Yet another challenge card – I find a few restrictions can really inspire my crafting – a couple rules are good! This challenge was a ‘recipe’ from Magnolia Down Under: you had to use 3 papers, 3 flowers, 2 buttons, and 1 bow. I decided to count the flowers in my paper – I’ve got poppies, lilacs in Tilda’s basket, and the daisies on the oval behind her. My three papers are the poppy paper, the oval behind her, and some fuzzy handmade stuff for the very bottom mat. Buttons are vintage, from my button jar, and the seam binding is from my vintage stash too.

I coloured her to match the papers as best I could, I just didn’t have the right grey-ish teal. One day I will own all 200+ Copic markers. One day.

The sentiment is actually from the googley-eyed fish stamp set I keep using. I thought it a bit of an odd choice, for fish stamps.

And for those who are despairing, I am still knitting. I’m on the second-to-last row of squares on my linen shopping bag. I got a fair amount done at work, but now work is over, and I’ gearing up for the craft fair, so I feel guilty if I’m not making cards! I think tomorrow or Friday I’m going to do a test set-up on my kitchen island. I haven’t done a fair in so long!

I bought a new stamp set yesterday, this lemon set from Flourishes. I’ve been eyeing all their sets online, and find a few at a scrapbook store in town (Scrapbook Pantry). I think I want all their stamps now! The designs are beautiful, I especially love all the botanicals. I coloured up the lemons on the branch immediately after getting home, and made up a little birthday card for Paper Garden Projects.

I also made another card using the same stamp set, but only taking 15 minutes to make it. I’m selling cards at a craft fair on Saturday, so I need to make a batch or two of quick cards!

Nice and simple, just a piece of cardstock, and 4 different stamps from the set. I went very lemon-y with my purchases yesterday, I bought the lemon stamp set, then decided I needed a yellow inkpad, a yellow inkpad, a yellow glitter pen, and two more yellow Copic markers!

The green in the leaves also makes my main card eligible for Copic Creations’ Green challenge!

The colour inspiration came entirely from the diamond-patterned paper (Michaels brand!). I gave Tilda an orange dress, which was awkward to blend – I have one orange marker, and one yellow marker (YR04 and Y02 respectively), but I got a look I was happy with eventually.

For some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to put eyelets in the leaves (yes, I just bought a Crop-a-Dile). At first I was going to eyelet them to the paper, then I realised that I couldn’t get the Crop-a-dile that far in to the paper, so I put eyelets in all the leaves I wanted to use, then strung them on some vintage seam binding.

The seam binding is taped down (yay scor-tape!) but the leaves are still free, so you can slide around them a bit. The card layout was inspired by Sketch Saturday’s sketch #93.

The red piece was cut with a the largest Labels 7 Nestability, and was actually the leftover bit from another project. That project is now in the recycling bin, but I’m using the scraps!

One of my favourite parts of the patterned paper that I drew into the rest of the project was the touches of aquamarine. That’s why Tilda’s shoes are blue, and the reason for the blue gems. As it is March, Aquamarine’s month, that’s the prompt at Daring Cardmakers right now.

The blouses are an interesting story. My mum is a big fan of the local antiques auction, and one night she bought a painting. I can’t even remember what the painting was of, but when we turned it over, there were all these pictures, obviously cut out of catalogues, stuck to the back! I peeled them off, with the idea of making something out of them. Then I thought that I could sell them to scrapbookers! This was about 6 years ago, so well before I got in to card making. I copied them all on to regular paper, with idea of selling the copies. I sold some of the originals on eBay, and never got around to doing anything with these, except lug them around for years.

So, because of that, I used Copic markers to colour on regular printer paper. They bled a bit more than cardstock does, and there was lots of ink on the paper underneath, but they turned out ok I think.

The lace is a lovely wide vintage one from my stash – I recently reorganized all my craft stuff, I didn’t even know I had it!

I can’t wait to copy some of these images on to cardstock, and try colouring them again. I’ve got full dresses, more blouses, people, girls, dolls…. lots!

I’ve been on a bit of a Local King kick lately – this build-a-sheep set is from there as well. I stamped the sheep heads directly on to my card base, trying to make a bit of a pattern out of them.

Then I stamped a sheep outline on to the dot paper, added head and legs, the applied Liquid Applique to the body. Heat that up and it goes nice and puffy! Add on some ribbon, and the mandatory sheep pun, and ewe are done!

Googley-eyed fish! The set is actually called ‘Puffy Eye Goldfish‘.

I was inspired to make my card by this post from Crafty Makes. I just loved the idea of the frame becoming a pond.

I stamped the two smaller sizes inside the card, with some little green bubbles. I used Denim Distress Ink, and a pale blue Brilliance ink, so the lighter blue fish shimmers.

I do love stamping on patterned paper, I’m very happy with my stripey fish on the front! I used a bubbly Cuttlebug folder to emboss the frame, and oval Nestabilities to cut all the ovals.

That card was made last week, and today I made another in the same vein. My boyfriend and I were cleaning out our storage room and junk drawer today, and we found a product that is used at our work, which I have now worked into my card making:

Here, I stamped the big fish with black Staz-On ink on to some gel. What is gel? Think about going to the theatre: light plays a very big part in most theatre productions. I would say 99.9% of productions have a lighting designer. Gel is one of the things used to create the right mood or look on stage. It is thin, clear plastic (thinner than printer transparency, more like regular paper) that comes in hundreds of colours. As the boyfriend is a lighting guy, we had a few little pieces hanging around our storage room. Not worth saving to him, I grabbed them and put them on my craft desk! We think this blue is R65, so it definitely isn’t the darkest you can find. R65 has a 35% transmission rate, where something like R80 is 9%. 0% would be solid.

Anyway, I thought blue gel would make a great pond, so once I stamped the big fish, I stamped some little ones inside the card with Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink.

You can see how it changes the colour of the light in this photo.

I wanted to use this spotty paper, but found it too white, so I got out my one bottle of Glimmer Mist that I’ve never used, and spritzed away! I like the paper much better now that it isn’t stark white. And it has a bit of shimmer now!

I’ve got a few bits of this blue colour, and some pale orange that I’m excited to work with. I think I might need to get a few more colours of Staz-on ink!

It was great to use something that would have otherwise been thrown away!

I suppose you’d only notice if you’ve bought Magnolia stamps, because the eggs on this card are cut from Magnolia’s packaging! I’ve been saving the little sheets, because I thought I wanted to use them to paper-piece a dress for Tilda. I still can, I have a few. I used the smallest sizes of my oval Nestabilities, and cut out the pink striped eggs. I also used some of the handwriting from the other side of the paper, and there are a few eggs with lacy borders.

I’m also proud because both papers came from my scrap pile – I can’t remember where I used the blue dot, and the green print is actually the back side of a Christmas paper!

The clouds and the little bubble around ‘Happy Easter’ are from a fabulous build-a-sheep set from Local King Rubber stamps. I wanted a cartoon-y Easter look, and I think I did very well at that. The card was inspired by the fact that Magnolia Down Under has an Easter challenge on right now, and the fact that my first craft fair is March 13th, and I have no Easter cards yet!

I was glued to the TV for every possible minute of the games. Sunday I had to work, and thank goodness for overtime! If the hockey had ended when it was supposed to, it would have been during the show. Because of overtime, it ended about 3 minutes after curtain call. As soon as the actors got offstage, they asked about the game, and as soon as I said ‘overtime’, we were all running down to the green room. (There usually isn’t a TV that gets outside channels in the green room, but one was dragged in just for these two weeks!).

I didn’t finish P’s thrummed mittens. I started, ripped out because I wasn’t following the pattern, restarted, and spent the whole time I was knitting wondering if they’d fit, if they’d work, if he even wanted mittens. Then my thrums were too fat, which made Magic Loop hard, so I had to find DPNs…. I put them down, and concentrated on my Fiddlehead Mittens.

I finished those! Linings and all!

I even did some re-knitting on these. The first lining I completed felt lumpy in the mitten no matter what I did. I started the decreases for the tip about 4 rows earlier on mitten #2, and that felt much better, so I ripped and re-knit the top of mitten #1.

I could have made one last winter card, but really didn’t want to. I got out my Penny Black Garden Friends set, and stamped a few images on to ovals I’d already cut out. I coloured in a few, and picked the best 3 for the card. I wasn’t sure what paper I was going to use, so I coloured the animals, grass, and lettuce first, leaving the flowers, butterflies, and basket to be coloured to match the paper.

The polka-dot paper is from October Afternoon, and I got it in the sale section of my LSS! I think I want a few more sheets… The scalloped ovals are a paisley paper from Heidi Grace designs. I wanted a little bit of a cameo look to this card, which I think I acheived.

I think bunny in the lettuce is my favourite of these three little characters.

Today’s card was inspired by some old journaling tags that I bought  last year and haven’t yet used. Not sure why I bought them…. probably for use in my recipe scrapbook, but they’re much too small for recipes! I thought ‘Today is the day’ would make a great birthday card, for the Just Magnolia birthday challenge.

I also wanted to use this Magnolia stamp that I hadn’t inked up yet.

I love the sunflower and her little tiered dress. I had trouble getting all the cross-hatching on the bottom tier to stamp properly, but it fades out naturally I think. I think someday I’ll use this stamp, but cut the sunflower off and have her holding a balloon or something else, I think it’ll be very versatile!

I also had a go at making some paper flowers – I punched these circles from an old, falling-apart book I have. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but it took a challenge from All That Scraps (book/newsprint) for me to do it!

I just used brads for the centers; I think it would be nice to use some of my vintage button stash, but I couldn’t be bothered to find needle and thread when I was making them, I just wanted to keep going! One flower is just rounds, the small one I fringed with my scissors, and the other one I folded then rounded the corners to give a petal shape. I rubbed a gold inkpad around the edges so they’d have a bit of shine too.

I don’t usually decorate the inside of the cards, but I stamped Happy Birthday inside this one with red ink. I used a brown Spica glitter pen for highlights in Tilda’s hair, a clear one on the lace at the bottom of her dress, and yellow Distress Stickles on the centre of the sunflower.