New Challenge at Inkspirational!

Hi guys!

We have a new challenge for you at Inkspirational:

I was a bit lost what to do with this word prompt... So in the end I just decided to attach as many things on top of each other I could think of. :) I love making cards with tags and found the perfect sketch for inspiration from Fusion Card Challenges. I cut my die cuts and vellum strip from snippets so I can play along at Pixie's Snippets Playground weeks 317 & 318 too. The tag coloration is created with Brushos and water and I love the ombre looked I achieved. I'm naturally then playing along at Addicted to CAS: Ombre and I think my colors are pretty cold so I'm playing along at AAA Cards: Chilled too! 

I hope to see you playing along at Inkspirational! Don't miss any of the other DT cards and challenge details, click HERE. 

TIME OUT Challenges Reminder!

HI guys!

Here's my reminder card for the current Inspired by Words challenge at TIME OUT:

You could be inspired of the whole sentiment or just choose some words or even one word. I'm sort of inspired by the whole sentiment and also including the word "day". :)

I white heat embossed a magazine freebie flower stamp and water colored it with distress inks. I wet the surface that I wanted to water color and then just dropped ink there for a quite messy look. I coated the whole coloring with two shades of gold from Gansai Tambi Starry Colors and I'm very pleased with the flower -I can maybe try to take better photos in the natural light today. However, I did go overly crazy with the splatters and I don't love the card... But it was very fun to make. 

I hope to see you joining us! Our guest designer this time is Michele, one of my favorite bloggers! She is so talented and makes amazing cards. We also have a new sponsor, Birch Press Designs -click HERE for all the information, take TIME OUT and craft! :) 

New Challenge at Less Is More!

Hello friends!

We have a new challenge for the next fortnight at Less Is More. It's time for the one layer challenge in our rota and this time the one layer theme is "Cute". I hope to see you playing along -remember that one layer means one piece of cardstock folded in half, no additional layers are allowed! :) My DT  buddies have plenty of inspiration for you in our challenge blog HERE. Don't miss any of the fun and a chance to win a prize from our monthly sponsor, Skull and Cross Buns!

Card 1 (above)

This is my first time using this cute Your Next Stamp beaver -I've had it for about a year already. I bought it for last year's Valentine's (in Finland it's typical to send cards to friends and family too, not just for lovers!) and thought this would be so cute for some of my girlfriends. :) I've watercolored the image with zigs and added sparkly details with Wink of Stella and glittery, clear Nuvo Drops (I wish I would not have added these, I liked the card more when without them). The sentiment is heat embossed with gold powder. I'm not comfortable with water color backgrounds yet so I masked the image and sponged the bg with blue distress ink. 

With this card I'd like to join:

CAS on Friday: Love

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Add a sentiment 

CASology: Glimmer

Penny Black and More: Something New (Never before used stamp!) 

Card 2 (below)

For my second card I used another NBUS stamp, this time by Dylusions. Coloring with Zigs again (still haven't purchased that new black ink for my Copic markers...) and this time the bg is sponged through a brick stencil. Some clear drops finish off the card. 

With this card I'd like to join:

Moving Along With the Times: CAS 

Thanks for popping by! I hope to see you playing along!

Welcome to Blogland, Twofer Card Challenge!

Hi guys!

I'm very excited to be joining the first ever Twofer Card Challenge founded by the fabulous Darnell whose card making, personality and writing skills I highly admire! I was definitely in need for something to spark my creativity after all the Christmas card making and this new challenge was just what I needed -slightly demanding but a lot of fun! Thank you Darnell! The goal of each challenge is to make 2 cards for different occasions using the same stamp/die following the monthly theme -in January the theme is Feathers. 

Let's have a closer look of the cards I created!

Card 1 (above)

Let's Celebrate, we deserve a party!

I've created the background myself: I sponged white pigment ink through a STAMPlorations stencil on black card and finished the background with white and gold paint splatters. The pattern of the stencil made me think of art deco style and partying flapper girls with feathers in their hair! 

Card 2 (below) 

Happy Retirement

This card has a very different look and the Finnish sentiment wishes for happy retirement days. I used nature themed patterned paper and picked the neutral color for the card base and second feather from the paper. With this card I'd also like to join Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Patterned Paper and Pixie's Crafty Workshop: Weeks 315 & 316.  It's my first time playing at Pixie's Crafty Workshop too so this post has many firsts! My feathers and the piece of vellum are all created from snippets + the white scalloped rectangle has some faulty stamping in the middle and I was able to save the piece in this project, yay! :) 

Thanks for popping by and I hope you like these two different cards made with one same feather die! 

New Challenge at Inkspirational!

HI friends!

I'm more than one day late with my Inkspirational DT card, sorry about that! I got confused with weeks and thought our previous challenge was still running for another week.. Well, these things happen! :)

The next fortnight we are inspired by the gorgeous photo above. There's many directions you could go to with this photo -music theme, colors, roses, pearls, lace... I went with colors, roses and pearls (if you look at the photo closely you'll see the tiny pearls I embellished the card with!) I've heat embossed my Stampendous image with white embossing powder and "glitter-watercolored" it with a water-filled, run-out wink of stella brush pen. I'm sorry you can't see the glitter in the photo... But the coloring has lovely sparkle IRL! I die cut the panel with a MFT rectangle die with decorative edges. Taking good photos sucks this time of the year... This one is taken in natural light but I tell you, there isn't much light around here right now... And the ones I took with unnatural light look even worse. I anyway hope you can see some details! :)

I'd like to join:

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge: All that Glitters

CAS Watercolour: Birthday

Watercolor Wednesday: All About Occasions

That's all from me now and I hope to see you playing along! Don't forget to visit the blogs of our DT members and our inspiring guests designer Charlotte, who I've just learned lives in Finland as I do! Yay! :) 

TIME OUT Challenges Reminder!

Hi friends!

I'm here with a quick post to remind you of our current challenge at TIME OUT! We are celebrating our 100th challenge and are very grateful for all our followers and DT members for keeping this challenge as fun as it is! We are actually changing up our challenges a bit and are replacing the CASE challenge with a new "We challenge you to be"-challenge... And the first one of those is "Thankful", very appropriate for the happy 100th challenge festivities! 

We have 2 guest designers this time to make the party even more fun: One of our regular players, Bobby, and Verve stamp company owner Julee. Verve sponsors this challenge with a stamp set for the winner. Do visit the fabulous blogs of our guests and regular DT members, you won't be disappointed !

Now onto my card!

I've stamped and colored this image in already last summer but it took this long to turn it into a card! The sentiment is of course very good for the challenge theme but I'm also very thankful that spring is coming slowly but surely... I'm not a winter person which is not very handy when you live in Finland! About 2 more months and we may begin to see the first flowers of spring! This image is by Mama Elephant and I've colored it in with Copics. 

Now it's your turn to show us what you are thankful for... Have fun, take some TIME OUT and craft! 

New Challenge at Less Is More!

Sorry for the unfocused photo, I try to get this replaced with a better one but please bear with this in the meantime! Clicking it larger might help a bit! :)

Hi friends!

We have the first challenge of 2018 for you at Less Is More and we also have some news: from now on you'll always have 2 weeks to play along, we are changing our challenges to run fortnightly! I hope you'll like this little change. We are still continuing with the monthly sponsors and with our familiar challenge rota so no worries, not too much is different! :) We actually have a new sponsor in January, Skull and Cross Buns. Exciting! 

Now let's get into the details of our first challenge in January: 

 I know one person who just loves loves loves purples, my good friend Sandie , and this is my message to her:

Sandie , I challenge you to enter this challenge at least twice times during the next fortnight! How about creating 3 cards for us?!? Do I hear "challenge excepted"?!? :) 

Our guest designer this time is the talented Wei. I really love the cute purse superhero card she created for us!

I've made a quick CAS card for this challenge using an oldie but goodie PTI stamp and sentiment stamp by Concord and 9th. My coloring is made with ZIGs and an old wink of stella pen filled with water -this gives such a lovely sparkle! I'm out of marker proof black ink so until I do some crafty shopping, no Copic coloring here! I guess this could be a good time to work on my water coloring skills! I forgot to stamp on Bristol paper (it's way better with ZIGs than normal watercolor paper) so this coloring job is very flat, not much dimension here... But oh well! At least it sparkles a lot! :)

That's all from me this time. Do visit my DT buddies for lots of more inspiration, I'm sure they have some extra cards in their blogs! 

I'd like to join:

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge: All that Glitters

Here's another photo take on the card, this time in natural light... The sparkle shows better in the first photo though! :)