New Challenge at TIME OUT!

Hi everyone!

The next fortnight at TIME OUT we are CASEing a fabulous card artist, Therese Calvrid from Lost in Paper. Above you'll see the beautiful card she made for us to CASE. Aren't those water color stripes, vellum, white heat embossed sentiment and flowers just amazing? All those things inspired my card. As always we allow "own twists" at TIME OUT so my twist is a completely different color palette. I just love the bright, happy look of my card and I hope Therese will like it too! The flower stamp comes from Paper Smooches and I used Copics for coloring. The water color stripes I made with a yellow Zig marker and water using also washi tape as masks creating the pattern. 

I hope to see you playing along. Our DT and guest designer Brigit have made very inspiring cards for you, don't miss them. click here !

New Challenge at Inspirational

Hi friends!

We have a new challenge for you at Inspirational and here's our theme:

I used a lot of masking in creating this cute card with Lawn Fawn critters. All stamps are individual so the masking did take some time but I love the way this turned out! My coloring is done with Copics and the bg is sponged with DI:s. This went for my godson for for 2nd birthday. :)

I hope you'll head on over to the challenge blog now and have a look what the other design team members made! Our guest designer this time is Lisa with a very vivid card, don't miss it!

New Challenge at TIME OUT

Hi friends!

We have a new fun challenge for you at TIME OUT : 

'Masculine with optional twist of mixed media'

We are defining 'mixed media' as:

Stamps and ink plus 2 other elements that add texture and/or dimension.

One lucky twister will receive a stencil by STAMPlorations and our winner gets a 10 $ voucher to their store. Great prizes! 

In my card I played with some great STAMPlorations goodies and made a maritime card. The stamps can be bought here and the stencil here . I heat embossed the anchor on a circle shaped card and added color with sponging Distress Inks and spraying some water on it for added interested. More sponging is done with the stenciled background... And I ended up doodling some white gel pen dash lines around the anchor circle. The sentiment is simply stamped. My mixed media elements are heat embossing, sponging, adding gel pen and spraying water. Hope you like!

Please join us. I'd now like you to head on over to our challenge blog and have a look what our guest designer Patti along with our regular DT members have made for your inspiration! 

Card Kit Club With Marina and Pia!

 Hi friends!

Me, Marina and Pia started a small "club" together -we are sending the same card making supplies for 4 or more cards to each other. The fun lies (in addition to getting amazing crafty goodies!) in seeing how different cards we make with the same supplies! I encourage you to head on over to Marina  s and Pia's blogs to have a look what they made, I'm sure their cards are fantastic and I can't wait to see them. 

 I sent the May kit and Pia was clever enough to remember to take a photo out of it (I wasn't)... But now when I try adding her photo to this post some weird stuff is happening and I can't do it! Bummer! So please have a look at the photo in Pia's and Marina's blogs. However, these were the ingredients of my flowery kit:

1) dry embossed flower background on white watercolor paper

2) Large Hero Arts bg stamp heat embossed with white on watercolor paper

3)The same Hero Arts stamp stamped with black on marker paper

4) Stamped and die cut Altnew Hennah Flowers

5) Several sheets of patterned paper in reds and blues

6) Small amount of sequins and gems (I use so little embellies that I had absolutely nothing fun to send!)

In my first card I used part of the dry embossed background for a super simple CAS card. I swiped red ink straight from the ink pad to the embossed panel. I love how applying ink straight from the pad gives you this uneven, distressed look! I simply attached the panel on textured card base and added a sentiment by STAMPlorations.

My second card features the Altenew Hennah flowers colored with Copics. I used two sides of one of the patterned papers too and chose a cream card base to match the color tones on the patterned paper. I also used Wink of Stella for the flowers, the photo makes them look a bit strange and over-glittery but they are fine in real life! :) The sentiment comes from the Altenew Hennah Flowers set.

My third card might be my favorite. The layout is inspired by Marina who I've often seen using this layout with patterned paper on top and bottom parts of her card base. Looks lovely I think! The stamped flower bg and the patterned paper originally covered the whole card front but when trimming everything to size I made drastic cutting mistakes... So this is how the layout turned out in the end. Looks pretty I think but it was a shame to miss most for the coloring I had made! Sentiment by Papertey Ink. 

Finally the fourth card where I used the heat embossed Hero Arts bg. I sponged it with DI and then used water and a brush to remove color from inside of the flowers. In the end I coated the flowers with Wink of Stella and attached the panel on a patterned paper-covered card base. This looks quite pretty too, the ink color happened to match very beautifully to the paper! Sentiment comes from Simon Says Stamp.

Now, please head on over to Marina's and Pia's blogs and have a look at their cards! I hope they enjoyed playing with my kit and can't wait to receive the next kit. :) Happy crafting and have a fun week! 

A Wedding Card With Cute Doggies!

Hi everyone!

My friends got married last Sunday and this is the card I made for them. They own a dachshund and I thought this cute dog stamp by Paper Smooches would be perfect to make a sweet card. I used the mirror stamping technique for getting two opposite images and it worked wonders -Jennifer McQuire showed very good tips in her video here, she even used this same stamp! I used a black thin marker pen for strengthening all the black lines after fussy cutting the doggies. The happy couple and the hydrant (it serves as an altar here!) are colored with Copics. The blue bg is created with Distress Inks and water and the ground is sponged with DI as well. 

I'd like to enter:

http://sirstampalotchallenge.blogspot.fi Feature a Creature

http://craftingmusketeers.blogspot.fi Weddings

http://pinkgemchallengeblog.blogspot.fi Love and Romance

http://papersmooches.blogspot.fi/2016/06/june-challenge-layers.html Layers I hope this card qualifies -it has a lot of dimension created with layering inks and stamping... The dogs are also popped up with 3d stickers! 

TIME OUT Challenge Reminder!

Hi friends!

I'm here to remind you of our current challenge at TIME OUT. Click here for all the details! We are being inspired by this photo...

...and as last week, I went with the bricks again. :) I used the same stencil too but this week I used it as an embossing folder in my Cuttlebug. Worked pretty well! I added some ink to the embossed panel, partly swiping with the ink pad (love the stripes that technique gives) and partly inking with a blending tool.  After I had the bg ready I didn't know what to do... So I did what I so often do and colored in a simple flower image. :) This one is from PTI and has a really calm, soothing feel I think... So this became a condolences card with a Finnish sympathy sentiment heat embossed on vellum. 

Thanks for popping by and I hope to see you at TIME OUT!  

New Challenge at Inkspirational!

Hello friends!

We have a new challenge for you at Inkspirational: Word Prompt TEXT. Before going to the details of my cards I want to share some great news with you! I usually don't write any personal stuff in my card making blog but this is just too cool to not write also in here: I passed my driving exam yesterday! Can you believe it! At first go at the age of 35. :) I've had intensive 2 months learning to drive and sitting on the theory lessons with all the teenagers. :) I'm so glad and so proud of myself too! Woo hoo! 

Anyway, my card. :) I made a bg panel for my Clearly Besotted flower, inspired of the word prompt. I first sponged some blue DI on the card panel, spritzed it with water to get some white dots, dried it, then stamped the text background with a Prima stamp and finally dry embossed the whole thing with a Taylored Expressions embossing folder that gives very fun, subtle, distressed kind of finish. My flower is colored in with Copics and that's pretty much all there is to this card -some gems and a stamped, Finnish birthday sentiment. I'm SO bored of all my Finnish sentiment stamps (well I only have 2 that I use all the time) and I finally found a nice sheet of sentiments and bought it yesterday. Very glad about that too! 

I hope you'll now head on over to the challenge blog and have a look what my design teamies and guest designer Jen from Haystack Cards have created for your inspiration. I hadn't seen Jen's blog before and her cards are amazing, do check them out! Happy crafting!

Retroish Flowers!

Hi guys!

I have a cute flower card for you today. My sketch comes from the new Share Joy Challenge. 

My version is simplified but I think you can still see how I was inspired. 

I used a Tailored Expressions embossing folder for my card base, some patterned paper, a Copic colored Clearly Besotted flower and a sentiment from Simon Says Stamp for my card. The flower is also covered with Wink of Stella and I added white dots with gel pen for interest. This one has a sort of retro feel I think, I really love it! :)

I'd also like to enter the current CASology, cue card CAS. 

In my opinion, although there's many details and colours in this card, the overall look is still clean and simple. What do you think? Also, coloring a simple flower like this with markers takes no time at all. :)

Finally, I'm playing along at CASual Fridays Challenge: Florals. 

Thanks for popping by, I hope you like today's card! Have a fun crafty weekend everyone!

New Challenge at TIME OUT!

Hi guys!

Here's my DT card for the new TIME OUT Challenge. We are inspired by this photo:

I was a bit perplexed what to make this time -I was late with my DT card and after seeing all the gorgeous makes of my design teamies and our very talented GD Karren  (love her style!) I was even more unsure what to make -I didn't want to just copy their great ideas! In the end I went with squares and brick and created the card you are seeing here. I used my Hero Arts butterfly stamp & die set for the focal point of the card and used a brick stencil for sponging the background. The butterflies are colored in with Copics and under them I used some burlap. I just love this stamp & die set- it's so fun to come up with ideas what to use under the butterflies! The burlap and the color choices of my card are sort of rustic to my eye and in the end I was quite pleased with the final card. I hope you like it too! I look forward seeing you joining as at TIME OUT.

I'd like to enter:

http://modsquadchallenge.blogspot.fi Peek a Boo

http://butterflyspotchallenge.blogspot.fi Aperture + Apricot (used both)

http://casmixup.blogspot.fi Dies (thanks Loll for hinting about the new challenge!)