Have I Beaten Anne?

The very talented and lovely Anne has each week produced a stunning project for the Play Date Cafe challenges in record time and her entry is always in before mine. However, today I'm hoping I can post my entry before she does and turn the tide haha.

The colours for this weeks challenge are beautiful and subtle. Soft muted tones of brown, yellow and green. They remind me of choc mint ice cream and toffee.

So with my clean and simple eye, I die cut three butterflies and embossed each with a different cuttlebug design. I mounted onto cream card, then attached a punched border (Martha Stewart loops) in the coffee colour. To hide the join, I attached a dark brown ribbon. All these were matted onto the green card and finally onto the cream coloured card itself.

Thank you to everyone who has left kind comments on here in the last few weeks. I read them all and they really perk me up. I do go to each and everyone's blog and look at your beautiful creations. In fact, I spend so much time looking and drooling over your blogs, I don't leave myself a lot of time to comment back. My sincere apologies and when I find a spare afternoon, I hope I can reply in kind. In the meantime, please just know how grateful I am to all who've taken the time to comment. Hugs to you all.

Playing Catch Up

Thank goodness for creativity! It's meditational, fun and calming. It allows the mind to focus. It's been just the tonic. Still haven't gotten around to clearing up my art room though this weekend. Well there's always the next.

So when I have been playing in my messy room, it's been making crafts for challenges. Play Date Cafe again! I love the colours that have come up so far. This time around was black, red and white. My first thought was, uh! not very original. But thinking on, the colours were influenced by a teenager and when I was that very same age, I decorated my bedroom in black, white and red. So, in fact they were an appropriate if not classic scheme. And hey, who needs originality all the time? Sometimes, going back to the classics and playing with them again is a good exercise.

So anyhow, I made not one, but two cards for this challenge. I decided to play at keeping the black dominant and switching around to white. Okay I could have tried a third with red dominating but shucks, I'm lazy haha. I also tried for minimalism too. Playing around with how basic I could get away with and still have a good looking card. The downside is that this discipline doesn't exactly use up a lot of stash. My scraps pile has hardly had a dent made in it this week.

Licking those challenges

Saturday, Nick & I saw the most fascinating sculptures at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It was the last gorgeous day of the year and we made the most of it. I'll be making a LO of our day out so will post the photos then. All I'll say for now is if it's within reach, you must make a trip out there. You won't be disappointed.

Sunday was a wet, windy and miserable day. Perfect for hibernation in my craft room. Decided to use the opportunity to lick some of the challenges that have come my way whilst blog hopping this week. This is Mum incorporates the Twisted Sketch and Colour Throwdown challenges. When I think of home, is a UKScrappers challenge for the cybercrop. And this time around the overall theme is Wizard of Oz. I know, perfect for friends of Dorothy. In the allocation of teams, I find myself a Tin Man. We have been asked to create a LO on what makes us think of home. Well, for me, it's a big snuggly sofa to layabout on. Give me a duvet and a sofa and I could ask for no more.

The text on the other LO is blurred - it's not rude (like you may have come to expect from me haha). It's just that it's cathartic journaling about recent events. The colours all work well together and are fortunately colour's I associate with Mum.

Better go off and design that sculpture LO now hadn't I? haha.

Birthday Card for Alison

My lovely friend Alison has a spooky birthday but does she tire of all the Halloween references? Absolutely not! She has a wonderful spirit always planning, looking ofr and joining in and creating fun and adventure. There isn't much of an age gap between us but boy she makes me feel old with her youthful energy haha (then again a fusty octgenarian would make me look old!).

And this is the card I made for her special day - all fresh light greens, yellows and blues. Hope you had a fab day hun :)

How on earth did I get so soppy

I've seen this style of two-fold card several times and fancied the challenge of making one myself. As experience has taught me, making these card variations is relatively simple. It's the decorating of them that can sometimes prove to be the stumbling block. It took mere minutes to make the card base itself with its cut out window. Then another hour faffing around trying to put it together with various design interpretations. I added something, then took it away. I added something else, then took it away. And so on and so forth. Finally I ended up with a soppy card. How on earth did I let that happen???? Haha.

Play Date Challenge 2

I enjoyed last week's Play Date Cafe Challenge and was delighted by some of the new blogs it directed me to. So, I've decided to play again. Three colours this time, all autumnal hues and shades that I like. It's an analogous palette plus a neutral so they harmonise together. I've opted for another card as these are the quickest to make. And look, yes I know, another flower! Cuttlebugged to within an inch of its life but a flower nonetheless. I included a ribbon and debated about whether it needed a bow but I've been adding those a fair bit recently. I need to break out of it and try something different. So for this card its left as it is. Less is more as they say, especially if you want to have more visual impact (mind I can't help but feel it looks like a garter belt. Trust me to give it a kinky undertone. Very DH Lawrence - flowers and garters haha)

Finally getting it out & playing with it

I've had a pack of grunge paper sitting in my craft room almost since the moment it hit these shores and have I done anything with it? Have I eckers like. So I did a little search on the Internet and found some tutorials on making flowers with it. It's been a while since my hands were covered in ink and paint. Even my craft sheet came out once I blew the dust off it.

The rose I haven't done anything with yet, I'll save it for any future project which requires such an adornment. The flatter flower was more suitable to go on a quick project such as a card. And as I haven't joined in with the Monday Mojo challenge, I went and had a look at their blog & decided my embellishment could be incorporated perfectly. I chose lighter colours such as yellow and pale orange so that the flower would stand out in contrast, keeping it as the focal point.

Yes the flowers were fun to make, yes the craft room looks like a bomb hit it (& so do I come to think of it) but will I find them addictive and carry on making them? Difficult to say. At the moment, I'm thinking no but I always find myself eating my words haha. Time, as they say, will tell. Now I wonder what else I can make with grunge paper?