Play Date Cafe

This is a new challenge site, based on colours. It's run by Julie Ranae, and one of her design team is Sarah Anderson, who is a crafting friend of mine and a tutor at Paddy's Stamping Place where I am often to be found! You can see their excellent and inspiring blogs by clicking on their names. They have set up the Play Date Cafe and will run a new challenge every week. This week the colours were Black, Grey, Brown and Rust. Here is my entry, I hope it meets the criteria.

The patterned paper is from Basic Grey, as are the cobweb stamps, the dancing ladies are by Stampington, the music by Lost Coast Designs. I went to a friends house the other night and she was playing a Leonard Cohen CD, which took us back to our misspent youth, hanging around smoky bars listening to music like that. Brilliant! The little ladies with their parasols and ballet shoes made me think of "Dance me to the end of Love" which was one of my favourite L Cohen tracks.

RSS Challenge 8

This Ready-Steady Stamp! challenge has got me to make my first Christmas card of 2009. That takes some doing as I'm a bit of a last minute merchant when it comes to Christmas. The colour palette was really appealing - anyway here are the criteria this time:



and here is my entry:

Sorry I forgot to "crop" the image so there's a bit more border than I would like.

The C for Christmas is obvious - done on an office labeller.

Colours, I limited myself to the three on the list and white.

Crackle - I stamped a crackle background over the whole of a tall black card, using a stamp from Stamp Camp that I got at Port Sunlight.

Snowflakes - I stamped and embossed some Elusive Images snowflakes onto white vellum with a mixture of white and sparkle powder, cut them out and stuck them on. The lilac paper is a print from an Artilicious CD with snowflakes on it.

Skinny - I cut a piece to "skinny" size and stamped part of an Elusive Images greeting on it, and added a line of stronger lilac and a line of silver with pens. I then doodled a black outline, punched a small bird using a McGill punch, coloured him lilac, stuck him on and doodled an olive branch for him to bring. I cut out a snowflake from another part of the paper and embellished it a bit with a starlight pen and added black fake stitches.

I stamped a "flying lady" by Lost Coast Designs - another Port Sunlight purchase - on another bit. I mounted these together so she looked like an angel floating down on a snowflake, and mounted these onto the skinny, stuck it together, added black ribbon and a few jewels. Hope you like it!

Enjoyed this challenge - I'm now off to try out another by the Play Date Cafe

RSS Challenge 7 (skipped 5 and 6!)

Have been very busy so absent from blogland for a while, though I've been having the odd late night catch-up with my favourites. I have had a go at the latest RSS challenge - I did actually make cards for the last two but never got round to posting them. I've included them here in case anyone is interested! The challenge this time is:



So anyway, here is my entry for this one. The base card is cream and has been stamped with Basic Grey cobweb stamps in suitable shades of Distress inks. Using the same inks, I swooshed them onto glossy card and overstamped it with Elusive Images "Nature's Peace" stamps. The tree in the centre has had little pearls added, which have been coloured with a gold Promarker pen. The hazelnuts (or maybe they are chestnuts?) were also coloured with Promarkers then glazed with Crystal Lacquer. "Autumn" was mounted onto a piece of brown fabric with staples - I'm not quite sure whether it's hessian or a rather open canvas so I hope it will do. The central panel was matted onto brown card and the right hand one onto a patterned ochre paper.








These are the cards that never got entered onto the challenge - ran out of time I guess! Looking at them all together, I realise that I have no consistency at all! They are all different and there's nothing to make them recognisable as mine. I'm sure that's not good - the work of designers I admire are usually instantly recognisable as theirs! I'll think I'll have to try and come up with something ....