Lawnscaping Blog Hop: Lawnscaping + Caffeine = Happiness

Hello crafty friends!

Welcome to the Lawnscaping June Blog Hop!!

You should have arrived here from Jennie M.'s blog. But if you are here first, not to worry! You will find the entire hop list towards the end of the post. Or, start from the beginning at Lawnscaping Challenges blog for more information.

Our blog hop theme this time is Coffee!! So here is my card. As I love interactive cards, I decided to create a shaker card!

I used the "watercolor smooshing" technique to create the pale blue background. This is a fun technique as you never know what it will turn out to look like. For the coffee rings, I literally used my daughter's plastic cup and dipped it in a watery brown ink puddle, then 'stamped' onto the water colour paper. They turned out better than I expected. ^_^

For this card, I used Summertime Charm stamp and die (for the jar), Love You A Latte stamp set (for cups, spoon, steam, coffee beans in jar and hearts next to the sentiment), Claire's ABCs (for the words "Brewin' Up") and Joy to the Woods stamp and die (for the hearts in jar). All stamps and dies are from Lawn Fawn. The "Birthday wishes" stamp is the only non Lawn Fawn stamp. It is from Holly Hobbie - Nature Walk stamp set. 

This jar is full of 'goodies'. It's a jar full of coffee beans, hearts, stars and shamrocks! (Can you spot them all?!) It is ready to brew up birthday wishes full of love and luck!

I also added Glossy Accents on the coffee inside the cup/ mug, it just gives them that liquid look. Gosh! I can almost smell that coffee. Feel I could just drink a cup of coffee now. I don't drink a lot of coffee, but I sure do love the smell and everything that is coffee flavoured. Such as: coffee cake, coffee ice cream, coffee flavoured chocolate, coffee yoghurt etc. Well, I do hope you have your coffee or your favourite beverage in hand and are ready to continue with this brilliant blog hop.

Before I send you off to the next blog, I should tell you the details of the PRIZES!! Leave a unique comment on this blog post for a chance to win. (No copy and pasting!!) There are lots of sponsors and lots of prizes up for grabs. Sponsors include: Lawn Fawn, Ellen Hutson, The Ink Road, Crafters Companion, Spectrum Noir, The Alley Way Stamps, Newtons Nook, Faber Castell and Right at Home!

Winners will be picked randomly along the blog hop. So, ensure you leave comments along the way. Comments must be left by 11:59pm EST on June 28th 2015. Winners will be announced on the Lawnscaping blog next week. Good luck!

I hope you like my card!! Your next stop on the hop is the lovely Ellen. Happy Hopping!

Lawnscaping Challenges

Niki G. 

Gray Whiskers Crafts

Melissa

Kristina B.

Lysa

Dianchik

Yolanda G. 

Jennie M. 

Julie C. -- you are here!!

Ellen 

Nina-Marie

Michele S. 

Anni

Michelle L.

Lydia

Oreet

Tammy H.

Shannon M. 

Kim

Kelly S. 

Trish K. 

Tanja

Amy

Kim H. 

Monica M. 

Beau Monde Designs

Valerie W. 

Maria

Wiebke

Maia Ink

http://melissabowden.com/

Vicki

Chitra

Tracy

Curl E. Cue's

Coralynn

Carisa

Dawn E.

Kate

Kristina P.

Thank you for stopping by!

*If you encounter any errors along the hop, please email Laurel directly at laurelbeard at me dot com. Please do not leave them in the comments.

A Tini Note

Happy Weekend!

I broke my favourite water glass at work ages ago. It had different patterned, coloured apples on it. This highball glass was very cute! Since then I haven't found another glass that I like. The other day my lovely colleague Jenny who sits next to me came back from her lunch break and she found and bought me a glass. It has different small flowers on it and it is so sweet! So to thank her for thinking of me and her wonderfulness, I made her this card.

It couldn't be more suitable to give her a shaker card of various shaped glasses to say thank you for my water glass!! ^_^ This is a small 4" x 4" card. I used the Free Spirits stamp set and its coordinating dies from Paper Smooches for this card. I used Versa Mark ink and clear embossing power to create a tone on tone back ground. Here is a picture from the side:

I filled these glasses by using nail art beads and a very small amount of sequins. I actually found these nail art beads in my local pound shop. It comes in these cute small jars with twelve beautiful colours.

These beads are so so tiny and they are fantastic for shaker cards. The thickness of a children's fun foam will be enough for these beads to run freely in their space. No bulkiness, easy to put the card in the post and twelve colours for a pound! You can't go wrong with that!! Hee hee!! ^_^

When I say sequins.... they are actually the middle part of the sequins. Crafters never let things go to waste! All those little circles that fall out from the centre of sequins, that is what I added!

 

I love this card so much, I made another two but filled in different coloured beads each time!

 

I am also entering this card to:

• Paper Smooches Spark: June 7-13 Anything Goes (wk1) challenge

 

• Make the Day Special Stamp Store: June Colour Challenge 

I picked the image on the right and I think I did use all the colours!! ^_^

 

Hope your weekend is going well and thank you for stopping by!

          

Let's Celebrate

Hello there!

Quick post today. I just want to share this card I made a couple of days ago.

Male cards are often difficult to make. I believe clean and simple is the trick! I used the Free Spirits stamp set from Paper Smooches for this card. No fuss, just simply stamp them directly on the card. This is probably one of the few fast cards I have made! ^_^

I don't know, maybe certain inks are just not made for solid stamps (I mainly use Memento dye inks and Brilliance pigment inks). Some are better than others. The champagne glass here turned out to be very blotchy. I also figured out that with some inks wiping across the solid stamp works better than tapping or dabbing on the stamp. The ink seems to go on much better. By wiping, it also gives you this nice fine line effect. This can be clearly seen on the far right hand side bottle. Anyone have this problem? Is it the ink or the stamp? Maybe I should invest in some better quality inks or should the solid stamps be treated in someway so that it takes the ink better?? Love to hear from all you crafty friends out there. 

 

I will be linking this card to the following challenges:

• CAS(E) this Sketch! #125   
  
• Paper Smooches SPARKs: May 31- June 6 Anything Goes (wk5) challenge  

• Craft Your Passion Challenges #264- Always Anything Goes
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes  

Thank you for stopping by. See you soon.

       

Designed by Me! - Babesyboo Part 1

Hello everyone!

Hope you all had a great weekend! Here in the UK today will be the last day of the half term break. Tomorrow kids will be back to school again, hooray! ^_^

I have something a bit different today. A long time ago... I think it was back in 2006/ 2007, even before clear stamps were popular and even before I started this blog. I had the chance to design some rubber stamps for Elzybells Art Stamps. (Gosh! That was a long time ago!) I wonder how many people remembered Elzybells stamps?? Unfortunately this brilliant online stamp shop is closed. However, Elizabeth, the owner of Elzybells Art Stamps, is now designing a range of greeting cards, personalised prints and other whimsically creative things. If you like Elzabeth's designs, you can purchase her creations at Cloud 9 Design and for news and updates on her work please visit her blog. I don't know what made me think of this, I guess seeing these rubber stamps, which I designed, brought back memories. Some of these rubber stamps are still brand new. Not been inked up yet!! OMG! That is just shocking! So I decided to create a series of blog posts to record and share my stamp designs. Also it will give me the chance to play with these stamps again, or for many of them it will be the first time they have been used! This is just for my own benefit but I do hope you will join me and like these Babesyboo stamp designs and card creations too.

Without further ado, here are the three stamps that I had fun playing with today.

Here is the card that I made by using these stamps:

These trio stamps are sunflowers, roses and daisies in various shaped vases. I used the "watercolor smooshing" technique to created the background. I also used the frame stamp and die from the Sizzix Words & Tags Framelits Die with Stamps set to frame these stamp images. Here is a closer look of the images:

The frame was cut several times and layered together to create dimension. I applied Glossy Accents on all vases and Crystal Stickles on all flowers. I do hope this card shows off these stamps perfectly in their own little frames! 

 

This card is also inspired by this week's Sketch Saturday #363 which is to pick any sketch from #215-#362. As I liked last weeks sketch so much, but didn't have the time to join in, I am so happy that I got the chance to use the sketch again this week. Here is what sketch #362 looks like:

I am also taking this card to the below challenges:

• Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes.
• Papertake Weekly Challnge: Take Your Pick. I picked Product Theme: Use glitter.

 

I hope you like this new series and I am looking forward to the next blog post where I will share more of my Babesyboo stamp designs.

 

Thank you for staying with me till the end. See you soon!