It's that time when I get to combine the sketch challenge from CAS(E) This Sketch with the inspiration at Fusion Card Challenge.  The groovy VW van was a bit of a challenge for me so I chose to use some of the colors in the photo instead.



I chose to emboss a flourish a-la the Just Us Girls challenge for my backgroud, but that was a challenge in itself.  I used a flourish die to make my own stencil out of cardstock.  But the cardstock proved too flimsy for this intricate die because when I spread the embossing paste over it a whole lot seeped underneath my "stencil" creating a messy blob.  So I created a new stencil out of the material that commercial stencils are made...but had the same result.  So I cleaned the messy parts up as best I could and hid the rest under my colorful letters.

Speaking of those colorful letters, that's my nod to the colorful VW van.  I didn't have anything in my stash that even remotely resembled a groovy van from the 1960's so I used some of the colors instead on my die cut sentiment


Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you can check out CA(E) This Sketch and Fusion for some inspiration and play along with us!

Supplies
Paper:  Solar White (Neenah): Pacific Point, Daffodil Delight, Call Me Clover, Real Red (Stampin' Up!); Raspberry (Avery Elle)
Accessories:  Medium Fancy Flourish die, Little Letters die (My Favorite Things); white embossing paste (Dreamweaver)

I wasn't able to get my colourQ post up on time for the new challenge on Tuesday so I thought I'd wait and combine those colors with the latest sketch challenge at CAS(E) This Sketch.



This is the second week in a row that I made a black on black card for CAS(E) This Sketch.  I'm normally a white card-base kind of girl but I really like how the different textures show up when you have an all black card.  This week I took those horizontal stripes and turned them into horizontal bricks.  Then following the colourQ challenge I added a big sentiment die cut in bright yellow and a butterfly stamped in the same colors with a vellum overlay.  Unfortunately, my butterfly is a tad over-exposed so it looks somewhat like an indistinct blob, but you get the idea (I hope)!

These are two great challenges and I hope you have a chance to play along with them this week!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies
Stamps:  Papillon Potpourri (SU)
Paper:  Black (Simon Says Stamp); Daffodil Delight, Whisper White, Vellum (SU)
Ink:  Daffodil Delight (SU)
Accessories:  Smile Word die (Lil' Inker Designs); Mini Bricks stencil (The Crafters Workshop); Basic Pearls (SU); black embossing paste (Wendy Vecchi); 

Are you ready for an incredible milestone?  Well, this week at colourQ we are celebrating our 300th color palette!  Can you believe it?  It all started here on October 4, 2009.  And here we are now nearly six years later!

Our colors this week are inspired by these ice cream cups!  Love the fun, summertime colors of these!  And here's my card:



It took me forever to make this card.  I kept changing my mind about what kind of flowers I wanted on the front.  I actually stamped and fussy cut two different kinds of flowers before I settled on this one.  Nothing looked right and then I remembered these images from Papertrey Ink.  They are a bit whimsical and went nicely with that die cut sentiment.  The sketch from Happy Little Stampers gave me my layout.


Our amazing colourQ design team has got some beautiful cards for you to see!  Come celebrate 300 color palettes with us, won you?   Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:  Stamps:  Off the Grid (SU); Funky Florals (Papertrey Ink)
Paper:  White (Spectrum Noir); Coastal Cabana, Whisper White (SU)
Ink:  Cameo Coral, Ruby Red (SU); Onyx Black (Versafine)
Accessories:  smile die (Taylored Expressions); enamel dots (My Mind's Eye)

This week the challenge at The Paper Players was to make a project with a flower.  How could I possibly resist this?  I'm all about flowers!  I hardly ever make anything without a flower!


I used the awesome MOJO sketch and broke open a couple of new things for this one.  I used the Twitterpated designer paper along with a Twitterpated button to highlight the center of my flower.  The flower, leaf, label and sentiment are from Verve.  And the embossed background is from a PTI impression plate that my nephew got me for Christmas!


I really like this one despite the fact that I made a mess of the bow.  I scrunched up the totally awesome seam binding ribbon which usually translates to a fool-proof bow (because any messiness looks intentional), but it still looks awful.   Hopefully whoever gets this card will think that I meant it to look that way!

Thanks for stopping by!

To my eye, the color challenge this week at ColourQ just screamed for a CAS card.  And since the ladies at Less is More are all about CAS, I checked out their challenge this week.  They had a pretty interesting one to make a card with just One Word.



The ColourQ challenge invited us to add one color of our own choosing to a combination of black and white.  I just love the adding a bright color to elements of black so I chose Melon Mambo for my card.  I inked up a Verve flower and stamped it off the edge of the cardstock.  (I can't take credit for this idea, because I went to my "binder of sketches" and found the FTL 54 sketch, which I thought was pretty cool).

To make the square outline I lightly drew a square with a pencil (using a piece of cardstock as a template).  Then once I stamped the flower and the sentiment, I went over the pencil marks with a Basic Black marker (using a ruler to keep the lines true).

I actually made this as an A2 card first but decided there was too much white space, so I made this version which is 4 1/4-inches square.  It's much more proportional to the flower and sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by!