Animals and Die Cuts

Yippee found some time for crafting today and made four cards and two scrapbook layouts.

Layers of Color's latest challenge is to create a card that uses a stamp and a farmyard animal. Here is my sheep card. The flowers in the background are from the meadow flowers themeplate by Elusive Images (I love it). I created a sheep shape on card and used cotton wool to represent its fleece. The greeting is on vellum underneath the green ribbon.

Meanwhile Caardvarks has a die cuts challenge. A challenge indeed when you don't possess a die cutting gadget. However, I have plenty of die cuts in my stash from when I used to buy Let's Make Cards, so I created a wedding card adding some glitter glue and using a die but frame by Bam Pop along with die cut cake and glasses.

Layout published!

Thrilled to have a second layout published in Scrapbook Inspirations. This one was created earlier this year when my partner completed his 15th marathon with a best ever time, and got below the magic four hours. For his age the average is four and a half hours, so I think he's done really well to get faster.

I used Bam Pop frames, Rouge de Garance paper, a Doodlebug paper frill and rub-on letters by Making Memories.

His next marathon is in Chicago in October, and it's the last one in his bid to run the world's top 10 marathons. Hoorah for that! Still, at least I got a digital SLR camera out of the whole business because he got exasperated with me not managing to take the right photo at the right time. I'm seriously thinking of entering a marathon myself just so he can see how difficult it is to photograph your spouse when thousands of people are charging past!

Stripes, ads and brides

An unlikely trio, each the subject of a card-maker's challenge. 4 x 4 Friday's theme was vintage brides. I was thrilled about this as I never get the chance to do a wedding card, and I really love vintage at the moment.

I covered the card with K&Co paper, then a small strip of paper I had painted with Twinkling H2Os on top of some peel-offs. I removed the peel-offs and was pleased with the resist effect. I then stamped some Peakin' Posies (Hero Arts) in gold and embossed them, and painted them with Twinkling H2Os. I cut them out and raised them with foam. The vintage image is by Stampington and I added a remnant of lace.

Wednesday Stamper is looking for stripes. I stamped silver swirls onto pearlescent blue card and then matted some langusge paper (K&Co), Sweet Pea paper by Fancy Pants and created a dress using stripy paper and a peel-off. The frame is by Bam Pop and the glittery letters by Dovecraft.
Finally Arty Girlz challenge theme is Ad-Dicted. "I want you to browse the tv and magazines for advertisments and use them as inspiration. It might be the format, the colours, the products, the slogan - whatever floats your boat".

I found some old adverts for Wills's cigarettes in yesterday's paper. I laminated them to protect them and covered a card blank with BasicGrey paper. I painted some paper with green and blue Twinkling H2Os and again used the resist technique with a "classic cars" peel off. The brads are by K&Co.

Viva Las Vegas!

A great weekend with lots of scrapping and card making.
First, a recap on my visit to Las Vegas this week. Arrived last Saturday around 2pm. Checked in at the Venetian, amazed at the sheer size and scale of the place, and immediately got a cab to Majestic Memories, a scrapbooking store. I spent a happy hour wandering round and selecting papers and embellishments, although I was disappointed not to get a couple of things on my list (Cuttlebug to name but one). The store had a LOT of Jolee's type stickers for every possible scrapbooking theme, which is not really my thing. There were plenty of papers from many of the manufacturers, and most of the Love, Elsie range.

I bought some papers, cardstock, a large punch, some Autumn Leaves transparent borders, various chipboard alphabets, some fab EK Success chipboard glitter shapes, a Stickles in magenta and the latest issue of Creating Keepsakes.

Back at the hotel, and attending our sales & marketing conference, I had no other time for shopping as we started at 7am and went through to 8.30pm, although I was desperate to try to get to a Barnes & Noble to buy Somerset Memories. Thwarted in that ambition, sadly.

I did get out on Sunday morning for an hour to take some pictures. Las Vegas really has to be seen to be believed. It's surreal, particularly at night, when the place exudes neon glamour. In the layout there's a picture of the Venetian, St Mark's Square (which looks amazingly like the real thing, although it's all indoors, including the sky and the Grand Canal!) and Caesar's Palace. I bought the Las Vegas lettering from a US online store a while ago. The frame is by Bam Pop. Paper by Doodlebug.

The other layout, Here Come the Girls, records a fun party a couple of weeks ago. CK said that grey is the new black, so, fair enough I thought, and used grey cardstock plus K&Co paper and chipboard swirl and giant brads from Dovecraft. The letters are the indispensable Heidi rub-on by Making Memories.