C4C- Saturday Challenge time!

This week's challenge at Crazy 4 Challenges is to have your creation reflect gardening or the outdoors. I took the add flowered paper and flowers route as they made me think of pretty Spring gardens. This challenge is so fun because really- the only limit here is your imagination! You can do gardening stamps, flower stamps, fishing or boating stamps or stickers, etc. 

I used a stamp from Kaiser Craft which could be about anything. Birthdays, job promotions, wedding days, you get the idea. I love having 'generic' cards on hand because I am always realizing 10 mins before I have to go somewhere that perhaps a card is needed. I added some new paper from Prima that is just stunning! It has lush colours in its flower pattern. Love love love it! This card really pulled itself together and I think I may have to use this design again!

I hope you can play along with us this week over at Crazy for Challenges and help us bring the outdoors to your crafty creations!

Cheers, Andrea

High Hopes Stamps Challenge- Anything goes!

This week's challenge over at the High Hopes Stamps challenge blog is an easy one! Karen- owner extraordinaire and hostess this week has decreed that 'Anything Goes!' So feel free to dig out whichever HHS stamp you want and get inky!

I used the new stamp designed by Laurie Furnell called Laurie's Tea cup and coloured it in with my copics. I then used some of my 6x6 papers from Kaiser craft- it was a newer release that was little girl and tea set orientated. Very cute. I then added a corner die cut, ribbon and my new favourite thing to do- add an arrangement of flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts. This card was so much fun to make and colour! 

I am also entering my card into the following challenges:

BunnyZoe- ribbon or twine

Icopic- use copic spring colours

Make it Monday- Anything goes

Simon Says Stamp and show- anything goes

To play along with us and see all the amazing DT creations please pop over to the HHS challenge blog and see what inspires you today!

Cheers, Andrea

I'm back with a Gilli challenge card!

Andrea here! I had a bit of a creative holiday so it has been awhile since I  have shared one of my Gilli creations. I am happy to say I am back after moving into a new house and ready to play along with our challenges here at House of Gilli!

Wini is our current hostess with the mostest and she has asked us to go Green! I dug out my Lil Gilli Girly to make a sweet 4x4 card to match her cute little size. I coloured her up with my copies to match my papers and kept the embellishments to a minimum for 2 good reasons:

-this lovely card is for a gift bag I am putting together for one of my friends and I wanted the focus to be on the image not the bling

-I still can't find most of my stuff in my new crafting space at the new house LOL!!!!!! My lovely friends helped me unpack and now I just have to figure out where they put it all hee hee!

I hope you get a chance to play along with us as well- we would love to have you join us!

Cheers, Andi

Quick cards playing with Perfect Pearls

I just wanted to share 2 examples of the cards we made on a previous Product Talk session (aka Therapy Thursdays) where we played with Perfect Pearls over at SGD. 

To make this card we first stamped our image using Kaiser Crafts cute butterfly stamp in Versamark ink. We then took our perfect pearls and gently brushed a SMALL amount of the pigment onto the image. We found it best to work with one colour at a time and put it where we wanted it before moving onto the next colour. Once done you then take the larger brush that is included in the kit and brush to remove the excess pigment around the image. 

An important tip is that you should just use a light hand when applying the pigment as you don't want to grind it into the fibers of the paper and therefore leave a colour 'cast' around the image. As well I like to seal my images. In this case we used Goosebumps spray to seal and add texture to our cards yet you can also just use a mini mister and water to set your design. Love that!

One of the fun things about perfect pearls is how versatile the colours are. I used the exact same colours on each card yet based on what colour of card stock I used they looked completely different. I did also have an example on white paper but I gave that one to my partner in the A-Team the fantastic Anja. 

So here is another 'what's old is new again' tool that many of us have in our craft supply. Dig it out and see what fun it us to play with pigments!

Of course if you don't already have Perfect Pearls you know SGD has you covered!

Cheers, Andrea