A package full of love on your birthday

It was time for another birthdaycard this week and again I used a Penny Black image. This cute kitten was a delight to color. I used my favorite colorcombo pink/green and of course my beloved promarkers. 

 Just like last time I used patterned papers from my scrappile. I used a piece of string and it wasn't until I was done with the card that I realized I had colored the string on the cat's package the same color. Love when those kind of "accidents" happen, don't you?

This card could be used for any number of occasions. Since the image is so cute I didn't want to make the card too cute with pastel colors or heart shapes. Instead I used a darker pink/green colorcombo and instead of a heart charm I used a leaf - perfect for a fall-themed card. I think it looks kind of vintage-y and I'm very pleased it turned out so "grown up" as it's sometimes hard to achieve with cutesy stamps.
Finished card measures 12.5x18.5cm (about 5x7")

Challenges: 

Creatalicious - anything goes

Cute card thursday  - vintage

Fab 'n' funky - inspired by nature

Passion for promarkers - clean and simple

Penny Black saturday - nature

Pile it on - autumn colors/theme

Simon says wednesday - clean and simple

Tuesday morning sketchers - sketch

Stamp: Penny Black "Fragile" 1920K
Promarkers: ivory, blush, pastel pink, ice grey 1,3 and 5, blender, chestnut, walnut, moss, marsh green, apple and meadow green.
Papers: "Valentine stripes" by Chatterbox, "Discreet" Whisper collection by prima marketing.
Dies: Spellbinder's circle and scalloped circle

Celebrating your birthday with cats and butterflies

So many friends and family celebrating their birthday this and next month so time to make some birthday cards. Here is my latest one. The recipient's favorite color is orange and preferably with black or blue. I couldn't believe my luck when I found this patterned paper in my stash. The whole background is just from one sheet of patterned scrapbook paper. You gotta love those. 

The image is from Penny Black colored with my promarkers. The text is a cut-out from a sheet of scrapbook paper. I added some stickles glitterglue to the letters for some extra sparkle and 3D glaze to the middle of the flowers. The bigger butterflies are shapeabilities dies from spellbinders and the small one a Martha Stewart punch.

And of course the inside has got to be as pretty as the outside:

When assembling my cards I always try different options. Here's a photo of the different layouts I played around with before deciding on the last one:

Challenges:
Crafty cardmakers - layer it up 
Creative inspirations - anything goes
Cute card thursday - animals/creatures
Everybody art - anything goes
Fab 'n' funky - fall colors
I love promarkers - spots and stripes (stripes under the sentiment and spots on the yellowish swirly pattern)
Moving along with the times - anything from the first verse of Dana's song "all kinds of everything" (I used butterfly)
Ooh la la - anything goes

Passion for promarkers - beautiful butterflies
Penny Black and more - sentiment
Penny Black saturday - nature
Penny's challenges - anything goes
Simon says stamp wednesday - stamp it

 

Snail mail Christmas and exciting news

Welcome back to my blog and to another cardtuesday.

I've noticed that tuedays work pretty good with showing you cards and fridays for other projects. Do you agree?

So today I want to show you a Christmascard using a sweet Penny Black image. Let's be honest - it feels like Christmas is lightyears away, but each year it sneaks up on us cardmakers. Am I right or am I right? In my book you can never be too early for making Christmascards. Heck, I even start making them before the year has ended :D

This is a quite simple card, but using glittery paper and a nicely colored image it gives the card a lift. When I color my images I like letting them do the talking.

As for the news...

For the month of june you will be able to see my cards on the 

I love promarkers challenge blog

I've been invited to be the guest designer for june! 

I'm so excited!

Supplies:

Stamp: Penny Black (don't have the stamp anymore. If you know the name of it, let me know)
Papers: Free papers that came with an english craft magazine
Tools: Image colored with promarkers, snowflakes stamped with distress ink


Challenges:
Aud sentiments - Anything goes + sentiment
Bunny Zoe's - Lovely layers
Creative inspirations  - Shape it up (no square cards)
Creative moments - Anything goes
I love promarkers - Lace and/or ribbon
Passion for promarkers - Spots and/or stripes
Penny's challenges - Anything goes 
Sketch saturday - sketch
The crazy challenge - 3 layers or more
The ribbon girl - Any image

Deck the halls

Another Christmascard in the works. This time I have used a very sweet image from Penny Black. I haven't used them in a very long time so I thought they deserved some ink :)

I have coloured the most with promarkers and used oilpencils and alcohol for the "fur". The papers are a great mix of all sorts of papers I had in my stash. I have used my nesties, qk holly leaves and distress ink.

Challenges for this card are:


ABC Chistmas - any of the old challenges ( I chose H holly + sketch from 7:th april)
Fun with shapes and more - scalloped
Penny Black - the holly and the ivy
Stampin' for the weekend - Christmas

Penny Black saturday week 100 bloghop

 
Penny Black saturday challenge are having their 100:th challenge this week. To celebrate they are hosting a bloghop with lots of prizes. I just had to join :) Barely made it sitting those few moments to make the card, but I reallly wanted to join so I pushed through. Otherwise I've been crosstitching and jewelrymaking in the sofa in a half sitting/half laying position.I haven't been able to sit and make any cards and those few moments I can I want to make items for my DT positions. So this is an exception, but I will show you some jewelry and other things I can make in the sofa.

It has been quite a while since I made any cards using PB stamps. Some of my poor PBs haven't even seen ink yet, poor things (especially the clear stamps like the ones I've used here). I used stamps from three different sets:

Hedgie from "garden friends"
Mice from "micey day"
Text from "wonderful"

The challenge was a sketch and I'm very happy how I used it. I turned it 90 degrees and used the rectangle panel to have an image in. It's not something I usually do. Don't think I've ever had a card with two different images like this.  I just love the pink and turquoise togethe and I added little pieces of sheer ribbon to the sides of the mice. Oooh, I need to add glitter to the flowers. Will do that and upload better pics tomorrow :D

I only used one patterned paper and two pieces of cardstock, but I think it looks ritcher than it really is. I used my new scalloped circle nesties and embossed the pink circle with a cuttlebug embossing folder. The text is just stamped with black and then I coloured it in with pink and turquoise promarkers - same as I used to colour the animals. Easy, huh?

Pampering time

I'm having so much fun at the cuttlebug challenge blog. The whole weekend they have been having tutorials and inspiration - a SPA weekend. If you haven't been to the blog you really should. There are so many talented women that make the projects and you'll get to use your cuttlebug in different ways.

One of the things the women were sharing were decorated bathitems. I got so inspired by this - I love my baths :) I designed a doorhanger (stolen idea from one of the ladies). We actually don't have a proper lock on our bathroom door, so we got one of those that you have in the hotelrooms: one side says "don't enter" and the other one "please tidy the room". We thought it would be kind of funny since we love travelling. We don't really need a lock for the two of us, but when people are coming over it might be nice for them to "mark" somehow that they are in there.

So now I designed a special doorhanger for myself when I take my baths :D




I embossed a piece of white cardstock with my paisley CB folder 1,5 times. There was a little uneven edge which is covered with the "ribbon" (smart, huh?). I used my new nesties although I had to cut out the image by hand because the oval was either too small or too big. The scalloped oval behind the image is white bling cardstock. The background paper is double sided so even the backside looks good :) It's quite thick and even though I thought it was a shame to cover it up I think it turned out good in the end. The image is from Penny Black by the way. It's the small one from an acrylic set. Coloured in with promarkers, what else? ;)

Penny Black challenge #46

This week on the penny black challenge blog the theme was "anything goes". Since I feel like I have lost my style in cardmaking I'm being a bit cautious when I join challenges now. I want to avoid getting caught up and "boxed in", so I'm trying to avoid the ones that are too "controlled" if you know what I mean. This challenge was great since the only "must" was a PB image and I love working with those anyway.

It was so great making a card after my own devices again. I almost had forgotten how much fun it was. Since starting my blog in autumn I have joined in on so many challenges. I have developed tremendously, but hadn't really tried my wings on my own.

I'm happy with the card I made. I think it shows my "developed" style, lol. I love the papers and the whole feeling of the card. It is supposed to be a "mother's day" card. I thought about adding a text in the upper corner, but thought it took the attention away from the bunny.





The grey paper on the bottom of the card is grey bling embossed with the script CB folder.

Penny Black challenge #40

Can you tell that I long for summer? lol. I just love these flowery green/pink (my fav colourcombo) papers. Here's what I whipped up for this week's Penny Black challenge.

The challenge was to follow a sketch and here's what I did. As usual the photo gets weird in my yellow light, the colours are more pink and magenta, but I must say I like this kind of Vintage colouring too. Maybe I should distress the card :) If you look at the post with my duckcard (below) you can see what a difference there is if I photograph by night or in daylight! I really have to make myself one of those lightboxes. Soon! :D

Thanks for taking a look at my creation :)

Friday sketchers sketch ;)

Friday sketchers had an interesting sketch this week. I don't think I've ever put a backgroundpaper diagonally before, so this was great practice.

I'm not so much into coloring at the moment, so I used a colored image from my box. The papers are from a cardstack I actually bought at my foodstore.

I don't know if it shows that well, but I used a rainbow inkpad to color in the edges of the tags. It looks really good.




Here's the sketch (taken from their blog):

Thank you card and diving photo

I almost missed this challenge, so I've been up half the night to make a card (well, not only for the card, I've been doing other pre-Christmas things). I really wanted to join this challenge because there is this adorable Sarah Kay stamp to be won.

I have - now - a little box of already colored in images. I found this little angel I colored a couple of days ago. I also found some "Thank you" stickers in my stash. I don't think I've ever done a thank-you card, but thought this image of the angel holding heart-flowers was great for this. Normally I would've used silver with purple, but I had to go with the textcolor. I also applied some goldglitter on her wings. I like the way I took some red color to focus on the flowers. I also put some goldglitter on the flower.

As usual, I'll take a better pic and put it up in the gallery (my slideshow to the right) Speaking of pics: have you seen my profilephoto yet? It's taken during my fiancées birthday trip in august to celebrate his 30:th birthday. We went to Malta to dive with our new certificates we had fought to get during spring/summer. We just made it in time for the trip. On location we fell inlove with the water (at least 6 meters visibility) so we decided to continue on our certificates and take the advanced level. We ended up spending his birthday on 30 meters depth! It was such an experience. This photo of me is taken at about 15 meter's depth. I'm "flying" above a ravine that went down to about 40 meters. It looked like an abyss, dark and deep. I thought maybe the photo would show it, but naturally you can't take that kind of photos with a simple camera. Besides - it was the first time we had a camera under water with us, so I still think it's a great pic.

No patterned paper - Penny Black challenge

A happy card without using patterned papers. I stamped the blue circles with a round stamp in different shades of blue. The image is colored with twinkling h2o-like colors.

Snowy is flakey

Before I forget I want to tell everyone to make sure to come back tomorrow. I will have something yummy here that I know won't hurt anyone's teeth...

This week on cutecardthursday the challenge was snow+snowflakes. I have a lot of Penny Blacks that have never felt ink, so I thought it was time for this guy. The quote is also from PB. Usually I don't like buying quotestamps, it's so easy to write a text and print it on the computer, but when I saw this quote I knew I had to have it. It would've been wonderful for a challenge that PB had where you were only supposed to use a quotestamp, no images (missed that one unfortunately).

A while ago I was thinking about what my style was and this card is it! No patterned papers, my own made stampbackground, embossingpowder and a lot of glitter and bling! And now my latest obsession: cuttlebug embossing folders. The purple papers are bling cardstock. Both the snowflakes and text is embossed with "turquoise sparkle". It gives a glitter and shine like gasoline, you know those rainbowcolors. It's one of my fav EP (embossing powders)

I love that blue/purple combo and think most of my Christmascards will look like that. Every X-mas I'm trying to have a style on my cards. One year it was traditional green/red, one year black/silver, last year I think I had frosty blue and this year I'm going for blue/purple. Such a great combo!



The text says: snowflakes are just unassembled snowmen.