Paper Dreams

Hello!

I hope you're well and enjoying this sunny spell we're having just now.  Not as hot here as in some parts of Europe, mind!  My lovely friend 

Our Daring Cardmakers challenge this week is set by Dawn, who lives in France and I see the temperatures over there are getting silly.  Stay cool, Dawn!

For my challenge I would like to see you use up your beautiful designer papers.

Cut It Up

I know we all like to save our lovely pretty papers but I want you to make them the main focus.  Your could simply use a lovely big piece and just add a greeting, cut out lots of pieces and make a pattern or just use elements from the papers to make a topper for your card.

Click Here to see what the team made this week

 When I read Dawn's challenge I knew I would make an 'eclipse' card.  I've meant to do one for ages and this was the perfect excuse to have a go. I still had last week's Midsummer Night's Dream thing in my head and one thing led to another and I came up with this

You know I love using digi papers, don't you? Well, rather than spend hours trawling through my paper pads looking for the 'right' design, I thought I'd check first to see whether any of my downloads might be suitable - and found the perfect picture paper to use.

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Digi background paper design is from "Seascape" my MicheleRDesigns, but sadly this shop doesn't seem to be operating any more.

I love the faded, torn effect around the image, so resized it to completely fit my card and printed out onto white Bazzill Bling cardstock.

 "DREAM" letters are from a Spellbinders Alphabet set.

Save the cut out letters and the little 'waste' bits for later!

4 more of each letter in a darked blue shade of card and glued together. Corresponding letter from the patterned paper on top.  

I glued the tiny bits from the D, R and A I onto small pieces of paper then adhered in place on the back of the relevant letter stack

The background was adhered onto the card blank then the letter stacks glued in place

 The parasol and the deckchair  were cut on the Silhouette Cameo from my own templates

The sun hat was hand cut and I trimmed with a knotted piece of narrow ribbon

The lighthouse and little tug boat are painted wood embellishments I've had in my stash for years, as are the little shells

That's it, all done for this time, I hope you like it

Thank you for looking, please leave a message.....

Happy Crafting!

A Dream for Midummer

Morning All!

Hope you're feeling well this sunny Friday morning!

How did we get to the Longest Day already - and without much sunshine to show for it so far....remember the long, hot summer of 2018? A bit of a dim and distant memory, eh?

  

It is of course, Daring Cardmakers day and Nat's challenge this week celebrated the day.

Midsummer's Day 

This week I'd like to see your cards in celebration of Midsummer's day - the longest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere and sometimes one of the prettiest summer sunsets to boot...

There are so many summer themes to choose from, but you will get extra gold stars if you make a card inspired by Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. :D

CLICK HERE to see what the design team came up with

This is a completely different card to the one I set out to make.  So I filed all the attempts I made at that one in the bin, cleared my desk and started again.
Flicking through my scraps box looking for an off-cut of white card to use for a background I found instead a spare piece of card that I'd printed out when making a card some time ago. Perfect!

 

Info

Digital paper download set from RomanticLetters,printed onto white Bazzill card. This panel was cut down and matted onto some olive green card before adhering to my card blank.
I inked up scraps of white card in yellow and orange shades ready for cutting out the pineapple and the glass.
I used two Spellbinders die sets the glass from one and the leaves and pineapple from another.
I found the silver metal 'dream' word in one of my "might come in useful one day" boxes. I know it looks black in the main picture, but 
this one shows the colour better

Once all the bits were glued together, and I'd added a few bits of thick card behind them to give some dimension and definition it was just a case of arranging them into a group and glueing down.

I'm hoping that adding the 'dream' will just nudge me into winning Nat's virtual gold star for the Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream 'nod'

That's it for this time. I spent hours trying to make Plan A work, whilst Plan B went together in about half an hour thanks the serendipitous background find!

Thanks for looking in today

Happy Crafting!

Flying High

Hello!

It seems that 'm back to my bad blogger ways!  I'm not quite sure what happened to his week, but updating my blog since last Friday obviously wasn't one of the things that got ticked off the to-do list.

We did have a lovely evening at our local cinema to see the live-stream from the Royal Opera House of the ballet Romeo and Juliet.  Without giving anything away, the story didn't end well ;)

This week on the Daring Cardmakers challenge blog we have our lovely Svenja in the hot seat:

It's Svenja here with a new challenge for you:

Come, fly with me!

I'd like to see all kinds of things that fly on your cards: birds, bees, planes, kites, superheroes... whatever comes to mind.

And of course the Design Team members have already taken to the skies to inspire you - see their cards HERE

Probably the obvious choice for me was to make some butterflies for this one.  Or bearing in mind the weather we've been having recently I thought of making a flying carpet and flying off to somewhere dry!

In the end though I decided to make a kite, and when I found the inky background while sorting through a box of 'stuff' I thought I could incorporate it into the design

 
Info

Inked background was  made for another project but not used in the end

Pieces of card were inked up in the colours I wanted to use for all the other components

The various pieces for the house was hand cut, as was the kite

The clouds were die cut with a Spellbinders die set

I used my own template and the Silhouette Cameo to make the little girl 

The kite is attached using wire, I added a piece of gold twine with knotted pieces of coloured Baker's Twine for the tail

The upper cloud, and the little girl are both attached with folding 'box' hinges behind them so that they can stand right out from the card

To finish I added a rub on decal sentiment

I quite like the simple and 'naive' look to this one.  Not that it was actually simple to make!

Anyway, that's all for this time, I hope you like it, I'd love to know what you think so please leave a message

Happy Crafting!

June's Elemental Inspiration Challenge.

Hello there!

We're having one of those "sunshine and showers" kind of days today.  When I say 'showers' I mean 'downpours', though.  I'm glad I'm not needing to go out today!

After a week staying with my family in Northumberland it's been really hard to get back to my craft desk - or anything else, for that matter.  So my card for the Daring Cardmakers was a bit last-minute this time.

 

As usual our first challenge of the month is an
Elemental Inspiration Challenge. 
For June we have this beautiful Mood Board. Remember, you just need to pick a minimum 3 elements  from the picture to use when making your card.  
If you choose to use the colour palette, then that would count as one of your elements

We also have the very talented Sonja Kaufmann joining us for the next few weeks as Guest Designer.  We've been waiting for Sonja to have a Daring Cardmakers-shaped gap in her schedule for ages, and finally it's here!

  I chose the leaves, feathers, the tags and the squares from the picture to use on my card, and decided to keep largely to the colour palette too

Info

For the background I set out lots of different leafy dies on my GoPress & Foil machine, added the soft gold foil, a piece of white Bazzill card and a couple of shim layers.  After heating I rolled the sandwich through my trusty old Cuttlebug, brought out of retirement for using with the GP&F as my eBosser just doesn't do the job!

Next I cut down and matted the foiled piece onto gold card and then adhered this to a plain white card blank.

 I cut several of the leaf dies in shades of green and gold, and sorted out 3 small pink and white feathers to use on the focus square.

A square of aqua pearlescent card was matted onto a slightly larger gold square and 3 of the larger die cut leaves were arranged behind before gluing in place

 in the lower corner of the card.

The pink and white feathers were arranged along with some of the smaller die cut leaves and adhered to the aqua square.

The stems opf a couple of roses were coiled around a bamboo skewer then glued on top of the feathers.  I tied a triple bow from narrow aqua ribbon and glued it across the stems, then die cut three tiny tags in matching colours to add to the 'bouquet'

Do you have stuff in your stash that you bought years ago and hardly ever get out to use?  The feathers are one of these things for me - I have bags of different colours bought when it seemed a good idea for some reason or other.  It was good to use some - even if it was just three of the smallest!

It would be great if you'd join in this week, we'd love you to share your creativity with us.

I hope you'll take a minute to leave a message, it's always good to read them - and I always try to reciprocate and visit your blog too.

Thanks for looking, have a great weekend

Happy Crafting!