Slim Hugs

Hi and welcome to the latest sketch challenge from the team at Freshly Made Sketches where our hostess, Linda Callahan, has got us all trendy-like with a slimline card design.

I had in mind to put an arrangement of flowers in the bottom left corner and a big sentiment across the body of the card and this is what I came up with:

Instead of a floral arrangment, I used a magnolia branch stamp.  The background was stenciled with Speckled Egg Distress Ink and crackle paste to give a fun texture - but it did warp the cardstock considerably so next time I'll be using thicker card.

The sentiment is stacked 3 high with the top layer being black velvet paper for a lovely luxurious look.

I hope you'll join us this week.  Be sure to check out the wonderful cards made by the rest of the DT.

Thanks for visiting.

Products used:

Stamps:  BAF:  Magnolia (Altenew)

Ink:  Versafine Onyx Black, Rose Petal, Tropical Forest, Rock Collection, Espresso (Altenew) Speckled Egg DI

Cardstock:  White, Black, Black Velvet, B&W Stripes (MFT)

Dies:  Big Hugs (MFT), Slim Diagonal Stitched Rectangles (Pinkfresh)

Accessories:  English Brick Wall Stencil (MFT), Crackle Paste (Tim Holtz)

Cheers

Karren

HB2U

Hi and welcome.  We're back over at the Fusion blog with another great challenge.  I went with the sketch this time, but did bring in some summery colors.

I had these flowers already stamped and cut so this card was fairly quick to put together.  I arranged the Boysenberry strip onto a white card base and then adhered the yellow flowers directly on top.  The purple flowers are popped up on foam tape and the sentiment was stamped and die-cut and adhered in the centre.

When I'd finished, the card looked a bit bottom-heavy so I added some Nuvo drops to try and adjust the balance a bit.

The design team have some wonderful cards to show you so I hope you'll check them out.

Products used:

Stamps:  Blossoms (Scrapbook.com), Roundabout Additions (Reverse Confetti)

Ink:  Versafine Onyx Black, Enchanted Garden, Pocketful of Sunshine, Green Fields sets (Altenew)

Cardstock:  White, Boysenberry, Black Licorice (MFT)

Dies:  Infinity Circle Dies (Hero Arts)

Accessories:  Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle Pen, Dandelion Yellow, Crushed Grape Nuvo Drops

Birthday Stars

Hi, I'm here with this week's card for Freshly Made Sketches, where our sketch hostess is Jen Mitchell.

I made this hard for myself because I had 2 new items that I was determined to use on this card.  The first was the navy cardstock.  I've been looking for a dark navy for some time because I loved Nightshift Blue from MFT Stamps, which is no longer available.  I bought a couple of different ones online to test and found In The Navy by Gina K to be the best match to what I was after.  So of course, I had to make a card with it!  The second item is the circular hot foil die.  I bought the hot foil machine for my Gemini Junior about 6 weeks ago and have been waiting, not so patiently, for some Spellbinders dies to come from the US.  Finally they arrived and I had in mind to use this circle dot one for this week's sketch.

The card is pretty self-explanatory.  Originally I intended to have rainbow circles in place of the stars and actually die-cut tiny circles from the navy panel and backed each circle with a rainbow color, then I didn't like it, so covered the holes up with sparkle cardstock stars.  Remember I said I made this hard on myself?  This card took me about 4 hours start to finish!

Here's the sketch we have to work with this week.  The DT have some gorgeous cards that I'm sure didn't taken them 4 hours to make!

Products used:

Stamps:  More Essential Sentiments (MFT)

Ink:  Versamark

Cardstock:  White, In The Navy (Gina K), Silver Sparkle (MFT), Silver Hot Foil (Spellbinders)

Dies:  Blueprints 21, Blueprints 8, Pierced Fishtail Flag Stax (MFT), Essential Glimmer Circles (Spellbinders)

Leafy Thanks

Hi and welcome!  Jennifer Timko is our sketch hostess over at Freshly Made Sketches this week and she has given us a fun square sketch to play with.  Here's what I did with it:

I went all-out Altenew on this card.  I'd been playing with washi tape and adhered some to a card panel before die-cutting with a square die.  I added that to a 4.5" square white card base.  The Leaf Canopy stamp was stamped with black and Olive inks and then I added some darker areas with Copic markers.

The Thanks is a new-to-me die and I die-cut that in gray and black before adding it to mimic the horizontal panel in the sketch.

And that's it!  Very simple!  The design team have some wonderful cards so I hope you'll check them out.

Thanks for visiting.

Products used:

Stamps:  Leaf Canopy (Altenew)

Ink:  Black, Olive (Altenew)

Cardstock:  White, Black Licorice, Cement (MFT)

Dies:  Bold Thanks, Leaf Canopy (Altenew)

Accessories:  Copic Markers, Grand Stream Washi Tape

Cheers

Karren

Macarons

Hi!  I'm here with a card for the latest Fusion challenge.  I focused on the sketch this time and came up with this card.

I did some ink-blending with Distress Oxide inks to create my background, which was meant to mimic the pastel colors of the photo, but didn't quite get there.  A spritz of Perfect Pearls mist gives it a nice shimmer thought.  I then stamped and cut the macarons and arranged them on top of each other.

The white die-cut worked perfectly for the sketch and was popped up on foam tape.

Thanks for visiting.

The DT have some gorgeous cards so I hope you'll check them out.

Products used:

Stamps:  Macarons (The Ton)

Ink:  Summer Afternoon set, Green Meadows set (Altenew), Extreme Black (MFT), Versamark, Scattered Straw, Bundled Sage, Milled Lavender, Tattered Rose Distress Oxide Inks

Cardstock:  White, Bristol Smooth, Black

Dies:  Square Grid Cover Up (MFT)

Accessories:  White EP, Perfect Pearls shimmer spray

Cheers

Karren

Tulips

Today's Freshly Made Sketch is brought to us by Lee Ann Barrett and she has a graphic design for us this week.  I decided to define the sketch elements using masking and ink blending.

I started out by masking off a triangle in top half of the card and sponged Hickory Smoke ink in the gap.  I then moved the masking tape and re-positioned it in the bottom half and repeated the process.  Once that was finished, I removed the tape and lightly sponged ink over the whole panel before placing the stencil down and inking through that.  After the panel was dry, I die-cut it with a stitched rectangle die, stamped the sentiment and then some splatters from the stamp set using Hickory Smoke ink.  I kept the splatters to the left hand side of the card so they would tie in the flowers with the background and sentiment.

The tulips come from a new-to-me stamp set by Close To My Heart.  Originally I was going to color them with Copics but I thought the sketchy look more suited watercolor, so I pulled out a couple of Zig markers and did some very basic coloring.  Once they were dry, I fussy-cut them and created an arrangement.  The flowers are adhered with foam tape.

Thanks for visiting.  The design team have some fun cards so I hope you'll check them out.

Products used:

Stamps:  A Million Little Things (CTMH)

Ink:  Obsidian (Altenew), Hickory Smoke Distress Oxide

Cardstock:  White, Bristol Smooth

Dies:  Stitched Rectangles (Lil Inkers)

Accessories:  Zig Markers, Scribble Script stencil (Donna Downey)

Cheers

Karren

Gillfriend

Our sketch hostess for this week's challenge at Freshly Made Sketches is Jacquie Southas and here's what I did with her fun sketch.

I created the background with Distress Oxide inks and Honey Bee Stamps stencils.  I followed a tutorial by Nichol Spohr for the colors.  Once it was dry, I die-cut it with a stitched rectangle die and set it aside.  The images were stamped and colored with Coics and cut with my Scan n Cut.  I arranged them to mimic the sketch, then white embossed the sentiment onto a black strip to finish.

Thanks for visiting.  I hope you'll check out the wonderful cards created by the rest of the design team.

Products used:

Stamps:  Mermazing, Gill Friends (MFT)

Ink:  Extreme Black (MFT), Versamark, Black Soot, Faded Jeans, Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide Inks, Unicorn White (Hero Arts)

Cardstock:  White, Black, Bristol Smooth, X-Press It

Dies:  Mermazing, Stitched Rectangle Stax (MFT)

Accessories:  Copics, White EP, Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle Pen, Ocean Scene Builder Stencils (Honey Bee Stamps)

Cheers

Karren