STAMPlorations Spotlight

I'm over on the STAMPlorations blog tonight with these two cards, using up backgrounds, stamped images and diecut words from my stash.  Pop on over for a closer look!

Seize The Birthday - Creatures Great And Small

Hello, and welcome to a new challenge at Seize The Birthday!  This time our theme is All Creatures Great and Small.  If that's not your thing, you can still play along with any birthday-themed project.

I used a Zinski Art sheep stamp from PaperArtsy.  The skippy hoppy thing comes with the set, and the Happy Birthday sentiment is from my set Baa Baa.

Pop on over to the Seize The Birthday blog for some fab inspiration from our Surprise Party Guest, Joyce of Cards By The Sea, and from the rest of the Design Team, and play along with us.

STAMPlorations Inspiration #252

It's Inspiration Tuesday at STAMPlorations, and I'm still delving into my stash of backgrounds.  This one was created months ago using stencils over a Gelli plate print.  It looks like I used Bubbles and Confetti Circles.  The Happy Birthday negative panel is mounted onto a mother-of-pearl smooshed background, and the cupcake is from Deepti's Sweet Surprise.

Pop on over to the STAMPlorations blog for some more fabulous inspiration from the team, and don't forget to leave a comment for your chance to win a $10 gift certificate.  And when you're shopping in the store, you can get 20% off using my code STAMPGIRLSHIRLEY.

STAMPlorations Inspiration #251

Hello, it's Inspiration Tuesday on the STAMPlorations blog, and I'm still on a quest to use up my stash of backgrounds, and to make more masculine cards.  This background has been in my stash for ages waiting for the right inspiration to come along, and today it has!

I'm loving the negative panels that the Skinny Sentiments dies leave, and I couldn't let this one go to waste.  I attached it to the panel with tiny staples and added a cupcake from Birthday Bash.

Head on off to the STAMPlorations blog where you'll see some more fabulous inspiration from the team, and don't forget to comment for your chance to win a $10 gift certificate.  When you're shopping in the store, use my code STAMPGIRLSHIRLEY to get 20% off.

Stencil Sunday Feature

Hello!  I'm on the STAMPlorations blog today in the Stencil Sunday spot with these four cards.

Stencils are so versatile - you can add layers and layers to build up patterns, or you can do some selective stencilling for a Clean and Simple look, which is what I've gone for here.  For an even quicker result, I made each pair of backgrounds in one swoop.

I placed my Tribal Triangles stencil over a double front sized card (European A5 in my case), did some partial stencilling with Distress Oxides, then cut the card in half.

I had a couple of Little Monsters in my stash so I coloured them with coordinating inks, then added sentiments.

This one uses the Everyday Sentiments dies, and the next one uses the sentiments from Big Monsters.

For a feminine version I used the Dots and Dashes stencil with pink and yellow inks.

As before, I chopped the piece of card in two to make two card fronts.

I like to personalise baby cards, so I cut some letters from some smooshed card using Uppercase Alphabet Plate and Lowercase Alphabet plate, lined them up and secured them with some washi tape before adding glue to the backs and gluing them in place.

This one is for the ready-made stash.

I channelled my inner Maria, using offcut negatives for a bit of tone-on-tone texture.

Fancy winning a $15 gift code to spend in the store?  Just leave me a comment here, and also on the STAMPlolrations blog post, and you never know, you may win!  And don't forget to use my code STAMPGIRLSHIRLEY when you go shopping in the store for 20% discount.

Seize The Birthday - Stencils or Anything Goes

Hello, we've got a new challenge for you at Seize The Birthday, and our theme this time is Stencils (or Anything Goes as long as it's Birthday-themed).

You've got a twofer from me:  I made this next card first, decided it was too pale (at that stage the background was plain white), so I made the second card, above.  But having painted a pale background, added some splatters and mounted it onto black card, I like it again, so you get to see both versions.  The stencil is from Altenew.

Pop on over to the Seize The Birthday blog for some fab inspiration from our Surprise Party Guest, Joyce of Cards By The Sea, and from the rest of the Design Team, and play along with us.

I'm entering this one into the CAS Stencil Challenge - Use a New Stencil (it was a Christmas present).

Colouring Challenge Road Trip

I'm doing the Colouring Challenge Road Trip with Kathy Racoosin, and Day 1 is all about colour plucking and nooks and crannies.  I normally like to just slosh colour on in a very loose fashion, so building up colour like this is definitely a challenge for me.

So for Day 1 homework I picked some random Zig Clean colour brushes - I don't have the full set, so they were definitely random - and started colouring.  And I'm quite pleased with it :)