New Challenge at TIME OUT!

Hi friends!

We have a new challenge at TIME OUT:

“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.” 

You can be inspired of the whole sentiment or choose just one or a couple of words for your starting point.

We are sponsored by CASual Fridays and I wanted to use their stamps in my card. I had to stretch my thinking a little bit, I wasn't sure how to make my stamp work for the quote! I did manage to think that trees are all about nature... Well, so is the sun... Love is mentioned in the quote -this is a card you would give to someone you love or at least care about a whole lot... And the "try again next year" made me think about things happening in the future, therefore "beautiful things are on your horizon". I think the interpretation sort of works! :)

In addition to the CASual Fridays Sunbeams I've used 2 background stamps by Kaiserkraft and Prima. The bg is very light and has a faded look, but maybe clicking on the photo and enlarging it bigger will help being the details. I needed something where to "mount" my sun and this was just an experiment -I do love how it turned out. The sun is heat embossed with silver, glittery embossing powder. That stuff looks great! My simple one layer doesn't have any embellishments, I did try to add some sequins and what not but could not make it work. Very mailing-friendly! 

I hope to see you playing along. Rema is joining us this time as guest designer -play along and you could be invited too! Don't miss the wonderful cards by Rema and our DT, click here and be inspired! After that... It's your turn to take TIME OUT and craft.

New Challenge at Inkspirational!

Hi friends! We have a new fun challenge for you at Inkspirational. 

The directions for this challenge are:

Use one, two or all three of the primary colours.(Red, Yellow, Blue) .

You may also use black, white or cream and realistic colours for skin, fur and hair.

Now you might think... Well what is that reddish brown background doing in Nonni's card then?!? I know! My DT card is faulty! :) I've colored the mice by the book but then thought I need to ground them somehow... And used grey ink for stamping a "dotty ground". I was thinking I would still get away with that because grey is a neutral. Sort of. About neutral. It's black and white mixed so it's allowed,  right? :) Then I thought I would use the same grey ink for stenciling my background... But I might have wanted to check first if my stencil brush (= old make up brush) had red ink on it or not! As you can see from the result... yes, it did. However, the stenciled background looked very pretty and made all the difference to the card (plain white looked a bit boring...) so I decided I will be naughty and just use it. Apologizes to my fellow DT members! I'm sitting on a naughty step here. I also thought I might get away with my mistake because these mice are so cute!! Aren't they the cutest mice that ever lived and gave Christmas presents to each other? It's such a pity Whiff of Joy does not exist anymore... Henry the mouse is my favorite cute stamp character. He truly has a personality. The stamped sentiment comes from Lawn Fawn. So, here you go, my faulty DT card for you. Do better than me when you enter our challenge! :)

We are very happy to have Shona joining us as guest designer. Please play along and you could win a GD spot as well! Happy crafting! 

Reminder of TIME OUT Challenge CASEing Julia

Hi friends!

Here's my reminder card for the current TIME OUT Challenge where we are CASEing the fabulous Julia Altermann! She made a wonderful shaker card for us to CASE and for my reminder I decided to make a shaker as well. I'm not loving all my color choices here but I do absolutely love this Lawn Fawn set! I've colored my images with Copics. I hope you like and I hope to see you playing along at TIME OUT! 

New Challenge at TIME OUT: CASEing Julia

Hi friends!

Today is very exciting for me because we are beginning a new challenge at TIME OUT where we are CASEing Julia Altermann who is my idol! :) She makes the most fun cards with mind-blowing coloring and her youtube videos are very entertaining and also educational. Do check out her blog Just One More Card and I promise you'll enjoy what you see! :) 

For my DT card I decided to make something for those followers of ours who maybe are intimidated of the idea of a shaker card but want to look for more simpler aspects of Julia's card to CASE. By the way -I've made a reminder card for next week and that is a shaker -love those! :) Anyway, in this card I concentrated on Julia's color choices, coloring in with Copics (and adding white gel pen for accent) + using a frame. I hope this simple card gives you ideas of how to play along. The DT made so awesome cards this week, there's shakers, CAS cards, fun patterned papers... Don't miss any of the cards, click here! Our guest designer this week is Jenny and I promise her card will make you smile. :) Please join us! 

I'm entering:

https://modsquadchallenge.blogspot.fi Use a die

Addicted to Stamps and More Make Your Mark

http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/wednesdaychallenge/ Make For the Border

http://thesisterhoodofcrafters.blogspot.fi Close to Nature

Card Kit Club #3 "Feathers and Wings"

Hi friends!

Me, Pia and Marina have been having fun sending card kits to each other... And this time it was Pia's turn to send the materials. Her kit is called "Feathers and Wings" and it contained beautiful die cuts, one stamped background, some patterned paper, beautiful stamped image of a bird couple and embellies. You can have a look at the kit photo in the end of this post. I saved the heat embossed background + some of the patterned papers for later use and this time combined the kit stuff with my own stash -on our previous rounds I've mostly worked with only items in the kit. Let's see what I made! :)

In my first card the beautiful fairy + silver mirrored card come from Pia. I just bought this Tim Holz sun rays stencil a couple of days ago and thought it would go nicely with the fairy. I used the same inks to fairy's wings and the background for coherent look. The sentiment comes from Chocolate Baroque and is heat embossed with white powder. 

In my second card I used more of the silver mirror card, some patterned paper, the bird couple and rhinestones from Pia. Actually all the ingredients of the card apart from the heat embossed sentiment are from the kit. I colored the birdies with different shades of grey Copics and went for a monochrome look. I sponged some ink to the background too to make it a bit less white. I even embellished! Way to go me! :) I love how this turned out. 

My next card might be my favorite from this round's kit cards. The dream catcher die is amazingly beautiful! I colored it with Copics and added many multi-colored rhinestones from my stash. The patterned paper comes from Pia -I altered it a bit with ink smoothing. The white heat embossed sentiment is a bit hard to see in the photos but I promise you it looks pretty IRL! :)

My final card is the most clean and simple from this round's cards. I combined Pia's paper, feather die cut and sequins with a sponged+stenciled background from my own stash and added a black and white heat embossed sentiment-strip for contrast. This is a nice card too I think! 

Here's still a photo of the kit:

Thank you so much Pia for these wonderful goodies and sorry girls that I'm AGAIN posting my cards later than we agreed -they have been ready for days, someone should just remind this airhead about writing the posts on time!!!

Snowflake Card for Challenges

Hi friends!

I had a sponged, stenciled background and a big die cut snowflake laying around my desk... And after going through some challenges I realized these two could be combined for a fun card! I'm seriously behind in my Christmas cards... This was card nr 3 for this year!!

I'm entering:

AAA Cards Blending

City Crafter Challenge Blog: Synchronizes Swim (my snowflake is pretty syncrononized and symmetrical, isn't it!) 

and

Pile it On: Make your own background

Thanks for popping by! 

New Challenge at Inkspirational!

Hi friends!

We have a new, fun challenge for you over at Inspirational: use patterned or designer paper with the optional twist of stamping on patterned paper. I was very inspired of the twist but in the end didn't stamp but used a Simon Says Stamp stencil over a monochrome designer paper that has a very beautiful ombre color. I used white pigment ink for sponging the stenciled design and I really like the look it created. I added a close-up photo so you could see the stenciling a bit better, it's a bit hard to see in the top of the card because the paper is almost white there... But IRL the look is very subtle and pretty. The sentiment is heat embossed with white on vellum, it's in Finnish and says "Today is your day". The feather die I've once received as a freebie with a crafty magazine.

Our guest designer this time is Kathy, don't miss her card or the DT cards -click here! I hope to see you playing along!