Hey,

Welcome to the penultimate Fusion Card Challenge of 2021! 

How quickly has this year whipped by?!

This time we have a fun 'Bauble Triangle' theme for you. As always both the sketch and the inspiration image are awesome.

I went back to my normal ways for this card and fused both the sketch and the inspiration image.

I used the colours and the Christmas theme from the image as inspiration for my card. 

I had a different idea in mind, I was actually going to put the circles over the top of the grey and white panels, but I didn't love that! So I got out a fun die by Simon Says Stamp that cuts 3 circles in a row and that created the look I had envisioned!

I am a big fan of the Flora & Fauna sets that feature a VW Camper Van, they are always so quirky! And this one features various things for you to dress up your van with! I went with Antlers (of course). I mixed in the snowflake and the sentiment banner and I opted to keep them all black & white, as I think the red base that is showing through the circles makes them pop.

I used - Flora & Fauna 'Driving to the Holidays', Pink Fresh Studio 'December Days',  A-Muse Studio 'Ugly & Bright', Simon Says Stamp 'Tri-Circle' die and the papers are all from my stash.

Make sure you check out all the rest of the inspiration by the DT over at the Fusion challenge blog, and play along with your own creation! When playing along you may use the sketch OR the photo to inspire your makes. OR, if you are feeling adventurous, you can fuse them together (see what I did there!).

Can't wait to see your makes. 

Challenge ends on November 23.

Cx

Hey,

Welcome to another awesome Retro Rubber challenge.

Hey,

Welcome to another fun Retro Rubber challenge.

This time we have another Tic Tac Toe board by our very own Jan.

I chose the middle horizontal line - Cake-Heat Embossing-Flowers.

 

 

Hey,

Happy Friday!

It's been a bit less brutal at work this week, which is great and means the weekend will be way more fun.

The card I made today uses one of my fave Waffle Flower sets 'Books and Coffee', I fell in love with the Bear and the Birdie holding a teacup the first time I saw it!

This time I did a fun thing and added the 'headband' from the Flora & Fauna 'Love Bug Dress Up' set (another fave and retired). It's the kind of silly thing I would wear on my birthday (yes, I am 47 going on 4..)

I kept the whole card very simple, as I wanted to add a Lawn Fawn, scalloped, and stitched frame, so I didn't want the actual imagery to be too fussy.

I popped the frame up using foam tape and mounted the whole thing onto a 4bar kraft card base - yes he is pretty small only 3.5x4inches.

Have a great weekend, hope you are doing fun things.

Cx

Hey,

Well I think the team at CASology have a camera on my desk :)

I went to check the prompt for the current challenge and it just happened to be -


Both sets I used on my card were already on my desk! WEIRD!

I decided to add a bit of interest to my CAS card, by die-cutting the largest of the Lawn Fawn scalloped, stitched, rectangle window dies. I love these dies, they always add a bit of interest/drama to a card.

Before I added the frame to my card, I added a small amount of Twisted Citron distress ink to the x4 edges of my card. Then I stamped the awesome plant by Flora & Fauna from their 'mini plant lady' set and added the sentiment from the Waffle Flower 'Pretty Foliage' set.

Add the frame, a teeny bit of Sakura glitter gel pen and voila! easy peasy completed card.

I love the little glow you get from the addition of the distress ink, for me it really makes the card.

Cx

Hey,

Happy Monday..

Flora & Fauna had a sale last month, meaning I got a few things that I have been longing for!

Including 'Love Bug Dress Up'.. so many ideas in my head for this set. It's now retired, so here is a pic of it -


I started with this fun card!

I used a piece of smooshed watercolour card that I had already (I smoosh giant panels and cut them down to use as I need them).

I stamped everything directly onto the panel and coloured the Unicorn part with Sakura Starburst glitter gel pens.

The sentiment came out well. I used Unicorn Kisses from the F&F set and added a Tim Holtz sticker and Birthday Wishes by Avery Elle.

Easy, quick, and fun.

Cx

Have a great weekend.

Cx

Hey,

Happy Friday!

I am heading to London today for 10 days, for work mainly, but I will get to hang with my family and friends too.

My teammate from Retro Rubber - LeAnne is on the DT for Tic Tac Toe Challenge and I was so happy to discover that there is a dedicated TTT challenge, that I am diving straight in.

Here's the current board -

I chose the top row: Flower-Die Cut-Yellow.

I love the Llama Garden set by Flora & Fauna and I wanted to make a fun card for a work colleague's birthday, so I stamped, coloured and die-cut all the elements from the set.

As the elements are SUPER busy, I thought a simple background would be good, so I die-cut an MFT Stitched Arch die in white and stenciled the tulips on to it. I used a different technique for my stenciling here, as I taped down the stencil and used Copics to colour the tops and bottoms.

I assembled it all onto a yellow card blank and finished it off with a die-cut Happy Birthday (dies by Simon Says Stamp).

I love how it came out, it's so fussy and different for me - which is always nice. It's now waiting on my desk to be handed over to my colleague.

Have a great weekend, see you in London next week.

Cx

Hey,

So last weekend as it was a long weekend I decided to CASE a card I have had on my Pinterest board for a while.

I knew that it wouldn't be a quick make, so needed to save it for a time when I had oodles of desk playtime.

This is the card I CASEd - by Rejoicing Crafts.

I loved the colour combos and just the fun and unusual nature of the card.
Yoosun used all Flora & Fauna stamps to create her card, but I didn't have all of those, so I dug out some Neat & Tangled and MFT stamp sets to supplement the F&F that I did have. Also Yoosun stamped all her flowers and leaves first and then added the watercolour aspect and I did it the other way around.

Here are photos of the first two steps -


As you can see the watercoloured panels don't really look that great, then add flowers and leaves and wow! it really comes to life.

I used a F&F car die and die-cut x2 cards out of white watercolour paper and then watercoloured them in red and blue to coordinate with the backgrounds better. I stamped and die-cut the Llama's from F&F's 'Llama Garden' set and affixed them to the cars before I popped them up on foam tape and added them to my card.

The sentiment is also by F&F and from their 'Birthday' set.

I am so, so happy with these cards, they came out so well and it was fun to CASE a card using a mix of things I already have!

I get so hooked on the beautiful cards that design teams make to help sell products, I always want to rush out and buy the products, but this year I am trying to mimic what I see, using what I have.

It's working out really well and this makes it easier for me to not be tempted to open my wallet!

Cx

p.s Other stamp sets I used were - Neat & Tangled's Scandinavian Prints (no longer available), MFT's Pretty Posies (available here) and My Cute Stamps 'Spunky Nature'(no longer available)

Hey,

Happy New Year from London!

Welcome to a brand new decade!

Hope you had a great NYE - I spent mine with my Parents and it was a fun day / night.

Today I am showing you the cards I made on Boxing Day - I had a bumper 10hr session at my desk and it was wonderful to just play and not have Christmas things to make.

I had an offcut of a smooshed piece of paper on my desk and it sparked an idea. I used the 'Flamingo Sunshine' stamp by Flora & Fauna - they have been my fave new to me stamp company of 2019..

I stamped the Flamingo onto the smooshed background and coloured the details in the few glitter gel pens I had - this was a new to me thing and I LOVE how much sparkle you get - cue me the next day in Blick with Cheiron buying more of them (Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust gel pens). I liked it so much, that smooshed x2 additional pieces of watercolour paper and cut x5 more squares from them so I could create x6 cards.

I die-cut the frame from patterned grey papers - the frame is by MFT stamps. I thought they looked a bit flat on the white cards, so I added a black piece of paper to make them pop.

I decided the sentiment's should be black and I used dies by Lawn Fawn, Taylored Expressions and Heffy Doodle. I was planning on them all being thank yous, but I needed a couple of birthday cards so switched it up a bit.

Love how they came out, I hope the recipients will too.

Cx

Hey,

Happy Friday to you.

Today is a big day for Hubby and I, we are going to our Green Card interview - EEK!! So nervous and excited...

A while ago we did a class at The Inkpad with Cheiron and she used a bunch of Flora & Fauna products.

I loved the 'Mini Toucan' set and bought it, but I hadn't had a chance to use it.

Then when we did the not quite Florida playdate Cheiron made a card using it and I loved it, so I CASE'd it and added some Reverse Confetti sentiments.

Super simple, but very elegant, I love how pretty and bright the Toucan is and I wouldn't have thought to add white gel pen for feathers!

Always learning new stuff from Cheiron.

Cx

Hey,

So Christmas card making is in FULL swing in my house..

I really don't love making Christmas cards and I try and keep them simple, bar the initial ones to get my creative Christmas card mojo going!

Last weekend I spent oodles of time at my desk making Christmas cards.

First up is a fun card that I saw by Flora & Fauna, so I bought the set and had a little CASE.

Photo Credit: Ellen Hutson

It looked super easy and it was!

When I am making Christmas cards, I like to do as much of the prep as I can, before the fun colouring part. So I die-cut all the white panels and stamped the sled and the dog onto all x8 panels.

Then I created a mask for the doggie and added the dots and the sentiments to each panel. Here is a work in progress shot for you..

The Wendy Vecchi 'Stay-tion' makes things so easy...

One of the best bits about this card for me, was the fact that the spotty stamp is from a Simon Says Stamp ice-cream set from 2014 - love it when I get to stretch my stamps like that.

After the prep, I coloured them all in, added the little hand-drawn 'string' to join the sled and the dog and affixed them to my card blanks - easy peasy.

Love a easy peasy Christmas card..

Cx

Hey,

As you know I didn't make it to Florida over Labor Day weekend.

But I did manage to host a not quite Florida playdate at my house on the Sunday.

This meant that we could use the kits we had pre-made.

Basically the plan was that each of us (x5 of us, including Ava in Florida) would kit x2 cards (or projects) for the others to make.

The photo above shows the x8 cards/projects we made on Sunday.

I'll walk you through them starting top left with my cards :)

I was the most efficient of the group and I had sent my kits to Florida already..so I had to make a couple of quick cards for the girls to make on Sunday! I decided to put my Pinterest board 'Look What I Made' to use. And it came up good, with x2 straightforward cards for the girls.

I used the Avery Elle 'Sea-Prise' set for my pufferfish card, the girls were horrified when they realised it was one candle that had to be stamped multiple times, so there were a lot of variations on this one.
The Unicorn card is by Pink Fresh Studio and uses all the stamps and dies from their 'Unicorn Dreams' set.

Moving clockwise to top right, these cards were Cheiron's kits. I loved her Toucan card - using Flora & Fauna stamps so much that I CASEd it (coming soon).
The floral card, used Altenew stamps and was fun to watercolour and we got to use Altenew markers, which are amazing and I do want!

Bottom right, kits by Tiff. She challenged us a bit, by getting us to make a fun envelope. Sadly I dropped the Panda stamp after stamping him, so I have a big black line across him, but hey as I always say, it's handmade, you gotta expect a little oopsie here and there. The envelope board was by We R Memory Keepers, stamps and stencils by Simon Says Stamp.
The Fox card used all the techniques and looks AMAZING!! Background stamp is by Simon Says Stamp, Fox and sentiment stamps by Rabbit Hole Designs. I love RHD stamps, the caffeinated range is hilarious.

Finally bottom left, kits by Lisette. The first card with the girl was fun, I have never ever stamped in a lighter ink and then coloured over it, very clever and way out of my comfort zone. The girl is by Picket Fence Studios, not sure who the dots are by. I love this card and the snarky stickers really worked well here. The Mermaid card uses the super cute Mama Elephant Mermaids and I loved adding the chunky glitter 'sea'.

The best bit about making all these things, were all the techniques we used - masking, heat embossing, watercolouring, blending, colour plucking. It was a masterclass in all the things that we have learnt over the years (mainly from our resident teacher Cheiron).

A fun playdate was had by all and we all left with gifts and 7 cards/1 envelope.
It wasn't quite Florida but it certainly made up for it.

Cx