Beer Cheers

I'm always in need of male birthday cards, so I made a quick one-layer card using Tim Holtz blueprint stamps to fit with a couple of challenges.  The first one is Colour Throwdown - black, brown and white:

and The Male Room - Anything Goes with an optional twist of beverages:

The sort-of-New-Year's-Resolution is getting off to a gathering steam!

Watch The Birdie

I'm over on the STAMPlorations blog tonight with some birdies - here's one of them.  Pop on over and have a look at the rest of them, and if you're thinking of spending, you'll get 20% off all stamps, dies and stencils in the store if you use my code STAMPGIRLSHIRLEY.

I'm entering this one into Stampotique Challenge #278- Use Tape

and The Male Room - Technique - Mixed Media.  I've used dye inks and water for stamping, Distress inks and Distress Oxides for colouring, die cuts and washi tape.

Urban Landscape

I'm playing along with a couple of challenges for fun today, and getting to use some NBUS.  My first bit of NBUS is the Tim Holtz Cityscape Skyline die set.  I cut them from mixed media paper and dipped and smooshed them in pools of Distress Oxides.  Once they'd dried I adhered them to my card and added a strip of my second bit of NBUS, this fabulous Tube washi tape.  Cool, eh?

I'm entering this into Inkspirational - Urban

and The Male Room - Die Cuts.

Seize The Birthday - Masculine

We've got a masculine theme for the challenge at Seize the Birthday.  I swooshed some Distress Inks onto white card then stamped the Texturised Big Numbers (from the STAMPlorations stamp lab) over it.  I brayered a light layer of white acrylic ink over it to grunge it up a bit, then added white highlighting on the numbers with a Sakura Gelli Roll pen.  The happy birthday strip is just stuck down at each side so that I could tuck a drinks ticket behind the strip.

Come and join us at Seize The Birthday - and take a look at the fabulous inspiration from the rest of the team.

ETA:  Just realised it fits the bill for The Male Room - make your own background paper.

And I'm also adding it into Uniko Studio challenge - Birthdays.

Seize The Birthday - Sweet Treats

(I'm multi-tasking today, posting a few cards because I'm running out of time to get them all in!)

Sweet treat anyone?  Low no calorie?  Yup, thought so :)  It's time for a new challenge at Seize The Birthday, and this time the toppings option is Sweet Treats.  What does that bring to mind?  Cake, ice cream, macarons, chocolate, all of the above?

I used an old Stampendous stamp, Tiers of Treats, and drew a matching scribbly border.  The sentiment is from Ladybug Crafts, It's Only Words.  I added some glossy accents to the strawberries and cherries, which doesn't show up on the photo above, but you can see better on this close-up.

If you don't have a sweet tooth, you can still play along, as long as it's a birthday project.  Pop on over to the Seize The birthday blog to see the sweet treats that the rest of the Design Team have lined up for you, and join in the fun.

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Here's a leftovers card.  When I was stamping my dragonfly for my 12 Tags of 2014, I stamped an extra one just in case.  So I added some alcohol inks to the back, cut it out and added it to a base panel.

I had made the base panel way back in the Online Card Class Stencilled class and it's been sitting around since then.  I had mixed gold paint in with the Polyfilla and pasted through the leaf cluster stencil, then sprayed gold glimmer mist over the panel.  And there it sat, waiting patiently to be used.  So this week I sponged some Distress Inks over the panel (the gold glimmer mist still shines through, although you can't see in this photo).  I stapled some of the cutout acetate to the top of the card panel.

I'm entering this into The Paper Players - Happy Fall Y'all

and Inspiration Emporium - Fall Is In The Air

and The Male Room - Autumn/Fall

and Mixed Media Mojo - Fall/Autumn and Embossing Paste

(and a quick reminder for you that the Mixed Media Card Challenge for September is Autumn - check it out.)

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My third card is for Papertake Weekly - Repeat Repeat (I've repeated the text stamp for my background)

and for Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Create Your Own Background

I used STAMPlorations Vignette: Christmas Block for the background and Holiday Sketches: Christmas Bells.  And another reminder that the STAMPlorations blog hop is still on.  Click here to hop.)

Watch The Birdie(s)

Hello again, sorry to bother you so soon, but I've got more cards to post to several challenges.  This first one is using the colours (loosely) from ColourQ although my red isn't quite so pink IRL.  I blame the photographer.

I played with Gelatos (more successfully this time) and a waterbrush, which equals painting in my book, so I'm entering it into Simon Says Monday Challenge Paint It.  Simon Says Wednesday Challenge is Stencil It, so I'm in there too.

And the City Crafters Challenge is all about birds:

I made another similar card for my dad for Father's Day, which I'm glad to say he liked, and which I'm entering into The Male Room:

Happy Retirement

I've dug out some really old stamps for this card.  The image is part of a stamp by Annette Allen Watkins, and the sentiment is a PSX stamp, but they are my go-to stamps for retirements.  I made the potting shed wall by scoring card and swooshing it with Old Paper and Black Soot Distress Inks, and stamped the sentiment over the planks afterwards.  I'm entering it into the following challenges:

The Male Room - a retirement card

Less Is More - something made from metal - I've used a brad and some wire.

Shopping our Stash - heavy metal (anything metallic)

And CASology - Paint.  "Where's the paint?",  I hear you ask.  On the potting shed wall, waiting for a new coat.

And the picture isn't straight on the wall because, well, it's a fella's shed ;)

Natural Tonic

Time for a little remedy after all the excesses of Christmas and New Year.  The challenge at The Paper Players is to feature the chalkboard technique on your card:

While I was browsing Paper Playful's site for any other challenges I could enter this card into, I found this one, The Male Room, which is new to me:

And this week their challenge happens to be to make a GET WELL SOON CARD.

All the stamps I used come from the Andy Skinner Retro set.  For the background I stamped the images in Distress Ink (can't remember now whether it was Antique Linen or Scattered Straw) and smudged over it straight away to blur the images, then stencilled some Tim Holtz stars over the top using Brushed Corduroy.  For the centre panel I stamped the image with Versamark and white embossed, then smudged some white pigment ink over, and mounted the piece onto kraft card, then added some twine.