Colour Q challenge #123

Just a quick post to show you a card I made using this week's Colour Q challenge:

I've had some more ideas of how to use the positive and negative shapes when I use my Silhouette.  This is what I came up with this time, still using that lovely free butterfly shape: 

Fun to make, kind of hard to photograph . . .

it goes without saying that the papers behind the butterflies are all off-cuts.  In fact, I went back and chose different, smaller pieces once I worked out what I was doing with them.  At this rate, I could make a million cards and never run out of scraps!

Let's Get Sketchy DT call

Last night I treated myself to making this page with new photos, new papers, and a new sketch.  The sketch is from a new site called Let's Get Sketchy, and is the basis for their DT call:

I really liked this sketch, as well as the "mini challenge" sketch she's also got going.  So if trying out for a DT position appeals, you might want to pop on over and have a look.  I haven't given you much time though,  you've got until the 10th of February!

Unlike much of what I post, this page is made using BRAND NEW PAPERS fresh from the shop, from Little Yellow Bicycle.  All I needed to add to these gorgeous papers was a bit of lace, some eyelets and my favourite - vellum butterflies!  I have added some hidden journalling behind the photo.

Let's Scrap Blog hop card 4: Betty Anne's card

Not having spent a great deal of time at Let's Scrap for a while before their Leap around the World blog hop, I had almost forgotten what a warm and friendly bunch they are!  They are fairly buzzing with the excitement of this month-long hop!  Less than a day in the gallery and all the cards I posted yesterday have more than one page of comments!  In particular, my card with the slide mount for my nephew received a few comments.  You can just imagine it, can't you?  "I have not seen a slide for years but this is a great way to get rid of all those slides I have" "I haven't used a slide in years.. time to haul them out .. have 1000's.."

I was actually thinking that my use of slide mounts was coming to an end - not because I'd run out of them, but because I was starting to run out of nice colours! LOL!  But then I thought to myself, but what if I covered the not-very-pretty-coloured slide mount in pretty-coloured paper.  So I'd like to say this card was created with a particular person in mind.  But it's not.  It's actually created with rescue-the-ugly-coloured-slidemount in mind!

Originally I had said that I wanted to do the cards for this hop with all off-cuts, but I have since amended that to include 6" pads.  It's really more about the size of the sheet of paper, and using what I have than anything else!  So all the papers, and the purple die-cut, come from the same pad from Kaisercraft.

Two more things I want to share with you about this card:

• Much as I love the look of baker's twine that I am seeing so much these days, I haven't stretched the budget yet to buying any - knowing me I would want a roll in every colour!  But way back in the days before paper-craft, I used to dabble in cross-stitch.  And as every former- or current-cross-stitcher knows, it doesn't take long to build up a stash of a lot of different colours of floss, some of which have hardly been touched! So it's nice that two different colours of embroidery floss have made a cameo appearance on this card.
• Now to the buttons.  To you, they might just look like buttons.  But to me, I happen to know that at a craft show 2 years ago I attended a seminar at a craft show where they demonstrated a particular dye, one of it's features being that it could dye synthetic products such as nylon lace and buttons!  Why I decided I needed to dye buttons, when I have about a squillion buttons from my mother's craft shop, I can't really say. Anyway I bought two colours of dye (green and purple) and I'm not really sure if I've used the items I've dyed on any item until today . . . . 

Last but not least, I need to tell you that this card is based on the sketch on Betty Anne' blog, Lets Get Scrap Happy

The secret to making cards for males who don't care about fancy embellishments

This afternoon, I had a card making session with my teenage son.
Now, I'm just going to pause for a minute while those of you with past or present teenage sons either dust yourself off after fainting on the floor, or wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes.  . . . but it's true.  This afternoon, Rohan and I made cards together.  But before I show you the results, I want to talk about the subject of this post:

The secret to making cards for males who don't care about fancy embellishments.
Now, it might be that every man and boy in your life absolutely loves and appreciates the miniature works of art you produce.  "Straight to the pool room", he might say, like the Dad in the movie "The Castle", giving it pride of place on the mantle piece.
And if your Dad, husband, brother, sons, and every other man you know is like this, you really don't need to read any further. 
But if, like me, you know one or two (or twenty) men who don't really seem to value the time, not to mention your favourite papers and embellishments, that go into your creations, you might want to keep reading!
It's not that they don't appreciate the sentiment that goes into your cards, because of course they do! It's just that they wouldn't appreciate it any less if it was written on a used paper towel!

My suggestion?  Keep it simple, and add a little dash of my secret ingredient . . . .

Humour!

Time and again I've noticed that the cards that my boys have most loved to give and receive, have been the ones that have had a touch of the giggles.  Whether it's a funny picture or a couple of hand-written lines in a store-bought card, or an explosion of hand-made goodness, it's the funny cards that work every time.  And I haven't noticed this changing as they've gotten older.

So here are our two versions of a funny skateboarding card (using my new stamps, of course!)

Rohan not only decorate the front of his card . . .

but also the inside . . .

and the back!

My card is based on Sherri's card, stop 11 on the Let's Scrap blog hop.  Here it is:

As I explained to Rohan, it is open to interpretation whether this baby is the next Bob Burnquist, pulling a really hard trick, or the next admission in the Emergency Ward.  I know which one I prefer!

Let's Scrap Blog Hop card 3: Debby's card

This next card, for my mother-in-law, was based on the card showcased by Debby, at her blog, ScrapSoul.  It might seem like I've been crazy-busy working on these cards, but like I said, Rob is off to see the family this weekend (he actually left about half an hour ago) so I had a day and a half to make 3 cards.  I'm not sure how many more I will do, if I make cards for anyone too far  in advance, I'll probably just end up making them another one closer to the date! So we'll see.

Anyway, here's the sketch.  This time, I was inspired by the sketch itself.  The retro picture reminded me of a sheet of Cosmo Cricket tags which I bought last year and been getting good use out of.

You might think (or at least I thought) that this would be the quickest card so far, what with just using a couple of pre-made tags, but I agonised about the placement, and which tags to use.  In the end I mirrored the sketch and added a flower, brads and some braid. 
And yes, I wet the edges of the background paper before distressing.  Told you I love that!

Let's Scrap Blog Hop card 2: Elizna's card

Next card was based on the sketch that Elizna used to make this gorgeous card you see at the left.
There's so much to love about this card - the way she used the tags, the dimensional hearts and the gorgeous border.
Having said that, my card, being for my father-in-law, is totally different!







Here it is:

The first point of inspiration for this card was the cute little Stampin' Up house stamps.  From there I thought of this map paper, which dictated my colour choice. 
I loved in the sketch how everything was in the bottom right hand corner, but I moved my sentiment up to cover a place name that was in a larger font and somewhat distracting.
I noticed that a couple of the girls were wetting the edges of their papers to distress them. I am totally loving this technique!

Let's Scrap Blog hop card one : Kristin's card

My kids went back to school this week - three different schools!!!!!! I've been dreading it all school holidays and I'm here to tell you, yes it's tough - we've got some organising to do if we are going to survive these next two years!  My mornings have been emotionally exhausting, and I have spent my school days spending way too much time on the internet!  I have:

• joined Pinterest - took a while to get my boards how I wanted them, and going back tracking down a couple of favourite projects I wanted to pin, but from now on, it's a quick press of the "pin-it" button when I see something I love!
• joined the Silhouette group on Flickr.  I went back and added some of my favourite projects from last year (and pinned some other people's while I was there!).  Again, from now on, I will just be able to add the odd project as I do it.
• started following my blog list in Google Reader - don't know why I didn't do this a long time ago, it is much more user-friendly! I spent quite a bit of time going through reading and "marking as read" old posts, so from now on I will be able to see at a glance who has added new posts since I last read them!
• And last, (but by no means least) I embarked on the epic Leap around the World Blog Hop at Let's Scrap.  If you're not a member of LS already, I totally urge you have a peek - 50 hosts around the world, each with a card sketch to show you, each with some blog candy to give away, and it goes for the whole month!

Robert's off to see his family this weekend for his nephew's 21st so I had three cards to make pretty quickly.  Here's my first card, based on the sketch at Kristin's blog, Some Scrap Sugar:

My goal for the cards I make for this blog hop is: to use only offcuts (but then that doesn't surprise you, does it?) and hopefully a few other under-used items for the stash.
My starting points for this card were

1. the bunch of beautiful key stamps I own
2. the little wooden numbers that I bought specifically for "number" birthday cards, followed by the thought that they might fit nicely in a slide frame (they did!) and
3. the colour scheme was dictated by this almost perfectly-sized patterned paper