Fairytale Crown

Fairytale crowns and tiaras aren't just for tiny princesses - even grown-up girls love them. Especially if there's a prince involved.

The cue word at CASology this week is Fairytale.

And the challenge at CAS-ual Fridays is Love Song:

CFC89:  With the Grammys coming up in a few days, we thought it would be fun to have a song inspired challenge.  Choose a song you love, then create a CAS project that is inspired by it!
Be sure to tell us the name of your inspiration song :)

The love song for this card is Rule the World (what else?) by Take That.  Gary Barlow can be my prince any day.

Pre-cut crown card from Craftwork Cards, platinum Stickles, AB gems, sentiment by Fiskars.

After a quick catch-up round blogland, I'm blogging off for a few weeks as I'll be way too busy to post (but I may peep in now and again to see what you're all up to).  See you sometime in March!

Sympathy Rose

Here's one of my many post-Christmas bargain stamps making an appearance again, this time on a sympathy card.

The challenge at The Paper Players is to create a sympathy card.  Always better to make them when you don't need them, ready for when you do.

And the challenge at Simon Says is Anything Goes, featuring Penny Black stamps.  The rose is Penny Black 2815K The Look of Love, and the sentiment is from Paper Smooches Sentiment Sampler.  Both the image and the sentiment are stamped with Versamark Smokey Grey.

Perfect Day

For this week's One Layer Wednesday, Ardyth has set the challenge to create a card depicting "Your Perfect Day".

My perfect day would have to include fish and chips on the terrace of the Duke of Marlborough at Russell, New Zealand, overlooking the bay as the sun is going down.  But since it's on the other side of the world it's not a regular occurrence.  In the meantime, my day is pretty much perfect when I'm stamping and making cards.  And I have just the stamp to depict this...

Colour scheme courtesy of The Play Date Cafe:

Fuchsia . . . Sprout . . . Canary

Stamp courtesy of Inky Antics.  Touch of sparkle courtesy of Stickles.

Playing Games

Back to CAS today.  The cue word at CASology is GAMES.  Cast your mind back to when you were a kid, riding around with your friends on bikes and trikes, without a care in the world.  Aah, bliss!  If it wasn't a layered card, I could have entered it into Ardyth's One Layer Wednesday "Your Perfect Day".  Oh well, it's an excuse to make another card :)

I used pale colours for the image (Inkadinkado), to make it look like the old-fashioned hand-coloured photographs.  Sentiment is from Penny Black 30-105 Gratitude.

Bucking the Trend

Yes, it is me - honestly!  My cards are usually quite CAS.  Sometimes ultra-CAS, especially when I only use half a sketch!  And quite a few of you are in the midst of online CAS lessons (and producing some fabulous results), which I think I might go for next time.

But deep inside of me, there's this mixed media person (I won't use the word artist) screaming to get out.  Not loud enough, until now.  I love mixed media creations but don't do them because, well, what do you do with them afterwards?  I've already got too much "stuff", and I don't like making things for the sake of making them if they're not useful afterwards (nowhere to put them).  But if it's on a card, I can give it or sell it (easier than giving/selling an item that doesn't have a use).

The inspiration for doing this card came from this month's Craft Stamper Magazine, which has a feature by Chris Dark, new to their design team.  That's her card on the front cover.  

So I thought I'd use her technique of layering diecuts from watercolour paper onto a watercolour paper background to make a card for this week's MUSE, the inspiration card for which is from Suzanne Dahlberg.

I used the pink, red and green colour scheme, the two flower types, the xoxo and the middle panel.  The base card has a two-tone red/green sheen to it.  You can see the difference in the two large photos. Lots of gesso and acrylic paint in various shades, including gold.  I had a blast making it, and pushing myself to add "more" instead of stopping at "less".

Here are a couple of close-ups so you can see the texture.

I'm also entering this into Simon Says Anything Goes.  Almost everything went into this!

So is it just a flash in the pan or will there be more of this?  I think there'll be more, but not on a regular basis, as most of the challenges I enter are CAS!

Must Pay More Attention

Ok.  I'm not big into pink.  I'm not big into hearts.  And I'm obviously not big into paying attention.  The challenge at Addicted to CAS is hearts.  Tick.

The challenge at ColourQ is pinks and brown.  Tick.

And here's the sketch at Addicted to Stamps and More:

Except that as I was making the card I was referring to the thumbnail on my blog reader rather than the full post, and this is what I saw:

I just thought it was an ultra-CAS sketch...

The guidance is: "You may flip or rotate the sketch and even replace the shapes. Please create with the sketch in mind." 

Out of sight, out of mind.  Bit of a shock when I came to do the post.

The heart was in my stash from a while ago. I'd made several out of a sheet of grungepaper covered in Fired Brick distress ink, then embossed through the Cuttlebug, then the raised area smeared with Versamark and heat embossed with clear powder, then cut out the heart shape freehand.

Sentiment from Paper Smooches.

Spring Birthday

I'm joining in the fun at a new challenge, Muse (which closes in a few hours!)

Here are the simple rules:

• Use what you have in your stash, don't purchase anything new for your Muse cards.
• Explain your interpretation of the Muse inspiration card in your post and link back to Muse. 
• Provide supportive comments to at least 3 of your fellow member’s submissions. 
• Vote for one of your fellow member's submissions that you find inspiring.

And here's the inspiration card, provided this week by Amy Kolling.

I took my inspiration from the yellow flower and the black sentiment.

The challenge at CAS-ual Fridays is to use markers.

CFC87: Use markers in your Clean And Simple Creation
Remember... a little can go a loooong way!
You can color an image, or an element, or get creative and show us some fun techniques!

I used Tombow markers to colour the flower stamp then added doodling around the images, so that I could enter it into One Layer Wednesday, hosted this week by Karen from Snippets, to use doodling in your one layer card.

Doodled Up- add doodling to your card!

You can see from these two close-ups where I've started doodling, and the finished panel.

It's a sketch challenge at Less is More this week, with conditions:

It's simplicity itself, so to add a little constraint, we ask that the card stays in this orientation ie that the band remains in the horizontal plane, in the lower part of the card and that it takes up no more than 1/3rd of the height of the cardbase.

I stamped the sentiment then added some doodled lines to define the panel.  Oh, and a bit of Stickles for the flower centres.

Flower: Hero Arts 657776

Sentiment: Hero Arts CL646