It's a Beautiful Day

Hello everyone! Wow I cannot believe how long it is since I last posted, I was getting into a groove and then ummm stopped. Sorry about that. I am also sorry for how brief this post is, I was planning on having a catch up on what i've been up to and some of the amazing Stampin' Up! offers that are going on in July but unfortunately Rory has a tummy bug and has already been sick once. I'm expecting more so I'm going to have to rush this a bit.

This weeks card has been inspired by two challenges. The colour challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches and What Will You Stamp? this week are using Stampin' Up! Beautiful Day. I know I've said this before but Beautiful Day is one of my favourite stamp sets, I actually jumped out of my seat when I won this set as my prize patrol at OnStage in November last year. So when the What Will You Stamp? email landed in my inbox this week it was just the boost I needed to get crafting and posting again.

I'm hoping my card can still been included in the CAS Colours & Sketches challenge as I don't have Highland Heather yet so I used Gorgeous Grape instead.

To create my butterfly I used some black Stampin' emboss powder to emboss the outline and then picked up ink with my aqua painter to paint the wings. I have used shimmery white card stock so that I could do a little watercolour painting without it warping too much. The curl you can see in the photo is where I pulled the strip up and tried to stick it back down - never a good idea! Towards where the butterfly wings are I applied Grapefruit Grove and then added in Daffodil Delight towards the edges. They really go well together.

To finish off the card I used Daffodil Delight to stamp a random pattern with the circles in the set and then my sentiment in Gorgeous Grape.

Again I'm sorry for how brief this post is, especially as it has been so long but I hope you like what I've shown you today. All of the supplies I have used are below and these link straight through to my online shop where you can purchase supplies 24/7.

Supplies:

Beautiful Day Clear-Mount Stamp Set

[145915]

£20.00

Aqua Painters

[103954]

£15.50

Gorgeous Grape Classic Stampin' Pad

[147099]

£7.00

Grapefruit Grove Classic Stampin' Pad

[147142]

£7.00

Daffodil Delight Classic Stampin' Pad

[147094]

£7.00

CAS Colours and Sketches Challenge #259 - Sketch

Wow, Sunday evening already, I can't believe how quickly this weekend has gone and I had a three day weekend. It's been lovely, I was able to take my boys up to Wisley Gardens on Friday with my Dad to see the butterflies. The boys had a great time spotting all of the different coloured butterflies flying around above them. Then when it got a little too hot in the hot house we went outside to enjoy a lovely picnic, spring is definitely on it's way. Some of the spring flowers are starting to open and there were several birds hopping about looking for food.

To try and use up some of the boys energy we took a walk around the gorgeous grounds, including the vegetable patches where they were asking Grandad lots of questions about what all of the different vegetables were. I think their favourite part, other than the butterflies, was the play park. In one corner there was an area set up to build dens, they had great fun trying to stand huge tree limbs up to make the walls. It was lovely to see them working together, each at one end carrying it to where they wanted it.

Today's card was inspired by all of the beautiful butterflies we saw on Friday, there were so many different colours. There were also some that looked exactly like Autumn leaves, perfect camouflage.  I decided to play along with the CAS Colour & Sketches Challenge this week, I have flipped the sketch round to be portrait as I created the tag first and it then didn't fit on a landscape card, whoops!

To create my butterfly I stamped the outline in Fresh Fig and then used my aqua painters to colour in the rest of the image using Rich Razzleberry, Island Indigo and Marina Mist. I used very little water as if you apply too much onto Whisper White it can make the card stock bobble which ruins the effect. You can put as much water as you want on water colour card stock but you need to be careful when using normal Whisper White.

I punched the hole in the tag using the Watermelon punch from the Itty Bitty Fruit Punch set, I also used this to punch off the corners. For the striped element of the sketch I chose some of the striped paper from the Painted with Love speciality DSP. It's called speciality because it's a little bit special, on one side of each of the designs are some Gold elements. The Gold goes so nicely with the other colours on the DSP and I think fits in nicely on my card. To finish the card off I used my stamp-a-ma-jig to line up my sentiment, this is one of the first tools I bought when I discovered Stampin' Up! about 5 years ago and it's still one of my most used.

That's it from me today, all of the supplies I have used to create today's card are below. Please feel free to click directly on the image to link you to my online shop or drop me an email on csh.wiggle.craft@gmail.com with any questions or orders you may have. Happy crafting.

Supplies:

Beautiful Day Clear-Mount Stamp Set

[145915]

£19.00

Whisper White A4 Thick Cardstock

[140490]

£6.50

Painted With Love Specialty Designer Series Paper

[145580]

£11.50

Berry Burst 3/8" (1 Cm) Metallic-Edge Ribbon

[145489]

£6.25

Itty Bitty Fruit Punch Pack

[145657]

£21.00

Fresh Fig Classic Stampin' Pad

[144082]

£6.00

Island Indigo Classic Stampin' Pad

[126986]

£6.00

Marina Mist Classic Stampin' Pad

[126962]

£6.00

Rich Razzleberry Classic Stampin' Pad

[126950]

£6.00

Liquid Multipurpose Glue

[110755]

£3.75

Stampin' Dimensionals

[104430]

£3.75

Stamp-A-Ma-Jig

[101049]

£11.00

Aqua Painters

[103954]

£15.50

Missing you

Good evening all, I'm a little bit late with this weeks post as we've had a very hectic weekend. It started with a lovely Thai meal out with my NCT girl friends Friday night. Breakfast on Saturday with my Dad and Uncle, followed by a girly shopping trip with my Mother in law and Sister in law, then out to my amazing friend and up-line's wedding party Saturday night. Then Sunday we went to view the photos from a photo shoot we'd had done of the four of us a little while ago and then back to Dad's for Sunday lunch. It was nice to go back to work today for a rest!

Somehow while doing all of that I managed to squeeze in a bit of crafting! Pickle even decided to give me a hand with the cutting!

Today's card was inspired by the CAS Colours and Sketches challenge which this week was a colour challenge. I have to admit, Night of Navy is one of my favourites but the other two I very rarely touch. It's nice to get out of my comfort zone every so often and use colours that aren't my first choice.

I was quite tired while making this card so I made a couple of mistakes, one of which actually turned out to be a happy accident. I'd taken out my eclectic layers dies and thought it would be nice to use the leaves die so you could see the layer of lemon lime twist card through the white card stock. So I happily rolled it through my big shot expecting it to create a lovely cut through piece. Only problem was I'd used the die that embosses not cuts....whoops! I had already wasted several bits of card stock, as I had a real problem reading measurements while making this one, I decided I wasn't going to throw it away. I grabbed my aqua brush instead and just painted over the leaves. I hope you'll agree that it turned out quite nicely! 

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week and I'll be back next week.

Building Orchids for CAS Colours and Sketches

Good morning! Before I start I just want to warn you this is quite a picture heavy post as I am a little bit in love with today's card. As I don't often say that about my own cards I hope you'll excuse the amount of photos! If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram  you'll have seen my Dragonfly post yesterday saying that I often get inspired by nature. Well on my kitchen window sill I have several Orchids and my pink one is currently in flower. Every time I see it I keep thinking I should try and replicate it with my Orchid builder set, obviously nothing is as good as nature itself but I do like my version as well. 

Today's card was also inspired by the sketch challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches I'm not sure why when I saw it I thought of using Orchids but I did!

I had great fun creating this card with the orchid builder stamps and framelits. so I though I would include step by step photos of how I created them to show you how easy it is! First you stamp out all of your layers, I used plain whisper white this time with Berry Burst ink but it would also look good on the shimmery card stock.

Then use the matching dies to cut out all of your layers, I find the magnetic platform really helps, this way I know the borders round my layers are going to be as equal as possible and I won't accidentally cut part of my image off. It might just be me with messy die cuts without the magnetic platform though!

As I wanted a little extra colour on the petals I sponged the edges as well. Then with my pierce mat underneath to give it a soft surface I pushed the edge of my bone folder into each petal section to give it a bit of dimension. This step is not essential but it does make them stand out a bit more.

Then finally glue the layers together, I personally use glue dots between each layer as I can accurately put them where I need them and they're not messy! As a little extra touch I used my wink of Stella pen (seriously cannot get enough of this!!) on the centre of the flower.

For my card I made two of the small Orchids and one of the large ones, I then glued these on a stem cut using the seasonal layers dies. The sentiment came from the Orchid builder set as well and was stamped in Garden Green.

So what do you think? As I said I actually love this card, I think it also helped that I already had a recipient in mind when I started making this. Sometimes without realising it I'll put extra effort into a card if I already know who I'm giving it to. 

Just for you

Morning all, it's a bit later than normal for me as although I had made this card ready for today's post I hadn't had a chance to photograph it. It's been a very hectic weekend filled with little sleep and a poorly little cub. This is going to be a very quick post from me as I have 10 mins before I have to get ready to take little cub swimming, I'm hoping this will cheer him up as he loves water.

Today's card took me right out of my colour comfort zone as usually I avoid greens and oranges but these two from the new in colours coming out in the annual catalogue 1st June are just so lovely I had to give them a go. This card was so simple to make, one stamp set, two inks and two pieces of card! I do love simple cards. This card was inspired by the sketch challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches this week. Here is the sketch:

Thank you for stopping by my blog, I'll be back on Thursday with another card for you but right now I need to quickly finish my tea and then go swimming!

Supplies: