, from Blossoms in Bloom, was heat embossed in gold and just layered over the top. Such a quick and easy card that really packs a punch. The hardest part was peeling all the backings off of the Dimensionals!

I used some left over Gold Foil, embossed cardstock and another foil element from the Forever Gold pack on the inside. Done!

Please head on over to Cathy's blog, where you'll find the rest of this week's Pretty Peacock cards. I can't wait to see what everyone has made!

Bye for now,

Tina

CTC #306: Bring The Bling

 Hi!

Phew! Where did that week go? I swear it was only a day or so ago that I was writing last week's CTC post! This week we are asking you to Bring The Bling - or in other words, to CASE a sparkly project!

There are lots of sparkly things in the Jan-June Mini, including the new Gilded Leafing,  Specialty Acetate, embellishments and Foil papers. I chose this card from the Bundles section of the Mini, as it has Gold Embossing.

I really loved how the images was stamped and chopped and put back together again. Whoever made this card is a very patient person! I am not, so I cheated and gained a similar effect by using a die cut over the chopped up background.

The Sunflowers Dies had the best outline image in my collection for this sort of card. I cropped the outline from Basic Black cardstock and layered it over the top of my chopped up background. The word 'friend' was cropped four times and stacked to give a more dimensional sentiment.

You might be saying 'but where's the bling?' The background paper is the new Pearlescent Specialty Paper. It has a gorgeous, subtle shimmer, but is very hard to photograph! The centre of the sunflower is also cut from the paper. 

I had a couple of sunflower leaves that I'd also cut from Basic Black cardstock that I'd planned to try to use on the front of the card. I didn't like the look, so I used them on the inside instead. I'm not sure what I'll use this card for - it's probably more of a 'thinking of you' card than a birthday card.

Our challenge is run through our Facebook group. All you need to do is make your bling card, take a photo and add it to the group. Done!

But please do continue on with this week's Blog Hop before you dash off to get creating! Next up is the wonderful Rebecca, who has made a gorgeous card using a sparkly product that I considered using too.

Bye for now,

Tina

JAI #542: Just Add Inspiration

 Hi!

Hooray for Friday, and hopefully the start of a cooler weekend! It's been 30+ here for most of the week, so I'm looking forward to a few cooler days. But let's get into the challenge! This week at Just Add Ink, we have an Inspiration Photo, suggested by Lou, to spark our creativity.

It's such a fun mix of colours and textures, don't you think? You can be inspired by anything in the photo, like the colours and textures as I mentioned. You don't have to recreate the photo, but having said that, that's pretty much what I did! LOL!

I started by pulling my retired Tropical Chic bundle down off the shelf. I kept it for the gorgeous, lush fern stamps. I knew they would come in handy one day! I used the mirror stamping technique with my Stamparatus so that the fat leaf would bend in both directions. Apologies to any gardeners that I may have offended - I have no idea what the different types of ferns are, or even if fern is the right word to describe them!

The pot for the ferns was cropped using the Balloon punch. I just trimmed off the top and bottom and wrapped some of the Blushing Bride Snail Mail Twine around it. I also used some Blushing Bride DSP, from the retired Tropical Escape pack. To replicate the wall in the Inspiration Photo I used some rendered wall DSP from the In Good Taste pack.

I had a fe left over bits and pieces from the front, which were put to good use on the inside. The sentiments on the card are from the A Good Man stamp set, stamped in Shaded Spruce ink.

That's all from me for tonight, but please do pop on over to the Just Add Ink blog, where you can link up your card for this week's challenge - after you've checked out eh rest of the Design Team cards, of course!

Bye for now,

Tina

Colour Creations: Poppy Parade

 Hi!

Thanks for joining me once again on a very hot Wednesday for the new Colour Creations Creative Showcase. We are up to Poppy Parade this week, which is a bright red. In fact, it's the last of the Brights colour family to be featured this time around. I chose a classic colour combination of red, white, black and gold, which I think must have been inspired by the New Year celebrations in parts of Asia last week.

I started with the striped panel. I used my Poppy Parade Blends to create the stripes, and my grid paper to line them up. The panel was matted with Basic Black and Gold Foil layers. The next layer was the banner, which was pretty much made with just bits and pieces.

More bits and pieces were used for the main panel of the card. A mix of dies and punches was used to crop the circles and the butterfly from A Touch Of Ink was fussy cut - sadly, no dies! All of this was layered on a card base that I'd embossed with the Subtle 3DEF. Actually, I tell a fib - I embossed a card front sized piece of Basic Black and adhered it to the Basic Black card base. Embossing the base can make it a little floppy, so embossing a layer is much better.

I used some retired Delicata Golden Glitz ink to stamp the butterfly again on the inside. I was so upset that this ink retired, but I kept mine to use when I like anyway!

The rest of this week's cards can be found over on Cathy's blog. Please do go and have a look, as each week I am amazed by everyone's cards. I'm sure you will be too.

Bye for now,

Tina

CTC #305: CASE The Sketch

 Hi!

Welcome back for the new CASEing The Catty Sunday Challenge Blog Hop. It's the end of quite a busy week for me, so it's a nice relaxing way to finish off the week, cruising around all the blogs to see what everyone made.

This week we are giving you a sketch to CASE, based on this super cute Darling Donkeys card. LOL, the rose in his mouth is very apt, as it's Valentine's Day today.

I must confess that I've cheated a little with my card today. I was meant to be in a 'Love' Blog Hop on Thursday night, but I got part way through the card and ran out of time, so I had to withdraw. I realised that it worked perfectly for the sketch, so I was already half done for CTC. Yay!

So instead of the three stripes, I have my row of hearts. It's such a fun die from the Stitched be Mine Dies. I had to hand place each of the hearts back into the outline, as they all fell out of the die and ended up in a jumble. It was worth the effort though, as just using the outline would have got a bit lost in the DSP, which is from the Berry Blessings SAB bundle.

Instead of using a rectangle over the top, I went for a series of layered circles, from both the Layering Circles Dies and the Stitched Shapes Dies. The text is from the Love You More Than Dies, and the strawberry is from the cute Sweet Strawberry Bundle. 

The inside strawberries required quite a bit of masking. I'd only planned to mask off the leaves at the top, but I accidentally stamped the first two too close to each other, so I had to mask off the strawberry as well. Worth the extra effort though!

Our challenge is run though our Facebook group, so you don't need a blog to enter. Just snap a photo of your card based on the sketch and add it to the group before the deadline. Easy!

The hop continues on with the lovely Julia Quinn. Her card is gorgeous - you won't want to miss it!

Bye for now,

Tina

JAI #541: Just Add A Blended Background

 Hi!

Hooray for Friday - it's been a long week, and I'm glad that the weekend is nearly here! This week at Just Add Ink, Nikki has challenged us to add a Blended Background to our cards.

How do you do your blended backgrounds? Are you a brayer fan, or daubers, or brushes? I was a brayer girl all the way until I got my hands on a blending brush, and now that's what I use most of the time.

Instead of doing a plain background, I decided to do my blending through a stencil, just for fun. This stencil is Circle Burst by MFT. I started in the middle with Coastal Cabana ink, Bermuda Bay in the middle and Island Indigo around the outside of the burst. I then cropped it with the largest Stitched Rectangles Die, matted it with Island Indigo cardstock and popped it up over a Silver Foil card base.

The character is from a Kindred Stamps set, called Plumber Brothers. I coloured him with my Blends to coordinate with the background. The sentiment is from another Kindred set, called Legendary. It's such a fun sentiment for a gamer birthday card!

This card is going to my nephew, who celebrated his birthday over a week ago. Oops! Luckily, I have the perfect sentiment for that! It's from an Ink Road Stamps set, fittingly called Belated. Another character from Plumber Brothers finishes off the inside.

That's all from me for now, but please pop on over to the Just Add Ink blog, where you'll find lots of blended inspiration from the Design Team. We clearly had fun with this challenge, and I'm sure that you will too. Don't forget to link up your card when it's done!

Bye for now,

Tina

Colour Creations: Pool Party

 Hi!

Thanks once again for joining me for this week's Colour Creations Creative Showcase. It's time for Pool Party to shine! This blue-green colour always makes me think of Tiffany Blue, so I went with that girly theme for my card.

I started by using my Stitched Rectangles Dies to cut an opening in the card front, and then adhered a piece of the Forever Gold Laser Cut DSP to the back. I popped the piece up over the top of my card base using Dimensionals. I probably should have added a piece of Window Sheet behind the laser cut, as it's a little more saggy than I'd like. Hopefully it's one of those tiny details that only the creator of a card would notice!

I used my All Dressed Up Dies to cut a strip of Pool Party card to go across the front of the card as a base for me to glue all of the other elements to the card. The perfume and flowers are from the coordinating Dressed To Impress stamp set. The perfume had a very light wash of Pool Party ink, and the flowers were coloured with Blends. A swish of Wink Of Stella finished it all off.

The shoes and flowers on the inside were also coloured with the Blends, and then given the Wink Of Stella treatment. I figured that a girly, Tiffany inspired card couldn't be too glittery!

Time now to pop on over to Cathy's blog, where you'll find the rest of this week's Pool Party cards.

Bye for now,

Tina