Less is More #413 - More Than One Type Of Foliage

 

There's a new challenge at Less is More where we want you to use more than one type of foliage. As I'm trying to get ahead this year, I used the opportunity to do another quick make Christmas card. Mine is just a few die cut leaves, which is a great way to batch make cards, but there is some fantastic stamping inspiration by the rest of the design team over on  the challenge blog so I recommend that you pop over to see those.

DIES:   Sizzix Tim Holtz Alterations dies (festive greenery and spring greenery), 
OTHER: Black card, gold mirror card, silver mirror card

Cue Card

Sponsor

That's it from me for now. Thanks for popping by and I really hope to see you again soon.

Hugs,
Sharon xx

Storms!

 

Hello there. It's about time that I made an Autumn themed card, isn't it? Looking through my Visible Image stamps I spotted the Tree of Life set and decided to give it some Autumnal colours. This tree looks amazing in fresh, lush greens but it also looks good in the rich colours of autumn. In fact, you could use it for any season of the year!

The sentiment is superb for Autumn too as there are usually some squally showers and winds howling to strip the trees of their colourful leaves. It is such a positive sentiment; great for reminding us that there is always hope of new life and growth.

Anyway, this is how I made this card: 

First smoosh some ink onto a craft mat and spritz with water, then taking a piece of acetate transfer some of the ink to a panel of white card. Build up a couple of layers of ink on the panel. Let the panel dry.

Stamp the tree in brown distress oxide ink and emboss it with clear embossing powder. Now colour the leaves in with your choice of marker pens.

Stamp the sentiment into place and heat emboss with a gold powder. Use an embossing pen to colour 3 of the leaves on the tree and heat emboss those with the same gold powder.

Mat the panel onto some gold card and then add it to a card blank. The final touch was to add 3 tiny gold gems under the sentiment.

Stamps Used:

(please click on the picture to be taken direct to the stamp set in the online store):
      

  

Other Supplies:

Distress Oxide Inks (walnut stain, fired brick), Distress Ink (aged mahogany), Versamark clear ink, Wersamarker clear embossing pen, WOW! embossing powders (clear gloss, metallic gold rich), Promarker pens (yellow, amber, lipstick red, burnt orange), gold gems, white and gold card.

Visible Image social media and other links (just click on the words in capital letters):

SHOP where the fantastic stamps are sold
BLOG with all the latest news and posts
FACEBOOK PAGE with info, inspiration and giveaways
FACEBOOK GROUP come share your work with us
INSTAGRAM
PINterest

That's it from me for now. Thanks for stopping by and I really hope to see you again soon.

Hugs,
Sharon xx

Less is More #430 - Sharon's CASe Card

Hi there. Well, on the day this challenge goes live, 10th October, it is my birthday (happy birthday to me ;-) ) and we have a fairly new tradition at the Less is More challenge that when the challenge date lands on the same day as a design team member's birthday, that DT member creates a card for everyone to CASe (Copy And Share Everything). 

CASe is known in some regions as 'lifting' and it is where you use the card to be CASed as a basis for your own card but you also add your own twist and share how you made your 'version'.  So, this is the card that I came up with for everyone to CASe.

I thought there were lots of elements that could be used in people's designs, eg stars, flowers, foliage, gold, yellow, orange, red (perfect for fall or halloween versions), making a designer background, there's die cutting, stamping, heat embossing, a banner, Happy Birthday and some Nuvo glittery drops (which might just be visible) as well as the design layout. 

I'm actually pretty excited to see what people come up with and the rest of the design team have made some super cards for additional inspiration.

My card was easy to make. I die cut the two curved panels and then laid them onto a card blank, faintly marking where the gap was, then removed them and stamped random stars in 3 colours of ink into the gap. I removed the pencil marks and added the curved panels back, using fun foam for some dimension. Next I stamped the internal parts of the flower petals using the same shades of ink and set them aside to dry. When dry, I stamped and heat embossed the flower outlines and then fussy cut them out. I die cut the leaves and assembled them into an arrangement onto the card. The banner was cut out free hand and the sentiment was stamped onto it before sticking it over the flowers. The final touch was a few Nuvo drops.

Easy peasy! 

STAMPS:    Uniko (Balloon Bash and Flower Power 2) 
DIES:   Craft + You (Conifer Twig), Lawn Fawn (Stitched Hillside Borders)
INKS:   Versamark clear, Prism (canary yellow, orange zest, red chilli)
OTHER:  WOW! Metallic Gold Rich embossing powder, Nuvo Glitter Drops (white blizzard), gold mirror card, white card , a pencil and eraser & fun foam. 

Halloween CASe card

It'd be rude not to CASe my own card, wouldn't it?  So here is my Halloween version which shows that you can use a completely different subject matter and just loosely interpret design elements

This one was made by die cutting the flying bats into an orange panel and backing it with black card before adding a mat of the tiniest amount of gold mirror card. This was attached to an orange card blank. The skeleton (and sentiment) was stamped and heat embossed before being fussy cut and mounted with foam pads. The metallic trims were something I've had in my stash for years and I have no idea where they came from now. They were silver but to match in with the theme of gold I heat embossed them with a gold sparkly embossing glitter before attaching them to the card.

STAMPS:    Visible Image (Mr Bone Jangles), Clearly Besotted sentiment (In Print - now discontinued) 
DIES:   Sizzix Tim Holtz Alterations (Mixed Media Halloween)
INKS:   Versamark clear
OTHER:  WOW! Primary Ebony embossing powder & Gold Sparkle embossing glitter, gold mirror card, orange card, black card, misc metallic trimmings, 3d foam pads

Cue Card

Sponsor http://www.uniko.co.uk/shop/

 
That's it from me for now. I hope you have fun CASeing this card if you join in the challenge, and I hope to see you here again soon.

Hugs,
Sharon xx

Making Time Count

Hello there. Welcome to October!!! My isn't this year just flying by? We really do need to "live in the now and make every moment count" so that we don't miss anything, don't we?

Today it's time for some of my Visible Image design team inspiration and I thought I would do something different from all those autumnal colours that are around at the moment, so I created a card with fresh, bright colours. 

I've been experimenting with a bit of mixed media recently and this was one of my first attempts at making an 'un-grungy' (is there such a word?) mixed media card.  The idea is that I will eventually, over the winter, train myself to do a little more mixed media in my CAS cards. I really like how this one has turned out with such pretty colours.

So in the time honoured tradition of my DT blog post, here's how I made this:

First, wet your card panel with some water and then add some distress stains. As the distress stains are sadly no longer being sold, you could achieve a similar result using a tiny drop of re-inker or maybe some brushos, but I'm sure that many of us still have some stains laying around that need to be used up.

Next, take the stencil and add coordinating colours of Luna paste through parts of the stencil.

Remove the stencil and wash it immediately, then set the card panel aside to dry. I love how the paste actually dries in such a random pattern that it kind of looks like an animal print.

Once the card panel is dry (I left mine overnight but it really doesn't take that long), partially stamp into the blank areas, using some of the smaller stamps in the set, with matching distress inks and distress the outside with a blend of one of the inks.

Now comes the fiddly part. Stamp the word TIME and heat emboss it with a clear sparkle embossing powder, then fussy cut each letter separately. Also stamp the rest of the sentiment and cut it into a banner.  

To assemble the card, mount the card panel onto a card blank with fun foam, affix the TIME letters and add the sentiment banner with fun foam for a little more dimension.

Doesn't the Luna paste sparkle beautifully and give that little bit of texture and dimension? 

Stamps and Stencil Used:

(please click on the picture to be taken direct to the stamp set in the online store):
 

  

         

  

Other Supplies:

White card, Distress Stains and Distress Inks (picked raspberry, mustard seed and salty ocean), Luna Paste (stellar champagne, moonlight rose, moonlight ocean), Versamark onyx black ink, WOW! clear sparkle embossing glitter, fun foam.

Visible Image social media and other links (just click on the words in capital letters):

SHOP where the fantastic stamps are sold
BLOG with all the latest news and posts
FACEBOOK PAGE with info, inspiration and giveaways
FACEBOOK GROUP come share your work with us
INSTAGRAM
PINterest

That's it from me for now. Thanks for stopping by and I really hope to see you again soon.

Hugs,
Sharon xx

Less is More #429 - OLC - Cheers

 

Well, this image is a reminder of pre-COVID times, isn't it? But surely at some point in the future we will all be able to get out again and have a few celebrations with friends; we just need to hang on in there until we get through this weird time.

Anyway, I'm keeping it super CAS and really simple this week for the Less is More challenge of a One Layer Card and a theme of Cheers! Just stamp and heat emboss the image and then add a subtle bit of colouring around the outside. I didn't have a 'Cheers!' sentiment, so I wrote the sentiment with a black pen.

Unfortunately this is another one of those stamps that I took so long to take out of the packet, that it is discontinued now.

STAMPS:  Acid Drops and Whatnots AD#54 Lemons
INKS:   Vesafine onyx black
PENCILS:  Polychromos pencil #154 light cobalt turquoise 
OTHER:   White card, WOW! Clear Gloss superfine embossing powder, Black pen

That's it from me for now. Head on over to the challenge blog for some fantastic inspiration from the design team and our fabulous guest designer Angie Cimbalo, who was the July winner.

Hugs,
Sharon xx

Joyful Baubles

Hi. I recently made this card as a sample for the latest, and fabulous, Christmas release from Visible Image using one of the super brand new stencils (which are on general sale from tomorrow 18th September 2020), along with an older stamp set, and I thought it might be an idea to show you an overview of how I coloured these baubles. 

This type of card is perfect for those people that are allergic to glitter. I know, I know...how very dare they!  We all need a bit of sparkle at Christmas time, don't we? But as card makers we also need to cater to everyone and we sometimes forget that people have allergies to the products we use. This card looks like it has sparkle and shine, but there is not a drop of gloss or glitter on it anywhere. 

Here's how I coloured and made this card:

First of all use the stencil to draw  the outline of the baubles with a white colouring pencil onto a small panel of red card. Move the stencil upwards to continue the hanging string line for the bauble that sits lower down. Then lightly marked out the areas for the highlight (the small circle) and the area that would contain the shadow (the curved band).

As you need to lay down the whitest areas first, start adding some layers of white pencil colouring around the two highlights and also at the bottom of the bauble. That lower white area helps the flat image to look like a sphere because it gives the impression of a reflection of light underneath the bauble. Then fill in the other white parts very gently, adding as many layers of colour as you are happy with. I liked how it was giving the effect of one of those textured, frosty baubles, so I stopped adding layers of colour before it looked all smooth.

Next add the darkest grey and a tiny bit of dark blue colour to the area with the deepest shadow, and then start to fill the rest of the shadow band part with the lighter grey.

After the bauble parts are coloured, move on to the hangers. Extended the lines to connect the hangers to the baubles, and repeat the process of adding light and dark areas to the hangers using the same pencil colours. Using a white opaque pen add some lines to represent flares of light hitting the baubles. That is the small panel finished.

Now on to the larger panel. Stamp and heat emboss the Joy sentiment with white embossing powder.

Once that is embossed, take your white opaque pen and draw lots more curvy squiggles up the side and along the bottom of the panel. I found that it was better to just be purposeful and trust yourself with this doodling, because when I got a bit hesitant, the curves were not as good. However, adding a few 'dots'  around the curly lines makes those areas not quite so noticeable, plus dots also tie in nicely with the dotty areas on the original sentiment.

Now it is a case of mounting both panels onto a white card blank. The smaller panel was matted onto some white card first and added with fun foam for dimension

Do check out the rest of the stamps and stencils in this 2020 release, as well as the older stamp sets because they are all awesome!

Stamps and Stencil Used:

(please click on the picture to be taken direct to the stamp set in the online store):

  

  

Other Supplies:

Red and White card. Polychromos pencils (101 white, 230 cold grey 1, 272 warm grey 3, 247 Indanthrene blue), opaque white Posca pen, Versamark clear ink, WOW! opaque bright white embossing powder, fun foam.

Visible Image social media and other links (just click on the words in capital letters):

SHOP where the fantastic stamps are sold
BLOG with all the latest news and posts
FACEBOOK PAGE with info, inspiration and giveaways
FACEBOOK GROUP come share your work with us
INSTAGRAM
PINterest

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you found this helpful and I really hope to see you again soon.

Hugs,
Sharon xx

Less is More #428 - Shades of Purple

Hi there. 

It's time for a colour challenge over at Less is More and the theme is Shades of Purple. 

Cue Card

I must admit that purples and blues and teals are amongst my favourite colours so I really enjoyed this challenge. I have two cards today; the first one (above) uses a BRAND NEW stamp set which are on preorder until 18th September and the snowflake images in it are just gorgeous!

All I did for this card was to blend purple distress inks over the front of the card blank in an ombre effect and then over stamp some small snowflakes with Oxide ink. I let this all dry. Next I cut a panel from white card, lined it up with the card blank in my stamping platform so that the large snowflake could be placed where I wanted it. I stamped and heat embossed the large snowflake on the card blank, then stamped the large snowflake again, this time on the white panel, with the sentiment in oxide ink. The panel was attached to the card blank with fun foam.

STAMPS:    Visible Image Simply Snowflakes
DIES:   Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillside Borders
INKS:   Distress Inks (shaded lilac, wilted violet), Distress Oxide (shaded lilac), Versamark clear
OTHER: White card, WOW! sparkling snow embossing glitter, fun foam.

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This second card was just as easy to make. Simply cut the panel, stamp the flowers and sentiment and add it to a coloured card blank with fun foam. What could be simpler?

STAMPS:    Altenew Ruffled Flowers
DIES:   Sweet Pea Card Front Builder dies
INKS:   AlteNew Inks (Wisteria, Hydrangea, Ultra Violet), Versafine onyx black   
OTHER: Purple and white card. Fun foam.  

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There's loads more inspiration from the LIM design team over at the Less is More blog.

LIM BLOG
LIM FACEBOOK PAGE
LIM INSTAGRAM

That's it from me for now. I hope you found something you like and I really hope to see you again soon.

Hugs,

Sharon xx