March Challenge Winners

Well it seems you all love a Tic-Tac-Toe challenge - we've never had so many players!  We had some really fabulous entries again and you made it really hard to pick a winner but in the end we selected Tallie as our overall winner with her stunning water coloured background for her super cute sloth!

Get in touch via the online form on the website Tallie and drop me your details so I can send you your £20 voucher to spend in store.

Our runners up for this challenge were:

Kristina

Who couldn't fall in love with this cute zoo keeper and her roaring friend?  Such a fun card we loved it!   We loved the fun way she incorporated the patterned papers.

Inspire-Create-Love also got lots of our votes - we loved the inked circle background and the bright fun summer feel to the whole card.

Our final choice by contrast is a subtle floral number from Craftinsanity.  We loved the overall colour scheme and beautiful watercolour detail to the flowers.

 

Great work we sure you will all agree!   Do grab your winners badges for your blogs!

Thanks to all for entering - if you didn't win this month - worry not - we'll be back tomorrow with a brand new sketch challenge for you all to play along with!

A big splash with Whaley small stamps.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I'm getting the most from those uber cute tiny stamps we all have that sometimes get over-looked...

Using Lawn Fawn's Whale You Be Mine, and Altenew's Tiny Bubbles.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, these wee little sets that Lawn Fawn come out with absolutely rock my world.  The price point is incredible (especially in our amazing store!), and they are always so so cute.  And now Altenew are joining the party and have released a few small stamps recently, I've used Tiny Bubbles here but they have Tiny Stars and Tiny Hearts also, all amazing for building up backgrounds etc.  Just brilliant.

I started by stamping out my lovely whales and the surrounding scene, including the sentiment which is from the same set, in Versamark and white heat embossing everything.  I knew I wanted to create an emboss resist background.  I then masked off my whales and the little heart using masking fluid, and went town with a big inky wash background.  once that was dry, I added a load of Altenew's Tiny Bubbles across my washed area, making sure to 'dab off' the ink form the edges of the stamp to give a softer finish.

I then added a flicker of darker blue ink, and a good splash of white to complete my background.  I removed the mask from my whales and heart, and coloured using Zig Clean Colour Brush Pens.

I finished with a slick of Glossy accents to make my scene stand off the page, and there you have it.

I really hope you like it and it makes you want to re-visit some of your smaller stamps that sometimes get lost amongst our vast collections :)

As always, everything I used is linked below so be sure to stop by the store.

See you next week.

Jillx

Stamped Sprays and Goodbye For Now

Hi there everyone and happy Thursday! It's a bittersweet post from me today as this will be my last a a DT member here, but don't worry I'll still be around.

So onto my card. Did you see that Tara just got in the new Altenew Shimmer Sprays? I really do like them and you can stamp with them too!

 

To stamp with the inks I took a dry baby wipe (just one I had left out for a little while). I folded in half and then sprayed some of the shimmer mists onto it, this will create kind of a DIY ink pad. I used Forest Glades, Ocean Waves and Lavender Fields sprays, I sprayed them next to each other on the dry wet wipe so I could create an ombre look on my stamped images.

I then inked up the images from Altenew 'Happy Dreams' using the DIY dry wet wipe ink/spray pad. I stamped the leafy vine images a number of times before setting them aside to dry. Once dry I then cut the pieces out using the coordinating dies. 

I arranged the vine pieces into a wreath shape and adhered some flat and the top ones with foam pads to add some depth.

To finish I added a twine bow and a sentiment from Altenew 'Beautiful Quotes'.

Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope I've inspired to use you sprays in different ways!

I bid you farewell but I don't believe this will be the last time I see you around here :)

Hugs, Lydia xxx

         

Watercolour floral canvas

Hi everyone, it's Esther here with a canvas featuring lots of layers and texture. I used watercolour, but, having run out of watercolour ground, I worked directly onto gesso.

I started with adding texture paste in the corners and towards the middle through the My Favorite Things Moroccan Lattice stencil. 

The next stage was adding lots of watercolour using Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens. I scribbled colour at the edges and spritzed it with a water mister, tipping the canvas and letting the colour run towards the middle. I worked from lightest to darkest, adding less colour as they darkened, and drying in between. As the layers were not fixed, and would start running again when wetted with the next layer, I was patient with adding and repeating colours until I had the look I wanted. Colours used were 036 Light Blue, 042 Turquoise Green, 033 Persian Green, 034 Dull Blue, 038 Peacock Blue, 092 Blue Gray, 090 Gray, 095 Dark Gray and 010 Black.

Using the same stencil, I lightly tapped a damp sponge over the edges that hadn't had texture paste to lift the colour slightly.

To complete the base layer I lightly rubbed Nuvo Embossing Mousse in Cornflower Blue over the raised areas and some parts of the canvas to add a metallic sheen and highlight the texture.

For the middle layer of flowers, I then scribbled Zig pens on my craft sheet, spritzed with water, spritzed some card and mopped it into the beads of colour to get a grey-blue marbled effect on the card. I repeatedly stamped one of the My Favorite Things Funky Flowers using Moon Rock from the Altenew Warm Gray ink cubes set and die cut them using the matching Funky Flower Dienamics. I shaped the edges of the petals upwards and then arranged and glued them in the centre of the canvas using wet glue. A touch more of the Nuvo mousse highlighted the edges and random parts of the flowers.

The large word dies on the top layer are Concord and 9th Wonderful Words dies, cut from card, rubbed over with the Nuvo mousse and mounted on fun foam to make them more sturdy. The smaller sentiment, Dream Big, is from Mama Elephant Labeled Messages, stamped in Lava Rock from the Altenew ink cubes. The arrow is from My Favorite Things I'm Owl Yours and cut with the matching dienamics.

To finish off, I added some splatters of black acrylic paint over it all.

It was fun creating a canvas with supplies you might not normally associate with this! Thanks for stopping by.

      

      

Sweet Cupcakes

The Altenew Way Too Sweet stamp set is one of my favourites. I wanted to make a card featuring the cake images from this set, as I haven't used them as much as the ice cream and lollipop images.

I used a border stamp and Altenew inks to create stripes on a piece of watercolour card. To give them a loose watercolour look, I spritzed the stamp with water before stamping onto the card.

I used a heat tool to dry the stripes, then stamped the cakes and a heart image over the background. I chose Altenew Lava Rock ink as thought black would look too harsh.

I created the sentiment from two different stamps, selectively stamping the words I wanted to create my own greeting. I heat embossed it in gold on vellum, and die cut it into a tag. I added it to the card with liquid glue, and added a few clear sequins around it.

Thanks for joining me today,

Gemma

Add caption

Altenew Red Cosmos Inks

Altenew Warm Grey Inks 

Altenew Sea Shore Inks

Altenew Way Too Sweet

Mama Elephant Basic Borders

Hero Arts Gold Embossing powder

Llama Love

Hi there, happy Monday to you :)

Have you noticed how Llamas are the trend at the moment in stamping? ....well I didn't think

 I'd need to jump on that band-wagon but the MFT set Llama Love is just such fun. 

What colour is a Llama??.... I just went for a dirty cream colour but I think they come in most colourways!! 

He was a challenge to colour and I ended up giving his coat a woolly texture too.

This card was for my, very well travelled, Brother in Law so I went with a more masculine 

style and used the Stepped Up Chevron border in primary colours to

 break between the kraft and cream card.

I have sponged Natural dye ink through the Wonky Chevron stencil 

to add some pattern to the Kraft card, an alternative would be to use the matching 

stamp design which I've linked to below.

I went back to my favourite design technique of stamping un-coloured images

 behind my focal point, and then added a pop of colour with a green cactus. 

Now to the sentiment... well that just goes so well with his

 expression and really makes me giggle :)

 

 

Thanks for stopping by and hope your day goes by without any Prob-llama's!! 😉

Jenny x