Whimsy Wednesday ~ Hello Hummingbird

Hey there lovelies, I'm back again as promised with another Whimsy Wednesday Inspiration post. I've been playing with those gorgeous Hummingbird papers again. I couldn't resist doing another creation with that lovely paper. I used some green ink around the edge to finish the paper edges before sticking down the paper to create my CAS design for this week. 

I've used a lovely Chipboard Element from Make It Crafty to embellish this card. Did you know you can buy these Make it Crafty Chipboard Elements from Whimsy Stamps? There are lots of wonderful extra elements available at Whimsy Stamps, so be sure to click on their 'Supplies' button when you next go shopping to check out those fab extras. 

I coloured the base of the words in a lovely soft green, to tone in with the hues in the beautiful paper. I've glued the two seperate parts together with a light coat of Olba glue and then adhered it to the paper the same way. I've used Nuvo Drops to create the water droplets around the sentiment and in the card corners. Just a little bit of texture and interest on an otherwise very CAS card. Below you see better the dimension the chipboard element adds. 

Thanks for popping into my blog, I hope you enjoyed your visit. I'll be back before long with another Whimsy Stamps crafty adventure. I've been busy working on the June New Release creations, so I'm really excited to share what's coming up! Ooh you're so gonna LOVE this next release. I'm bursting to share what I've been working on! In the meantime, I need to get cracking creating my hubby's birthday card and one for my darling sis who had her baby a few weeks ago. They share their birthday ~ May 26th, so we will be having a double celebration for them both this weekend. Quite a special one for my sis, her first birthday as a mummy and it's her big '4-0'! So we're putting our party hats on this weekend. (Just between you and me, a special one for my hubby too, as it's his last year of being in his 40's!)

For a closer peek at the lovely elements I've used to create this card, just click through on the thumbnails below to be taken straight to the store. Check out the full May Release by clicking here for the Rubber Stamps and dies or here for the Digital Release. Hugs and happy crafting! xoxo

     

 

Fab 'n' Funky ~ Getting ahead for Christmas

Hey there my lovely blogging pals, it's time for a new challenge at Fab 'n' Funky and this week we are getting ahead for Christmas. You may enter any Christmas creation you wish, we'd love to see them all. I love joining in the Christmas challenges, as otherwise I tend to leave the Christmas crafting until the last minute and it's a mad rush to get anything made, let alone posted out! So I'm a big fan of a bit of Christmas crafting throughout the year. 

The card I'm sharing was actually made with a photograph that I took from our first Christmas back home. My sister had laid the table so beautifully for our Christmas lunch all together and she had little sprigs of Pohutukawa on each place setting. Pohutukawa is known as the Kiwi Christmas Tree. Pohutukawa trees bloom here in New Zealand at Christmas time. They're so beautiful in full bloom and very distinctive trees. So I thought when I came across this photo, that it might make a rather pretty 'Kiwi themed' Christmas card. 

I kept it very CAS, just a wee doily flourish for interest using a Marianne Designs Doily Star die. A die cut red square mat from the Dienamics Blueprint Set 14 and to finish, a simple LOTV sentiment stamped straight onto the kraft card base. An easy design which I think I'll make a few more of, as it's really nice to have a 'Kiwi themed' card to send. Our Christmases are so different to the snowy wintery ones of the Northern hemisphere.

We don't have a sponsor this week, our challenge is just for fun and anything goes as long as it's for Christmas, so you have loads of scope to have some crafty fun. I hope you'll join us and can't wait to see what you create. I'll be back again in a couple of hours with my Whimsy Stamps Inspiration post, so be sure to pop back for that. In the meantime, have an awesome week and happy crafting. Hugs, Wends xoxo

Kiwi Christmas Tree

Challenge Entries:

Sweet Stampin' ~ Bunnies or Bears

Hey there lovelies, it's time for a new challenge at Sweet Stampin' and we have such a lovely one for you today. Our theme is 'Bunnies or Bears', simple! Just share your cards with us that have either a bunny or a bear (or multiple of these) on it. I am a little bit besotted with the gorgeous animal characters drawn by Kristy from Some Odd Girl. They are my favourite images in her range. I just LOVE their enchanting faces. This lil' bear is one of my favourites. This adorable 'Winter Friends' stamp set is out of stock now at Some Odd Girl, but Kristy has some super cute 'Critters' as digital images. So check out her store for more details. You might recall the card I made using this lil' guy and a couple of his snowy pals last year. Click here if you want a peek back at that. I've only ever coloured him up as a Polar Bear, but I wonder now if he might look just as cute as a Brown Bear, I'll have to try that next!

I made a shaker card for this challenge (and this time actually remembered to add the acetate at the right stage!) Hehe. I created a lil' snow-mound by masking a circular shape in the bottom left corner of the card and then stamped this cutie on top. I then masked the bear as well, so the mound and bear were both masked and then added distress ink to the background to create a Northern Lights effect. Okay, not the best Northern Lights, but a pretty sky at least, don't you think?

I added just a hint of colour to this sweet bear, some pale cast shadows and some pink to his nose and cheeks. It always looks so much brighter to me in reality but pales in photos, so clearly I have to be more confident about laying down heavier shading! You can barely see the pink in his ears, but it's there. LOL.

The sentiment I stamped quite a while ago, I have a wee box that I keep some prestamped sentiments in and I thought this one was lovely to finish this card, but not thrilled with the stamped finish. Now I would use my Stamp platform to stamp it over again and make sure there was a crisp finish, not so back when I stamped this. It makes me happy I bought that bit of kit now! 

I decided to do a two layer circle but never thought about the wee shaker elements getting caught between the layers! Hehe, this card seems to have a few 'lessons' for me in it. Notably that I didn't 'ground' my bear! Hehe, I never noticed until it was all put together, that I'd forgotten to add shadow under his paws. Oh well, hopefully this goes unnoticed by most. 

I hope you'll come and share your Bunny or Bear creations with us this week at Sweet Stampin'. We'd love to see what that inspires you to create. Do head over to the challenge blog for some further inspiration, my teamies have created some gorgeous cards for this theme. I'll be back again soon with another crafty adventure, hopefully one with a few less mistakes, hehe. Hugs to you all and happy crafting, Wends xoxo

Challenge Entries:
Aud Sentiments: #203 ~ Cute + A Sentiment
Winter Wonderland: Christmas In The Snow
Colour Crazy Challenge: #20 ~ Anything Goes
Creative Inspirations: May ~ CAS or Fussy & Fancy

Addicted To Stamps & More: #292 ~ Make Your Mark
Cupcake Inspirations: #446 ~ Colour Challenge ~ Pastels
Christmas at Sweet Stampin': May ~ Anything Christmas
613 Avenue Create: #209 ~ Anything Goes + Mainly Blue Option
The Merry Christmas Challenge: #20 ~ Anything Christmas Goes
Cute Card Thursday: #530 ~ The Great Outdoors (you can't get much more outdoors than the poles! hehe)

Fab 'n' Funky ~ Retro Chic

Hey there lovelies. It's my turn to host the challenge at Fab 'n' Funky this week and I've chosen a theme I hope you all will love. Our wonderful sponsor this challenge is The Paper Shelter and looking through their fabulous images I was inspired by how many of them depict a particular era, there are the big bustles and tiny wastes of the late 1800's, the sweet tea dresses of the 1950's, the swinging 60's hippies, or perhaps a 1920's flapper?! There's just such a huge range of lovely vintage images out there in our crafty world, so this week, I'd love to see you pull out your coolest 'Retro Chic' images and have a play along with us. I was laid low by a migraine on the day I was planning to prepare my card, so I'm only just putting up my post today.

One of my darling pals turned 40 recently and I've wanted to make her this card for weeks, but been too busy to pull it together. So I was delighted to have this challenge as a reason to make it happen. She was in fact the inspiration for my theme choice. She loves the 1950's era and the beautiful tea dresses of that era. She's also rather partial to animal prints and totally knows how to rock that look! She looks amazing in hot pink too, so a little plan came together when I recently bought some paper from Snap Click (which if you don't know about, you should totally stop in for a visit, they have a 'One Buck Wednesday' every week, with fabulous digital paper sets down to US$1!!). The set I used is called Beautiful Chic by designer Adrienne Looman and the pink brick and animal print with roses papers are from this set. They just screamed to me to be used for this card. Utterly perfect for my lovely pal Sarah. 

Having been poorly, I thought I might use one of the lovely precoloured images from The Paper Shelter to save me some colouring time, but my printer is still being naughty and it printed pink bands on the bottom half of the image! I tried colouring over them to tone them down and blend them in, but they just didn't obscure at all well, so I went off to my local printer, had the images printed in a couple of different sizes and brought them home to colour up. I used the little image as my 'practice' image and then coloured up the larger image once I was happy that I could pull off turning the polka dots on the dress into animal spots. I'm so happy with how this turned out.

I used a Copic friendly Memento Dual Marker to create the Leopard spots on her dress, then added two colours around them to create more convincing Leopard spots. I've used a mix of my Copics and Promarkers for this creation. I don't have any 'hot pinks' in my Copics as yet, but I love using them for hair and skin, so the pic above shows the Copic colours I used for her red hair and fair skin.

I tested out the two sizes of image on the card base and settled on the larger size and the little image looked swamped, but that little image came up well in the test colouring, so I'll create a smaller card and use it on that. 

I went through several different ideas when creating the card base. I cut the work 'hello' from pink cardstock, but decided that a metallic finish might be better. The silver and gold didn't quite work, but I liked the rose gold finish. It just seemed to work best. It's hard to capture the pretty shade of rose gold, as when the light hits it in photos, it can change the look dramatically. Below you get a glimpse of the pretty rose gold shade.

I used Wink of Stella on her bow, hair clip and make up puff. I also added some white Flower Soft to depict the little powder clouds which were cut away in the fussy cutting. The circle mat I used, is actually from a Double Scallop Whimsy die, but the scallops were a bit much for the design, so I just trimmed those off leaving the more solid central circle. 

Check out her cute feet. Those shoes are so gorgeous! I had to paint her toenails of course! One of the cute little details you are rewarded with if you stop and take a closer look. I wonder if my pal will notice?!

That's all for today, I am going to go hang out with hubby, so I'll wrap it up there and catch you all again soon for another crafty adventure. Be sure to stop into the Fab 'n' Funky Challenge Blog and check out what my awesomely talented teamies got up to this week. They all rose to this challenge fantastically and have created some stunning cards. Click through on their links for a closer look at their creations on their own blogs. Thanks heaps for stopping in to see me today and sorry about the über long post! I had planned to do a quick one, but I just can't help myself, there were so many pretties to share! LOL. Have an awesome weekend. Hugs, Wends xoxo

Challenge Entries:

Cardz 4 Galz: #71 ~ All Dressed Up

Not Just Cards: May ~ Anything Goes

Crafty Creations: #366 ~ Anything Goes

Lemon Shortbread: #67 ~ Anything Goes

Colour Crazy Challenge: #20 ~ Anything Goes

Creative Inspirations: May ~ CAS or Fussy & Fancy

Addicted To Stamps & More: #292 ~ Make Your Mark

SugarPea: #43 ~ Mix It Up Challenge (inspired by the pink rose)

The Paper Girls: #151 ~ Friendship (made for one of my bestie's 40th birthday)

As You Like It: Pink or Blue? I'm definitely a pink girl. I love pink and I love crafting with it.

Southern Girls ~ Sparkle & Shine

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you just can't get it all done? I am only half way through creating this card, so the pics show the incomplete work. But I threw a migraine yesterday and just couldn't get either of the two posts I was meant to do finished. So here I am, in my incompleteness, asking you to see the possibilities until I can get it finished. This is of course, my design team post for Southern Girls and I worked with a gorgeous stamp set from our Sponsor 'My Favourite Things' to create (or half create) this fun card. Our theme this challenge is 'Sparkle & Shine', which I just LOVE, as I adore anything with a bit of glitter and shine. I just love these lil' dragons too. How cute are these guys?! So so so cute me thinks!

Here's my elements all ready to go, but not completed. I stamped random hearts all over the sky, to suggest this was a little magic the daddy dragon is doing. If you look closely, you can see I embossed a smoke cloud onto acetate (because I wanted a sheer effect) and because he's blowing down, I've added it in the direction he's blowing. I didn't want to cover the dragon really, he's so cute, so using the acetate meant you could still see through the wee smoke cloud.

 

I coloured these cuties from the MFT BB Magical Dragons set with my BG copics. A new adventure for me, as these are brand new! There's quite a gap between the lower two BG shades, so I wasn't super chuffed with the blending, but I'm a copic newbie, so I chalk that up to more practice needed. Oh to be near the lovely Faye for one of her classes! The above shots show the sparkle on the floating hearts and on the wings and horns of the two dragons. Wink of Stella was added for those sparkly touches. The shine on the silver embossing of the smoke cloud is lovely too when it catches the light. 

I had a play with some little clouds, these were created using a CC Designs cloud die, from one of their 'Build A Card' die sets. One has a wee heart cut out of it and one is plain. The paper set I used, had a page with these embossed and sparkly clouds, so I fussy cut those intending to add them somewhere in the cloud mix to tie the paper in more to the design. They're just loosely placed above, apart from the edge ones which I've stuck down. Two of them popped up on foam for dimension. I'm not convinced I have the balance right with the clouds yet. I think I'll take that middle one off.

It didn't take me long to settle on this paper for this creation. I just love the magical feel to it, which I think fits so well with this image. The swirls mirroring the dragons puff of smoke. I think it's a really fun paper. Yes it's busy and usually I steer away from this, as it can detract from the image too much, but on this occasion I think it works. I did need to mat the image with the white shimmer paper scallop die though, to give it a border that framed it and ensured it didn't get lost in the busy paper. The die was slightly too long, so I cut it and then cut just one end again to make it a little shorter. This is also an older CC Designs die. I'll hunt out the detes for this later.

I've put the image panel against some navy cardstock, just to show off the lovely pearlescent scalloped edge frame. In this light, you see the sheen on the pretty pearlescent cardstock which I also used to cut the clouds too. The pale blue clouds were cut from a pale blue paper from the same paper pad as the swirly busy paper I've used as the main background page.

Hear it is, all ready to be stuck down, but I'm still not convinced about the longer navy card base, I might create a square one yet. I've not stuck down the image yet either, or all the clouds. So once I've completed this creation, I'll come back with a final pic to show you what I chose to finally do. Oh the indecision! LOL.

Do stop by our awesome sponsor to check out their fab goodies and if you like what you see, be sure to stop in and add your own 'Sparkle & Shine' creation to our challenge for a chance to win a wonderful MFT prize! The rest of my teamies have totally nailed the challenge this week with some truly gorgeous 'Sparkle & Shine' creations for you to swoon over. Be sure to stop by their blogs for a closer peek at their gorgeous creations. I'm off to finish the card I should have posted last night for my previous DT post! Oh dear, it's really been a busy year so far and I'm not keeping all the balls in the air, but I try! Hugs to you all and I'll be back very soon with my next post. Hugs and happy crafting, Wends xoxo

Challenge Entries:

Whimsy Stamps Inspiration Post

Hey there lovelies. I hope you've been having a good week. My last week shot by in a blur. Still getting in lots of baby cuddles and helping with errands etc, so my days are very full right now. But nicely so! I have managed to find a few crafty minutes here and there though, which is just as well, because I have had a very special lil' mans birthday to prepare for! My gorgeous boy turns 8 today. I've actually already made his birthday card, but it didn't stop me colouring up this gorgeous Llama, full of party drama! Such a fun image I think!

I've coloured this awesome Krista Heij-Barber image called Llama Birthday with my Promarkers as I wanted bright cheery colours for this creation and I have a huge range of colours in my stash of Promarkers. So here are the colours I used. Just click on the little images to pop them up larger so it's easier to read the marker names. 

We have some awesome new digital papers this month, and I've used the red and yellow toned paper from the Stripe Papers set to mat this fun Llama image. You only see a hint of this lovely paper top and bottom, but I think it's the perfect finish to set up this festive image. I've added it to a lovely bright orange card base that has a lovely sheen to it. I used the same paper to mat the writing area on the inside of the card and couldn't resist adding another fun sentiment to the inside of the card too. I created this on my computer and printed it up after I'd added the writing page, so just added the sentiment strip over the top. Next time, I'll be sure I add it to the writing panel first before sticking it down for a more seamless finish. I ended up colouring around the sentiment with a sparkly orange pen as it needed something to finish it off.

The only 'embellishment' I added to this festive card was some musical notes to hint that the Llama Llama Birthday sentiment is a fun party song. While I was colouring this in, I had that song from the film Grease 'We Go Together' running through my head, as it has all sorts of fun nonsense lyrics in it... "We go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong", talk about a blast from the past! But it so gave me a giggle while I was working on this card. 

Thanks for popping in to visit today. I hope you were inspired by this festive creation and I encourage you to go and check out the rest of the amazing new releases at Whimsy Stamps. The May releases are fabulous and I've had so much fun colouring these past few days. I'll be back with another Whimsy Wednesday creation next week, but as we are kicking off our new challenge tomorrow, this post is a couple of days early. You might also see my Birthday Llama creation over on the Whimsy Stamps Inspirations Blog where I'm showcasing this image for my Digital Design Divas post this month.

Click through on the link above to visit the Whimsy Stamps store and take a closer look at their awesome new release this month. Once you're there, click through on the Digital tab to look at the New Digital Releases for May too, because they're awesome. 

As I mentioned it's also time for us to kick off a new challenge at Whimsy Stamps tomorrow, so you can join us there with any of your Whimsy Stamps creations. The theme is always Anything Goes as long as you use a Whimsy Stamps image. Have a fabulous week, I'm off to celebrate with my gorgeous birthday boy xoxo

Challenge Entries: 

Alphabet Challenge: D for Dots

Crafty Catz: #417 ~ Anything Goes

Crafty Creations: #366 ~ Anything Goes

Inspire.Create.Challenge: #18 ~ Sunshine

I Love Promarkers: #359 ~ Anything Goes

Allsorts Challenge: #468 ~ Happy Birthday

Aud Sentiments: #203 ~ Cute + A Sentiment

Crafting With Friends: #67 ~ Anything Goes

Colour Crazy Challenge: #19 ~ Anything Goes

Creative Inspirations: May ~ CAS or Fussy & Fancy