Savannah has a Star

I had a little birthday splurge on my favourite stamps for "colouring in" this weekend - I do soooo love an Uptown Girl from Stamping Bella.   It's a brand I don't sell myself though, so if you want them, then like me, head on over to my mate Elaine's fabulous store Quixotic Paperie and pick up a  lovely leggy lady (or 12 like I did!!!!)

I always like to try and play in my favourite weekly challenge - Less is More - and this week, they want us to feature a star on our one layer project - hope this one isn't too subtle ladies - she does have a star and it's even in the name of the stamp but it is a bit little!

 

I had such fun colouring Savannah in - and I love the idea of wearing a Christmas tree!  I stamped her on a kraft base card and used the stitched mat square dies from Lil' Inker Designs to create an embossed border and then traced the solid line in red to make it pop between the dashes.  I coloured her with Polychromos pencils - using just 3 shades of green to get some depth in the shadows and highlights on the tips.  I love using pencils on kraft - you can get such a grown up finish from a medium considered so childish!   I finished with one my favourite Christmas sentiment sets by Hero Arts.

Retro Fairy

It feels like ages since I made a card for a challenge, so I'm starting the new year as I hope to go on - being crafty and creative!   So here's a card I made for the current sketch at retro sketches.

The main image is from the Stamping Bella Uptown Girls range and she is stamped onto watercolour paper and coloured with distress markers and a waterbrush.  The sentiments are from Hero Arts It's Your Day and the DP from papermania.  I didn't manage to get my sentiment around the fairy as in the sketch so I used fairy dust instead - hope that's OK.

I'm also going to enter this into the current "anything goes" challenges at KIS http://kis-challenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/kis-30-anything-goes.html and http://thepinkelephantchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-pink-elephant-challenge-tpe231.html

Framed Vienna

I'm working on submissions again today - deadline Monday and we're out tonight celebrating my friends 50th again so I've got to start to try to make myself presentable too - which all in all means I shouldn't be playing in this week's LIM challenge yet.......

So here's my framed entry for it!  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/week-111-theme.html

I used part of one stamp from one of my favourite stamp ranges ever - the Uptown Girls from Stamping Bella and this one is Vienna on her Vespa but I masked off some of the Vespa so I could fit her into a Polaroid style frame (cut on my cameo).  She is coloured with copics and then I added the sentiment onto the bottom part of the Polaroid frame.  I added a second thin green frame which was again cut on my cameo to add a little more interest to the edge of the card.

It's also my entry into the Anything Goes challenge over on Stamping Bella's Splitcoast forum http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/forums/stamping-bella-f176/bellatastic-tuesday-7-scs-win-%2420-stamping-bella-goodies-t570150.html

Right, time for a bath so I can "attempt" to add some rollers to my hair - if all else fails I hear the shaved look is in thanks to Jessie J ;-)

Couples for St Lukes

Our challenge over at St Luke's this month is all about couples - not necessarily romantic ones - if you check out the challenge you can see the variety of inspiration from the DT with feathers, fur and scales.....

I didn't go down the romantic route either - I went for a couple of great friends with one of my favourite stamps from the Uptown Girls range by Stampin Bella.

I simply stamped the image onto colouring card, coloured with copics and pencils and stamped the matching sentiment underneath.    Simply decorated with some DP matting and layering, a little ribbon and some off cuts from a PTI border die which make an interesting faux photo fixer.  I added a gem to enhance the deco feel of the die cut shape.

We have a couple of super cute stamps form Lili of the Valley as prizes this month so I do hope you'll join in on the challenge  -  our numbers have dropped a little and even if you don't want to donate your card to the charity element of the challenge, the more players we get online the more the word gets out to new players so you're still doing your bit to help the charity along.  http://stlukescharitycardschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/couples.html

Thanks for stopping by.

Retro Party Girls

It's my cousin's daughter's 20th Birthday today and she's a girl who likes to party so it was time for the Uptown Girls to come out to play again :-D  I love this range of stamps from Stamping Bella and have pretty much the whole set but these were the first ones I bought and I do turn to them so often for girly cards.   I used this week's sketch at retro sketches as the basis for my design http://retrosketches.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/retrosketches-25.html

Victoria and Juliette are coloured with copics and then their outfits are paper-pieced and sparkled with glitter.  I debossed some gold mirri with my damask folder and then picked a selected of black and gold papers to give it a rich feel.  (all the papers are from GCD studios paris nights or papermania capsule collection)  I finished with a cocktail glass button mounted on a black sentiment from craftwork cards over some black velvet ribbon.

The glass didn't show up too well on the main shot so I took a close up - they're really cute embellishments.

I'm also going to enter this into this week's stamptacular Sunday challenge which is "Let's hear it for the girls" - can't you just hear them singing the Cyndie Lauper 80's classic "girls just wanna have fun...." ? http://stamptacularsundaychallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/this-weeks-challenge-is-going-to-be-so.html 

CASual showers

CASual Fridays  challenge this week is April showers bring May flowers - well we're certainly getting the showers in northern England - we had a months' worth of rain in Sheffield in less than 48 hours this week and it is officially the wettest April on record for the city in 130 years!   Lots of the rivers around us are on flood watch again and some (thankfully further away from our house) have burst their banks already.  We were flooded back in 2007 and haven't seen the rivers like it since then - I have everything crossed that we're not in for a re-run but the forecast for Sunday looks pretty bad again :-(

Anyway, enough of the weather forecast - back to the card.  I was definitely influenced more by the April showers than the May flowers, but there are flowers on my card so I think it still fits.  For my design I used the sketch from Annabelle Stamps but gave it a CAS interpretation. 

I turned to my current favourite stamp range - Stamping Bella's Uptown Girls - and opted for the image which came to mind with the current weather - Lolly and her brolly and decided to paper-piece it.  I went for a cute yellow, blue and green floral paper for the brolly and wellies and covered them with glossy accents for the wet look and did the same with the green raincoat.  I trimmed the card front enough to take the scalloped glitter edge and finished with the sentiment that came with the stamp.

All the papers for paperpiecing were from my scraps box so I am also going to join Pixie in the playground this week http://pixiescraftyworkshop.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/pixies-crafty-snippets-challenge-17.html  If you've not played along before, it's a weekly challenge all about using up the bits all us crafters insist on keeping ;-)  Race you to the swings......

Birthday Girls

One of my very good friends celebrations one of those special birthday which ends in a zero next week, on Valentines Day to be precise, not the best day to have your birthday as it makes going out difficult as everyone is being romantic so no much place for big girly get togethers!   So we're getting together on the 15th instead and naturally a special birthday requires a special card and I'm showing it early to meet the deadline over at Quixotic Inspirations as I used their lovely sketch as my starting point for the design.

I used my favourite new range of stamps - the wonderful Uptown Girls from Stamping Bella which Elaine over at Quixotic Paperie imports and sells and I am reliably informed that the newest release is winging its way over the Atlantic as we speak "swoon"  I need the ALL.......

For this card I used Victoria and Julliette's Night Out (currently out of stock but restocks are coming too) and cut their legs off to fit them in the circle on the sketch - wasn't sure about doing that, but I actually love the effect of using just a bit of them and it reminds me a bit of the opening to the old bond movies ;-)  Coloured with copics, pencils and lots of glitter!

DP is papermania capsule collection and then I embossed some teal strips with a birthday EF and die cut some swirls which were finished with matching teal gems for the obligatory special birthday sparkle.  The age was stamped in black and then filled over with a teal pearl drop (sorry can't remember who the stamps are by)

Here's the link to the sketch challenge:  http://quixoticpaperie.blogspot.com/2012/01/quixotic-paperie-sketch-challenge-no3.html

I'm also entering into:

Allsorts Challenge - Free and Easy

Catch the bug - Anything Goes

Craft us Crazy - Anything Goes

Paperpieced Uptown Girl

Another close to the deadline entry - I really must get more organised!    The challenge this week at Allsorts is paperpiecing and it's one of my favourite techniques  http://allsortschallenge.blogspot.com/2012/01/week-136-paper-piecing.html

As I needed to make a card for my friends birthday on Sunday, I went with one of the gorgeous Uptown Girls from Stamping Bella - I ADORE these girls and can't wait to see the new ones.  My friend doesn't read my blog unless I point her at it, so I'm pretty safe to share:

I stamped the dress onto some K&Co papers with a small pattern and then added some shading with pencils and copics in the same tonal values.  Finished with a little stickles.  There is a first on this too - real sewing!  I finally opened my sewing machine that's been sitting in a box for 18 months as I've been too scared to use it.  I'm going to a patchwork cushion class at my local craft shop next Saturday so I needed to learn how to use it first.  Lynne, the lovely lady who runs the shop, set the machine up and talked me through it and all was going well - until I got home and had to thread it up - I had 6 attempts - gave up and then DH did it for me!   So I stitched my mats together and also added some stitched lines to the DP (hard to see on the photo)  Finished with craftwork cards sentiment inked to colour match.

Catch you later

Warm Birthday Wishes

It's my friends birthday today and as she has spent Christmas skiing in France I wanted a winter image for her card - I was sure I had Stamping Bella's Snowbunny in my stash but I think I must have just liked it a lot when I've seen others use it as I definitely don't have it (yet).  So, as I had my Bella file out, I opted for Quinn, one of the Uptown Girls.

She is stamped onto kraft card and coloured with pencils with a little sansoder for blending and a gold promarker for the buttons and coat trim.  I used the warm wishes sentiment that she comes with, but then added "on your birthday" using words from the say it loud set from Waltzingmouse.  I used a reverse corner punch on the image and the blue matt, then added a snowflake DP from DCWV to a plain kraft card base.

I am going to enter this into the Little Miss Muffet Challenge this week which is anything goes  http://littlemissmuffetchallenges.blogspot.com/2011/12/challenge-25-anything-goes.html  and if you check out the site you can get a cute wintery freebie image to play with too :-D

It's also anything goes over at aud sentiments http://audsentimentschallengeblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/challenge-44-winner-of-43-and-dt-call.html  so I'm entering their challenge too.


Happy New Year!

OH NO 4-0!

One of my friends is hitting the dreaded 40 this week and we're going out tonight to commiserate celebrate.  Naturally this needed a special card and as soon as I saw the new release of "uptown girls" from Stamping Bella I had to have them as they are all so perfect for my friends.  For the 40th I went with this version as the matching sentiment is so apt for the lady in question:

I decided to paperpiece their evening wear, and have done a close up below so you can see the detail.  On the black glitter paper I just added some pencil lines to show curves.  On the teal dress I used 3 shades of BG copic markers to add some depth of shading to the natural folds and some stickles to the trim.  I love paperpiecing - its such a quick way to "colour" a card and can be just as effective as colouring on the right image.  I edged the image, sentiment and mats with pewter embossing powder by "dipping" them into the ink pad.  I like the uneven look it gives.

The rest of the colouring is done with copics and I finished the glasses with a little glossy accents.  I used the same DP for the teal dress as one of my background papers - I like to do this as it ties the card together - and then I selected another from the same pad (DCVW linnen stack) to add some contrast and interest whilst keeping in the same colour family.  A strip of black glitter covers the join and ties into the black dress and the "FORTY" was cute using a sizzix alphabet strip again from black glitter paper.

If you like the "girls", then make sure you check them out - they are Canadian but are available in the UK from Quixotic Paperie here and there are some awesome Christmas ones out now too.  They are much bigger than standard bellas so make excellent larger cards (mine is A5 size)

I'm entering the following challenges with it:

Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes with bling
Sweet Stampin - Anything Goes
Totally Papercrafts - Glitter It
Phindy's Place - Paperpiecing

Thanks for stopping by.

Craftilicious x

LIM Cocktails

Good morning LIMettes - time for our favourite weekly challenge again - and I'm loving the cocktail theme this week!   It's an appropriate theme as Less is More applies to the art of cocktail making as well as card making - all the great cocktails are the simple ones.

The ladies shared a little game to find out what your cocktail personality is - this is mine:

You Are Made Of Silliness, Pizzazz, and Giddiness

3 parts Silliness 2 parts Pizzazz 1 part Giddiness And a Splash of Happiness Finish off with an olive

What's the Recipe for Your Personality?

Blogthings: Our Quizzes Weren't Written By Bored 12 Year Olds

For my card, I have used my brand new stamps from Stamping Bella - her new range of  "Uptown Girls" which are just perfect images for me to make cards for all my girlfriends as we do love a cocktail!  Stamping Bella is a Canadian Company if you've not come across them before with a fabulous range of stamps (not just images for colouring) but I get mine in the UK from Quixotic Paperie and these stamps landed here just this week and I got mine yesterday so the timing of today's challenge is perfect!   

This one is called "Madison has a Margarita" but I decided she'd be having a cosmo so changed the colour of the cocktail appropriately.  She is coloured mostly with copics - I have a new range of colours as there was a really good offer on so I had a little splurge!  I did do a little shading on top with pencils and sansoder.  I added a pink spotted matt which is from a Bo Bunny scrap from my snippets drawer and I used the same to matt the sentiment which comes with the stamp (I know Chrissie already used the same sentiment, but this is destined to be a retirement card for a friend next week so it had to have this sentiment on it!)  The little pink flat back gems were a little freebie with my stamps - Elaine the owner always includes a little something as a thank you which I think is a lovely touch.

Right, time to see what cocktails everyone else has come up with.

Catch you later