Up, up and away

It's Saturday so it's Less is More day, and today's challenge is 'Up, Up and away'.  Funnily enough, this suited me down to the ground as I've had a card in mind for a while.

A few weeks ago I was gutted to find that Meljens Designs was closing it's shop.  Melissa has decided to go back to Etsy and do other things (although she's taking some of her favourite digis with her).  Now, as with most digi designers I use, I had a wish list to purchase before the shop shut for good and one of them was perfect for this challenge.  Now, when people say less is more to me I instantly think of lots of white - but that doesn't have to be the case.  When I first saw the balloon design from Meljens I saw it in pastel colours. Does anyone else just look at an image and know how you want it to be coloured?  Anyway, for ages I have had some card stock which reminds me of clouds.  I've got it in various colours (although I seem to have Borrowers in my craft room and they've 'borrowed' most of it, along with my mod podge and two bone folders!).  I did find it in pink, but that is fine because - for some bizarre reason - that's what I'd got in my head.  I did want to add the text on the matching blue but I've had to use some other blue card stock as I wanted to enter the challenge and I have run out of patience searching for things this week.  Although my craft room got a really good tidy and I still can't find my mod podge, grrr.

Anyway, here is my pink and pastel 'Less is More' challenge card.  I hope you like it.

Thanks for reading

Love Dawn 

To Die For

Get me, blogging twice in two days! What I should be doing is 30 wedding invitations (honestly Natalie, I have started them - I promise). But it turns out that I really enjoyed entering the Less is More Challenge yesterday. So I thought I'd have a go at another one.  Today's offering - when I nipped on Bloglovin - was from The Paper Players .  Jaydee's challenge was to use a die.  Should be a doddle.  I literally have hundreds of them.  But, to be honest, apart from the nesties and a couple of swirls I really never use them. So, it turns out this will be a challenge after all.

I spent a while looking through, cutting a couple and discarding the results before I found a lovely animal set from Cuttlebug.  I did actually use them on a card many moons ago for my boss's son who was ill and undergoing hospital treatment.  The monkey was my real favourite so he was my victim of choice.

And here is what I did with him (and yes I did also use a nestie circle - well I needed to put him on something to make him stand out).

And I even finished off the inside with another little monkey from doodle dragon studios

Now I really must finish those wedding invitations.  Natalie is 'Dieing' to get them sent out.

Thanks for reading

Love Dawn x

Less is...a pain in the proverbial

This morning I decided, in my wisdom, that it would be fun to join in with a blog challenge.  I only get to play occasionally and, because 'Bloglovin' had put up Simply Less Is More , that became the challenge of choice.  Today's 'Less is More' challenge is predominantly black.  Simples!   I'd already seen Jen Nelson's entry as I am a huge fan of her blog.  She makes Clean and Simple look so easy.  This should be a walk in the park! Yeah, right!

Well, I started by looking for the perfect stamp - and I found it, really quickly.  It was a parcel that had come as part of a set free with some magazine purchased long ago and I'd never gotten around to using.  It was a simple image that wouldn't need colouring and would be perfect in black ink on white card.  OK, let's stamp. And I did - about a dozen times!  Finally, I managed to stamp an image I was happy with.  Yippee!  Next, in order to add a little detail to the card I decided to emboss a diamond pattern on my card blank.  My main idea involved a square embossed in the centre of my card blank.  Guess how easy that turned out to be, not!
Anyway, I persevered.  After several attempts I got one I was happy with.  Fabulous.  I picked up the finished result to take a photograph and...managed to put an inky mark on the side of the card. GRRRR!  I couldn't believe it.  Oh well, if at first you don't succeed etc, etc.

Having struggled to get my square panel in the centre on my first attempt I got wise and decided a matted panel would do just as well.  After all, I had matted the stamped image onto black.  I was just carrying on the theme.  I had seen a card with a negative sentiment in a black panel and thought it would look different on my second attempt. So I cut out the 'Congratulations' word from my Tattered Lace word dies and started to fiddle with all the little bits...which turned out to be far more of a faff than I thought it was going to be. So hay ho, I gave up and stuck the sentiment on.  I finished off the stamp with a single red gem stone to add a little something and I had my finished card...which looked a lot more complicated than I had intended, GRRR!

So, I went back to my first attempt.  I thought, if I turned it around and added some ribbon and a bow, I would hide the inky spot and get away with it.  However, it now looked unbalanced so I added another ribbon and bow to the top of the card to balance it up.  Stuck a couple of red gems on to key it all in and had a nice card for the challenge.  But it wasn't what I had originally intended, GRRR!

So, I went back to the drawing board.  I embossed the whole front of the card so it could be seen more easily and added my matted, stamped image with just a single red gem.  There, simples!

But, do you know what, despite the frustration of not getting it right first time.  I actually enjoyed my morning and I finally ended up with three similar cards which all fit the criteria and which, in the end, I actually liked. So here they are.

Take your pick folks.  In the end, I really couldn't decide.

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x