Earth Tones

Earth Tones is the theme for this week's Less is More challenge. Resisting the temptation to produce yet another Autumnal leaves card as I'm pretty sure I did one of those last year for a Less is More challenge, I decided to use earth tones for the background on my card.

I used a Memory Box designer stencil with TH Distress Inks applied with some cut and dry foam on Crafty Individuals coated cardstock. Lovely result, the colours blend so well on that card.

The focal images are die cut from Crafters Companion Centura Pearl card, the poodle is mounted on 3D foam. These are lovely quality dies from Frantic Stamper purchased from Oyster Stamps with my winnings from the Artful Times Challenge last month.

Summary of Materials Used:

Precision Cutting Die by Frantic Stamper Inc. - FRA-DIE-09093 Toutou the French Poodle

Precision Cutting Die by Frantic Stamper Inc. - FRA-DIE-09091 Loretta

Memory Box designer stencil - Texture Mesh 

Centura Pearl black cardstock

Coated cardstock from Crafty Individuals

Tim Holtz Distress Inks : Vintage Photo, Ripe Persimmon and Wild Honey

A Day Without Laughter .....

Just a quick share today of a card I made using my Charlie Chaplin stamp. I kept it simple in black and white as I feel it should be.

Materials : 

Charlie Chaplin Stamp - Deep Red

Stamped with black versafine ink

Aperture cut in black Centura Pearl card using a Spellbinders distressed edges die.

..... and don't forget to laugh.

Recycling and Wooden Things

I have collected quite a few wooden items that I have stashed away for future crafty projects so it was a nice surprise to see that the Artful Times challenge 58 this fortnight is Made in or on wood. I chose a wooden tea light holder. This is what I started with :

Back in March I made a birthday card for a friend using an old ordnance survey map, I still have panels of that map left so for my tea light holder I decided to recycle some more of that map. This is the result:

The box is painted with Paperartsy Fresco Finish paint : Nougat.
Panels of the map are stuck to the box with Mod Podge and trimmed to fit with a craft knife.
The landscape is cut from green cardstock using a Memory Box die called Modern Landscape Border.
Add a tea light (I just happed to have an apple green one to match, lucky accident).

I still have more map panels and to use up the left over die cut border, I made a quick card which I will enter in the Less is More Challenge, Week 178 Recipe : to use a recycled item. My recycled item being the map.

I quite like the way the river meanders across the card, another lucky accident as it wasn't intentional.
Happy Crafting.

Collage Couture

A couple of years ago I bought a book by Julie Nutting called Collage Couture. My intention was to learn to draw the figures and create some fashion collage inspired by the book. We are all full of good intentions but time passes and now we can buy the Julie Nutting doll rubber stamps. I bought "Megan".

Here are two cards using my Megan doll.

The hair and boots are stamped and cut out from Kraft card. The dresses and panel are Marianne Design papers from the 1950's paper pad as is the sentiment on the tag card.

These are great fun to play with and I recommend that book, it is full of excellent inspiration. 

Owls

There are many stories from folklore associated with Owl symbolism, some believe they represent wisdom, some believe they are a symbol of misfortune. Often depicted on Halloween artwork representing the dark side of mythology, they are always very popular images on cards. Whatever you believe, they are fascinating.
So the theme for my CAS card this week is an owl.

I am entering this in the Less is More challenge this week where the recipe is to include a die cut. In fact, for this card I used two.

The owl is stamped in coffee archival ink and cut out leaving a white border. The stamp was a freebie from Get Stamping magazine.
I cut an aperture in some ribbed kraft card with a Sizzix Framelits die called Flowers, Scallop. The owl is then mounted in the aperture and a branch added. The branch is a Memory Box die.

Hope you like him.

Mail Art

The Artful Times Challenge 55 is Mail Art. I just realised that Artful Times is sponsored by Oyster Stamps and since the Oyster Stamps people were so nice to me last weekend I thought I'd make the effort to do a challenge, haven't done one for a while (which is frustrating because I like blog challenges, they make me think).

This is my decorated envelope which I will enter for the challenge:

I started by masking a border around the envelope and masking out an oval for the address. The stamps used are Cardio Majestix Emily's Garden, a lovely set of miniature flowers, foliage and a butterfly. Starting with the larger flower I stamped the flowers with Adirondak Stonewashed dye ink, first, second and third generation stamping. Then added the smaller flower in Memento Paris Dusk. The leaves and foliage are stamped with Memento New Sprout and Olive Grove and then the masks removed.

The butterflies are added last after stamping the Daisy Post stamp which is a very old one from my stash by Stampendous, I used to use that a lot so it was nice to re-discover it for this little project. I guess I should make a matching card to go in it ..... I might just do that.

Daventry Craft Retreat

A new adventure for me. Last weekend I went to the Oyster Stamps craft retreat in Daventry, my first craft retreat. Never having attended one of these, I had no idea what to expect. There were six workshops over two days, all papercrafting, no paint involved and only a little bit of ink but I enjoyed it. The demonstrators were Martine from Oyster Stamps, Kay and Amanda from Honey Doo Crafts and Sandra from The House of Zandra. Highly recommend this one, the organisation by the Oyster Stamps team was excellent, the hotel was the usual events type hotel but the staff were friendly and helpful and the food was very, very good (being vegetarian often means little choice but not at this venue). Oh, and did I mention it was very reasonably priced as well.

I completed two of the six projects at the workshop but finished off two more this week. Here are my House of Zandra projects.

A big thank you to the Oyster Stamps team, to the demonstrators, to my friend Beryl for driving me there and being such good company and to all the lovely people I met last weekend. x