It's Elemental, my Dear Watson

Oh, what a poor neglected blog this is! Time to try and get back into the swing of more regular blogging.  I don't make New Years Resolutions because I'm rubbish at keeping them and that's just depressing, but one of my "Try Harders" for 2015 is about being a better blogger 

After a few years of the Colour Combos over on the Daring Cardmakers, there's a new year long theme for the First Friday of the Month, inspired by one of Nat's regular dares last year

"Elemental Inspiration"

Here's how it works;

The DT will take turns to choose and post a picture - it could be a photo, a piece of artwork, or maybe a little montage of  bits and pieces we like.  

Each of these pictures will have a variety of "elements" that we hope will inspire you to get crafting - and we'd like you to use a minimum of THREE.of the elements you see to make a card  

 For instance the Element Suggestions for the January picture are: 

 colours, stitching, hearts, quote, vintage girl image, parasol, layout, vertical panels and layers - but of course you'll probably see many more that you can incorporate

I'm the first to set this new type of challenge and I've chosen a beautiful piece of artwork from a fabulous blog: Victoria's Art Visions.

It really is worth taking a look at Victoria's blog, she is sooooo talented

Victoria's Art Visions

The elements from this picture that I've used to make my card are 1. the colours 2. the "stitching lines", 3. the hearts and then a "bonus" element with the wording style for my sentiment 
here's my card:

 Materials and Tools

Black card blank

Cream card for inked piece and surround

Distress Inks and Memento Inks

Stickles and Gklossy Accents

Stamps from Self Addressed (now defunct, sadly), Heidi Swapp and 7 Gypsies

PC generated World image

Hand-cut hearts, Punched tiny hearts

Hand-drawn doodling and sentiment

The background for this went together really easily - Getting the greeny shade in was tricky - it is there, but doesn't show up much. 

I thought that I'd go with the message behind the original quotation and not get bogged down trying to make everything perfect, this made using stamps less scary for me - if you visit regularly you'll know stamoing is not my favourite thing! 

Using those stitching line stamps from an old Self Addressed kit made me sad for it's demise - I used to love getting my box of goodies through the post all the way from America every month

The measuring tape stamps and the ink blot are from a Steampunk set by 7 Gypsies. I thought there was a globe one in the set which would work with the sentiment I wanted to use, but there wasn't so I had to hunt out a suitable image on Google instead

The stamped words are from a Heidi Swapp stamp thingummy - its like one of those old library date stamp things where you twist the knob to get a new message.  I thought it looked cute and useful when I added it to a Christmas Wish List years ago, but in reality I think maybe this is the first time I've actually made something using it

Anyway, I had fun making this and as it was my first piece of crafting since before Christmas it didn't go too badly....Heck, I may even make something else soon!

Hope you like it, and I'm also hoping you'll feel inspired to join in with us this week - it would make me very chuffed if you did! 

Hope 2015 is full of good things for you, Happy New Year