Thursday 23 February 2023

Striped Birthday

 Hi and welcome to a new challenge from the team at Freshly Made Sketches, where our hostess this week is Jen Brum.  Jen gave us angled panels - something I usually struggle with, but this week's card came together quite quickly (for me, that is!)


I found the colour combo on Pinterest as paint colours and thought it would work well for a masculine birthday card.  After cutting the strips, I wanted to add something more so clear-embossed this background stamp from Judikins that my mum gave me a few months ago.  She had inherited it from a friend and passed it onto me.  I just love this style of stamp, so was very happy to give it a new home.  It took a bit of jiggery-poke to get the strips semi-lined up with the background so the stamping looks seamless, but it doesn't look too bad.


The sentiment strip wasn't stamped with the background stamp but instead the sentiment was copper-embossed.  All the strips were added at different heights by stacking them with various layers of cardstock.  This adds a bit more interest to the overall card.
Thanks for visiting.  Please check out the wonderful cards made by the design team.



Products used:

Stamps:  2207J (Judikins), Elegant Sentiments (Waffle Flower)
Ink:  Versamark
Cardstock:  White, Latte (MFT), Fine Linen (PTI), Neutrals Multi Stack (DCWV), Fresh Aqua (Memory Box)
Accessories:  Clear EP, Copper EP (Altenew)

Cheers
Karren

Friday 17 February 2023

Just Because

Welcome to my blog!  It's time for another challenge from the Tic Tac Toe team and this week I chose Flowers - Pink - Word Die to come up with this card:
 

I stamped and Copic-coloured this gorgeous image and then used my Scan n Cut to cut it out.  Onto a white card base I added the Interlocking cover die cut from white cardstock.  The sentiment was also die-cut from white cardstock and stacked three high to make it stand out a bit against the white background.


I added the floral image then the sentiment and finished with some co-ordinating enamel dots.


Thanks so much for visiting.  I hope you'll give this challenge a try.


I'm entering this in The Flower Challenge who are looking for our latest stamps/dies.  I got this floral stamp set just before Christmas and this is the first time I've used it.




Products used:

Stamps:  Roses With Love (Woodware)
Ink:  Amalgam (Gina K.)
Cardstock:  White, X-Press It
Dies:  Interlocking (Penny Black), Just Because (Birch Press Design)
Accessories:  Copics, enamel dots

Cheers
Karren

Edited to Add:  This card got a shout-out at The Flower Challenge.

Thursday 16 February 2023

Birthday Bouquet

 Hi!  Today's card uses the latest sketch from Freshly Made Sketches, where Kim Singdahlsen is our hostess.  Here's the card I made with her fun sketch:


When I first saw the sketch I was planning on doing rainbow stripes of coloured cardstock, but the last few weeks I haven't been feeling the joy from card-making, so this card was put together with pretty much no creative inspiration 😄  I'm really and truly hoping the joy comes back soon, because I do love this craft.

Anyway, stamps and co-ordinating stencils with a touch of Copic shading thrown in pulled this card together.  The background is patterned paper matted with white cardstock, both of which were die-cut with the Torn Paper Edges die to keep with the "clean" requirement for the challenge.


I completely spaced on the sentiment placement because the tag was perfect, so apologies to Kim for missing that!  The cardbase was embossed with the Subtle embossing folder and I chose to use some pale yellow cardstock as a change from white.


Thanks for visiting!  The design team have some much more inspired cards to wow you with, so please check them out.

Products used:

Stamps:  Sketched Wildflower Bouquet (The Greetery)
Ink:  Amalgam (Gina K.), Versafine Onyx Black, Vanilla Cream, Sunray, Honey Drizzle, Maple Yellow (Altenew), Sage, Eucalyptus (Catherine Pooler)
Cardstock:  White, Banana Split, Thick & Thin (MFT)
Dies:  Sketched Wildflower Bouquet (The Greetery), Torn Paper Edges (MFT)
Accessories:  Sketched Wildflower Bouquet Stencils (The Greetery), Copics, Black Enamel Dots, Subtle Embossing Folder (SU)

Cheers
Karren

Thursday 9 February 2023

Gnome Letter

 Hi and welcome to this week's Freshly Made Sketch Challenge where our sketch hostess is Linda Callahan.  I used the sketch to make a Valentine's card for my DH.


This was a pretty simple card to put together.  I coloured and die-cut the images and then chose some coloured cardstock to match the colouring.  For the horizontal panel, I used a brick embossing folder on Fog cardstock to keep it neutral but not too plain.


The sentiment was white-embossed onto black and added over the images to help ground them.





Thanks so much for visiting.  I hope you check out the fabulous cards made by the rest of the design team.

Products used:

Stamps:  Love to My Gnomies, Bitty Hugs & Kisses (MFT)
Ink: Versamark, Amalgam (Gina K. Designs)
Cardstock:  White, X-Press It, Fog (SSS), Fresh Aqua, Berry Red (Memory Box)
Dies:  Love to My Gnomies (MFT), Infinity Circle Dies (Hero Arts)
Accessories: Copics, White EP

Cheers
Karren



Friday 3 February 2023

Dear Friend

 Hi!  I'm back with another card for the Tic-Tac-Toe team and this week, I am the hostess.  Here is the board I created:


For my card this week, I went with the right-hand diagonal - Stencil, Friendship, Butterfly - to come up with this card:


If you follow my blog, you would have seen these colours being used on the smaller Pink Fresh hot foil butterflies a few weeks ago.  I actually made this card first and loved the colours so much I re-created the look on the smaller butterflies.  Once I had the hot-foiling, stenciling and die-cutting done, I went to work on the card base.  

I masked off a rectangle and used the Postcard stencil from Stamperia and some white embossing paste for a tone-on-tone look.


The sentiment is also hot-foiled and die-cut with the co-ordinating die.  I finished with some enamel dots to match the butterfly colours.

Thanks so much for visiting.  The design team have some fabulous cards with this board, so I hope you'll check them out and play along with us.

Products used:

Ink:  Blue Suded Shoes, Dress Blues, Sea Glass, Uptown, All That Jazz, Daydream, Black Jack (Catherine Pooler)
Cardstock:  White
Dies:  Butterflies Hot Foil Plate and Die (Pink Fresh Studio), Hello Dear Friend hot foil (Spellbinders)
Accessories:  Postcard stencil (Stamperia), White embossing paste, Black Hot Foil, Enamel Dots (WPlus 9 and Altenew)

Cheers
Karren

Thursday 2 February 2023

Framed

 Hi!  I was thrilled when my card was picked by Nancy and the team at Color Hues a few weeks back.  As part of winning the challenge, I was invited to be a guest designer for this new color challenge and what gorgeous colours they are:


I immediately wanted to make a floral card and this is the end result.


I stamped the main image from Garden Roses onto white card and used the co-ordinating stencils to colour it.  My ink colours were Clay Mask (light and darker) and Polished for the flowers and Matcha and Sage for the leaves.  Once finished, I used the die to cut it out and arranged it on a white card base.  My original intention was to have the flowers draping from the top left and the sentiment in the lower right.  After I stamped the sentiment, I realised the off-cut would look pretty in the bottom right.

Then I decided it looked a bit bare and cut a Sage Leaf frame to frame the centre of the card and the sentiment.  Then I decided to go all out and die-cut quite a few different-sized frames and positioned them on the card base just for some added interest.


The CAS-lover in me thinks this is too much, but it is interesting and a bit different from my usual style, so I'm putting it out there!  I finished the card with a wee coral enamel heart.

Thanks so much for visiting and thanks to Nancy and the team for inviting me to play along!  Please head over and check out the wonderful cards made using this gorgeous colour combo.


Products used:

Stamps:  Garden Roses (Pink Fresh Studio)
Ink:  Amalgam (Gina K.), Versafine Onyx Black, Matcha, Sage, Clay Mask, Polished (Catherine Pooler)
Cardstock:  White, Sage Leaf (Lawn Fawn)
Dies:  Garden Roses (Pink Fresh Studio), Nesting Rectangle Frames (Waffle Flower)
Accessories:  Garden Roses stencils (Pink Fresh Studio), Enamel Heart (Altenew)

Cheers
Karren

Hello Kitty

 Hi and welcome. Today’s card uses the latest sketch from the team at Freshly Made Sketches where our hostess this week is Jen Mitchell.


For my card I coloured up some images from a NBUS set by MFT Stamps. The sentiment is also from a NBUS set and stamped with inks to match the cat and yarn.




Thanks so much for visiting. Please head over and check out the fabulous cards made by the team.



Products Used:

Stamps:  Catitude (MFT), Sentiments Squared (The Greetery)
Ink:  Amalgam (Gina K.), Versafine Onyx Black, Twilight, Cranberry Fizz (Catherine Pooler)
Cardstock:  White, X-Press It, Floor to Ceiling (MFT)
Dies:  Sentiments Squared (The Greetery)
Accessories:  Copics

Cheers
Karren