Clean and Simple Card

Hello my friends!

Doesn't it get dark a lot quicker, now we are officially not in the British summer time!! Daylight time has shortened and that is just so depressing.

Yesterday we went to my sister-in-law's place to celebrate her coming birthday on Monday. I spent the morning making the card and then rushed out to town to get her a present and rushed back to wrap the present. (Yes, not very organised. Everything is last minute!) After all this effort.......... what do we do? Everyone in my family jumped into the car trying to get to the party on time and no one picked up the card and present that were sitting at the bottom of the stairs and assumed one of the others had picked it up. The thing is, none of us realised it until we were nearly there. Oh dear~ That was embarrassing! Walking in without card and present in hand. My husband had to make another trip this morning to do a special delivery.

Anyway, glad the card and present have now landed in the right place. So here it is, a glance at the card.

I am joining The Play Date Cafe Challenge PDCC 105 and using the below colours as inspiration-

Kraft/Taupe...Flesh...Cadet Blue

I am also entering The Sugar Bowl Challenge 70 - Maria Therese's Sketch and using the optional theme Clean and Simple.

I am pretty happy with the card. I love the colour combination! Will definitely try this combo again. This is my first attempt to make a clean and simple style card. For me, it is not that easy to leave a huge white space untouched. I hope I am not doing too bad as a first timer.

Here is another photo for a closer look.

The stamped image is coloured with Copic markers. I used a piece of Retro Flowers Oilcloth pattern paper, which was cut out from the Cath Kidston catalogue, to paper piece the dress. The sentiment is from Clearly Hand Stamped set by Crafter's Companion. Then I hand stitched the border. (I do have a sewing machine but never use it to stitch cards. I guess I am just too lazy to take the machine out! ) Crystal Stickles glitter glue has been applied on the flower on her head and the fabric flowers.

That's it for now. Weekend just goes too quick but hope you all had a nice one! Enjoy the rest of your evening.  

The Sugar Bowl Challenge 54 - Lilian's Sketch

Being a working mum, it is always nice to be able to find a little bit of "ME" time to do the things I love!

I have made this card over the weekend by using The Sugar Bowl Challenge 54 - Lilian's Sketch with the theme of clean & simple: 

In my personal view, clean & simple in card making is not easy. It is a skill of knowing when to stop; knowing which embelishments to pick and add, as there are so many on the market. The temptation is to add them all on one card. So I hope my card here is clean & simple to suit all pink loving princesses! 

    

I have simply embossed 2 pieces of white card for the top and bottom area. Added 3 fabric squares in the middle. Then added two fabric/ ribbon roses on both left and right squares. For the center main image I used Copic Pens to colour Gorjuss Girl and paper piecing the dress. I believe it is a card full of textures!

Have a lovely sleep everyone!

My First Card for 2011

Happy New Year! Hope you all had a nice and relaxing Christmas and New Year break.

I told myself that I should make more cards and blog more this year. Is that my New Year resolution?! I guess it is! ^_^

So here it is - my first card for this year.

I will be entering this card in The Sugar Bowl Challenge 50 by following the below sketch and using the optional theme- embossing.





I will also be entering this card in The Play Date Cafe Challenge #63 by using grass green, gold and silver colours. At first I didn't think that these colours would work together. However, after making this card, I now quite like the colour combination. Unfortunately I don't think my photo captures the true colour of the girl's socks. (Everything else pretty much matches the colour of the card in reality but just the colour of the socks somehow came out different. It is very strange!) It was meant to be two different shades of greens but they came out as blues.

Finally, I will be entering this card in the Papertake Weekly Challenge - Anything Goes with optional to add lace to my work.

I am very happy with my first card of the year. The colours make this card look very elegant and the sketch is simple and easy to work with. I hope you like it too!

With Love

We just had the hottest days of the year last weekend. Temperatures in London hit 30.9 degrees on Saturday beating Athens, Sicily and Barcelona. Today it felt much cooler and finally we had some rain! Although I much preferred the sun, I do think our grass in the garden has needed some water.

I made a card over the weekend for The Sugar Bowl Challenge 38- Judy's Sketch with the optional theme of Scallops.



I rotated the sketch for my card and made a slight change. Instead of creating (or restricting) the Gojuss Girl image in a rectangular frame, I decided to cut the image out and let her sit freely. I then coloured the image with Copic marker pens. I also used paper piecing for the dress with the summer papers from "My Minds's Eye", which came free with this month's Cardmaking and Papercraft (Issue 81).


I think this card turned out to be quite nice. I hope you like it too! Thanks for stopping by.

It's fun making cards with you

I love to do crafts with my daughters. Whether it's making models out of recycled boxes and toilet roll tubes or cutting shapes and images to make a pretty collage picture, we always have a great time! It is also a good chance to spend quality time with your children.

Whenever my eldest daughter, Aimee, (she is 7 now!) has been invited for a birthday party, she always says to me "Mummy, can we make a birthday card for my friend?" Quite often she decides on the colours and images etc, that she wants to use. She really has a definite opinion on how she likes to create her card, which is brilliant! Everything from the card layout/ composition to colouring, paper selections, choosing sentiments etc is well thought out. She has some ideas on how she would like her finished cards to look. Of course, sometimes she needs a bit of encouragement, suggestions and a bit of help in cutting and trimming. But, all in all, we do make good cards together.

Today I would like to share two of the birthday cards which she made (with a bit of mummy's help!)

For this first card we used Taylor Expressions - For the Love of Cupcakes stamp set and a free stamp set by Adam Pescott from the Cardmaking & Papercraft magazine. My daughter chose 2 main colours: pink and yellow. She also mentioned that she would like to use the stamp set to create 3 different cupcakes. So she tried stamping and was able to demonstrate a really good colouring technique too. Here is a close up of one of the cupcakes. She also added glitter to the rose and used Crystal Lacquer for the yellow topping, which added texture and shine.


While she was making the cupcakes, I helped to colour the cute doggy and did the paper piecing for the teddy bear.

I think we make a good team. Aimee definitely enjoyed making this card, particularly as she had the original idea for it!

The second birthday card here is mainly in pink and yellow too. (I wonder if this is her favorite colour combination?! ) For this card she helped to stamp the flower background and also colour the Gorjuss Girl image from Sugar Nellie. With a little tip on how to colour, I think she has done a fantastic job! Although some colours have accidentally strayed over the image outline Aimee said "It doesn't matter mummy, you can cut the girl out so you can't see that I've gone out of the line!" Clever girl! So that is exactly what I did! She also liked the paper piecing effect and decided to pick a redish pattern paper for the dress.

What do you think of these cards? Aimee has another party coming up soon. I think she really enjoyed colouring the Gorjuss Girl image this time. She even asked me "Can I make another card with the girl sitting sideways?" Mmm... maybe this time I will ask her to colour the whole image. Looks like another fun day is coming soon. I am so glad that we are able to share the same interest in making things. Have you shared your craft activities with your children or grandchildren yet?

Enjoy the fun!

Gorjuss Girl

Got some time to take up another card challenge last week. Actually I finished the card over the weekend but just haven't had the time to post it on the blog. Luckily I am still in time for entering The Sugar Bowl Challenge 19- Marlene's Sketch and this time you will also need to include the colours pink and brown.



I love the combination of pink and brown. They just look so yummy together! Reminded me of a chocolate cupcake with pink icing! (Even better with a cherry on the top! ) So here is my card:

I have had this sitting Gorjuss Girl stamp for a while and I finally found a chance to use her for the very first time. The sketch is easy to follow and I am very happy with my colouring by using Copic Ciao markers. (Just on the dress and skin though. I only got a few of the pink and skin colours so far. I need more marker pens in my collection!! But for my first attempt, not bad colouring huh?!) I have also made my own little beaded pink and brown flower to decorate the card. It is my friend Jai's 40th birthday on the 21st and I hope she will like it.

Thanks for looking.