Adorable...Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge #14

Monday means SKETCH CHALLENGE TIME over at the Atlantic Hearts blog.  This week's design is particularly versatile and would work for many different-occasion cards.

There is always room for some flexibility with a sketch challenge, but this time I definitely wanted to take advantage of that large flower silhouette, by making a big fat flower, playing with some Noor! Design dies sent to me by my Dutch crafting friend, Corina.

Floral Flourishes Dies

I started out cutting the nested flower shapes from some double-sided CTMH paper. Then spritzed them with water, then played with a "smooshing" tool and my McGill foam mat.  After they had taken on the shape I was looking for, I set them aside to dry while I assembled the rest of the card.

The colour scheme comes from the current 10-Minute Craft Dash palette, 

but there was no way I was going to get this baby done in ten minutes...! But I did like the blue and coral colours paired with kraft paper.

The background is embossed with a large dots Cuttlebug folder; the focal mat is textured cardstock cut with a Nestabilities die.

Flourishes, cut with a Paper Smooches die, add some whimsy. The sentiment comes from Paper Smooches' "Good Gab" stamp set, heat-embossed onto a Simon Says Stamp tilted banner die. Notice the new bling from CTMH!

Lots of dimension, eh? Not exactly mail-able, but this one will be hand-delivered to hubby for his birthday this week.

So! I'm sending you off to the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge blog, to see the new sketch up close. Creations by the other DT members will be posted on Wednesday of this week, and you have until midnight, Sunday, August 4th to link up YOUR take on the sketch.

How will you interpret it?
Can't wait to see your creation!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

CTMH Supplies Used:

Cardstock: Kraft, White Daisy, Smoothie, Pacifica

Patterned Paper: Elemental (retired)

Ink: Versamark, Pacifica dye ink

White detail embossing powder

Bling: Base & Bling Floral accents Z1883; Bitty sparkles Z1263

Other Supplies:
Nestabilities: Labels #2 dies
Joy Craft/Noor! Design: Floral Flourishes dies
Paper Smooches: Flourishes #1 die set
Simon Says Stamp: Tilted Banners die set
Cuttlebug: embossing folder (large dots)
Paper Smooches: "Good Gab" stamp set.

Finish'er...10-minute Craft Dash #19

Time for another attempt at a personal best in the 10-minute Craft Dash!

The challenge colours this fortnight are:

Now here's the back-story to this card:  my husband and I are endeavoring to complete a half-marathon in every Canadian province and territory before we're 65 or our knees give out, whichever comes first. Four down, nine to go...

This past month, we ran the Blue Nose Marathon in the historic city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. What a beautiful place to tour, while dashing from one end to the other--down by the water-front, past the Citadel, up the slopes of Point Pleasant Park... The motto of this run is "Just finish'er" (add East Coast accent HERE).

Also, since January (NY Resolution month), the whole fan-damily has been hitting the gym and working with trainers. My son wants to survive boot-camp this summer and hubby and I are trying to stave off inevitable aging.

Anyway, back to the run. I knocked FOUR minutes off my time from last fall's half, all the while running up and down hill. So this card is to thank my trainer for helping to fix my posture, strengthen my legs and generally motivate me.

Here's the PRE picture of the crafty space. All supplies gathered and a pretty good idea of the card design in my head. Thanks to Lyndal Higgins for the tip of grouping all similar jobs at once (do all stamping, then all die-cutting, etc.).

Here's the card--I used CTMH ink, paper and card-stock in Cranberry, Crystal Blue and Buttercup. And the time???

Ta-dah!

Lost a few seconds with the hand-written font, but stamping or computer journalling would have left me way over-time.

Don't you love the PACE BUNNY? A Paper Smooches image--I've used him for a ton of cards this spring. He's commemorating my PB.

So make tracks (get it?) to the 10-Minute Craft Dash to check out some more winning cards with this colour palette. You have until next Saturday, June 15th, to join in the mad dash.

Happy crafting,

Caroline

The MAD 10-Min Craft Dash strikes again...

The urge to craft in RIDICULOUS time (Woot if you're a fan of "Space Balls") struck again. The color palette at the 10-minute craft dash this time was particularly appealing:

Soft shades of sand, sea-foam green and coral. I subbed in the CTMH colours Cashmere, Lagoon, Smoothie and Desert Sand. I also had some washi tape that was JUST the right colour.
Here's my desk before the timer started:

I have a bunch of flower shapes pre-cut with the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge, and I store them with the coordinating stamp set. So that was a bit of a time-saver. I also had my card base and piece of kraft paper pre-cut. A rainbow of Liquid Pearls had just been delivered to my door this week, and I knew I wanted to use some of those.

As you can see above, I JUST made it again this time. The kicker was applying all those dots and dashes of Liquid Pearls--you HAVE to take your time or it just all globs together.
Here's the final product:

The greeting comes from Paper Smooches Good Gab. A very versatile stamp set. They released a new one this month that is a scream! called Slang Gang. I hope to play with that one again, soon.

Anyway, off to link up to Paulina's blog.  Its quite inspiring to see what other crafters can accomplish in just 10 minutes!

Happy Crafting,
Caroline

Supplies Used:
CTMH inks in Desert Sand, Cashmere, Lagoon and Smoothie
Colonial White card stock and kraft paper
Washi tape
Girls Rock stamp set (CTMH C1538)
Good Gab (Paper Smooches)
Ranger Liquid Pearls in Rouge, Flamingo and Platinum Pearl

Smile!... for the 10-minute Craft Dash #16

Got brave again this week--time for another go at the 10-Minute Craft Dash!

Here's this week's challenge colours:

I was checking out the results at CAS(E) this Sketch! and saw THIS cute card by Donna Mikasa.

Colouring those cute little wood veneer camera shapes seemed like a great idea. Here's the ones I purchased from Simon Says Stamp:

I just swiped them across ink pads in the challenge colours, using GYPSY, COTTON CANDY and LAGOON. They picked up the colour perfectly.

The stamp set used for the film-strip and sentiment is from Close to My Heart, C1440, Take a Picture.

• Lesson learned from this attempt: be careful layering stamped images when you want to heat-emboss, and you have limited time to permit complete drying. Despite blotting the black images and using my embossing buddy, some of the embossing powder stuck to the filmstrip and I wasted precious seconds carefully sweeping it off with a fine tip paintbrush.

I was pleased with how this turned out, and even managed to stamp on the inside:

(isn't that "CLICK" the cutest thing? could go back and colour the letters with alcohol markers...)

AND, more importantly, did it all within the specified time, look:

Woo-HOO!

Final look at the finished card:

(love the addition of the PINK gems as flash-bulbs).

So, off to link up to the 10-Minute Craft Dash.

Just one problem.

Can you see it?  In my rush to get the darned thing done, I chose the WRONG SHADE OF GREEN.  It really should be more like THIS.

• Lesson Learned #2: Refer to crafting directions and specifics VERY CAREFULLY before starting the timer...

Oh well, there's always something!

Hope your crafting brings you satisfaction this week,

Most sincerely,

Caroline

A Glutton for Punishment... 10-Min Craft Dash #14

I tried out the "10-Minute Craft Dash" a couple of week' ago, with mixed results on my part (see HERE & HERE).

For some reason, that challenge just, well, ticks me off! You'd think creating a card within a 10 minute window, especially as you're allowed to assemble your materials ahead of time, would be easy. Not so much!

The challenge was calling to me again, this week:

I thought I'd CASE a card by Jennifer McGuire, from the Online Card Classes Pattern Play. So I didn't even have to do any real thinking! Here's how it began:

However, this lovely creation

took me 20:05 minutes!  I thought I had it all figured out, but last-minute design decisions (chuck the embossed card base, too busy; trim the new kraft base two times! twiddle with the spacing between the elements; ditch the felt flower, too big; substitute the second smaller piece of patterned paper for the original solid green...you get the picture!) made this WAYYYYY long.

So. Again, my pride (or something!?) was pricked and I had to give it a second try. I decided to make something that LOOKS complicated, but actually is easy. I bought this template from Paper Wishes a while back, and hadn't yet tried it out. A pinwheel card with double-sided paper was the new goal.

Here's what the template looks like:

It involves tracing and hand-cutting (time-consuming!), but I was banking on the dimensional design to give that wow-factor. I was able to use one of the strips I cut from the first card as the flower stem (not cheating, right? it was just sitting on my desk...), had a LITTLE trouble getting the brad through 10 layers of paper, die-cut the flag-leaf, stuck it all down and VOILA! Only 9:32!

Simple but cute!

I'm going to link this one up to the Moxie Fab Challenge: Spring Home Decor. You could actually take this off the card and stick it into a flower pot for some funky bring-on-spring greenery.

Whew. Enough for now...

Happy crafting,

Caroline

10-Minute Craft Dash--Take Two

I had to try again--I KNEW I could produce a card in less than 29 minutes...
Lessons learned from Take One:  minimize hand-cutting, or lining anything up, no fancy two-tone stamping, the flatter the better.

In case you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, see this POST.  I had a less-than-successful go at the 10-Minute Craft Dash:

This time I used two Paper Smooches sets:  We Connect and Leafy Greens, as well as two new PS dies: Ampersands and Love Word.
The card is essentially one-layer, except I popped up the Ampersand. I love that dye inks are kind of see-through--there are some neat effects where the colours over-lapped. I tried for some texture on the solid leaf-shapes, too, by swiping the stamps across the ink pad.
And this one came in at:

6:41--Woo-hoo!

Back to the 10-Minute Craft Dash to link this one up.

Happy weekend!
Caroline

Supplies Used:
Stamp sets:  We Connect, Leafy Greens--Paper Smooches
Dies: Ampersands, Love Word--Paper Smooches
Inks: Chocolate, Lagoon, Smoothie--Close to My Heart
Dotty for You patterned paper--CTMH
Chocolate and White Daisy card-stock--CTMH
Foam tape

Epic FAIL! 10-Minute Craft Dash & Heart2Heart

I haven't been playing with many challenges lately, and thought I would fix that. Paper Smooches is sponsoring the dare at a new-to-me blog, 10-Minute Craft Dash. I had just received some new PS stamps and dies in the mail this week; the stars seemed aligned...

The deal is, the colors posted above must be used (I chose CTMH versions,  Lagoon, Chocolate and Smoothie), you can pull out your supplies before you start, but you MUST finish your project within 10 minutes. I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to use Paper Smooches' Warm Hearts, so I got to work. Had a little trouble with the sentiment, which I wanted to do in two colours, covering over alternate parts of the stamp with Scotch tape... I glanced at my cell-phone (which I was using as a stop-watch) and just laughed. I was already at 20 minutes! So I finished the card and it took this long:

But its so cute!

So I am going to link it up to the Heart 2 Heart challenge blog this week, which features Clean and Simple cards. There is a fair bit of white space on this one, and limited color palette, so hopefully that counts. Also to the Keep It SImple challenge blog, whose focus this week is paper-piecing.

Hope your weekend includes some crafty time...
Caroline

Supplies Used:
Dotty for You paper pack; White Daisy and Chocolate card-stock; CTMH
Ink-pads in Chocolate, Lagoon and Smoothie, CTMH
Copic Marker W1
Chocolate marker, CTMH
Lil'Inker stitched rectangle mat die
Memory Box landscape border die
Foam tape
Warm Hearts stamp set, Paper Smooches