Sunday 28 January 2018

Gerbera DT Inspiration for Uniko

Hi friends I'm over on the Uniko blog this morning sharing a little Gerbara inspired combo. You'll find all my cards HERE but I wanted to feature 2 of them on my own blog to link up at a couple of challenges today so here goes:

First up to enter over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where it's Layer it Up! Although I love some layering to cards I'm rather a 'clean and simple' girl so too many layers freak me out!!! I hope this one includes enough die-cut layers/panels/sentiment for the girls at SSS.


Using: Uniko - Pure Florals Gerbera, Festive Sentiments and Simply Said, Altenew Inks, WOW Silver Sparkle EP

Next up I'm heading over to the 'Ombre' challenge at Addicted to CAS and Anything Goes and Addicted to Stamps & More. Same colour combo and products but here's my 'clean and simple' version! 

Using: Uniko - Pure Florals Gerbera, All Occasion Sentiments, Altenew Inks, WOW Silver Sparkle EP


Thanks for calling by my blog today and for more details on my cards please head over to the Uniko blog where there's another 2 varieties! Catch up Soon! 

Sarah

Sunday 21 January 2018

A Trio of Sunday Challenges

Hi there friends, I'm rather pleased with myself ... having a couple of non-design team specific cards to share with you today for a change! The benefit of our cold, snowy, wet English weather meant a good excuse to escape to my craft room.

First up, I'm super excited to have found time (just) to enter the new 'Twofer Card Challenge' with these cards. I thought I'd find this challenge a breeze as I love making TWO-fers on my blog but this took some thought to come up with 2 completely different designs and occasions. I hope these generalised ones count!


The theme, as you'll see from the Cue Card below is 'Feathers' ... Easy I thought, thinking of my gorgeous WPlus9 Fanciful Feathers stamp set and dies then I realised I'd have to get out of my comfort zone and whip up 2 completely different ways to use it. 



Here I created a very random pattern of the smaller feathers using Altenew Inks, in some cheery bright colours, to cover the whole card front ... yikes I'm used to more 'white' space than this but it's quite fun stepping outside of my usual 'box'. Using a Uniko Christmas set; Rustic Christmas I added the little birds randomly to the pattern. To finish a die-cut hugs from my stash, coloured with Promarkers and Winked with Stella on a stitched rectangle with a 'sending' sentiment also from Uniko.


This one uses a Brusho off-cut extravaganza! I just love these colours, yet when using Brusho you never quite know how it'll turn out. This time using the matching dies to the WPlus9 set I die-cut some feathers, adhered them to a stitched rectangle with a strip of the brusho panel to the right. The 'For Your Kindness' is from the Fanciful Florals stamp set and the die-cut Thanks also by WPlus9.

I'd also like to link these up in 2 Simon Says Stamp Challenges ... The SSS Monday one is Birds of a Feather, with the SSS Wednesday one 'Add a Sentiment'

Thanks for visiting my blog today and I hope you've had a fun crafty day too.


Sarah

Saturday 20 January 2018

Less is More #363

Hello my crafty friends, 

Another fortnight has zipped by and I'm here to announce our latest challenge over at Less is More - and it's that dreaded one! Although we've moved to fortnightly challenges we are still using the same rotation of 'themes' so it's our ONE layer week!

Here's the cue card, which is self-explanatory, I hope, followed by my cards and I've 2 to share today.


First up, using a James Bear image from LOTV is the card I made for Kylie of Happy Little Stampers when she became a Nana for the first time at the end of last year. Having seen the photos of her adorable grandson I couldn't resist stamping this little cutie on the card. The 'Hey' sentiment is from Uniko with the 'Nanny' from Clearly Besotted Stamps.


Loads of masking and stamping on this second one using a mixture of pandas, as they're super cute ... yes? The sets are by Mama Elephant and it's Incoming Mail and Pandamonium. I've added a couple of score lines at the bottom for some extra interest and a little bit of shading and colour with Promarkers



As always there's loads of fabulous designs from my fellow teamies over on the main blog HERE and if you missed the first challenge this month, we introduced a brand new sponsor for January; Skull and Cross Buns! Why not head on over and check out their gorgeous range of stamps and do make sure you play along for a chance of a prize, which we'll announce at the start of next month.




I hope you'll join us and have some fun and thanks for calling by today!


Sarah

Friday 19 January 2018

Uniko Challenge #45

Hey there, it's time to announce our latest challenge over at Uniko; here's the cue card showing what we're looking for.




I was drawn to the rose and heart in the photo but skipped the heart in the end for this card! You'll have to pop back when we showcase our reminder posts, on 2nd February for that addition! I've used an 'old' sentiment (or 2) from the All Occasions Sentiments #3 with the newly released Pure Florals Rose set. I've tried to colour this using a 'no-line colouring' technique by stamping the images with Memento inks then colouring with Promarkers. 



I think the sentiment on my card is pretty appropriate too as our Guest Designer for this challenge is  one of my best craft buddies EVER and fellow teamie at Less is More! It's Anita of Neet & Crafty who won the last challenge with none other than the Christmas card she sent me; to say I was thrilled is an understatement! Do pop along and visit her blog and leave a friendly word and some love. She won't admit to owning loads of yummy stash but believe me she does and creates such beauties with it all! 

There's a couple of challenges I'd like to pop my card into, first up Simon Says Stamp: Wednesday Challenge is to 'Add a Sentiment' and I've done just that! Timeout Challenges is inspired by words "Each day is a gift, open it, celebrate it, enjoy it!" so my take is that fabulous friends are true gifts and it's great open up, celebrate and enjoy special times with them!

Also it's a photo inspiration week at Inkspirational and I couldn't resist adding this card there as I was drawn to those stunning flowers and leaves in the picture and my stitched border works well with the string of pearls and strings on the violin - hope it counts! 


You have until Friday, 23rd February to link up to the challenge and all the details you need about prizes and how to play can be found over at Uniko HERE

As always thanks for calling by my blog today and I hope you feel inspired and will play along

Sarah

Sunday 14 January 2018

Uniko Revisit - January 2018

Hi there friends, here's my first Uniko post of 2018 and it's one of Bev's 'REVISIT' months where she asks us to 'dig out', dust down and bring a previously released set back into the spotlight! 

There's a bit of a twist for this month, however, as Bev asked the DT to pick their own favourite set, released during 2017. Now that's a BIG ask and quite unfair due to the sheer number of beauties Uniko has released. In fact it took me a while to decide which to go for. In the end I chose the Organics range of stamps ... not realising that the first one was released in 2016! Ooops!

I'm still going to feature that card anyway as I've a little trio going on! My Mum asked me to make a bunch of Anniversary cards and she prefers the square design, which I find quite tricky to make. Have you noticed most stamps and dies are geared towards rectangles? Before Christmas I discovered some cheap, large stitched square dies from The Works, which made the design a breeze! (Thanks to Di, friend of JulesB - who found these initially and shared them at the HLS craft retreat in November)

Onto my cards
using: Originally Organics Additions, sentiments from Simply Said and Happy Succulents
(images coloured using Promarkers plus Altenew Inks)

Having used a sentiment from the Happy Succulents set on the previous card I realised the images combine quite well with the organics range so here's my take with this one

using: Happy Succulents image and sentiments from Simply Said and Festive Sentiments
(images coloured with Promarkers plus Altenew Inks)

... and here's the DUD! The Originally Organics set was released in October 2016 but I've still used the Happy Succulent 'Happy' sentiment and the 'Anniversary' from Simply Said with the same Promarker colours.

 



As is the tradition there's a blog hop giveaway; the prize will be a £15 eGift Certificate to spend in store and you will have till midnight 21st Jan 2018 to comment along the hop

You'll find all the details including the links to to my teamies blogs and a sneaky peek at what they've created with their favourite set(s) over at Uniko HERE

Thanks for visiting my blog today and I wish you lots of luck on the hop!


Sarah

Saturday 6 January 2018

Less is More #362

Happy New Year Crafty Pals, I hope you are all well and enjoying 2018 so far.

I can't believe this is my first post since 23rd December ... here's me thinking I'd have been crafting and blogging non-stop over the festive period but other fun stuff got in the way!!!

Anyway I'm here to announce our latest challenge at Less is More and we are moving to a 2-weekly format from today, in the hope that it'll free up some extra time for the LIMettes and DT alike. All the details can be found on the main blog so I'll get straight down to sharing the Cue Card for our first challenge of the year! 


Surprisingly I've managed cards for you today, despite the festive fun!!! Each one featuring purples, of course and using the delicious Altenew range of inks.


This one uses the Painted Butterfly set from Altenew with a sentiment from Clearly Besotted; Brushed Greetings.


Next up another Altenew set, this time it's Beautiful Day combined with an inlaid die-cut 'happy' sentiment from STAMPlorations and the 'New Year' sentiment from Happy Little Stampers.

I'd like to link this one up at Simon Says Stamp - Wednesday Challenge where's it's 'Something New' so I'm going with the new Year!


... and last but not least here's the card featured over at Less is More and it uses the Bold Blooms set by My Favorite Things and a sentiment also by MFT. 

As always there's loads of fabulous designs from my fellow teamies over on the main blog HERE and we've a brand new sponsor for 2018, it's Skull and Cross Buns for this month so do play along for a chance of a prize, which we announce at the start of next month.


I hope you'll play along and have some fun - you might even like to join us more than once this fortnight! Thanks for calling by and catch up with you soon. 

Sarah