Bright Sunshiny Day

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is "Ode to Sunshine".  The British
coastline is dotted with little wooden huts painted in pastel colours that we call beach huts and I took those as my inspiration this week.  They were mostly constructed during Victorian times and families would use them as a base for their days on the beach, using them to change their clothes, brew a cup of tea and (more often than not) shelter in during a rain storm.

I started with the Darkroom Door Home Sweet Home stamp set, stamping, cutting and colouring a host of the small houses with Promarkers.  I had to experiment with the sun to get it just how I wanted it.  I started out by covering some card with tissue tape, cutting out the parts of the sun and then colouring them with Promarkers.  Unfortunately, the alcohol in the Promarker ink removed the design from the tissue tape, so back to square one.  Second time, I coloured the card with Promarkers, covered it with tissue tape (the colour shows through the tape) and then cut out the parts of the sun.  Success! :)

For the sky, I heavily inked my manilla tag with Salty Ocean distress ink and then added detail with the dotty stamp from the Psychedelic Grunge stamp set.  I spritzed it with water and then stamped it on the tag, leaving it to sit for a second before dabbing off the water with kitchen paper and drying with a heat gun.  All that was left to do was to assemble it all together and it was a welcome glimpse of sunshine on what was (at the time) a grey and chilly day!  (How we'd love one of those in the UK right now, we're melting!).

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)


Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Freebie: Ribbon Storage

This week's freebie is my handy ribbon storage tag.  As I said on an earlier post:

"The tag is designed in a fold-in-half style. This means that if you're using thinner cardstock for them, you can fold them in half for extra strength. If you're using strong cardstock, just snip them in half with scissors for twice as many tags!

Thread your ribbons onto the tags and store them on a large book ring. No more ribbon tangle nightmares! If you store your ribbon in a box with the ends of your ribbon poking out through holes, this means an end to "mystery ribbon" - where you pull out a piece of ribbon only to see that there's not enough for the project you're working on, so you open up the box and try to thread the ribbon back through the hole again (until it happens the next time!)"

As ever, please don't pass these files around.  They will be permanently free here so please direct others to come here to download them.  Notice the new tab at the top of this page?  "Cutting Files" will take you to the full list of files which will grow by 1 set each week.

The files are available as SVG and DXF, which can be used with most digital cutters.

I'm baaack!

After 2 weeks in sunny (and rainy!) Orlando, I'm finally back home again.  I know, I know, thanks to the miracle of pre-scheduled posts you didn't even know I'd gone :)  I never announce trips away on here, burglars can read blogs too!

Sadly, although I made it home in one piece, my luggage hasn't!  My suitcase, stuffed with bargain crafty purchases, decided to go on a holiday of it's own :(  After a day of sweating, I have just heard from the airline that they have found it and it will be delivered to my home soon.  Phew!

I did Disney for the first time this trip - although I have holidayed in Orlando several times I have always stuck to Universal, Busch Gardens and Seaworld in the past.  It was a lot of fun, I'd definitely go again, though Universal Islands of Adventure is still my favourite, the new Harry Potter ride is amazing!

I hope you've all kept well while I've been away, nice to see you again! :)

Happy Birthday Simon Says Stamp and Show!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is "Celebrate".  This is Simon Says Stamp and Show's 3rd anniversary, so that's what I decided to celebrate in my card.  3 years!  Where does the time go?  After 3 years on this team I'm still excited by each new challenge, so someone, somewhere is doing something right! :)

While we're on the subject of Simon Says Stamp and Show, we're having a change of name!  We are now known as the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.  Still the same same vintage-themed goodness, just with a slightly different name and a different look!

Ok, back to this week's project!  I started out by inking my base card with Distress inks in tones of red and orange.  I spritzed the 3 stamp with water and stamped it in several places (wiping it to remove ink and respritzing it between impressions).  I used a black pen to highlight the edges.

The stars were stamped onto the card and then stamped again separately and coloured.  I cut them out and applied them to the card, lining them up with the images I'd stamped earlier.

The fingers were stamped and coloured with Promarkers then applied to the card.  I used my GelliArts printing plate to create a couple of prints and took strips from them for the left and right edges.  I think that's about it, not to complicated technically but hopefully visually interesting! :)

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!