Sympathy cards

Last week the wife of one of my work colleagues, passed away.    We are taking up a collections and I got asked to make a couple of sympathy cards.  Her favourite colours were Pink and Purple and her favourite flowers - Roses.

I chose two different Altenew flower sets to make the cards.

I used Sweet Rose Bouquet  with Tea Party ink set for the flowers and Green Fields ink for the stem.  I struggle with this set, so did them separately and fussy cut the flowers and added to the stems.  I used a Simon Says Stamp sentiment.  I took some pink card and used a Darice folder to emboss the oval.   This card is my Altenew Educator Certification Program... In the Mood for Colour - Pink.
The class teaches us how you can take your mood and apply to your cards.  Pink is Sensitive, Caring, Sweet.  Perfect for a sympathy card. I really enjoyed this class. 

For my second card I used the Peony Bouquet for the Big flower and Beautiful Day set for the leaves and the buds.  The flowers were inked with Shades of Purple inks and the leaves were inked with Green Meadows ink.  The sentiment came from the Beautiful Quotes set.  The background was sponged with a Catherine Pooler stencil and two of the purple inks.

I'm entering the second card in the the Anything Goes at Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.
Edited:  I made it as one of the Rockers with this one 

I had a great day yesterday at a Craft Fair - For Your Inspiration.  It was held at Mystery Creek - bout two hours drive south of Auckland.  I picked my friend Suna up at 7.20am and we drove down with a stop at Mercer for a cuppa and a cheese roll, arriving about 1/4 hour before the show opened at 10.00am.  There were about 16 exhibitors.  Suna and I meet up with Carol who is in one our NZ card group - she lives near where the show was being held.   I was quite restrained - my big buy was the Tim Holtz glass mat.  I've been wanting one for ages but postage cost are prohibitive.  I also got a few inks, a neat Prima Princess stamp, some glue and little bits and pieces.

thanks for stopping by.  I appreciate the visit. 

Smack Down Starburst.

Over at Splitcoaststampers this week, the Monday Technique challenge called Smack Down.
Here is the technique described by Sabrina
"This is what the technique involves:
Ink your chosen stamp in a light colour. Stamp on the paper, and then continue stamping all round it, as if you were stamping off prior to cleaning your stamp.
When there's no ink left, ink the stamp and repeat the process. Cover as much of the card as you like. The repeated stamping fills up the card quite quickly.
Switch up to a different colour - if it's very dark, you may need to stamp it off once on scratch paper. Repeat the process. The repeated stamping fills up the card quite quickly."

I didn't use two colours - just the one 

I used an older Hero Arts stamp called Sunburst and as I seem to be on a bit of a blue phase... used some Catherine Pooler ink called Fiesta Blue.  I really love the background it produced.  I then die cut a circle and stamped the Sunburst in the middle.  I have some home made 3D dots and the teal one worked well in the middle.  The sentiment is white embossed - it's from a Catherine Pooler set.    A few sequins finished it off perfectly. 

Foundations Box has arrived...plus more Christmas cards

Yes I am happy to say I got my Catherine Pooler Foundations Box on Friday.  My friend Suna and I got them together (cuts down the postage costs for us) so on my way to Stamping Group on Saturday I dropped hers off.  Hope she is having as much fun with it as I am.  The inks are AMAZING and the stamp sets are full of variety.    I've done two cards so far

this one was the first I did... and  I messed up the bottom due to the ink being so juicy, I had to adapt to a LIGHT touch... so added the extra strip of green and also added a strip of card covered in the blue ink.   These inks are incredibly juicy and very intense colours.... I did 2nd generation stamping to get the lighter blue snow flakes.

and just look at the beautiful coverage with the red ink on the solid circle.  Once again I used the ink to make my layer.  Great way to tie in your layers to the inks on your card.

Yesterday was my day stamping with my group of friends.... there were 7 of us there.. (no photos as I was soooo busy making cards!)  I really enjoy catching up with all these lovely ladies and it had been quite a while since we last got together.    I had a very productive day - thanks to some pre- prep.  I had taken all 45 of my Christmas cards to work on Thursday and sold 30 of them.... and got 12 orders...4 of one, 7 of another and 1 of a third.

  7 of the first one and 4 of the second one.   I did all the die cutting and the embossing on Thursday and Friday nights so Sat was just putting it all together.    

And here's what I did as well.

I made a red one the same as the first one.  That will give the person a choice of colours. I'm entering this into the challenge at A Blog Named Hero.

So you can see I really did work hard on Saturday.   Hubby is away for the weekend so once I got home, I just kept going... the Happy Birthday above was done then.   A bit of a rest day today!  

a big thanks if you made it this far.... so much I wanted to share.  Hope my American friends have enjoyed their Thanksgiving on Thursday and enjoyed catching up with their families.   Only 4 weeks now till Christmas.

Watercoloured Beautiful Day Flowers

Hi there... I've got a lovely set of cards I made over the weekend to share with you today.  I stamped a bunch of Altenew Beautiful Day flowers - using the outline stamp and then took some beautiful soft shimmery watercolour paints and coloured them in. 

Once each of the flowers had dried, I took a coordinating Altenew ink and used one of the layers onto the flowers.

Having the matching dies are invaluable.  It made it so easy to cut them out.  I also did some leaves from this set and also some from Altenew's Peony Bouquet as well.  Again I used the paints and then some inks.

I used the Catherine Pooler set Hello World for the sentiments for the cards.  I matted them all on some coordinating cardstock. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  Would love if you want to leave me a comment. 

With Sympathy

I'm back to share another card over at Die Cut Divas,  using products from our sponsor, Kaisercraft.   I have used a Feather Embossing folder from the latest release

 

This folder is simplicity itself... Just this large feather in the centre of the folder 

After embossing the flower up towards the top of my card.  The bottom panel is a made using Geo Builders by Catherine Pooler for the StampNation SOA Collection.   The sentiment is from a Hero Arts set.  Love the simplicity of this card.

thanks for stopping by. 

Nothing beats creating with friends.

That's for sure.   Our group has had a very busy winter and a number of us have been way, and simply been busy so today's gathering was the first for some time.  5 of us joined Lei at her house and spend a full day creating.  I got there at 10.00am and left at nearly 5.00pm.  Managed to get 6 cards done. as well as sharing an awesome lunch and lots of fabulous conversation. 

I have had lots of new stuff arrived this week... an order from Simon Says Stamp that included some Altenew stamps, some SSS dies and a stencil or two plus my StampNation Stamp of Approval set arrived.  It is totally full of goodness

Even with all this goodness, my brain was not working so I did some blog visiting and You Tube watching to get some ideas.  So today's cards are all CASE'd or inspired by others.

First up are two cards that are CASE'd from cards by Sandy Allnock.  She did an awesome video on using the Layering Christmas Trees from Hero Arts.  just click on her name to link through to see it. 

I used the same Hero Arts Layering Trees and the same Couture Creations Sentiment die on both cards. The tree was stamped with 4 shades of green distress ink and blended with water and a paint brush.  Lots of Liquid Pearls around the oval one as well as on the trees with red and gold stickles.

My next card was inspired by Catherine Pooler.

I did an twisted inlay die cut using Simon Says Stamp stitched dies, The sentiment die and word are from Winnie & Walter as are the sequin stamps.  The birthday is embossed on some adhesive backed vellum.

I had an awesome day and did get a couple more cards done.  Two are for design work so can't share yet.  And one is for a birthday on 9th September. 

Hope you have a great weekend and get some time to create like me. 

Inspired by Catherine Pooler's class at Craftsy.

I've been taking the Craftsy class by Catherine Pooler - Wild Cards - 21 Techniques.  It's been lots of fun with tons of neat techniques and ideas.  Here are two cards I made with techniques that Catherine shared...

First up was a technique using the back of a sentiment stamp to colour block.

 

I used the back of the Kaisercraft stamp and a rainbow of Memento inks to make the base.  Stamped in sentiment and added some punched stars and sequins. 

My second card used a Double stenciling technique. 

My first stencil was a MFT Houndstooth inked up with Tea Dye ink.  I only sponged a little bit of the stencil.  Over top of this I sponged some Weathered Wood ink and a Hero Arts stencil (Leaf and Flourish)  The sentiment is from Winnie & Walter.  I had to channel my inner Catherine as I got a smudge on it.  So out came the Sequin stamp set from Winnie & Walter and I stamped some black sequins and stars. 

I've done one more card inspired by the class - but you'll have to wait a week or so to see when I post of A2Z Scrapbooking on the 6th August! 

If you haven't joined Catherine's Craftsy class I can highly recommend it!  You can get it HERE.

Inpsired by Catherine Pooler and Jill Foster....

I've joined Catherine Pooler's StampNation... an amazing online site that has lots of videos and techniques and a fabulous forum.

Catherine is a fabulously talented lady - very real too... you'll often see her making mistakes and bloppers and then showing you how to fix them.  I really enjoy visiting... On one of my recent visits to StampNation, I watched a video by Catherine that was inspired by one she'd seen Jill Foster do.  Jill is another extremely talented artist.  The technique both ladies used was a Ghost background... a very simple but effective technique where you stamp a background in versamark ink and let it dry.  Once dried, you sponge on distress ink and paints.  It give a very subtle background.  I CASE'd the card that Catherine did...

Can you see the subtle background.  It's a Hero Arts background stamp.  My green colour is Bundled Sage.  My focal panel is made using a Penny Black Sunflower stamp. I used Distress Markers to colour the stamp and spritzed with water before stamping.  I then used Wink of Stella to move the colour around a bit.   The sentiment is from a Winner and Walter set.  I used a Fiskers punch to cut the panel edge and added some PP down the side.  Finished with some Pretty Pink Posh sequins. 

Here's a close up of the beautiful background. 

This is will be a background technique I will be trying again.