Black and White at Cardz 4 Guyz

This week it's Amy's turn to choose the theme at Cardz 4 Guyz, and she has chosen Black and White.

I decided to use the New York stamp from the Tim Holtz "Cityscapes" set. Somehow I think of Paris and Rome  as feminine cities, London and Sydney as unisex ones and New York as masculine. No, I don't know why either, maybe it's personal associations although never having been to Rome I don't really have any right to make my mind up about it.

Anyway, we normally associate Tim's designs with everything that's inky and messy and exciting, but I think the Cityscapes stamps have so much going on in them that they lend themselves to a much more CAS treatment, and that's what I've done here. The image is stamped in Onyx Black Versafine and embossed with clear powder, then matted and layered with black. To add extra interest, I used a hammered textured card for the bottom black mat, making it a little larger than the other layers. It doesn't really show on the photo but the extra texture looks good in real life.

I am sharing this with
Craft Your Passion  - Anything Goes
A Bit More Time To Craft - Anything Goes
A Beautiful Mess - Anything Goes
Classic design Team Open Challenge - Anything Goes   

29 Again?

Not much waffle from me today as it's school holidays and I'm on a Granny Day, but right now Lara is engrossed in a grown up colouring book so I've snuck away to the computer.....

I love the shocked look on the face of this cat, stamped with a cat from Katzelkraft's "Les Chats Russes" set. It looks absolutely horrified that its person has just lied about their age. The sentiment is from Rubber Dance stamps. The background is simply a paw print stamped randomly over the card front.

I am sharing this with

C.R.A.F.T. Challenges - Create your own background
Alphabet Challenge - C for Cats
Sweet Stampin - How Old???
Quirky Crafts Challenge - Raining Cats and Dogs 
Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers - J is for Joke

A manatee is for life, not just for Christmas

I am really not sure what this manatee is doing in my digi collection. I must, at some point, have won it or bought it, which means that at some stage in my life I must have thought, "I know exactly what I need - an image of a Christmas manatee. One with bits of Elastoplast on his tail." I'm a bit worried about what I must have been drinking at the time....

Anyway, I think the doleful looking fellow works very well with some of the sentiments on the Dylusions Christmas sentiment sheet. I printed him out and, following the advice of several commenters when I had a problem colouring digis with Promarkers, left him to dry for 24 hours before colouring him. Result - no smudging. Thanks to everyone who suggested it. After colouring, I cut him out and finished his hat trim and beard with Wink of Stella.

The die cut "flowers" are from the Kanban set I sorted out last week. The larger flower was white but I coloured it with a yellow distress ink pad.

I am sharing this with

Allsorts Challenge - April Fool/Humorous
Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers - J is for Joke 

Enter..... Chloé

When I lived in Hong Kong in the 1970s/80s. there was a regular TV advert for a fashion design brand where the voice -over simply said "Enter..... Chloe" and that gets stuck in my head every single time I use the beautiful Chloe Stem die (Memory box?) so I've tried to work it out of my system today by using it FOUR times.

I combined snippets of light and dark purple card and cut the Chloe stem twice with each, and also used an old Cuttlebug die (it came bundled with my first ever Cuttlebug years ago) to cut two squares of each colour.

The Chloe heads are stuck to the squares, slightly overlapping the edges, and the stems trimmed off at the corner. I tried various arrangements of the squares and settled on this, with them radiating out from a central gem. The sentiment is stamped with purple Versacolor and embossed with clear powder.

I am sharing this with

Pixie's Snippets Playground - week 223 - if you are an infrequent visitor to the Playground, or perhaps even have never played, you really MUST go over there this week, not just to drool over the beautiful picks and inspiration, but to join in yourself and play for a really wonderful prize!
Cuttlebugmania - Monochrome
Glitter and Sparkle - use a punch/die  

Birthdays at Twofers

Today is the start of our latest challenge at Twofers, and since Zoe is celebrating a Big Birthday this month, I have chosen the theme Birthdays.

I've used an apple blossom stamp from Clearly Besotted, coloured with Promarkers and layered up with kraft and some papers and ribbons from my stash, a punched border and a ticket stamped with a Studio G mini set. The set includes a selection of sentiments to add to the ticket, and in honour of Zoe's birthday, I have added the words "Senior Discount".

Do head over to Twofers to see what Zoe and Christi have made - and share your birthday cards (as always, using some stamping and no digis) with us for the chance to win a $15 Alleystamps voucher.

I am sharing this with:
Addicted to Stamps and more - Make your Mark
Crafting Musketeers - Spring is in the Air
Crafty Gals Corner - Anything Goes
Cardz 4 Galz - Springtime
Fantasy Stampers - In the Springtime
Classic design Team Challenge- Anything Goes   

CAS Christmas at Sparkles Christmas

It may be April Fool's Day but there's no fooling about here - it's time for the new challenge at Sparkles Christmas, and this month we'd like to see a CAS (Clean and Simple) card. There is a prize this month of a $12 voucher for Di's Digi Stamps

 

I've made a very easy card, inspired by something I saw on Pinterest. I die cut a pine branch (the die is quite an old one and I can't remember the branch) from a snippet of green card and cut the houses by using the bauble die that was the covermount on last Christmas's issue of Die Cutting Essentials and a snippet of red card - I just taped a small piece over the area with the buildings on rather than cutting the whole thing. Then I cut each building away from the rest of the die cut, assembled everything on a card stamped with a Studio G sentiment and hand-drew the strings for the house-baubles to hang from the branch by.

This idea could be adapted to all kinds of other "decorations" - I've seen a very similar thing done with buttons. Snowflakes - perhaps that snowflake confetti that we all hoarded about 15 years ago  - large gems or candy canes would work too. It would only take a few minutes to create a set of "same but different" cards, in fact I think I'll go and do that right now!

My Card Boo-Boo

Today being April Fool's Day,  Darnell over at DJKardKreations  wants to see the times we've made a fool of OURSELVES when making a card - the ones that went wrong. She's having a one day only challenge where we can share our bloopers.

I hope I'm actually going to get chance to be around to link my own card to it, because today is a Very Big Day in the Willis household, it's going to be my husband's first day of retirement, and we have exciting plans for the day that don't really involve me sitting here blogging (I wrote this earlier in the week). But on the other hand he'll probably find he has umpteen phone calls to make in order to Make It Official and I'll be left twiddling my thumbs.....

Now I don't know about you, but when I make a card and things go wrong, I dismantle it and start again - I don't stop and take a photo of it first. So I had to think long and hard about what to share.

Only in the last few days, I made the classic mistake of sticking the front panel on to a card upside down, and had to remove it and start again.....

 

It was to be a tent fold card, and as you can see, the butterflies would have all appeared to be dive bombing the table.

But Darnell is really looking for completed cards, ones where you didn't realise until you'd finished that there is a blooper on it. I didn't think I had one, and then the other day I finished a card for a future Twofers DT project. 

I was trying to give this card a masculine feel, so I decided to use a dark brown button as the embellishment on the ribbon wrap.

When I first finished it, I was really pleased with it, but when my husband saw it he said "That button spoils it". I got a second opinion from a couple of friends, both of whom agreed with him. So I slept on it (not literally, of course, that would have creased it) and next day I looked again and thought "That button spoils it". And it does, it's too big, too heavy, makes the card look as if it is about to topple over to the right, and doesn't link in with anything else in the design.

So I had to remove the button - have you any idea how strong Pinflair glue is? - and rescue it.

Do you want to see the rescued card? Well, I'm afraid you have a very long wait because I'm not sharing it until May 21st. APRIL FOOL!