Twofer Guest Designer!

 Hello lovely crafters. 

I was recently very surprised (and delighted, of course) to be a winner at Twofer Challenge. 

That meant I was invited to be a guest designer so here are my cards for this fun challenge. 

The aim of the challenge is to make two different cards for two different occasions using the same stamp, die or stencil. This way we stretch our brains and our stash. 

A lovely challenge, the only problem being what to choose to use? I finally settled on a Hobby Art set called Falling Leaves. I'd planned to use several of the leaves but in the end only used one,  this pretty Maple leaf. 

I wanted to use spring colours as we are full of the joys of spring here just now with tiny new leaves unfurling after a wet and cold winter. (In fact we are now back to freezing nights!)

I started this card by stamping the leaves and embossing in clear. The I added Leaf Green (very appropriately) Brushos with plenty of water and let it do it's thing. I may have dabbled around a little bit with a brush to help it along. 

When I was all dry I ironed off the embossing between sheets of paper. My favourite technique. 

For the second card I resorted to Autumn colours. I embossed the leaf three times in gold and then painted in with red and orange Distress ink. I fussy cut them and then added a little stencilling to the background in the same orange ink. I went in a with a heavier hand than I'd intended but it's done now. 

Finally I added a strip of design paper which was the perfect colour match. The pattern, however was not regular hence the change at the top of the card. I was a bit annoyed with the irregular pattern at first and wish I'd cut it slightly differently but there we are. 

I finished it off with a white on black greeting thinking it might work for a man's card. 

So there you have it. Two completely different cards for two different occasions. 

Thanks for visiting, enjoy your day. x

Die cutting fun

 Hello lovely crafters. 

Here are a couple of cards for one of the many challenges I follow every week and fail to join in with.

This week the challenge is die cutting. I broke out a new die and made two cards. There was a whole lot of fiddling about.

It would have been quicker and easier just to make one, but where's the fun in that?

It's not my usual kind of card but you have to try things.

I chose some rather nice textured shiny card which I have had for ages. One colour was a snippet and one was a new sheet. 

I had a fairly good idea of where I was going with it so I placed the die in the centre of each in turn and cut out the bauble. I carefully collected all the 'bits' in boxes. 

Then I cut out the greeting on each and saved the fallout again. 

Then it was simply a case of gluing it all down and swapping the colours over. 🤣🤣🤣

Actually it all went fairly smoothly. I lost one tiny piece from the middle of the P, was about the cut another and found it stuck to a cutting plate by static. 

Some red ribbon and strips of red card added some much needed colour. 

Oh yes, and instead of putting the tiny circles back into the intersections. I added some gems. 

I did remember to roll each card through my Big Shot after the gluing before the gems and ribbon. This is a tip from Auntie Di and smoothes everything down nice and flush. I don't think I've ever remembered to do that before! Great tip.

I'm also jumping over to Pixie's Snippets Playground with this as I've used snippets of red card, ribbon and the base colour of one card.  Di is celebrating the 400th Snippet post and must be responsible for prompting us to use up a huge snippet mountain. 

I'll also hop over to the NBUS challenge as this is a new die (and I've only had it a few weeks).

Thanks for visiting, enjoy your day! x