My entry for July Challenges

This month is almost over and deadline for Challenges are around corner. I'll keep this short as I have a bit of headache and didn't get much sleep last night because an annoying person kept me up. I caught some sleep in the morning which didn't really help.
This card I kept things simple and used only 4 Distress Inks colours: Faded Jeans, Tumbled Glass, Dried Marigold and Tattered Rose. With a few dabs of Adirondack Color Spray: Terracotta and Cosmic Shimmer Vintage Mist Patina.
Stamps I chose are Stampers' anonymous Mini Ornates and Fairytale Frenzy, Hampton Art Stamps Splatter, Stampingbella mesh and PaperArtsy Hot picks.
Other tools are Martha Steward Vintage Doily Edge punch and Distress Stickles Pumice stones
Embellishments: faux flat back pearls and Idea-ology Paper string stripes.
The paper flowers are all hand cut and stamped with floral from PaperArtsy Hot picks.

For Stamping Sensations July challenge Sketch and Summers colours and
Country View Crafts July Challenge Summer Sizzler
The choice was to use sketch or colours and I did both. Minimalism is not really my thing as I come from a Eclectic, sometimes Chaotic background and like it this way. Sketches are helpful in the layout but rarely do I follow them. I can't find any use for Paper strings other than tying up stuff, you can sew with them, pierce the hole and add a touch of glue to one of the end and use as needle. Metal needles will tear the card. The orange gives a zing to cool blues it feels intensive heatwave meets heavy rain which is what I'm experiencing right now. More to come that is if I can complete another project for another challenge.

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Another set of cards for Stamping Sensation's June Challenge

I intended to make another card for Stamping sensations and ended up with 2. They have both the similar layout and bird themed stamps only difference is the colour.

This one is darker and still worked on card layout sketch, majority of materials came from Issue 62 of Papercrafter magazine. Infact there are several card and papercrafting packs of goodies but all cost £7.99. This stash has the summer palette of pinks, blues and greens. In Crafterstamper they showed how to make your own paper tapes using double sided sticky tape. I sort of panic because there was a colour clash or LED light was playing tricks on me. I just blasted the background in terracotta Colorwash spray and added lighter colours in the foreground.
Main stamp image is from Paperartsy Hot picks range and others are Crafty Individuals. I've found some wonderful Asian foam stickers from a crafty store. Normally I buy Sanrio, San x and other Japanese stickers in Hong Kong just to show there are good thing if you look in your local craft shop not Hobbycraft.

I decided to enter this one for Stamping Sensations: Summer Blooms. I'm still making paper flowers by hands but more sculptural using glossy accent to glue them on and gem in place of a brad.
Paper is from still from Papercrafter magazine collection.
Rubber stamps are: Stampers' Anonymous-Tim Holtz, Crafty Individuals and Cox and Cox- birds and nest stamp collection. It does still has more over collaged style but I'm working on the minimalism.
There one more set to complete before I rest for a bit and craft again.  

This is what Oscar made he altered a loo roll and is in process of altering a cloth.

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June Challenges and say Hello to a new friend

I'm still new to these challenges and sadly none of my work has gone chosen so far it has been a while since I last made a proper card or any with rubber stamping. As the old cliché it's not the winning but taking part which counts and each day is fresh page in a journal waiting to be filled.
For June I decided to enter this card in 2 challenges:
Country View Crafts: Die Cuts
Stamping Sensations: Summer Blooms

 

I doodled some card sketches and chosen a colour palette, to me June is start of summer this season's colours if sorbet. I used Candy: Dark Red, Greens, Blues with Walnut Stain.
Lots of Distress Inks and Stains were used so I won't go into much detail as usual I pick out whatever pre Distress paper scrap in stash. Don't have die cutting machine but have lots of Die cuts in fact 38 pages brought from Create and Craft. The trellis was painted using Distress Crackle paint: Antique linen it turned out green. The roses individually hand crafted from 4 hearts punch using 10 pieces with some small punched leaf details, the flowers took the longest to make.
Rubber stamping were in Stazon Jet Black and used: Crafty Individuals, Stamper Anonymous, Paper Artsy Hot Picks, Birds and Nest set from Cox and Cox.
I should of used an aperture card then wouldn't need to cover the edges with paper string: idea-ology.
Finally added small touches using faux gems and flowersoft.
Not too much of background were hidden by embellishment I have been known to over collage things.
I have still have Tim Holtz June tag of 2013 to complete plus my version for February. In the meantime say hello to my new best friend. He is called Oscar and is Syrian hamster I believe is about 3 weeks old.

I brought him on Monday from Pets at Home, in fact all Syrian hamsters are boars (males)

He's panda coloured and I worried about him on Monday and Tuesday he was active and playing on the wheel but changed on Wednesday, barely eats and spends much time in his house and only comes out to collect wood shavings to build a nest. I've checked Oscar last night he doesn't seem to have wet tail and still fairly active. Since he is still new maybe still settling in, I remember what happened to Cherry the Chinese dwarf she suddenly died in within 6 days.
Hang in there little Oscar.

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