Curtain Call Butterfly Bling!

Hiya!

Check out this week's GORGEOUS colours:

I actually sketched out this card when sitting in a boring meeting at work this week (tee hee!). I made a couple of tweaks to my original design but overall it's pretty much what I had in my head! Lookie:

The butterflies are the beautiful All a Flutter a-la-carte stamp in the UK mini catty my FAVE stamp from the mini! I stamped it three times with Choc Chip ink on Whisper White card then coloured with Summer Sun and Apricot Appeal markers. I covered them with versamark ink then dipped in a mix of Dazzling Diamonds glitter and heat and stick powder. Once I'd heated that, I dipped in clear embossing powder to seal all the glitter then heated again - they are lovely and sparkly IRL!

I stamped the flourish from Baroque Motifs in Rose Red onto Regal Rose card then added some shadows with a Rose Red marker. The ribbon is Rose Red double-stitched grosgrain and I added a hat-pin from the Pretties Kit through the knot with some pearls and glass beads... eek! So pretty!!!

The greeting is from another a-la-carte stamp - I mounted the greeting and cake separately so I can use the greeting by itself if I want (which I do - cos I always need birthday cards and can never find enough SU birthday sentiments!!). I punched the greeting out with the Word Window punch and layered onto an Apricot Appeal punched oval. I rounded some corners on the layers for a bit of a different look. The sketch is from Karen Giron's Sweet Sunday sketch challenge last week - great sketch to play with!

Make sure you stop by the rest of the Curtain Call Crew to see what they've created:

Andrea Roose

Iwona Palamountain

Julie Smith

Lea Lawson

Marisa Ritzen

Melissa Hubert

Shelley Germann

Sue Kohler

and our wonderful leader Stacey Schafer!

Thanks for stopping by...

x Amy x

Latest workshop card...

Hiya!

I thought I'd share a quick card with you that I demonstrated at a recent workshop:

I'm loving the Sweet Pea DSP and 2-step bird punch at the moment - so easy to create a quick card! I used Rose Red, Sahara Sand and So Saffron as my main colours, with quite a lot of Bashful Blue added with the DSP. No extra tricks with this one - pretty simple really!

I'll be back tomorrow with another Curtain Call card - hopefully I can post a bit more this week as I'm now on half term - yippee!!

Thanks for stopping by...

x Amy x

Curtain Call Petals....

Hiya!

It's that time of the week again and I'm back with another Curtain Call colour challenge card! This week's colours are soooo pretty - lookie!

The Amethyst/Pink colour combo reminded me of the Tea Party designer paper and coordinating stamp set, Playful Petals - so I went with that...

The flowers and petals were stamped on Whisper White and coloured with a combination of reinkers, blender pen, aqua brush and markers. The layout is from this week's Card Patterns sketch - really awesome sketch! I added some pearls from the Pretties Kit to finish things off.

Make sure you check out the rest of the Curtain Call crew:

Andrea Roose

Iwona Palamountain

Julie Smith

Lea Lawson

Marisa Ritzen

Melissa Hubert

Shelley Germann

Sue Kohler

and the wonderful Stacey Schafer!

Thanks for stopping by...

x Amy x

Curtain Call Punched Flowers...

Hiya!

Welcome to another fab Curtain Call Colour challenge! This week's colours are ones I wouldn't normally put together in combo but I'm loving the result!

Here's what I came up with:

I 'multi-tasked' on this card too (see yesterday's post!), combining the colours with preparing for a punch class I am running on Saturday. I saw some flowers created with circle punches on SCS and wanted to give it a try so this is my best effort!! Not my usual style, but I really liked how it turned out. The stems and butterfly are from Hello Again and the sentiment is from Starring You. Some of the flower layers were stamped with the different stamps from Circle Circus. I added some white buttons to the centres of the flowers and added some faux stitching with my black marker. The final touch was a bit of Pretty in Pink striped ribbon (I don't have Pink Pirouette yet...).

Make sure you visit the rest of the Curtain Call Crew to check out their inspiring samples:

Andrea Roose

Iwona Palamountain

Julie Smith

Lea Lawson

Marisa Ritzen

Melissa Hubert

Shelley Germann

Sue Kohler

and of course Stacey Schafer

Thanks for stopping by!

x Amy x

Only Regal Garden Plums!

Hiya!

Just a quick post to show you something I made today - it's for our SU team challenge. This week was to do a colour search on this website and pick one of the combos that come up and go with them to make a card. I ended up with Only Orange, Regal Rose, Garden Green and Perfect Plum - eek! What a combo!!

I needed to multi-task with this challenge as I have a class coming up next Saturday on using punches. One of the ideas I wanted to use was the 'dahlia fold' flower using circle punches so I used that technique with this colour combo. The paper I used was the Perfect Plum DSP pack. The pink background paper was created by stamping a variety of stamps from Circle Circus onto Bride DSP and rubbing with kitchen towel - pretty funky eh?! I added a white satin ribbon bow in the centre of the flower for an extra quirky touch.

Thanks for stopping by! I'll be back tomorrow for the next Curtain Call colour challenge!

x Amy x

Mojo wall hanging...

Hiya!

This is my second post today - scroll down to see my Curtain Call card for this week's FAB colours!

I picked up some chipboard album pieces today at a local craft store and I thought instead of using them for an album I would try using each piece as a wall hanging. I saw this idea recently at a craft show and loved it. I used this week's Mojo sketch as my starting point, as well as some awesome new goodies from Stampin Up - Rich Razzleberry ribbon, cardstock and ink as well as some Cottage Wall DSP. Check out the finished product:

I used a Scripture stamp from Verve as well as my fave Verve set - those gorgeous butterflies. I sanded the edges of some of the pieces and added some pearls. The holes at the top were punched with a crop-a-dile then set with Jumbo eyelets. The butterflies were stamped on some of the DSP with Rich Razzleberry then embossed with clear sparkly embossing powder (pity you can't see them sparkle in the photo!).

I'm really excited about the possibilities with these - they'll make great gifts that are simple and inexpensive to put together!

Thanks for stopping by!

x Amy x

Curtain Call Embrace

Hiya!

Sorry I haven't posted this week - it's been a bit hectic with work and other things going on! But today has been great - spent the whole day making cards yay! Here are today's lovely Curtain Call colours:

I went with a floral theme as I was inspired by the beautiful photo. I used the Embrace Life set (not in the UK catty - I managed to get it from my Mum who's in Australia!).

I coloured the images with an aquabrush and inkpads and added some pearls for added elegance. The greeting is from PTI's Birthday Basics set, which I use a LOT! I never seem to have enough birthday cards! I used the SFYTT this week for the layout.

Make sure you check out what the other Curtain Call Crew have cooked up for you this week:

Andrea Roose

Iwona Palamountain

Julie Smith

Lea Lawson

Marisa Ritzen

Melissa Hubert

Shelley Germann

Sue Kohler

and the amazing Stacey Schafer...

Thanks for stopping by!

x Amy x

Shimmery Curtain Call

Hiya!

This week's colours are GORGEOUS! Check 'em out:

I wanted to create a background similar to one I saw on Nina Brackett's blog recently. I actually braved using my sewing machine for this one and it didn't turn out too badly!

The flower in the middle was a bit of a 'light bulb' moment when I wondered what the flowers in the SU Pretties Kit would look like painted with a mixture of shimmer paint and reinker... the result? Flippin' awesome!!! It is sooo sparkly and pretty in real life (even my husband deviated from his usual 'that's nice' to 'that's really pretty'... high praise indeed lol!). I tried to take a few close-ups to try and capture the shimmer and dimension:

This one's a real close up of the flower... can you see the sparkle? I added a button to the middle for a quirky little finish. The layer underneath the flower is vellum cardstock cut with a nestabilities label.

I am SO going to be trying this again! Just imagine the colour possibilities with all the wonderful reinker colours... hmmm!

Make sure you check out what the other Curtain Call gals have created for you this week:

Andrea Roose

Iwona Palamountain

Julie Smith

Lea Lawson

Marisa Ritzen

Melissa Hubert

Shelley Germann

Sue Kohler

and our fantastic leader Stacey Schafer

Thanks for stopping by!

x Amy x

Butterflies, Bows & Buttons...!

Hiya!

This fortnight's challenge on our SU team's challenge blog is butterflies, buttons & bows... Well I had to laugh because you'll find it hard to spot one of my cards that doesn't have any of these elements included lol!!

So because I LOVE them, and because I've made... er... quite a few cards with these three Bs I thought I'd post three cards today - yikes! I'm always amazed by Chupa, who manages to post multiple cards almost daily - she churns them out at an incredible rate and they are all gorgeous! So this is my attempt!

The first one is my FAVE - I just adore these colours together, but am very sad that Taken with Teal will no longer be available as of October - it's one of the colours being retired in the Stampin Up Colour Renovation.

The papers are from the gorgeous Sweet Pea DSP pack in the UK mini catalogue. The butterfly is from the mini too, along with the Real Red satin ribbon (yummy!!). I stamped the butterflies in choc chip then coloured with blender pens and reinkers then embossed them with clear embossing powder to give them a shine. The sentiment is from Wow Flowers and was inked with SU markers. The layout was from a Viva la Verve sketch in March I think.

My next card I did for a Colour Q challenge a while back but didn't get around to posting (that often happens!).

Again, some retiring colours were used on this one: Taken with Teal, Lavender Lace and Lovely Lilac {insert sad face here...}. The stamp in the background is from Fresh Cuts and the butterfly (same one as before...and next!) was stamped and then coloured with glitters from the Cosmos range. The sentiment is from Tiny Tags and was punched out and layered over a punched flower from the Boho Blossoms punch.

My final card was shamelessly cased from the lovely Dawn McVey. It wasn't one specific card I cased, but rather a selection of her fabulous creations that inspired me.

Any of you were are familiar with Dawn's blog will have seen her ruffled book print effect. I wanted to try this but using a stamp to create the print so I used the 'Bloom' definition from Blooming with Beauty. I stamped it multiple times on Naturals Ivory cardstock then punched with the scallop border punch then sponged with creamy caramel ink - pretty cool huh?! I added some Chocolate Chip satin ribbon along the top and used a button from the Latte collection to finish. The butterflies were stamped with Choc Chip and coloured with blender pen and inkpad. The Cameo Coral piece in the background was stamped with the FAB swirl from baroque motifs in Ruby Red ink. Most of the colours used in this card are also retiring (sheesh - what's left?? lol!) - they are Cameo Coral, Blush Blossom and Ruby Red. Don't worry though, we are getting some GREAT colours in to replenish the colour collections. Now's a good time to stock up on any of your faves that we are saying farewell to though!

Any-hoo, I'm off to make up an idea in my head for tomorrow's Curtain Call challenge... Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

x Amy