Colourful Inspiration

Oh no. Another source of inspiration. My brain may just explode! I paid one of my regular visits to the Jellypark challenge blog yesterday and discovered a link to a really great website full of colour palettes for designers, crafters and anyone who loves colour. Design Seeds has page upon page of colour co-ordination ideas, just perfect for overcoming designer's block.

Claire at Jellypark has set this week's challenge based on Design Seeds' colour palettes. I have chosen an oldie-but-a-goodie called 'Color Picked' ~ those of us in the UK, please excuse the American spelling! I think I chose this set because it is based on colours that I like to wear and use in home decorating. I think that the start of autumn also influenced me in the selection of heather hues and sage green. Had the birds left any on my trees, these would be the colours of the plums being harvested this month, but I have watched them munching the fruit all summer long.

Anyway, getting back to the challenge... I have made a card using one of Claire Keay's gorgeous images of a little cutie being transported into the sky by her balloon. The colours were perfect for this challenge, although my experiment of using clear stickles over the top of the decoupaged balloon didn't come out as I had expected. I thought the plum colour of the balloon would show through the clear glue base of the stickles, but the colour has split and become bronzy, but still very pretty. That's inkjet ink for you!

I tore the image edges freehand and layered it up at an angle. The backing paper was originally a burgundy colour with white dots, but I coloured over the top with a shale Promarker to give a two-tone look. I then laboriously pushed out a whole 8x8 sheet of die cut flowers (from a Cosmo Cricket kit) to give an interesting layer in sage green with pinks and plums. It took me almost a whole episode of Casualty to push out those flowers with my trusty pokey tool, but then I do have trouble with my hands and wrists!

I coloured some of the tiny paper flowers with promarkers and kept some plain. I layered them up with bronze brads to add more dimension. The muted sage cotton lace is from American Crafts, finished with two overlaying flower shaped brads in complimetary tones (not sure where they were from - they've been in my stash for about 7 years or so!). The sentiment is actually a white icing rub-on from Quickutz, applied to a small piece of patterned cardstock overlaid on another piece of cardstock printed with script over-coloured with Promarkers - phew! I also added more of the flowers and brads to the side of the sentiment for balance. The sentiment just edges over the side of the rectangular card so that it makes it need an 8x8 envelope.

The tomato pip just above the ribbon is the work of my two year old son Joel who helped my husband with the photography. He was at the side of the card when it was being snapped and he thought that the photos were of him. Aah, bless him! I have removed the pip now, but was mid-way through editing the picture before I spotted it, so it is staying. It also made me laugh, not a frequent occurence when one of my projects gets damaged, but Joel is so cheeky, he gets away with it. He is rarely to be found with clean face or hands, so the card got off lightly with just a tomato pip.

Alien Adventure

Having been working on cards for men this weekend, I thought I would make a card for a younger member of the male gender. This card is for a friend of my son who will soon be 7. It is made with the Stamp Fairy challenge in mind, which, this fortnight, is based on one of their sketches.

The card base is 8x8, so it is actually made from two card sheets joined together with the seam inside disguised by the insert. The central base panel is iridescent paper from Kanban. It is hard to photograph, so the colours don't look as though they go together - but trust me, they do! It is green with a sheen of purple in the right light. I embossed around the outside of this layer and infilled the area with purple Promarker and Sakura gelly roll pens. It doesn't look like it in the photo, but it makes the central panel really stand out against the white border. The scalloped circle was hand-cut with a pair of fancy scissors borrowed from my 5 year old daughter's craft cupboard! Most of the papers are Cosmo Cricket, with a little Papermania thrown in for good measure! The cute alien stamp is, of course, from Stamp Fairy, coloured with Promarkers and Flex Markers with a little doodling using a Letraset 0.5mm drawing pen. The sentiment was stamped onto white card which I inked up to tone in with the alien background layer. The three circles at the top left were cut from a 6x6 paper sheet, accented with Sakura gelly roll and glaze pens then layered up with foam dots. I love the circular foam dots (from The Range) as they are easy to peel and the 'left over' sticky foam is great for giving dimension to larger areas. They are great value too at just 99p per pack. I added lots of doodle detail all over the card and also used very thin strips of paper along my main stripes just for extra dimension and detail without cluttering the overall look of the project.

Polkadoodles Challenge Week 33

As I am a confirmed Polkadoodles addict, I thought I would have a go at one of their weekly cardmaking challenges. This week's challenge has been set by team member Ruth and it's quite a tricky one! The theme of the challenge is 'Single Layer Cards', either printing or stamping directly on the card, and only using minimal embellishments to finish it off.

For someone like me who struggles with the 'less is more' concept, this was a challenge indeed. I really did have to restrain myself!

I used the 'Mummy' black and white digi stampi from the fabulous 'Sundae of Seasons' CD-Rom (available from Polkadoodles of course!). I coloured the Mummy using the new Flex Markers from Letraset, then hand stitched around the image with a thick cotton floss to give the impression of a red layer under the image. To add another 'fake' layer, I coloured in a rectangle around the Mummy and red stitching, again using Flex Markers. To enhance the effect, I added faux running stitches using a white Sakura pen around the rectangle, which makes it pop out from the card a little bit more. I edited one of Nikky's sentiments from the same CD and printed it directly on to the card. As I couldn't help myself, I finished the project off with a short piece of Cosmo Cricket ribbon woven through the card, tied in a knot.

It is my birthday in October, so I think nearer the time, I will leave this card laying about in the hope that one of my three little ones writes it out and gives it to me, along with birthday breakfast in bed and a whole load of crafty goodies for a present (I'm compiling a Polkadoodles wish list kids, just in case you were wondering what Mummy wants for her birthday - the last one in my 30's, so don't forget 39 'kisses' in the card lovely children!!).