Tinstar Designs

I’m trying to build up my Christmas card stash at every opportunity I get and sometimes it’s fun to make a card with no stamping and don’t you think that sponging is rather relaxing. The current challenge over at AAA Cards #102 is all about ink blending and inspired my card.

To create my scene, I masked off a circle to represent the moon and then used inks from Stamping Up to sponge the night sky. I die cut the sleigh and trees and placed them over the sky piece and I was done.

It’s not a traditional CAS card but maybe the night sky gives the illusions of white space?

Ingredients:

• Inks – Stampin Up Night of Navy, Dapper Denim Soft Sky, & Basic Black
• Misc. – Santa Sleigh die, Christmas tree die & star sequins
• Cardstock – Stampin Up Basic Black & Whisper White

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

I love making cards to show my friends that I appreciate them and the current challenges over at CAS(E) this Sketch #246 and Just Us Girls #418 fit the bill to inspire my design.

I love the ink smooshing technique so took my ink pad and smooshed it onto my craft mat, spritzed it with water and then dabbed my card front onto it until I got the effect I wanted.

I then added some vellum die cut vine leaves, sequins, the sentiment and mounted them on some cardstock and glitter paper and hey presto my card was made!

Ingredients:

• Stamp – CAS-ual Fridays Wallflower (sentiment)
• Cardstock – Stampin Up Whisper White, Bermuda Bay & vellum
• Ink – Ranger Distress Oxide Peacock feathers & Catherine Pooler Designs Black Jack
• Misc. – Sequins, silver glitter paper & vine leaf die

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Today I’m combining 2 challenges – one from Seize the Birthday toppings challenge to use a kraft card base and the other from Tic, Tac, Toe #022 where I chose the diagonal of stripes, ribbon & layers.  You can’t beat this recipe for a great masculine card.

I took a bit of liberty with the ribbon idea where I pleated a piece of DSP to look like a piece of pleated ribbon.

I needed a birthday card for one of my nephews so went to a stamp set for a boy who loves music – Reverse Confetti ‘Inner Rock Star’. I stamped the guitar and records then fussy cut them out, stamped the sentiment on to a banner, used the eraser end of a pencil to create the white dots for the background and then layered all the components with dimensionals and stamped the musical notes for a finishing effect.

Ingredients:

• Misc. Kraft Card Base
• Stamp – Reverse Confetti – Inner Rock Star
• Ink – Stampin Up Basic Black, Marina Mist and Craft White
• Misc paper scraps from my stash.

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

So by now, you’d realise that I play along with a lot of challenges – why? – well I’m super busy with work and all the activities that my daughter is involved in so when I find that small bit of time to get crafty I often find myself just sitting there lacking inspiration.

So I go to my list of challenges for inspiration, many times I combine 2 or 3 as the thinking in done for me. They might be a sketch, colour scheme or a theme – so I then just grab the relevant items and I’m off. It’s a great way to create when you may only have 30 minutes free and lack ideas.

So here’s what I’ve been doing today:

I’m on my 3rd month of playing with the Gerda Steiner image challenges and this month we get to use her Balancing on ornament mouse digital image. He is adorable and I had so much fun colouring him in with my Stampin Up Blends.

I also used a sketch from Freshly Made Sketches #311 to help me with my layout design.

Ingredients:

• Digital Image – Gerda Steiner ‘Balancing on ornament mouse’
• Markers – Stampin Up Blends – Cherry Cobbler, Smokey Slate & Old Olive
• Cardstock – Stampin Up – Whisper White & Cherry Cobbler, Stampin Up DSP Merry Musically
• Misc – White puffy paint, gold embossing powder & gold thread

Up next is a card for a challenge for the Watercooler Wednesday Challenges #143. The challenge was an anything goes feminine card. I was asked to make a fun card for a little girl  and I’ve been wanting to try out a blackboard style card and I think it fits in nicely with this challenge.

I made the actual blackboard by cutting and gluing the frame around some plain black cardstock. I used twine to tie it all together like a real blackboard.

Ingredients:

• Cardstock – Stampin Up Crumb cake, Basic black & Whisper white
• Stamps – Stampin Up Woodgrain (on the frame), Wacky Wishes (sentiment – retired) & Pretty Petites (banner – retired)
• Punch – Stampin Up Petite Curly Label (retired)
• Inks – Stampin Up Melon Mambo, Rich Razzleberry & Craft white
• Misc – Twine

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

 

Today I’m playing along with a challenge by SUO Challenge #186 – Treats of All Kinds.

The challenge was to make a card that evokes the sense of enjoying a treat and there is no better stamp set by Stampin Up than ‘Sweet Treats’  for this challenge (IMHO!)

Supplies: All Stampin Up

• Sweet Treat & Brushstrokes stamp sets
• Crumb cake, Pool party. Pear pizzazz and Peekaboo peach
• Peekaboo peach
• DSP – scrap in my stash
• Whisper white and Crumb cake cardstock
• Misc. – sequins

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

The current challenge on the Less is More site is all about Stamp Layering.

Now I often struggle with layered stamp images but the set I used for this card really suited my style which is rather messy/abstract!

Ingredients:

• Stamp – Catherine Pooler Designs – Best in You
• Inks – Catherine Pooler Designs – Lime Rickey, Garden Party, Tiara, Tiki torch & Black Jack
• Misc. – Twinery – Black & White twine

I really like how this card turned out and will be making more in other colour combinations in the future.

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Love me some dots, so I knew I had to play along with these two challenges when I saw them!

• The Sisterhood of Crafters – I see Spots
• CASE this Sketch #245

I stamped and white heat embossed the Hero arts stamp on white cardstock. I then sponged the CPD inks and used a wet-wipe to clean off the ink from the solid dots. I then punched out some circles from the vellum to match the CTS sketch and white heat embossed the sentiment on the vellum. I then added the layers with dimensionals to the card base and then I was done. Another Christmas card for my stash!

 

Supplies:

• Stamps – Hero Arts “Life of the Party Dots’ and The Ton “Mistletoe Kisses’
• Inks – Catherine Pooler Designs – Rockin’ Red and Lime Rickey
• Misc.– Clear embossing powder, vellum, and white cardstock

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Today my card is for the current Little Red Wagon #147 challenge.

 

The challenge is “What’s Red All Over?” which means that I got to create a project that used red.  I’ve been trying to build up my Christmas card stash, so of course I created a Christmas card for this challenge and what could be more red than Santa’s suit?

This was such a simple card to make and I’ll easy be able to mass produce this one.

Here are the ingredients:

• Stamps – Fresh Squeezed Stamps ‘Hello December’
• Cardstock – SU Basic Black, Real Red, Whisper White, Silver glitter paper
• Punch/Die – SU Curly Label (retired) & Apothecary Accents (retired)

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

 

I had fun creating for the following challenges today:

• Shopping Our Stash #326 – That’s sketchy!
• Try Stamping on Tuesday #345 – Sketch or Halloween
• Water Cooler Challenge #142 – All About Christmas
• CASology #272 – Cherish

I’m submitting Card 1 for the first 3 challenges.

For the SOS challenge, I chose to use the sketch from the TST challenge. I white embossed the poinsettia image on water-colour paper and then smooshed the CP inks (where I got overlap from the green it’s giving a bit of an orange hue), then I cut out the shapes to match the sketch, added some black to mount each piece and then assembled them all onto the white card base with some dimensionals behind the circle bit.

Supplies:

• Stampin Up ‘Mistletoe Kisses’ and The Ton ‘Poinsettia Close-up’
• Inks – Catherine Pooler Designs Rockin’ Red and Lime Rickey
• Cardstock – Stampin’ up Whisper White, Basic Black & watercolour paper
• Misc – white embossing powder, ruby-red gems, dimensionals

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I’m submitting card 2 for the CASology challenge as I feel that at Christmas time we should all cherish our family and friends; it is a time to show them all how much they mean to us.

Supplies:

• Stampin Up ‘Wonderland’ and The Ton ‘Poinsettia Close-up’
• Inks – Catherine Pooler Designs Rockin’ Red, Orange Twist and Lime Rickey
• Cardstock – Stampin’ up Whisper White & watercolour paper
• Misc – white embossing powder, ruby-red gems, dimensionals

I gold embossed the poinsettia image on water-colour paper and then smooshed the CP inks, then I stamped, embossed and cut out the sentiment banner and then assembled them all onto the white card base with some dimensionals behind the circle sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

Today I’m playing along with a theme challenge from AAA Cards #101 – Inspired by a film.

After having a look at the DT cards for the  challenge, I realised you could be quite interpretative with the film inspiration, so I went to a favourite sentiment set by CAS-ual Fridays called “Frankly” which this specific one reminded my of the film “Gone with the Wind” and the memorable mansion fire scene, which I represented with Distress Ink sponged on the panel in Candied Apple and Spiced Marmalade, which to me sort of looks like the colours of the flames.

I finished off my cards with some black and white twine from The Twinery and a few accents that look like raindrops.

Thanks for looking and have a great day.