CR84FN- my first time!

I came across a blog challenge I hadn't seen before this week that looks really fun- CR84FN color challenge! Their challenge for this week was to create using the following colour combo...

I sat down with this inspiration last night and came up with two cards. This time of year is very busy in my family for birthdays, so first up is another birthday card- for my Grandad this time...

I used the kissing technique from the current Hero Arts challenge, inking up the Three Ferns with Broken China Distress Ink and the Dots and Flowers background stamp with Barn Door. After kissing the stamps together, I stamped the fern onto white card stock. I then cut the image into 9 'inchies' and inked the edge of each square using antique linen Distress Ink. The kraft piece was stamped with Dots and Flowers in Tea Dye, and distressed around the edges in Antique Linen.  The birthday sentiment is from the Birthday Messages Clear set, and then Grandad word is from a relatives clear stamp set I picked up when I was over in England in December.

I really like the effect the kissing technique gave with the red tints on the blue, you can't really see the pattern of the other stamp though- got to work on that still! 

The second card I made is for my precious little Goddaughter's first Valentine's Day! I was asked to be Godmother to my best friend's baby girl last year and I love that little bundle of snuggliness so much. (You can see a photo of her at her Christening here). They live in England so I don't get to see her for real life cuddles very often at all, but we chat on Skype (well the baby doesn't chat, she's only 9 months old- but I can't wait until she can tell me all about her day etc!) and I have made it a goal to send her a card and little pressie for every holiday (and also some just because- as they're the best cards aren't they!) so she knows I'm thinking of her. This is the first card I have made for her, and I realised I need to get some little girly stamps lol! So, it's a bit grown up for her, but I tried to make it a bit younger looking with the butterfly heart trail, and I know she'll love the butterfly on the card. Her Mummy will love that it's personalised to her, so hopefully it will be a hit all round :)

It's a pretty simple card! Just a piece of kraft, punched with a Fiskars punch, and distressed with Antique Linen and the Heart Winged Butterfly embossed in white and inked with Tumbled Glass and Broken China. I cut the butterfly out and put foam dots under each wing to give it dimension and glued the body to the card with glossy accents. I did have some black embroidery thread glued on as the butterflies antennae, but then had second thoughts and cut them off seeing as the card is for a 9 month old. I wanted to make sure it had no small pieces, just in case! The sentiment is from the Michael's dollar bin, and the 'Goddaughter' is from the same Relatives set as before.

So, any tips on good girly sets for making cards for a very young little girl?!

I'm loving these colour challenges, can't wait to try some more :)

Lynsey xxx

One more card!

As I was uploading my first card to the Play Date Cafe, I remembered I had a butterfly that I had made a month or two ago when just playing with embossing and inking on patterned paper- and it just happened to be purple! So, I rushed back into my craft room and put together this card, also for the PDC, and Hero Arts ' Love & Friendship' challenge!

I need to try one of those 90-minute scrambles over at the Hero Arts Flckr group- that card came together in record time, while trying to race to get it done while there was still sunlight to photograph with lol! Unfortunately, I didn't quite make it so had to take it under electric light, but I think the pic still came out ok.

Ok, now I'm off to do more 'research' online for craft room inspiration- of course my new house comes with a new craft room- one that will be totally my room and not just a corner, yey! I've got so many ideas- but after the number of clear stamp sets I ordered yesterday, I need to come up with a clear stamp storage system..... how so you store yours?

Lynsey xxx

Cars and Challenges

Hi there! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend- mine was mostly spent hopping around various blogs and stalking twitter accounts to see what was going on at CHA! I've decided that one of my stamping goals is to go to CHA one day, it just looks like so much fun. Even better would be to work on a booth there and demo- a girl can dream can't she?!

We went up to a small car show at the town we are moving to soon (hopefully!). Our realtor's daughter just started a new barber business up there and they hosted a car show as part of the grand opening. Here's a little pic of my hubbies other love (please excuse the messy masking of the license plate lol, I had to do it on Paint and don't have much skill in that area lol):

It's a 1963 Chevy Corvair. It is a little rough around the edges, you can see the paint is faded and green in places, and the interior isn't perfect- but I think it gives it character! It's so much fun when we take it to car shows as we get a lot of people come over to us and tell us stories about when they had one as teenagers back in the 60's, it seems to stir up lots of fond memories for people :)

Do you see the mountains in the background? Ooh, I love it so much up there, can't wait to get moved up to our very own home in the mountains- eek! Escrow is scheduled to close March 1st, so only 27 days to go, yey!!

Anyway, onto the challenges....

I loved the current Play Date Cafe challenge to use black and white with a touch of purple, inspired by this beautiful picture

I was inspired to use buttons on my card by the current EIC challenge inspiration store Too Cute Kawaii. This store has all kinds of cute little things all crafted with polymer clay. I particularly liked these cute buttons

I'm also entering this card into the new Hero Arts 'love & friendship' theme challenge, using their new Live Life clear stamp set for the sentiment.

This next card I made for my grandmother's birthday!

The layout of this card was inspired by the current CASE Study challenge with the main panel and flower embellishment. I was inspired by the Hero Arts featured technique for February- kissing, and so went rummaging through my stamps looking for one with lots of solid space to kiss! I pulled out my flower medley and La Letter stamps and got kissing lol! Once I kissed the stamps and stamped the flower medley I then embossed it with clear powder so I could colour over the flowers easily. I pulled out my way too neglected jar of flowers and inked it up with distress ink, stamped La Letter onto it and then found a pretty flower button to stick in the middle. I think the canvas stripe background, and twine in the button and wrapped around the flower panel just finishes the card perfectly.

I put in an order for some more new stamps last night, eek- some new lovely Hero Arts and Lawn Fawn will be arriving at my doorstep in a few days- yey!!

Have a great day xxx

Found my new home!

We were up in Tehachapi on Friday getting the inspection done on our new house (which went well, no major issues, yey!) and after it was all done we went into the town centre to wander around. I had seen online that there was a local scrapbooking and stamping store there, so of course I had to check it out!! The store is mostly scrapbook focused, but does carry stamping stuff including a few Hero Arts stamps and Ranger products like my distress inks and alcohol inks etc. But best of all, at the back of the store is their Centre d'Art, a room FULL of supplies available for use for an hourly fee. You can go there with a friend, and spend an afternoon using any of their tools, books etc and they also have classes etc of course. But best of all, you can rent stamps for just $1 a day- and they have thousands!!! The lady who runs the store, Kathy, was so nice and so passionate about her store and crafting. She is off to CHA this weekend and we had so much fun chatting about that and how much fun she would have! I can't wait to hear all about it when she gets back, and to see the new products when she gets them in :)

While there I of course had to pick up a few things!! I hadn't tried any spray mists yet, and had seen that the Create blog's challenge this week was to use spray mists- so when I saw the shelf full of glimmer mists I had to get one! Also, with it coming up to Valentine's Day I had to add a heart to my stamp collection, so the Hero Arts Heart Lace came home with me too!!

I had been itching to get playing with my new finds and finally got time last night. Here's what I came up with...

It's quite different to the cards I usually make, but I quite like it! I sprayed the glimmer mist onto white cardstock and then blotted it with a paper towel to give a glimmery marble effect.

I then embossed the Heart Lace in gold and used a Fiskars border punch to punch the top and bottom. I then gold embossed La Lettre onto the card, wiping the ink off in places each time I stamped so that it looks 'patchy'. I adhered the panel to the card at an angle (using my new Glue Glider Pro that I received from De over at EIC, thanks De!!) and then tied the brown ribbon, using a little Glossy accents to stick the bow in place.

I really can't wait to move up to Tehachapi now, and get to spend more time at Picture Perfect and Stamps of Approval! I know I will make some great new crafty friends there and have lots of fun :) Just keep your fingers crossed for us that escrow continues to go smoothly so we can be in our house by March!!



Love, love, love!!!

Just had to share my excitement with others I know are probably jumping up and down just like me!! I let out a little eeeeekkkk and scared the life out of my cat Silvester who was snoozing next to me, and received a rather worried look from hubby who was minding his own business watching TV!! Soooo, what am I so excited about?

Look at this....

I think Ranger and Core'dinations were thinking specifically of me when they came up with this collaboration lol!! Ok, maybe not- but there seriously could not have been a better new product for me- just take a look back over many of my recent cards like these Christmas cards or these distressed cards. It's quite obvious if you spend any amount of time on my blog that I have a little Distress Ink addiction- I have all 36 of them (got them off ebay when I first started stamping), and use them for every single card I make. Then when I bought my Texture Boutique starter kit, it came with a sample pack of Core'dinations cardstock and once I got sanding and distressing that card I was hooked on that too. Now I can get that yummy sandable card in the distress ink colours.... I am in heaven!!!

Oh, and just to amp up the excitement even more- they are giving away 40 sets of this wonderful new product (I sound like I work for them don't I, hehe). Just head over to the Ranger blog and get your name down for the contest. They are bringing out one in the Adirondack pallet too, so even more srumminess to play with. I just can't wait til these are available to buy and I can get my hands on them.

Oh, also my kittie Silvester was a little jealous when he saw that I had posted a pic of the other 2 the other day, so he insisted I snap a pic of him to put on here while I was in the middle of taking card pics ;-)

Here's my beautiful boy- he just loves the camera! I wish you could feel how soft his fur is too, I could just snuggle and pet him all day.

The challenge motivation worked :)

Remember how I was saying yesterday how I had been really struggling with getting motivation to sit down and get out my stamping supplies and get creating again with all the other distractions I have going on in life right now......

Well my plan to peruse my favourite challenge sites worked, and after a quick (well ok about 2 hour long lol) read on my fave blogs I ran off to my craft room and happily pulled out my new Hero Arts stamps and got stamping!!

My first card was inspired by the current Hero Arts challenge to create a card inspired by the 2011 Catalogue and to use the masking technique in a project. I was also inspired to use the butterfly stamp by the current Create challenge to use butterflies, and to use the silver embossing by the current Etsy Inspired challenge featuring the Etsy store Modern Bird where you can find some really lovely handcrafted silver jewelry.

The card was inspired by one of the cards on page 17 of the HA catalogue, using the Dictionary Greeting friend stamp and the large canvas stripes design block. I stamped the friend definition onto the card using Aged Mahogany Distress ink, and then masked it before inking the whole card front with Victorian Velvet and then stamping over it with the design block in Aged Mahogany. I made sure the ink was fully dry before embossing the butterfly, from a Martha Stewert set, using silver detail embossing powder. The card was actually a pinkish coloured card which I flipped inside out so there is the nice surprise of the colour pop inside.

My second card was also inspired by the Hero Arts Challenge. I loved the Large Blossom cling stamp the minute I saw it, and the card pictured on page 39 of the catalogue just sealed the deal!

I created another one layer card here (for some reason I thought that was part of the HA challenge lol, maybe that was last month and I missed it!!). First I embossed the Large Blossom onto the card with white poweder and then masked it before inking the entire card front with Scattered Straw. I then stamped the Large Canvas Stripe design block  using Wild Honey, off-centering it a little to put it at an angle on the card. I then coloured the flowers using peeled paint, scattered straw, wild honey and a little aged mahogany, applying the ink with Fantastix. The sentiment was stamped with black Stazon, and then finally I used my Crop-A-Dile to attach the brads at the corners of the Canvas Stripe block to make it look like a separate piece attached to the card.

Ok, I'm off to catch up on all my fave blogs and get commenting on the beautiful creations in the galleries :) Hope you have had a great day....!

Where'd my mojo go?!

 It's January 19th already, can you believe it?! I haven't posted since before Christmas, wow time is going fast! Sorry for going MIA again, but with no excuse of a trip home this time lol! Honestly, my head has just not been in the right place for stamping and card making. I was really excited when I got my Hero Arts Catalogue for Christmas and ordered some a few weeks ago but when they arrived in the mail they have just been sitting on my desk. I love them, but just can't get into the mood to start playing. I have plenty of ideas, and have loved seeing all the beautiful creations on the Hero Arts blog and Flickr pool- but just can't get myself into the craft room to make beautiful creations of my own!

I think it's because of everything we have going on in our life right now. When I went on my trip back to England, I got out of my routine of reading my favourite blogs and playing in the challenges and since I got back we had Christmas and have been dealing with still trying to buy our first home. The first house we were getting fell through a couple of weeks ago. It was so disappointing and stressful to deal with and to make the final decision to walk away and stop fighting for the house we had set our hearts on was really hard. I won't bore you with all the details, but basically it was just one thing after another coming up with that house and in the end we just had to accept that it wasn't the house for us. Honestly though, the minute we made that decision to walk away and move on it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and now I'm really glad we did it. We were lucky to find another house we love right away, and put an offer in on it on Tuesday last week and by Thursday we were already in escrow!!! We have our home inspection on Friday morning so you have to wish us luck :-) Of course, now the stress and disappointment has been replaced by anticipation and excitement- we've been looking at furniture and appliances we'll need, and I've picked up quite a little addiction to Marshalls, Ross and TJ Maxx, looking for cute home decor items for my new home!! Its all so much fun, but again eating into my brain space and time I need for my card making!!

I was thinking earlier today that maybe the motivation I need to get going again is to stop by one of my favourite challenge blogs and try to play along. So I'll be heading over to the Etsy Inspired Blog and to the Hero Arts Blog to see what they have going on and hopefully get into that craft room.

Do you ever lose your crafting mojo? How do you get it back?

I do have a few cards to share for you though that I did a few weeks ago. The pics aren't great as I had already put them in cello bags before I remembered to photograph them (see I'm all out of sorts lol). I am a big supporter of a local charity called Forgotten Angels who are a cat rescue and focus on adopting out homeless kitties, but also on running a trap-neuter/spay- release program in the community to try to reduce the feral cat population on the streets. I used to work at the local PetSmart and became friendly with Cathy, the lovely lady who runs the rescue. We actually got one of our babies, Odie from them a couple of years ago. Here he is on the right with one of our other boys Taz.

I got talking to Cathy when we were down at PetSmart during one of their adoption afternoons a few Saturdays ago. They have a table at the front of the store where they sell cat and dog goodies like car magnets, and mugs etc and she was saying how she needed to find some new products to sell as people wanted new things. I suggested I could make some cards in a cat or dog theme and if they sold I would be happy to make some for her every week to sell on the stall so she has something new and different. I love the work that they do, so it's the least I can do to donate these cards and hopefully help get them some money for food for the kitties etc. So, here are the cards I've made so far- I'll  be taking them down on Saturday so I'll let you know if any of them sell!!

I found one of the kittie sets, used in the first card in a craft store when I was home in England, and then got another cat set and a dog set by Inkadinkado, but I've got to be honest and say I'm not loving any of the sets- they're really not inspiring me that much!

Do you have any recommendations for cat and dog stamps I could get to make some cuter cards. I really want to help Forgotten Angels make some money, so I want to make the best cards I can!!

Oh, and as this is my first time posting this year- Happy New Year!!!