New Challenge at Less Is More!

Hi friends!

We have a new fun challenge for you at Less Is More:

I had a bit more time on my hands finally and got to create two cards for your inspiration... Hopefully you'll like them! For more ideas by our fabulous design team, click HERE. This time Skye is our guest designer and I love the die cuts she used in her card! Great to have you joining in, Skye! Uniko continues as our June sponsor. 

Card 1, Christmas (above)

In my first card all the W+9 die cuts are from my "bits" box... And so is the die cut white rectangle, already pre-stamped with a Finnish "Merry Christmas"-sentiment! All I did was adding some Wink of Stella to the pinecones and berries, glued everything together and assembled the card... Very fast and easy!

With this card I'd like to enter:

Merry Monday Christmas Card Challenge: Inspiration photo (I chose the colors red, green and brown + branches)

CAS Christmas card Challenges: Masculine

Spring has been so busy I've completely forgot about this challenge... Thank you Trina for reminding me!!

Card 2, Ocean (below)

In my second card I used some pre-made Brusho water colored card + pre- Copic colored and pre-die cut starfish, all from the "bits" box. I die cut the Brusho card with my favorite edge die (Lil'Inker) and assembled the card. The sentiment is from a set I got from my crafting buddy Jill when she visited Finland about a month ago! I love the simplicity of the sentiments in this set.

With this card I'd like to join:

CAS Watercolour challenge June: Ocean

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Bright and Cheerful

Thanks for popping by and I hope to see you joining us! 

New Challenge at Inkspirational!

Hi friends!

We have a new challenge for you at Inkspirational and I'm really excited about this one... I got to chose the topic and I chose "small stamps". I think so often we forget the smaller stamps in our sets and just use the big ones! I hope you'll enjoy this topic and will play along. More DT inspiration from our design team members and a fabulous cactus card from our GD Valerie HERE

My card is inspired by the sketch and CASE This Sketch and the colors of Color Throwdown. I just stamped small PTI flowers with pastel ink colors, following the sketch, super simple! I did want some extra detail so I die cut a curve with a Lil'Inker die. The sentiment is actually a sticker that I've popped up with fun foam. I finished off the card with a couple of rhinestones. Hope you like and thanks for popping by! 

TIME OUT Challenges Reminder

Hi friends!

I'm here to remind you of our current challenge at TIME OUT where we challenge you to be:

I went with bold leopard print! :)

In my card I'm using products from the sponsor of our challenge, Poppystamps. Their store is a delight to visit and is packed with top quality goodies-take a look here. They also have a fab blog. Take a look at it here and sign up so you don't miss out on all the fun! On their blog they are running a 'Clean and Simple' challenge. So if you have some of their products and make a clean and simple card for our challenge...then link it up to their challenge for a chance to win more prizes!!

The die I used can be purchased in Poppystamps store HERE and the sentiment stamp is from a floral stamp set HERE. I've used the flowers from the stamp set in a card a couple of weeks ago (with a very similar design, this is one of my faves right now!) HERE . Here's a quick photo of some of the flowers in the stamp set:

Thanks for popping by and I hope you enjoy this CAS card. Have a look at all the TIME OUT design team inspiration in our challenge blog. This time our guest designer is the talented Marieke, I truly love her style! Happy crafting, everyone!

I'd like to join:

Poppystamps March Challenge: Clean and Simple

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Girl Power

girly leopard print sure is powerful, right! :)

AAA Cards: Ombre

my patterned paper has an ombre look!

Twofer Challenge #2 Hearts

Hi friends!

I'm here with a last minute entry for Twofer Challenge #2: Hearts. I was afraid I'd miss the deadline but I did make it in the end, yay! There's even 5 more hours to go before the linky closes... Hmmm I could still start over if I wanted! :)

In my cards I've used a heart background stamp by CAS-ual Fridays and my occasions are Love and Christmas. 

In my Love- card I've white heat embossed the heart background, die cut it with my currently favorite die by Lil'Inker and sponged ink to only to the top part of the image.  I also splashed some water to the inked part for extra texture. The sentiment is heat embossed with white too. 

A close up of the card:

The continuous heart pattern reminds me of retro wallpaper patterns, maybe from the 70's... And I though it might look fun stamped tone on tone. It looks alright IRL but was hard to capture with my camera, hopefully you can see the heart pattern a bit better in the detail photo below. For some reason the tone on tone look begun to look like Scandinavian Christmas print to me and therefore the second occasion turned into Christmas -my first idea was to make a Friendship or Sympathy card. In the end the second card is my take on "Scandinavian Retro Christmas". Lol! :) I used die cuts from W+9, a Finnish Christmas sentiment + white paint splatters. I seem to need to splatter all my cards now... It's a thing! 

In addition to Twofer challenge, I'd like to enter my Love-card into:

Penny Black and More: Hearts and Love (and/or flowers, no flowers here!) 

Simon Says Monday Challenge: Crunge It Up (I used distress inking + water splattering)

Calling All Sistahs: Photo 

In addition to Twofer challenge, I'd like to enter my Christmas card into: 

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Make Your Own Background

ABC Christmas Challenge: Distress (I used paint splatters) 

Thanks for popping by!

New Challenge at Less Is More!

Hi friends!

We have a new challenge for you at Less Is More! We continue with our birthday festivities and have some of our alumni DT members creating with us and we also have prizes for you to win... Don't miss any of the fun, the amazing amount of inspiration and prize details, click HERE. Our challenge topic is a fun, but possibly a challenging one:

Dry embossing is something that is maybe not easy to incorporate to CAS designs but that's why we love challenges... They challenge us! :) Let's see what I came up with.

Card 1 Feathers (above)

I've used dry embossing in two ways here: 

*I've dry embossed the whole background using a very subtle embossing folder, something that's very suitable for CAS backgrounds.

*The feathers are cut from previously dry embossed card. The feather die was a freebie with a crafting magazine some years ago and I still use it -it actually does some embossing in itself too!

A very simple layout with these feathers + a bit of wash tape and sequins to embellish the card. The Finnish sentiment means "for you". It's a rubber stamp and just impossible to stamp straight, I tell you!!!! I start to think the whole sentiment is somehow "crooked" on the rubber itself! I think this was the first and last time this stamp came out to play...

With this card I'd like to play along at:

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Add a Die Cut

Card 2 Flowers (below)

In the detail photo you can see how I've used dry embossing here -just on 1/3 of the card making sure there's lots of white space left. This design is quite detailed but I'm hoping to get away with it, to me it is CAS enough! :) The stamped, Copic colored and die cut flowers come from Poppy Stamps and my currently favorite decorative edge die comes from Lil'Inker.

With this card I'd like to enter:

Stamping Sensations: Anything With Flowers (my 2nd entry)

Guest Designing at Addicted to CAS!

Hi guys!

Today (or tonight if you are on my time zone!) I have the great pleasure to be joining Addicted to CAS as a guest designer for their new challenge:

Thank you Barb for inviting me!

I've interpreted the code word with two ways:

a) using leopard print patterned paper

b) Thesaurus tells me words related to cat are for example "admirer" so I made the card for someone worth admiring -this could go to any of my beautiful, lovely friends! 

The sentiment stamps come from MFT and the brilliant curve die is from Lil'inker. Love this die! I bought it last summer but haven't really used it -recently I've made this + one other card with the die (in my blog tomorrow...) and now I feel like using it in all my cards! I just love this fun way to add some pattern and detail to your CAS design! Some sequins finish off this very simple card. 

I'd like to enter:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop #319

(my snippets are the strip of black card + the leopard print paper is a leftover from a large 12 x 12 sheet from my scrapbooking times years and years ago!)

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Add a Die Cut

I hope to see you playing along at Addicted to CAS and thanks again Barb for inviting me to join as a guest designer! 

Guest Designing at CASE This Sketch!

Hi guys!

I have the great joy to guest design at CASE This Sketch Challenge blog in their current challenge! The sketch is a fun one:

It begins a series of retro sketches: CASE This Sketch is using some of their old, fabulous sketches for second time just because they are so great! :)

I followed the sketch pretty strictly... I've used some orange card base, black card that I had previously stamped with the Ton background stamp and golden Delicaa ink (also die cut this with Lil Inker dies) , an Altenew flower (die cut and colored with Copics) + Altenew sentiment (heat embossed with white). The combo of Copics I used is pretty fun: when you choose a color combination where the 2 lightest markers that you are using are a bit "too light" they start to push back the darkest colors and you get a soft, sort of water color look. I think I used YR68, YR14, YR02, R000. Of course you can use less than 4 markers too but 4 is often good for a very contrasting color combination!

Thanks for popping by and thank you CASE This Sketch for a fun GD opportunity! Do play along and don't forget to visit the blogs of the designers of this challenge -there's some of the most wonderful talent of bogland on offer in there! 

I'd like to join

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes

New Challenge at Less is More

Hi friends!

We have a new challenge for you at Less Is More:

A fun but tricky one, isn't it! 

Card 1: Hugs

My first DT card has a large sponged lotus flower (or something close to lotus!) which I sponged with memento desert sand ink and colored on top with Copics for a "no-line coloring"-look. I usually shy away from this technique but this image was so large that it was not very difficult to keep the lines and petal edges clean even though there isn't any defined outlines. My sentiment is a large hugs-die cut (from my friend Sandie, thanks hon!) which I absolutely love. I sponged it with some distress ink and also brushed the same ink on top of the flower. I think the larger size of the sentiment die worked pretty well with the large size of the flower. I added Wink of stella to the sentiment and couple of clear sequins to finish off the card. I also die cut the panel with a MFT border die for just a little bit of extra interest.

I'd like to enter my Hugs-card to 

Stamping Sensations: anything with flowers (my 2nd entry) 

Card 2: Thanks

My second card has a self-made white on white thanks-background which I created with die cut sentiments. I backed my white card white Stick-it adhesive before die cutting so creating the background didn't require much effort. It looks quite fun IRL, unfortunately the lighting conditions were a bit bad when I photographed this but I hope you get the idea anyway! The cute, stitched die cut flowers come from Lil' Inker and I've added wink of stella and clear sequins to them to get the card looking a bit more girly. The off-white card base is not so yellow as it looks in the photo... The lighting again. :( 

Our challenge blog is filled with fantastic DT cards and lots of inspiration for this challenge. For me it was a challenge to not to get to play with my stamps but there is many alternatives like stencils, dies and even some store-bought fun toppers to play with... I look forward seeing what you'll create! Play along and you could win a fabulous prize from our July sponsor, Happy Little Stampers!