In the pink

I was just viewing a few of my favourite blogs and came across a new challenge I'd not seen before.  The Creations in Pink Blog is not one I'd come across but, once I'd seen it, I figured it needed to be done.  Pink goes with so many other colours but the idea is that your card needs to be mostly pink.  Well, what's more pink than a flamingo? I recently bought a sweet digital stamp set from Whimsey Stamps called Ahoy Matey.  It was perfect.  There was a flamingo.  I'd even got him printed out.  Now, here was a potential problem.  Although I'd printed him out my printer needed some maintenance and he's come out more grey than black.  Oh well, I'd never tried no line colouring but I wasn't wasting a piece of cardstock so let's give it a go.  Well, talk about a happy accident.  I love how he turned out.  I'm definitely going to try no line colouring again. I've got to really I printed all the images from the set on the same piece of card.

I'm so chuffed with this.  I'm equally surprised that red and pink went so well together.  It was so nice to join in another challenge for fun and I'm so grateful to Shell over at The Camel's Hump for leading me astray on this one.  Bless you hun.

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x

Get Real

Morning all.  We have a new challenge for you today over at Sparkles Monthly.  We would like you to use a real stamp.  As a great user of digital images I had to rack my brains over this one.  It's not that I don't have real stamps - I have far too many (is that even possible). I don't use them as often as I should.  Now, what to go for. In the end I went with Coffee with a Splash from Altenew.  I am a big fan of Altenew stamps and I shouldn't really need an excuse to use one of theirs. I made my mind up when I saw some papers I'd put together on my desk to use.  They were all brown tones and I thought they'd go well with the coffee stamp.

I heat embossed it onto my circle and put it all together using a layout I'd seen on Pinterest. Yes, I did add some bling - just for a change! Anyway, over to you.  I'm off for a cup of tea (my other half is the coffee drinker in our house).

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x

Tone on Tone

Morning all.  Time for me to chose another challenge theme.  This time it's for Make my Monday and I've chosen 'Tone on Tone background'.  Now, I've chosen to layer white on white for my card but you can used different coloured tones.  I bought a really lovely die set from the Works quite a while ago and I used one of them to create an engagement card. I was so pleased with it I decided to recreate it here on a wedding card.

Please excuse the shadow in the top corner.  That's the problem with scanning cards with a bit of dimension.  This is the best I could get it.  I added a few white hearts on this one to fill in some of the gaps and I'm so pleased with the result.  In do like to create backgrounds with dies.  Anyway, pop over and see what the design team have come up with.  I really impressed by how different they've interpreted my theme.  Please have a go at this challenge.  I'm keen to see how you use my theme.

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x

Check this out

Morning all.  It's a bank holiday today in the UK and also time for a new challenge at The Alphabet Challenge.  We are at the letter C and that stands for 'checks'.  Please pop over and see what the design team have created. I'm so impressed with their creations. I feel that I've taken the simple option by going with checked backing papers.  I was looking for some other papers that I'm sure I've got but couldn't find. During the search, I found these papers instead.  Because they had paw prints on I decided to use a die set that I've not used before.  I cut all the pieces in white and coloured them in and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  

It's not anything like my original plan but, until I can find the missing backing paper, it will have to do.  Once I find the other stuff I'll have forgotten what I'd planned to do with it.

Please pop over and join in the fun.  We'd love to 'check' out your projects.

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x

Birthday Girl

Morning all.  As it's Thursday we are ready for a new challenge at Cardz4galz.  Sue has chosen the easy peasy theme of Birthdays.  Now who doesn't need more birthday cards in their box.  I always do.  I have tonnes of 'generic' cards that would do but sometimes you need one to say 'happy birthday'.  As it happens I was in need of a specific birthday card as one of the ladies in the office downstairs had her 40th coming up. Yes, we are still working but we have only two in the office at one time so we can practice social distancing.  Now this lady is so easy to make for as she loves her little westie dog.  As long as I had a westie on it I knew it would be a hit.  So here it is.

Once I'd chosen my pretty papers  and coloured my image - it's an old one from digistamp boutique who are no longer trading - I just needed to stick it together.  I cut the 40 with my cricut.  The floral paper is inlayed into the green frame which is hard to see on the photo. It looked a bit plain so I added some little butterflies. They are layered in the green with some scraps of vellum and I added the usual bling.   I finished it off with the happy birthday die and it was done.

Now it's your turn.  I'm always in need of inspiration for birthday cards so let's see what you've got.

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x

Vaguely Vintage

Morning all.  Thanks for all the lovely entries on my Cardz4guyz challenge.  It's always lovely to see how others interpret your theme.  Today we have a new Guyz challenge and Heidi has definitely challenged me with this one - Vintage.  Vintage is way outside my comfort zone - although vintage for a guy is easier than vintage for a girl in my opinion.  It's a good job I've been tidying my craft room so I knew I'd got a little booklet of masculine images with some vintage stuff in.  I knew I'd got it but I wasn't sure where I'd put it.  This tidying lark isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Anyway, when I did manage to spot it, I found some vintage looking musical instrument tags that appealed.

I didn't like them as tags so I cut them down a bit and distressed the edges.  I inked and distressed a little bit of background paper and used the same ink (vintage photo distress ink) to colour a cream card blank. I swiped my ink pad over some craft cardstock which gave a lovely textured look to it and used it to cut some musical dies.  I added the obligatory bling - 'cause I can't help myself - and that's it.  Considering I'm not a fan of this style I'm really chuffed with this.  I've got a couple more tags left so I'm doing another for my Church box of cards.

Over to you.  I could do with some inspiration.  Let's see your vintage projects please.  

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x

Just for fun

Now here's an oddity.  Me joining in a challenge for fun rather than it being a design team project.  I follow loads of challenge blogs and I sometimes even make a card to fit.  I don't always get chance to do the blog post bit though.  To be fair Sparkles Christmas Challenge is a monthly challenge so you do get plenty of time.  I just forget.  Anyway, it popped up on my Bloglovin feed this morning so I decided to dive straight in.  They want to see ribbon, lace or twine.  I have to admit to having a bit of a ribbon problem.  The problem being that I've so much it gets knotted up in the box I keep it in.  Anyway, rather than fight the big knot monster, I found some ancient sticky ribbon on a sheet.  

I embossed a piece of white card with some snowflakes and used the ribbon and some gold border peel offs to created stripes in the other corner.  I matted that onto some green card and stuck a green panel in the middle.  I'd already coloured this sweet image from The Paper Shelter and it had been sitting in a box waiting to be used.  Anyway, now I've finished it I'm off to tidy my ribbon box - she lied!

Thanks for reading.

Love Dawn x