Hello.

Hello.

I have a really easy card to make today.

It features the Altenew set Floral motifs. 

By stamping the image in black repeatedly and just colouring the one image with whatever you have to hand you can really get a pop on a simple card.

I used a watercolour pen to colour the flower and leaves.

I loosened the pink colour with a water brush and its much more blended than it looks in the picture.

Keeping the design simple gives the flower centre stage on my card front.

Thanks for looking.

Just because...

 Hi everybody,

I've got some simple colouring on kraft to share with you today.

I'm a massive fan of kraft card, and I especially love colouring with pencils on it, it creates such an organic look.

I used the, oh so pretty, 'Bejeweled' set from Altenew for today's card.

I started by stamping out the butterfly, twice, once on my card panel, and a second time on a separate piece of kraft card, and heat embossing in white.  I then got out my coloured pencils, (I used Crafter's Companion but obviously any would work), and coloured my second butterfly in, using soft pinks with a splash of yellow to help make the colours pop.  I stamped out my sentiment, again heat embossing in white, and cut around it.  Like I said, I love the organic look and wanted to keep that theme throughout, so wasn't too concerned about perfection.  I also cut a piece of vellum to put behind my sentiment for a bit of extra pretty...coz we all need some extra pretty, right?

I then layered all my pieces on top of one another, adding some gold twine behind the whole thing.  I wanted my butterfly to really stand of from the card, so added some foam tape behind the wings to really make them stand proud.

I finished with a scattering of clear domed gems as I thought they worked perfect with the pretty simplicity I was aiming for.  And there you have it.  I love this set, it's really good for all types of colouring, and I especially love the sentiments in it, the fonts are clean and modern and have really sweet simple messages.  I hope you like it.

As always, everything I used is linked up below.

See you next week.

Jillx

Lacey scrolls

Hello.

How are you enjoying this heatwave? 

To be honest it doesn't agree with me but did inspire the summery feel for my card today.

I have used the Lacey scrolls stamp set from Altenew. 

I have kept this very clean and simple and have stamped the images in the Altenew crisp inks ( follow our Facebook page for stock updates) and just the one on the front i added some extra details with coloured pencils.

The only accessories i used was some green washi tape and liquid pearls.

Thanks for looking.

More sketchy roses

Hello.

I have more sketchy roses from Altenew today.

I have used watercolours to colour the rose and stems and honestly if your afraid to water colour don't be its so easy to it this way.

Simply heat emboss the image the  add a wash of watercolour and the colour will stay in the embossed sections creating your shading. 

Really really simple.

If you don't have watercolours you can use distress markers or the equivalent add some colour where you want the darker parts to be and either spritz with water from a mister bottle of pull the colour out with a water brush,

To add an extra touch use a sparkly or metallic embossing powder.

The sentiment is also Altenew and is stamped in the hero arts ombre ink.

Click the images below to go straight to the store.

Thanks for looking.

Sketchy Roses

Hello.

If you're waiting for Altenew i thought i would show you an older set Sketchy Roses.

This set has the beautiful large rose stamp and some extra leave stems and petals and is currently on sale.

Normally i would colour with copics or maybe watercolours but if your not confident colouring paper  piecing is the answer.

I stamped the rose and the stem onto some paper from Lawn Fawn lets polka mon amie papers in pink and green.

After fussy cutting i added some basic shading with copics.

There are lots of options with this technique and you can go simple like i have or more elaborate and add lots of layers or bold patterns.

    

Click the images to go straight to them in the store. 

Remember if an item is out of stock you can let us know you would like it by registering your email on the email me when back in stock.  Clicking the heart adds any item to your personal wishlist if you are logged into the store.

Thanks for looking.

Keep it Clean and Shiny with CASual Fridays

Hello fellow crafters! If there's one technique I'm always struggling with it's clean and simple. I always start out with the resolution to make something that's CAS, but in the end, it never really is. So, today, I'm doing my best to keep it as clean as I possibly can and I'm using an awesome set from CASual Fridays.

As of now, all CASual Fridays products have been moved to the Discontinued Brands section in the Make The Day Special Stamp Store because the brand will be discontinued here in the store.  But of course you can still get your fix at www.casualfridaysstamps.com – but don't forget to check out the current deals at the MtDSS Store here!

My card took all of 10 minutes. Seriously. All you do is stamp the image in Versamark, then sprinkle Judkins Sticky Stuff embossing powder on it and heat set it. The moment the embossing powder turns sticky, stop heating it – it’s sticky now and that’s when you apply the Gilding Flakes.

Mush the flakes onto the sticky surface while holding your breath – this stuff is super light, so heavy breathing (darth vader style) or sneezing (heavens forbid!) will make the air around you sparkle ;) Once you’re done, use a scrubby tool to get all the excess flakes off and reveal the actual shapes you’ve covered ;)

I’m also very impressed by the fine detail I got; even though the Sticky Stuff is pretty coarse. You might want to heat it from behind to make sure you are not blowing off the embossing powder. And because it was so easy, I wondered if I could use another medium to create a similar card: once more, I used Versamark and Judikins Sticky Stuff, but then sprinkled it with Elizabeth Craft Designs glitter. After carefully pressing the glitter into the sticky surface, I rubbed off the excess and made the glitter shine.

You might see here that I didn’t get the finest details as well as I did with the gilding flakes, so I’d recommend this technique for images which are not quite as detailed, but I still like the effect immensely. I’m not sure how well it translates to the photos, but in person, the sparkle is just stunning.

Add to it the stark contrast of the black sentiment, and you have one clean and simple card. Only fitting to use CASual Fridays stamps for it, I’d say :)

Thanks for stopping by today! Don't forget to check out the CASual Fridays sale over in the shop while supplies last! Happy crafting!

Butterflies to brighten a dreary day!

Hi! It's that time of year where any injection of colour is welcome- particularly on a cold and dreary day!
I got stamping up a ton of these beautiful butterflies from the Altenew set 'Painted Butterflies'

I've also added the sentiment from the Sentiments and Quotes set- which is on special offer at the moment too!

The multi-step images are easy enough to line up and the beautiful thing about this set is that if it's not lined up perfectly- it just adds to the arty-ness of it all ;-)
Any stamp set that hides my mistakes is a great one in my book!
I've only stamped and trimmed out each butterfly- keeping it really simple. This set looks amazing watercoloured or using copics after stamping the outline only.
Do go and get a set- there's just about enough to go around ;-)

Well I need to fly… wouldn't it be lovely to have wings?!!

See you next week,

Keren xx

Chase Your Dreams

Hello fellow crafters!

For today's card I wanted something bright and cheerful. Also, I haven't played with my Newton's Nook stamps nearly enough, so they had to be thrown in the mix.

I started by coloring the super cute cat with my Copics, then added clear Wink Of Stella to the balloon to give it some sparkle. It's also easy to fuzzy cut these stamps; if you leave a white border, it goes rather fast. For the background I used the Landscape Trio dies by Mama Elephant. Who doesn't love stitched borders? Some careful sponging with Distress Ink and voilà - a sky!

Hint: I cut the same scalloped rectangle shape that the front panel is in from a piece of thin copy paper and then glued the cut up cloud panel on that paper, then adhered that to the card front. I didn't want to start puzzling the clouds together on the card itself because I was worried I might not get the alignment right (knowing myself, it would have been catastrophic) so I used that little trick.

As a sentiment, I picked one of the beautiful sayings from Altenew. I wanted it to dangle from the cat's balloon, but it was too big. I simply masked off the part I didn't need with a post it, stamped the first part onto the tag and the other part inside. The Wplus9 Timeless Tags 2 fit perfectly here. Some Judikins Iridescent embossing powder on top of the Versafine pigment ink and - sparkle!

The other half of the sentiment was stamped inside of the card. I thought that would be fun for the recipient: super funny card front and a very encouraging sentiment once opened up. Just a cute fit with the cat hanging on to the balloon, don't you think? :)

I mounted the little cat with foam squares to add dimension, fiddled a really long time with the twine to make it look good and spent ages to "properly" sprinkle my sequins across the card. I never get the "random" placement right the first time and rearrange my elements to make them look great. Not sure I always succeed, but it's fun :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Throwback Thursday

Hello :-)

Happy Thursday-nearly the weekend-yay!

Todays card is another for one of those frequent August Birthdays,using the super cute,Mama Elephant Bootastic and its matching dies. This doesnt have to be just for Halloween-it can fit a few occasions,including an invite to a movie night,but thats another post ;-)

The speech bubble is from the Avery Elle Oh Yeah die and the Wish List is definitely NOT throwback as its from the scrummy new Altenew Thoughts and Reminders stamp set. I paper pieced the princess after stamping and colouring her Julie Nutting style,over script paper. 

Here's a close up...

I shaded parts of her dress with a pale grey copic to add some depth,and some gold Stickles to her wand and crown. See? Not a wiff of Halloween ;-)

Hope you like it,have a great end of week!

Lou x

Persian Carpets

I love most things about Persia - the food, the art and in particular the carpets so I was very excited about the new Altenew stamp set Persian Motifs (well I'm excited that we have ALL the Altenew stamps and was spoilt for choice of which to play with first but this one won!)

I took just one of the images from the set and went about stamping up my own carpet design, embossing each one with a teal embossing powder.  Once I'd finished I just used runny watercolour paint to flood each flower with blue, making some areas wetter than others so they would dry darker.  I filled in the leaves and stems in the same way with a teal colour and then left it to dry.  I used the same technique on the background with a pinky-red as I love the bold colours in Persian carpets.

For the sentiment I went for Super Script, one of their gorgeous sentiment sets, and stamped and embossed it onto a vellum strip so you can still see the design underneath.  As fixing vellum can be difficult when you don't have much space to hide the glue, I have a little trick - when doing panels like this, I score them and fold the edges around the back and then a few dots of glue behind the letters are enough to hold it flat ;-)   I added a strip of gold washi to the base card to balance the design and draw your eye to the gold.

If you got the newsletter yesterday and wanted the new Neat and Tangled "A Long Time Ago" set but clicked the link and found it to be unavailable, it looks like there was an error in the link, as it is actually in stock.

This card would fit our new colour challenge too - don't forget to check it out and play along ;-)  http://makethedayspecialcards.blogspot.co.uk/p/challenges.html