Fusion - Congratulations!

Hello!

Welcome to my first post as a member of the Fusion Card Challenge Design Team! You would not believe how excited I am to be joining this AMAZING team on this AMAZING challenge! I was excited by the concept when Fusion first started, and was lucky enough to be chosen as an honorable mention in the very first challenge. And I was a guest designer in the second challenge! I continued to play along as often as possible, and I was so sad when Fusion ended. I think I was not the only one, because here we are, starting a brand new year with a brand new team, yay!

For those of you who have not yet discovered Fusion, the concept is simple - you can choose to use the inspiration photo, or the sketch, or you can combine the two to create a fusion. Simple and with inspiration galore!

For this first challenge of the year, I have created a fusion card. I took the colours and some of the pattern from the photo and I used the sketch to create this card.

I have used PTI Congratulations Mini set, Embellishments, and Mama Elephant Flashy Letters. Colours are SU! Basic Grey and Pumpkin Pie. The circles were created using Spellbinders Nestabilities Circles.

This is the inspiration board:

I wouldn't normally mix grey, orange, and white, but this bedroom looked so elegant, I decided to give it a try. I am so glad I did! I love this combination!

Now to introduce you to my team mates. :-)  These lovely ladies have all come up with their own beautiful response to the inspiration. Why don't you take some time to pay them a visit, too?

Betty J
Cathy Weber 
Dannielle Robeson
Deepti
Geri Freeman
Julia Aston
Katie Brooks
Kelly Griglione
Kimberly Wiener 

Lyndal Higgins

Lynn Mangan 

Michelle Lupton

Sindhu
Stephanie Severin

Thank-you for visiting. I hope to see your entry to the Fusion Card Challenge in the gallery. ;-)

Michelle
xxx

P.S. For those of you wondering, my dog is still missing. Please forgive me for not visiting and leaving comments at the moment. I'm spending every spare minute searching for Coco.

Merry Christmas, Mum!

Hello!

Today I made my Mum a Christmas card. She is leaving on Monday night to go and spend Christmas in London with my brother, his partner, and their new baby boy (Mum's first grandson). I'm very envious! I'd love to be spending Christmas in London meeting my new nephew, too! (Oh and with my brother and my sister-in-law.) I decided to make a card that would match the wrapping paper, mostly because the paper was in colours my Mum likes, and secondly, I really love that paper! :-)

I will admit that I am amazed that I managed to replicate the wrapping paper so closely, LOL! First I created the flourish background using PTI Embellishments in Soft Stone, then I silver embossed the SU! Christmas Deer (I love this deer as much as I love Dasher, and that's a lot!). I stamped the sentiment to ground the deer, and then finished off with a few stars from PTI Christmas Friends. The card base is Soft Stone, and the mat is Night of Navy. Colours are Soft Stone, Hawaiian Shores, SU! Pool Party, Coastal Cabana (swiping it across my card yesterday has had a positive effect in drying it out a bit), Night of Navy, Pool Party.

My Mum is rarely impressed with my cards, but she did like this one. She spent quite some time looking it over and comparing it to the wrapping of her present. It made me happy that she likes it so much. I hope it travels with her.

My eldest daughter just realised this afternoon that this will be the first Christmas that she hasn't been with her Grandma. She is very sad. This afternoon she asked Grandma to take her along, but that would bring the problem of not being with us! We'll have to make good use of Skype.

My youngest daughter today danced in her final ballet concert for the year. She did a wonderful job of dancing, remembering all of her steps without referring to the "helpers" at the side of stage. She told me afterwards that "it was a long time to remember all the moves!" She's 6. She loves ballet.

Thank you for coming to visit me!

Michelle
xxx

PTI 6th Anniversary - Printables

Hello!

Papertrey Ink are celebrating their 6th Anniversary with some super contests. This one is using one of their free printables to create a card. I made two cards, I will come back later with the second one.

This is my first card.

The printable is the centre image. I matted it on Fresh Linen card and created the background using Hexagon Cover Plate and stamped with Embellishments in Fresh Linen and SU! Bashful Blue.

I don't usually use digital images in my cardmaking. I don't find that I have much success with my printer. My new printer seems to have done an awesome job, and I'm quite happy with the outcome on this one. ;-)

If you want to give this a go, you can pop over to Papertrey Ink and grab the freebies for yourself.

Thanks for dropping by!  I'll be back after another mad rush around the countryside collecting children from various activities!

Michelle
xxx

Happy Fathers Day!

Hello!

Have you missed me? It's been several weeks since I've been able to do any crafting, and my visiting/commenting has been severely limited. I miss you! We've hit birthday season, combined with end-of-school-year events ramping up. Between August and October we have all four family birthdays, fathers day, wedding anniversary, as well as many other family/friend birthdays. It's crazy! My eldest daughter plays violin and piano. She is in the school string ensemble, and sings in three school choirs. In the next three months she has several concerts (ensemble and solo concerts) and three exams (violin, piano, music theory). I can't imagine what it will be like when my youngest daughter starts up with the same activities! Every year, we get to mid-December and collapse with exhaustion... luckilly we are in Summer holidays by that stage and can laze around by our pool doing NOTHING, LOL!

Anyway, the reason for today's post is that it is Fathers Day here today in Australia. The best reason in the world to pull out the crafting gear and making a card. :-)  The hubby requested that I make a card using the black "riveted steel" look I used on another card (that would be Swiss Dots on black card).

Here it is.

Stamps: Hero Arts Envelope Pattern, PTI Embellishments, PTI Heart Prints. Ink: SU! Early Espresso, Soft Suede, Ruby Red, Old Olive. Card: SU! Soft Suede, Basic Black, Early Espresso, Old Olive, Ruby Red. Paper: Mocha Morning. Dies/Embossing: PTI Tiny Tags, Sizzix (?) Swiss Dots. Twine: Capuccino from the Twinery.

I am entering this into the Asymmetrical Challenge over at Moxie Fab World.

The card is a hit. :-)

Just before I go, I'll share last week-end's birthday cake. Terrible picture, but you'll get the idea.

My youngest daughter turned 5. This cake was her request. I was doing okay until I got halfway through putting on all those marshmallows, and then I started cursing. I was so glad it turned out so cute and that the little girl was delighted!

Hopefully I'll be back again soon!

Michelle
xxx

For Your Inspiration 36

Hello!

Well, this is the last For Your Inspiration challenge for this year. The team are taking a little holiday and we'll be back next year. Please join in on this challenge and help us end this year grandly. :-) The inspiration photograph for challenge #36 is beautiful, as always.

For me, I chose the colours and shapes as my inspiration. I loved the purple and yellow of the sunrise/sunset, and the grey wall is just delicious!

I turned to a sketch to build my card, and the sketch at Retro Sketches #24 was perfect, and turned the picture upside down - the sunrise on the bottom with the grey leading up from there.

My card follows the sketch really closely.

I really like how this turned out. The stamps are PTI Embellishments (who knew this set could be so beautifully CAS? I surprised myself). The colours are PTI basic white card, Memento Grey Flannel, SU! Pale Plum and Barely Banana. The Pale Plum card is textured. The rhinestones are SU! and are the perfect finishing touch (if I do say so myself, LOL!).

The FYI Design Team have done some beautiful work again. Please do take some time to go and visit them and leave some love.

Debbie

Debby
Rudlis
Karen

Rochelle

Sara

Steph
Sylvia

Vicki

Thanks for coming to visit me, and I hope to see you over at FYI with your project for the challenge very soon!

Michelle
xxx

CAS-ual Coffee

Hello!

Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope you have all had a wonderful, joy-filled celebration. My family and I certainly did. I haven't been stamping much lately due to the rush and busy-ness involved in Christmas preparations. Now I can take a breath, and I've sat down to make a card that has been brewing in my imagination for a few days.

Over at CAS-ual Fridays this week they are teaming up with Market Street Stamps. I don't own any Market Street Stamps (yet), but they have kindly offered a free digi to join in their Block Party fun. I signed up at The Neighborhood and took a little time wandering around, familiarising myself with what was there (and collected lots of ideas, stamp "needs", and inspiration) and then collected the digi and set my mind to work on forming a design idea.

The theme at CAS-ual Fridays this week is Kraft and Twine, with a bonus offer of joining in the Market Street Stamps Block Party.

 

So, today I had my idea and set to work. Do you sometimes find that your idea was much simpler to execute in your head?  For a simple card, I sure had some troubles putting this one together, LOL!  If anyone has any good suggestions on how to adhere twine down on a card, please let me know.  This time I used sticky dots, but I don't think this is the ideal solution. Argh!

The Coffee Cup image is from Market Street Stamps. I reversed it to get the two cups facing each other.  I printed the image onto Crumb Cake cardstock and then put that panel through the Big Shot with Swiss Dots folder.  The sentiment is from PTI Embellishments. I paper-pieced with Crumb Cake and Real Red.  The card base and sentiment strip are Soft Suede, and the card base has been put through the Big Shot with PTI Canvas impression plate. The twine is The Twinery Maraschino.

What do you think? I quite like it.

Michelle
xxx
       

Happy 40th Birthday

Hello!

I have been thinking about my brother's birthday card for a few weeks. I have to send it to the UK, so I need to be a little organised. I would sort of like it to arrive in time for his birthday this year, since it is a big one... I am fairly certain that he never looks at my blog, so I should be okay sharing his card here well before the big day.

If he does pop in (by a miracle), Happy Birthday, dear brother!

I picked up a new-to-me, hand-me-down stamp set or two the other day (thank-you, Cassandra), and I've been itching to get into them. Added to those, I have a couple of borrowed stamp sets too. Oh, I am a lucky girl to have such good friends.

I found the Mojo Monday Sketch #208, on Monday, funnily enough, and I have been looking for a colour scheme ever since. The sketch is this one:

The square sketch really, really appeals to me. So neat and tidy, two squares and two rectangles inside a square. Mmm, nice!

Today the new Play Date Cafe Challenge #101 came out. The colour scheme is gorgeous, and perfect for a masculine card. It is also perfect for the ideas I had floating about in my head for this card. These are the colours:

On the subject of The Play Date Cafe, I'm very thrilled to let you know that the card I squeezed in at the last minute for Challenge #100 received an Honourable Mention. I'm the Cream in their Coffee! Am I feeling a little excited about this? You betcha! I find it so thrilling when a card I really like, is really liked by others. Thank-you, thank-you, PDCC Team.

So back onto the subject at hand...my card:

There is a tonne of shimmer mist on the cream panels, but I don't think you can see it much in any of my photos. The patterned paper is metallic, so the shimmer mist works well. I don't usually do this type of stamping - lots of different stamps layered on top of each other - but this is what has been sitting at the back of my mind for a week, so I did it. The card is supposed to be warm like a big hug, with uplifting messages (live, love, laugh, dream), along with the birthday wishes. I feel that I achieved what I was trying to do. I played around with all sorts of other embellishments, but I couldn't work them in. My CAS soul wouldn't let me frilly it up any further, LOL!

What I used:
Stamps: PTI Embellishments, Postmarks, Outlines Alphabet
Card: SU! Soft Suede, Very Vanilla
Paper: SU! Mocha Morning (yummo! I just knew I NEEDED this paper)
Ink: Crumb Cake, Soft Suede, Ruby Red
Shimmer Mist

So, what do you think?

Michelle
xxx