Postcard Challenge - West Africa

After a bit of a hiatus from the Postcard Challenge I'm back in the game. This week's country was actually a collection of countries under the umbrella term 'West Africa'.

The pattern on the left hand side of the card is an example of a kente cloth design, a fabric native to the Akan people. This was drawn in pencil and coloured with promarkers. For the rest of the card I applied some Antique Linen and Tea Dye Distress Inks for the background. I then created the figures with my Promarkers. I've added the Senegal flag, although I've since realised that the Akan people didn't live in Senegal - oops.

For the stamp I have drawn and coloured an adinkra symbol, known as Sankofa. It is a bird looking backwards and is symbolic of learning from our past.

Monochrome

I'm on a bit of a roll these last couple of days, which is lucky as I have a TON of cards to make!

This card is a congratulatory card for some dear friends who have gotten engaged and are getting married in August. I chose to take up the challenge from Simply Stampin' (#60) and create a monochromatic card with a splash of a different colour. I also used my oval dies to fit in with challenge #53 (use Punches or Dies) at CAS-ual Fridays.

I went for a muted blue colour scheme, using a combo of Night of Navy, Baja Breeze and Bashful Blue. The splash of a different colour came courtesy of my Wisteria Wonder ruffled ribbon, which I layered with Night of Navy ribbon.

I used the bird image and a sentiment from Silhouette Sentiments, stamped in Night of Navy on Bashful Blue card. The Baja Breeze panel has been dry embossed using the striped embossing folder from Stampin' Up! and mounted on dimensionals. To add a touch of sparkle I placed basic rhinestones around the central image.

Hot off the press!

Talk about cutting it fine...this is my entry for this week's Simply Stampin Challenge, which closes in just ten minutes time!

The challenge was to use the following colours...

...which was totally outside my comfort zone! I was pleasantly surprised by the combo and this is the card I made:

I've used the Simply Soft stamp set and a sentiment from Silhouette Sentiments. Sorry for lack of description but the challenge now closes in 4 minutes - eek! Wish me luck ;)

Happy Birthday Urban!

It was my friend's little boy's 3rd birthday today and I knew he'd love a card with his name on it.

I got my little one on board again to help cut some letters using the Big Shot and my Timeless Type alphabet dies. We used patterned paper from the Just Add Cake set.

The layout is based on the sketch from this week's Feeling Sketchy Challenge - week #7. 

The image is a cute digistamp from Pink Cat Studio which I've coloured with my promarkers. I added some faux stitching (I can't stop using it at the moment!) with a red marker and added black dots at the ends of each 'stitch' to make it more convincing.

As well as the Feeling Sketchy challenge, I'm also entering this card into the following challenges:-

Lollipop Crafts Challenge # 80 - Just for Him
Allsorts Challenge Week 154 - Card for a Man or a Boy

Colour Create Challenge #96

My lovely 3 year old has been so well behaved this week that I got her involved in cardmaking. She absolutely LOVES using my Big Shot so I let her do all the handle turning :)

Yesterday 'we' made a card for the Colour Create Challenge #96, which was to use a colour scheme of Green, Brown, White and a touch of Lavender or Purple. It seemed an odd combo to me and I wasn't sure how the purple would work with it. When I picked out some shades to try though...oh my! Gorgeous stuff!

I decided to go for a clean and simple design to balance out the detailing in the stamp I used (Faith in Nature). The stamped image was coloured using my SU inks with water and a paintbrush. The sentiment is from a Hero Arts set I was lucky enough to win recently.

I really like the retro 'mod' feel this layout has to it.Must remember this one for the future!

Clean and Simple

I'm a huge fan of CAS (clean and simple) cards. I'm not so good at making them though. They require a lot of thought about how to make an impact without using too many elements, and how to use negative space effectively.

Having a sketch to follow makes this easier for me and I really liked the sketch provided by Card Positioning Systems' Challenge #265. 

I teamed the sketch with the theme of 'Birds' given in this week's CAS-ual Fridays challenge #52 and the gorgeous colours in the last Play Date Cafe challenge. The deadline for the latter has passed but I was so in love with the colour scheme I still went with it.

For my card I used a simple white background and printed on a digi stamp from Pink Cat Studio. I coloured this with my Promarkers and found patterned papers from Stampin' Up! to match. Simple, yet fun.

I've photographed this against a background of patterned paper, but it is just a white card.

Runway Inspired Challenge #11

It's not often I will make a card purely to submit to a challenge blog. However, when I saw the picture posted by the Runway Inspired Challenge (Christian Dior Fall 2012), I simply had to!

I should point out, for anyone wondering what this has to do with planes...it doesn't! Runway is the term used in the US for what we Brits call the Catwalk ;)

I knew exactly which patterned paper I wanted to use and I had some gorgeous mink coloured ribbon I would use to accessorise too. Sadly, I couldn't find the ribbon and I couldn't quite get the right shade of card I wanted. However, undeterred, I used SU Naturals Ivory CS and aged the edges with Pti Chai ink. The sentiment is a retired Stampin' Up! one I had and the ink I used was actually a homemade blend of white craft ink with crumb cake and chocolate chip re-inkers. I like how subtle it looks on the choc chip background. To add a bit of interest I added one of the Antique brads from SU.

I'm so pleased I discovered this new challenge blog (thanks to Feline Playful) and I can't wait to see what the next challenge will be!

Mellow Yellow

With Summer just around the corner I felt it was time to coax the sun out of its hiding place behind the clouds with a splash of yellow. The folks down at Crafty Boots Challenges are clearly on my wavelength as they've made it their challenge to use yellow this week too! I chose to team the yellow with Kraft and white, as inspired by the OCC Colour Trifecta challenge. I think it gives a really fresh look.

I also added some faux stitching with a white gel pen, as inspired by Crafty Ann's Challenge #64. To make it look more realistic I added a black dot at the beginning and end of each 'stitch'.

The flower is made by stamping one of the petals from the Stampin' Up! Pick-a-Petal set in Daffodil Delight onto white card and mounting them on dimensionals. I've added a black centre made from a simple circle punch. The background is the retired SU Friendly background stamp, stamped in Daffodil Delight again. All of the Kraft sections are SU Crumb Cake, raised using dimensionals to create depth. I've added a couple of strips of SU patterned paper to tie in with the spotty flower. The sentiment is from Afterthoughts, with more of the friendly background, cut out using the Decorative Label Punch.

I usually tend to forget about decorating the inside of my cards, so I've been making an effort lately to make the insides as pretty as the outside. I've repeated the petal stamp and added a sentiment from the Cheer and Wishes retired set. A pretty flower from Baroque Motifs adds a lovely touch...as well as covering up a mark I accidentally made while stamping the sentiment ;) I decorated the envelope in the same way for a lovely finishing touch.