Challenge up your life: Challenge #3 Türkis und braun / Turquoise and brown

Hi Crafters,

today we are challenging you again, over at 

The Challenge this time is:

Challenge #3 Turquoise and brown

I personally find color challanges rather hard to do, I usually have trouble finding the right colors in my stash. So I often leave them out, but this time that was no option!

So I decided to use my new alcohol markers for the brown and some shadow ink and distress inks für the turqoise. 

I cut a small panel with rounded corners, white embossed the bunny and the moon. Then I masked them off and sponged on soft pool and tide pool shadow ink and darkened the edges with a littly salty ocean and peacock feather distress ink. I left a bit of a halo around the moon, not too defined. 

Then I masked off the top of the panel with a torn edge and sponged a mountain range in the background with salty ocean, peacock feather and a Stampin' Up smokey slate. Then I colored in the bunny with alcohol markers and added faux stitching and a few small stars with my gel pen. 

After the panel was finished, I spent ages to decide how to arrange it in my card base. I tried twine, different banners, different positions. I wanted the banners do be either stamped in turquoise or brown, but with my choice of inks it always turned out splotchy. 

In the end I changed my mind and stamped the banner in brown vintage foto, then colored it with alcohol markers. After I finished coloring, I heat embossed the banner edge and the sentiment in white on top. 

I added faux stitching with a brown multiliner around the white cardbase. Then I arranged and adhered a little thread under the panel and popped up the panel and the banner on some foam dots. 

Then I added the same brown stitching on the envelope. The very last thing I did, was adding some puffy paint on the bunnys bottom.

I hope you'll have lots of fun with this Challenge.

Love

Ela

Christmas Owl

Hi Crafters,

I really haven't gotten around to much crafting lately.
One of my daughters is still ill and can't go to school, but I have to work from homeoffice anyway. And I am under the weather myself. I lost my voice almost entirely and that had to happen this very week, when my office phone never stopped ringing and my daughter wanted to chat practically all day. 

Anyway, I absolutely wanted to participate in this months Challenge over at Gerda Steiner Designs, because I've seen Julia from Just one more Card use this sweetest owl of all. 

I don't often use digi stamps, because my printer's ink bleeds terribly, with just about every coloring medium there is. But my colleague has an old laser printer to give away, so if I can somehow fit it in, I'll be able to use digital images more regularly. And I absolutely WANTED that owl!

 

 

I printed the owl with my normal printer, so I had to use my watercolor pencils without water. Then I masked off a circle around the owl to watercolor the nightsky background. I was very careful, to color as close to the lines as possible, without touching them. It worked better than I had thought. Unfortunately the color seeped underneath my mask, so I had to cut it down after all. 

That ruined my plan for this card, so it took me quite some time to figure out how to finish it off. In the end I used my last craft cardbase, heat embossed the sentiment in white and added a doodled border to it. Then I  adhered the framed circle and the snowflakes.

I am also adding this card to two sketch challenges. I think it fits both, interpreted a bit losely.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Ela

Challenges: 

Gerda Steiner Designs: Owl wish you

CAS on Sunday: Children's Card

Simon says Stamp: Anything goes

CAS(E) this Sketch: #101

Fusion Card Challenge: Sparkly Christmas

Stempelküche Challenge #8: Untypische Weihnachtskarte / Unusual Christmas card

Hello out there,

Mias Stempelküche is a lovely German online shop, selling mostly clear stamps and matching dies, e.g. Lawn Fawn, Mama Elephant, Newton's Nook and many more. But they also have their own line of really cool German sentiment stamps. 

And they have a Challenge blog which today starts the 

8th Challenge: Unusual Christmas Cards

And I was chosen as a guest designer for the month of November. I am so happy and proud. Thanks so much to the team for picking me! 

This challenge I found really challenging. That's why I approached it directly, even before I created the card for challenge #7. I pondered it for a few days, and then dipped right in.

 I had all those tiny white stars left over from another project and decided to use them for a shaker card.That was also a challenge in itself, because I've only ever made one shaker card before.

I decided to go for bright pink and grey to go with the white, as well as a large die cut sentiment, that I could stick right over the acetate. As I already had stars to go inside, I kept with that theme and used the Paper Smooches stars dies. I didn't have a bright pink cardstock, so I sponged some white cardstock with Picked Raspberry distress ink and die cut the words and lots of stars from it.

To add some interest to the frame I used a stencil to add white dots of embossing paste. I also added a single pink star to the inside of the card and three grey ones to the envelop.

And here's a close up of the stars when shaken. As you  may have noticed I also added a few larger pink stars to the inside.

I hope you all participate in that challenge, because I had heaps of fun.


Love
Ela



Challenges:
Simon says stamp: Anything goes

Another very simple Christmas card

Hello Everyone,

hope you're all fine.
One of my girls is ill, and kept me awake half the night. Well, actuallyit's not her fault, after she woke me, she was soon back asleep, only I couldn't sleep anymore. So with me tired and her sick, we all stayed home for most of the week-end.

But at least we managed to go to the pharmacy and the super market, and have a shot at our small, handmade Christmas gifts. I'll show them these days, when they're all finished.

I also created a very simple Christmas card today. I die cut the words from white cardstock and embossed them in gold. Then I cut a panel slightly smaller than the cardbase from white cardstock and stamped the word Christmas in the lower third. I glued the embossed die cuts in place and doodled an uneven line all around the panel. The bow is stamped, I didn't trust myself to draw one after all the trouble with the word dies. They are so intricate...

At last I adhered the panel to the front of a top folding card with foam tape.

I had no great idea for a matching envelope, so I just doodled the same kind of frame. With gold marker instead of black, because I didn't want it to look like a sympathy card.


Have a great day
Ela



Challenges: 
clean&simple: #313 Sketch

 
 

Christmas card in classic red, green and gold

Hello Everyone,

My powder sock is still missing, but I managed to create a card none the less.

 

I used the TAWS background check set to create the triangle and colored in a few of the circles with red and green alcohol markers. Then I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment. I also embossed a few more of these circles, but in the end I didn’t like that as much and covered them with a gold perl maker pen. This way the gold tones don’t match as perfectly anymore, but the dots are nicely domed.

Close up

I cut the panel down only a little, added a red ribbon with a bow for some interest and adhered the panel to a red card base.

Then I picked a red envelope and stamped the dots again and added a few more drops of gold.

Have a great day

Ela

Challenges:
Creative Friday. #115 Am laufenden Band
CAS on Sunday: #46 Ribbon and/or Twine

 CAS(E) this Sketch: #100 Sketch

Stempelküche Challenge Blog

Hi Crafters,

I am proud and happy to announce, that I won the 6^th Stempelküche challenge, which was a color challenge. I am especially glad, because I usually find color challenges rather hard. Thanks to the team at Stempelküche, I really appreciate it!

So here’s  my lucky winner:

Unfortunately I don’t have a new card to show right now. For one I’ve been rather busy the past 2 weeks, and didn’t get around to much crafting. And then the bit I did was still coloring light bulbs for my own Christmas cards this year. As I’ve shown so many of these already, I’ll spare you the latest ones. Maybe I’ll take a shot of all of them together when I’m finished.

I did decide to get myself inspired by a few challenges only today, but discovered that my powder sock has gone missing. I was using it for something else on Halloween and obviously didn’t store it away in its rightful place straight away. Stupid me. I’ll have to start a search tonight.

You’d like to know what a powder sock is? This is:

My homemade anti-static powder tool. Made from an old kid’s sock and talcum powder.

Have a great day

Ela

Challange up your life: Challenge #2 Banner, Girlande oder Kranz / Banners, garlands or wreaths

Hi Crafters,

today we are challenging you again, over at 

The Challenge this time is:

Challenge #2 Banners, Garlands or Wreaths

This challenge really inspired me, I created not only one card, but four, though two of them probably count as one.

These are very simple cards. I used the paper smooches botanical 2 set and shadow inks to create the wreaths and also the mistletoe on the envelope. Then I stamped the sentiment and added the red bow with a glue dot. Last step was to add the red ornaments/berries with a red paper pen. These take a while to dry, so that should always be the last step.

Already while I was creating the first two cards, I thought about using snowflakes to create another wreath. Unfortunately I lost my snowflake set last year – to my long lasting distress. But there are a few tiny snowflake that are just the right size in the lawn fawn frosty friends set. 

I stamped them in white pigment ink on black cardstock and heat embossed the sentiment with white embossing powder. Then I lightly applied some more of the white ink with a dry baby wipe around the edges, to create the blackboard look and adhered the panel to a white card base. I actually wanted teal dots for this card, but I had neither teal ribbon or a teal paper pen, so I went with red again.

For the last card I wanted a less classic wreath, but still Christmas themed. So I stamped, colored and die cut a bunch of the tiny images that come with lawn fawn’s trim the tree set. I arranged them in a circle and glued them down on a craft card base. And then I messed up the sentiment by stamping it crooked.
That really annoyed me, it was just a tiny bit, but it was noticeable… I wondered with what I could cover it, but it was a two line sentiment, so an ordinary banner wouldn’t have worked. That’s why I chose the larger banner, stamped it an cut it out, just to see if it would be large enough. But I didn’t like it in white, so I thought I’d try to color it with alcohol markers. And I think it turned out quite nice in red.

For the envelope I adhered three more of the tiny items to the flap.

I really hope you’ll take the challenge and have some fun with us!

Ela



Challenge:
Festive Friday:  #44 Picture inspiration

Honorable mentions

Hi Crafters,

I almost missed it myself, so I am a little late to announce I won two honorable mentions at two different challenges. I am so happy that people seem to like what I do. Thanks SO much!

Crazy for CAS had a one layer card challenge a while back, and I participated with this card:

The second challenge was Halloween or autumn themed, with a sketch and an inspiration picture. I only used the picture this time.

 

I've been a bit lazy with challenges lately, because there's so many other things to do, including my own holiday cards. I really hope I find some time this week-end to get back in the flow.



Have a great weeke-end
Ela

Stempelküche Challenge #7: Strukturpaste / Embossing paste

Hello out there,

Mias Stempelküche is a lovely German online shop, selling mostly clear stamps and matching dies, e.g. Lawn Fawn, Mama Elephant, Newton's Nook and many more. But they also have their own line of really cool German sentiment stamps. 

And they have a Challenge blog which today starts the 

7th Challenge: Embossing paste

And I was chosen as a guest designer for the month of November. I am so happy and proud. Thanks so much to the team for picking me!

Embossing paste for a theme fitted me like a glove, I only recently got my own Wendy Vecchi embossing paste, and love it so much more than the stuff I'd had before. So I prepared my cards long before it was due. I did two, because I had planned to use both snowmen on one card, but when I tried it out that was just too much. So I used them both on different cards. Which one do you like better?

I stamped and die cut the snowmen and birds from the  Lawn Fawn set Making frosty friends and coordination dies. Then I covered the snowmen in embossing paste, so the surface was irregular and looked like snow. Then I had to put them aside to dry for quite a while, so I prepared all the other pieces.

First I prepared the panel by sponging on distress inks in Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers and Black Soot. Then I used a stencil to create the falling snow with embossing paste and left that to dry as well.

Next I tore the paper for the snow banks and stamped the Christmas sentiment with Memento Tuxedo Black ink. 
I die cut the hats and scarfs from patterned paper and black cardstock. For the top hat I added a bit of reflection with a white gel pen and to the bobble hat I added some puffy paint for the bobble. 

Then I colored in the birds with my spectrum noir markers.

When the snowmen were finally dry I cut a freehand carrot nose and added the eyes with a black pen. Then I assembled it all and added some shadows with my alcohol markers.

As usual I also created matching envelops and insides by stamping the same images in grey.

Hope you all play along, I am so looking forward to see your cards!
Ela