Welcome Paul Maximilian

Hello Crafters,

my niece had a little son a while back (makes me feel so old, my sister is a granny now).
And today I'd finally like to show you the card I created for his birth. 

I didn't want the card to be too cutesy-baby, because it's not really the parents' style. I went for something more classy and timeless. 

I chose some off white card stock for the card base. As I didn't have a large bold star stamp, I used a die by Paper Smooches to create my own fun foam stamp. Then I stamped the stars with antique linen ink. The impressions are not perfect, which makes it look a bit distressed. But that was fine with me, it suited the card.

I adhered alphabet stickers for the name and some tiny wood veneer stars I still had for embellishments. 

It's a  very simple card, but I love how it turned out. That's it from me today, hope you have a great time
Ela



Challenges:
Paper Smooches: Anything goes
Stempelküche: Personalisiert
Simon says Stamp: For a child (I hope this card qualifies, despite the non-childlike style)

Challenge up your life: Challenge #72 Circles

Hello Crafters,

it's time for another challenge at

This week, we are challenging you to use circles on your cards or layouts.

Challenge #72 Circles

I started out, with an entirely different idea. I meant to use an embossing folder with circles, a wide strip of a rainbow gradient I still had lying around and a circle focal point with some kind of image. 
 
I went through my stash and picked a humming bird from WPlus9. I coloured it in blue, green and purple, but then I got stuck... I couldn't make my elements work for me... 

I decided to drop the rainbow and created a whole bunch of circles, I coloured them with alcohol markers in matching colours (blue, lilac, purple, green and grey) and arranged them on a white card base. But it still didn't work, so I dropped the bird as well. 

Now I needed a new focal point. But luckily I  had just received a new sentiment stamp set with the most beautiful scripty sentiments. It's actually an add-on set meant to go inside a circle element, but I didn't get the main set. I just loved the sentiments, and I think they work just as well without a circle.

I stamped the sentiments on a white circle and matted it on a slightly larger grey circle, which was adhered to the card front with foam tape. The sentiments reads "kind regards", but in German that is less formal than in English.

Now, I hope you'll join us in using circles on your projects.

Lots of love
Ela

Block stamping with water colours

Hey Crafters, 

today I'd like to show you three cards, inspired by Jennifer McGuire. 

She did a whole buch of amazing cards with block stamping and water colours a while ago. I'll not explain how I created them, if you're interested in the technique, please check out Jennifer's video.

This technique is always fun, so when my daughter wanted to craft with me the other day, we went for it. 


I especially liked Jennifer's cards with the torn edges, so this is how my cards turned out. By the way, I didn't add stitching, because my sewing skills are non existant... Beside I've lost the power cord for my sewing machine. Don't ask me how.

Which one do you prefer?


Lots of love
Ela

Birthday flowers with Polychromos

Hello everyone, 

Debby posted this wonderful flower card last week, and I instantly fell in love with it.

As always, my first thought was "I need that stamp", but you can't have everything... I decided to use a child free evening and find something in my stash to make it work without spending money.

I stamped the image with Versamark ink and coloured in the flowers with my Polychromos pencils in a similar colour scheme as Debby. 

My craft card stock was a bit too smooth, so I had a hard time laying down as much pigment as I wanted to, all the while thinking it's wouldn't turn out good. And while it certainly cannot compare with Debby's original, I am still rather pleased with the end result. 

I had to fidget quite a bit with the final card design. I couldn't use my stitched rectangle dies, because the stamp is so large and I didn't want to cut off too much. I decided to go for an over-sized card base and just a white border on both sides. The stitching is a wonderful detail, but I simply didn't have the supplies. 

The sentiment reads "Today is your Birthday". The first part was stamped with brown ink, the second part was die cut from a scrap piece of paper, that I coloured with the same pencils. I quite like the ombre effect. 

Due to the unusual size of the card, I had to use patterend paper to create an envelope, because my normal cardstock was too small.

As I had some more spare time the next day, I went ahead and did the same again, only with white and yellows on grey card stock. I wanted to try my other idea and adhere the panel at an angle. Also that card stock has bit more of a tooth.

For the card base, I used white wood structure card stock and rounded corners. The sentiments reads "for your Birthday".

So, if you like, tell me which one you prefer, because I am still undecided. 

Lots of love

Ela

99 nine not-so-red balloons

Hello Crafters, 

how are you? 

My daughters' Birthday was last month and we're having a rather big party every year. This year, it was even bigger, because of the new school and new friends and we celebrated with another girl who's Birthday is only one week later. So we needed heaps of invitations this year.

This is, why I wanted to keep it very simple, but I still wanted them to look really good.
 
I picked this lovely balloon background stamp and heat embossed a whole bunch of water colour card panels. I love this stamp, doesn't it just remind you of that old Nena song? 

While I was stamping and embossing, my girls helped me by colouring the balloons with my ZIG markers. We had chosen several colour schemes beforehand, because I didn't want them to use too many colours and create mud. 

Then we spritzed the panels liberally with water to make the colours run into each other and set the panels to air dry. We did 2-3 layers of colour on each panel.

Next we created vellum strips with nice torn edges and layered them around the lower third of the panels. On the top layer, I stamped and embossed the sentiment, which of course means "invitation".
In the end we embellished the panels with sequins and little heart die cuts and adhered them to white, black  or grey card bases, depending on the colour scheme.

I personally like the first card (the blue one) best, but my girls preferred the pink and yellow colour scheme. 

Hope you all have a great day
Ela


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Edit:
The balloon stamp is by Create a smile, if anyone is interested.
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Challenges: 
Simon says Stamp: Anything goes
The Paper Players: Sketch 

Two Doggie Birthday shakers

Hi Crafters, 

it's been a while, live was rather busy for me lately. 

However, today I'd like to show you two cards I created for two dog lovers.

I created the green card first. I really like that bright apple green at the moment, so I picked that colour for the card base. For some interest, I added white embossing paste through a brick wall stencil.
 

Then I stamped the dog and about a million bones and tennis balls. I coloured all the pieces with my alcohol markers. Just very basic colouring, nothing fancy.  

As the tennis balls and bones were meant to go into the shaker, I covered them with clear embossing powder, to make them slide better. 

I didn't invest in the matching dies for the stamp set (I generally don't), therefore I had to cut out all the pieces by hand, but that wasn't too bad. I also die cut the Polaroid frames and stamped the sentiment on the bottom of the frames. 

Then I assembled it all with foam adhesive.



The red card was created several weeks later, after I had given away the first one. 
I totally forgot about the stencilled brick wall, which I actually just realise right now, while I write this post. That explains, why it seemed so wrong to me, at the time. Seeing them side by side I think I would have liked the stencilled background on the second card as well.

For that card I needed a dalmatian, so I used the larger dog. Instead of clear embossing powder, I used transparent liquid glue, to seal in the bones. For me, both methods weren't really worth the bother, so next time I'll probably just leave out that step.


I arranged the Polaroid frames a little differently, because the dog was taller and facing the other way, and ended up with a lot of empty space. Therefore I chose to stamp the sentiment on two banners and tucked them behind the dog. I also added a paper clip arrow to the top left corner. 

I apologise for the bad photo quality, I only took a few snapshots with my mobile before I gave away the cards. 

Hope you all have a great day
Ela 




Challenges:
Seize the Birthday: Anything goes Birthday 

Happy Easter and another bunny

Hello Crafters,

Just a very quick note from me:  one of my girls was ill last week, therefore I had no time for anything much. But at least I created another one of the little gift wraps, because as you know, I have two daughters...

So I did the other one the same way, only in different colours and stamped the other way round.

Wishing you all a very happy Easter!

Ela

Challenge up your life: Challenge #37: Bunnies

Hello Crafters,

it's time again for another Challenge at: 

Ready for Easter, we are looking for Bunnies for the next two weeks.

Challenge #37 Bunny

Of course I used my favourite Bunny, from Purple Onions Design, and I wanted to use my brand new set of  Polychromos pencils. Yeah, I know, I said I would make do without. But my sister-in-law gave them to me for my Birthday a while ago. And I love them, THANKS!

I thought a little gift box for Easter would be nice, so I picked a bright orange card stock, die cut the pillow box and stamped and coloured directly on the box, without a belly band this time.

I thought blue would go well with the bright orange, and I think I was right.

So, show us all your bunnies, and don't forget to check out what the other ladies created.

Hugs

Ela  

Wild horse

Hi Crafters,

today I have an entirely handmade card to show you. My daughters are invited to a birthday party tomorrow, and their friend likes horse riding. So I wanted to create a card with a horse. But I didn’t have a suitable stamp and didn’t find a digital image I liked. So I decided to try my watercolour skills.

It didn’t turn out the way I had imagined it, so when I was done I didn’t like it at all and went to bed rather frustrated. The mane is rather a bit too wild, and I had imagined more shadows and structure on the face, but didn’t dare paint them in.

But when I saw it the next morning, I thought it wasn’t all that bad. Rather messily painted, but still recognizable as a horse and watercolour needn’t be perfectly realistic. I like it after all. And I think so will the Birthday child.

I decided to keep the card simple and not even use a sentiment. I thought maybe she'd like to keep the image and that way she can frame it without the sentiment spoiling the effect.

Have a nice week-end

Ela

Challenges:
Seize the Birthday: Anything goes Birthday
(Hope that's ok, even without a Birthday sentiment, because it is intended as a Birthday card)

Challenge up your life: Challenge #36 Die Cutting

Hello Crafters,

welcome to the new Challenge at

This time we are challenging you to use one of my favourite techniques:

Challenge #36 Die Cutting

I love die cutting, you can create all kinds of cool effects with it. For this challenge I wanted to use a die that I actually had for a year and never used. Having disregarded it so long, I now really wanted to put it to work...

So I went for an inlay background grey on white and white on grey. That was one fiddly bit of work, whatever made me go for inlaying with such an intricate die? I must be losing it...

When it was all done I had two panels and no idea of how I wanted to continue. Besides I didn't like the backgrounds as much as I had thought, so I wanted to cover up a bit of them, but not too much.

I found a gorgeous digital stamp of a robot with a balloon - robots being the obvious choice with the clockworks - but unfortunately it was out of sale.
Looking for an alternative, I found myself a great collection of digital stamps at Prettygrafikdesign, with some very cute toy robots and combined them with some balloon stamps I had in my collection.

I coloured all images with water colour pencils, doing only very simple shading. Then I fuzzy cut them out and adhered them with foam tape.

I placed both robots on a strip of coloured card stock to ground them. The red one is water colour paper, coloured with the same pencil I used on the robot and balloon. And the green is a just normal green card stock, but layered with a torn strip of vellum on which I heat embossed the sentiment. 

I picked Birthday sentiments for both cards to go with the cheerful balloons. Besides you can never have enough Birthday cards. As I make my cards for friends and family I gravitate towards German sentiments whenever I can.

To finish them off, I added strings and Glossy Accents to all of the balloons and adhered the front panels to coloured card bases (grey and green). I like the little surprise, when you open the card, and the inside is in an unexpected colour.

Now, go ahead and create a project using your dies. And please also check out what the rest of the design team created. Those ladies are so talented!

Have a nice week-end
Ela


Challenges:
Seize the Birthday: No toppings
Laura's Loft: Watercolour