Cure For The Monday Blues Challenge # 20 - Love's Young Dream

Challenge number 20 for the Cure for the Monday Blues (see full details here
http://littlemisst-papercraft.blogspot.com/2014/06/cure-for-monday-blues-challenge-20.html )
was to make a card using this lovely photograph as inspiration.

Source: Pinterest

 

The photograph shows a pretty bedroom that was designed for a young girl, using pinks, pale aqua, touches of gold and splashes of bright, vibrant colours. Further information about the design can be found here http://honeyandfitz.com/2013/12/19/chloes-mermaid-inspired-big-girl-room/ where you can see all the attention to detail and some before and after photos.

 

I decided that I'd like to try to replicate the pretty floral rug on my card. Here is a close up of the actual rug design which can be found here http://www.pbteen.com/products/martina-rug/ .

 

 

I started by making an A5 card base from some sturdy pale pink pearlised card, then I used an A4 Spellbinders embossing folder to emboss a strip of darker pink card with a polka dot pattern. I highlighted some of the dots with a Distress marker to mimic the bedspread and adhered the polka dot strip to the left of my card blank. I cut a smaller rectangle of Papertrey Ink pale aqua pearlised card for the floral panel then used Versamark ink and gold embossing powder to heat emboss the sentiment (from Hobby Art's clear Sentiments stamp set - CS026D). I also heat embossed the chandelier from the Elusive Images UDLSP0329 Bella stamp set (now Chocolate Baroque) onto pale pink card and fussy cut it out. I used Memento Teal Zeal dye ink to stamp some of the doodled swirls from Elusive Images stamp sets UDLHC0131 and UDLHC0132 and one of the small flowers from the Fantasy Floral set (UA4SP0185).

 

For the brightly coloured flowers I used a selection of coloured card and dye inkpads, together with a white pigment inkpad. Some of the leaves were from the Chocolate Baroque Tangled Garden stamp set (UA4SP0400) and some of the flowers were from the Fantasy Floral set (UA4SP0185). The rest of the leaves and flowers came from set UDLHC0100 FunkyDoodles - Fresh and set UDLCH0101 FunkyDoodles - Retro. After I had stamped everything I fussy cut it all out and then edged each one with a broad black Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen. I made sure that I covered up all the cut edges with the black ink so that I'd have a crisp outline. I further embellished some of the flowers and leaves with an Inkssentials white pen and a fine black Pitt pen.

 

Please click on the photos for a clearer view.

 

I then began the labourious task of layering everything onto the aqua panel using double sided tape and foam pads. Where leaves and flowers were overhanging the edges I trimmed them off flush. Some of the flowers and leaves were partially raised on foam pads and those in the foreground were raised completely. I stuck the panel to my card base using some strong red lined tape then finally I shaped the chandelier and adhered it with tape on the outer edges and foam strips in the middle.

 

 

This close-up photo gives you some idea of the dimension of the floral panel. The colours are much brighter in real life - unfortunately it was dark when I took my photographs and they appear more subdued.

 

Although I had started making my card early on Sunday afternoon, it took me much longer than I anticipated to complete it (over eleven hours in total), so I wasn't able to enter it into the challenge in the end. However, I enjoyed revisiting some of my older stamps and CASEing the rug photo and I shall be sending my card to a friend who has a birthday later this week. Thank you for looking!

Pretty Pink Posh Sequin Shaker Blog Hop

There is a big blog hop going on at the Pretty Pink Posh blog here http://prettypinkposh.com/2014/04/sequin-shaker-blog-hop.html where there are lots of wonderful shaker cards to admire.

 

I decided to join in, so I made this undersea scene, viewed through a porthole! I have had the porthole stamp for ages, but can't remember which company made it - sorry! I started with an A5 silver shimmer card blank and added a layer of PTI Hawaiian Shores card.

 

 

 

I took some pearl shimmer card and stamped the porthole using Memento Gray Flannel dye ink. I then cut out the centre circle using a Spellbinders standard circle die. I taped some thick acetate which I had saved from old Spellbinders packaging to the back of the aperture. The sentiment is from a set by Hobby Art Ltd and was stamped using the same Gray Flannel dye ink on  to PTI Aqua Mist card, which had been die cut using one of the Spellbinders Labels eight dies (S5 - 019). This was then layered onto a PTI Hawaiian Shores die cut from the Spellbinders Decorative Labels Eight dies (S5 - 148). I embellished the sentiment panel with a couple of brads which look like screws.

 

 

 

 

I decided to use a square of PTI Sea Shimmer card to make the undersea view. I drew a feint circle (slightly larger than the size of my acetate window) to aid in placing the stamps. I used a selection of Elusive Images stamps from the following stamp sets :- Underwater Kingdom - UA5SP0326, Seadragon - UA5SP0327, Mermaid Queen - UA5SP0328 and Something Fishy - UDLSP0330. These are currently available from Chocolate Baroque here  http://www.chocolatebaroque.com/search.asp?keyword=mermaid . They were stamped with a mixture of Gray Flannel and Tuxedo Black Memento dye inks. I also stamped most of the images onto some masking paper and fussy cut them out, so that I could mask off the images in the foreground whilst building up my scene. The panel was then coloured with Copic Ciao marker pens and the fish were accentuated using a Wink Of Stella Clear glitter pen.

 

 

Then it was time to add some pretty blue and green assorted sequins. I used 3mm thick foam tape on the back of the porthole panel to raise it up enough for the sequins to be able to fit inside. I snipped the tape at intervals so that I could bend it around the circular aperture and I made sure that it completely met up and that there were no gaps. A few more foam pads kept the panel flat and made it easy to fix to the card front.

 

 

Here is a close up of the sentiment panel. I thought that the words were quite appropriate to describe the various coloured sequins in my "ocean".

 

 

 

Finally, here is a close up of my undersea scene, complete with mermaids and brightly coloured fish. As usual you may click on any of the photos to enlarge them for a better view.

 

 

 

This card was so much fun to make - I hope you like it!

Cure For The Monday Blues # 11

This week's cure for the Monday Blues inspiration photo took me way out of my comfort zone.  http://littlemisst-papercraft.blogspot.com/2014/03/cure-for-monday-blues-challenge-11-and.html . In fact I had more or less decided not to enter this week until I received an email from Taheera and she reminded me about it - so I felt obliged to have a go! I thought that I would really struggle to come up with something, but in the end I had so many ideas that I actually made two cards today! 

 

 Source: Pinterest

 

 

My first card is a more feminine version, where I decided to concentrate on the right hand side of the inspiration photo . I started with a white 5" x 7" card blank and layered on some dotty pink designer paper from my stash and a smaller rectangle of Papertrey ink Spring Rain card. I used Memento Rich Cocoa ink and Papertrey Hibiscus Burst ink to stamp the Waltzingmouse Woodenheart Alphabet onto white card, substituting a small heart for the letter O. The panel was then layered onto a rectangle of Papertrey ink Dark Chocolate card and adhered to the card with double sided tape. I used the Hibiscus Burst ink again to stamp JustRite's "Autumn Damask Background stamp" (CL - 03895) onto white card and cut out a pennant shape. The Sweet Heart sentiment (from Waltzingmouse Stamps "Half Baked Gingerbread Joy" stamp set - as was the small heart) was stamped in Versamark and heat embossed with Wow Bark regular embossing powder and I added a small heart shaped pearl. The floral heart stamp was by Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque) and I used Versamark ink and Wow Opaque Bright White Super Fine embossing powder on some PTI Hibiscus Burst card, then cut it out and mounted it onto the card with foam pads.  I was very happy with the result.

 

 

 

For my second card I started with a black 5" x 7" card blank and layered on a piece of  yellow Core'dinations card from the Tim Holtz and Ranger Adirondack collection, then a layer of Papertrey ink Raspberry Fizz card, which I embossed with a Cuttlebug Swiss dots embossing folder. I used Memento Tuxedo Black dye ink to stamp the Elusive Images damask background (from plate UA4SP0156) onto white card, trimmed it and added the panel to my card with double sided tape. I used Versamark ink and the Wow white embossing powder again to stamp the "Smile" sentiment from Waltzingmouse Stamps' "Compact Sentiments" set onto turquoise card and one of the pretty bird images from Elusive Images' "Birds of a Feather" set (from plate UA4SP0218) onto another piece of the Raspberry Fizz card. I cut two of the smaller Spellbinders Labels One dies out of yellow and black card, layered them up and stamped the larger of the cameo ladies from Waltzingmouse Stamps' "Cameo Creations" using Raspberry Fizz ink. The panel with the bird was raised up on foam pads and the final touch was a row of three black gems in the bottom right corner.

 

 

This was the card that caused me the most problems as the colours were not what I'd usually go for at all - but I think that sometimes it's good to challenge yourself a bit more - it is called a "challenge" after all!  Thanks for looking!