XXX

Happy Friday to you! I am here to share another AnnaBelle Stamps challenge with you!

This week we want you to use the colours Lime and Orange in your projects. Here's my card:

All of the Belles used Lil Monster's Balloon stamp set this week, along with a soon-to-be released die that goes with it! I stamped the lil monster and the XXX sentiment from the set with Archival Ink in Jet Black on watercolour paper.

I then coloured him in using a paintbrush with Distress inks (Shabby Shutters for his shirt and his balloon with Spiced Marmalade) mixed with water. I used a marvy marker (Grey) to do some shading on the lil monster himself.

See how the rest of the Belles used this cute stamp set! Links to their blogs can be found on my sidebar.

That's it from me, take care and have a fantastic weekend!





About our challenges:

• We post our challenges every Friday at 12:00pm AEST (AEDT during Daylight Savings).
• Each challenge runs for a week, and will close on the Friday 10.00am so that we can announce and showcase our weekly winners prior to the next challenge.
• Each weeks winner will receive our special blinkie to display on their blog and a $10.00 Gift Voucher to spend in store at AnnaBelle Stamps (or something equivalent).

How To Play Along:

• Copy and save our challenge banner and include it and a link back to the ABS blog in your post.
• Please link directly to your entry not just to your blog.
• Please don't link to postings made prior to the date of our current challenge. All projects submitted must be new.
• A maximum of 7 challenges may be combined including this one.
• You may enter any of our challenges several times as long as each submission is with a new creation.
• We would love you to use AnnaBelle Stamps and embellishments, but you can play along without using them, it’s all about sharing ideas :)

Happy for you!

Hello there! I left work on time today for the first time in ages (it's been crazy busy lately so I have been working lots of extra hours) so that I could have a bit of a potter in my garden while there were still remnants of daylight left, and also, so that I could complete the following card I made for this week's CAS-ual challenge which is to use an embossing technique.

Here's what I came up with:






I made the flower panel last night before I went to bed by clear embossing on watercolour card the biggest flower from the "Petals from Scratch" set by Fiskars (I know I keep using this set, but I love it!) which I stamped with Versamark ink. I then used a drop of Spun Sugar Distress Ink reinker on an acrylic block with a little bit of water to colour the petals. For the flower centers I used Soft Peach shadow ink on the acrylic block with no water added.

This afternoon I created the tag using one of the sentiments from the above set clear embossed on the same watercolour card and coloured it with Spun Sugar and water. I punched out the tag with an old Carl tag punch and tied it on to the ribbon using white cotton string. The ribbon is from Kaisercraft and the button is from a cheap pack I bought from a discount shop.

Thank you for looking and have a fantastic day (or night)! ;)

Have a wonderful birthday + free sentiment!

Hello again :) I've got a card to share as well as the sentiment I used which I'm giving away as a freebie. 

To save, right click on the above image and choose 'save target as...'.

Sentiment info:
File type: PNG (can be dropped into MS Word, background is transparent)
File size: 171kb
Full dimensions: 25cm x 11cm
Fonts: I wish I knew! My old computer died and I have yet to reinstall all of my fonts...

All of my free digital sentiments can be found on the "Free Digital Sentiments" tab at the top of every page of this blog, or by clicking here. I'd love to hear from you if you use them! Please leave a comment or drop me a line: jess@lennonforever.net.

 And here is the above sentiment in action:




 After printing the card (see template below) on white cardstock I used a strip of Mask-It film sheet - a temporary low-tack adhesive plastic - to create an invisible border above and below my sentiment. I then stamped some of the flowers from 'Petals from Scratch' by Fiskars with Black Onyx Versafine ink. After pulling off the masking film I took out Versacolor cubes in Boysenberry, Grape and Raspberry (yummm) and diluted them with a spritz of water on a stamping block and used a paintbrush to colour the flowers. As you can see from the photo above I went for a very loose and watercoloury effect which goes well with the loosely drawn flowers.


It can take a bit of trial and error to get the sentiment placed just right on the cardfront but to make the process even easier I've done the hard part for you by making up a word document with the sentiment already in the right spot and the page dimensions to print a 4x8" (score at 4") card - all you need to do is print it out and stamp/embellish/whatever!
You can download the word document I used for the above card here. Please let me know via comments or email if you have any problems accessing the file.


Thanks again for looking at my cards, and for leaving such lovely comments. :)

Best Wishes and Roses

I only realised today that I hadn't thought at all about this week's Card Positioning Systems sketch challenge - and thought, if I could, combining it with the My Grafico challenge this week would solve all my problems!



I punched out the roses using my supposed 1.5" square punch which, in actual fact, is 1" square... someone sure screwed up in the punch factory that day!

I don't know how it happened, but when I stamped on my scratch paper my sentiment stamped fine... and then when I stamped on the card the bottom of the s of 'wishes' and most of the 'w' were paler than the rest of the sentiment. It looked weird the way that it was, so I got out the plain ol' black sharpie and filled in the gaps. It looks a little strange, but better than it did.

Digital stamp tip: I print all of my pictures out on ordinary A4 copy paper and then use a photocopier to get them onto the paper I want, in this case my Monte Marte sketch pad. I've found this paper deals really well with watercolouring so I use it often. The toner won't smudge or smear when wet like my inkjet printer does.
I don't throw away the pages I use to copy from - I use them again and again. It saves trees as well as time!

Size of card: C6 (A5 folded in half)

Supplies:
Card/Paper - Quill cardstock, Optix paper "Tula Pink", Monte Marte sketch pad
Ink - Versafine "Black Onyx", Toner
Stamp - "Roses and Posies" Stamps by Sarah Paris, Kaisercraft sentiment
Embellishments - watercolours, Victoria Spencer ribbon
Tools - Fiskars paper trimmer, Zig H20 pen, Bostik glue tape, Sullivan's 1.5" punch (which is actually 1")

Challenges: CPS#164 and MyGrafico #46 'Punch out Crime'