If your balloon flies away...

I'm not anywhere near 100% happy with this card - think I needed a little something less or more - I'm not sure!

The mouse, tufts of grass and balloon are from a set of stamps by Jane Nesterenko. I stamped these directly on to the shaded blue card. The grass and small areas were painted directly on to the card but the mouse was stamped and painted on white card and then attached to the picture.

The small butterfly is a Studio G stamp.

The sentiment reads 'If your balloon flies away...' and was computered generated. The inside of the card reads 'I'll catch it for you'. My intentions were to make a card suitable to send to a friend needing a bit of support.

The card is also for this week's Tanda Teaser, which themed 'Up in the air'.

Cold Winter Winds...

After all those Spring colours it seems a shame to go back to that cold winter feeling, but just like the weather forecast that is exactly what is happening at the Stamp Something Challenge where we were asked to 'create a sample that reminds you of the cold, winter winds that will soon be leaving us!!'

I sincerely hope they will soon be leaving us as the few days of sunshine we have had recently just make everyone feel so much better.

Anyway for my card I decided to use my trees stamp by Art Impressions stamped in black versefine and then embellished with snow and frost (Sakura White Glaze pen with added fine glitter).

The 'Winter' embossing was created using a Sizzix Simple Impressions folder. Everything is matted on to silver to give a 'cold' feel to the card. The white organza ribbon is also layed over silver ribbon to echo this effect.

Only one challenge covered by this card!!! ~That's blown my week off!!!

Messy Rabbit Easter Card...

Well I don't know whether it was the Joanna Sheen special programme last Sunday with all the new Messy Rabbit products or it was thinking about the Pink Elephant Easter Blog Hop, but something made me go all Eastery!!!

I really enjoyed making this card using the sketch at the Sketch and Stash Challenge blog. Due to my main image being quite large I decided to use the sketch to create a large size (8" x 8" ) card. In this challenge the idea is that you use the sketch and a new craft item - my new items are the cute little basket which is from the Whiff of Joy Spring stamp set and the lovely yellow patterned paper by Kanban.

I particularly chose these papers to fit in with the inspirational photo on the Cupcake Challenge this week where we were given a photo of a vase of yellow flowers and asked to create something using that as our inspiration.

One of my aims this year is to do something for the complete alphabet at the ABC challenge site. Well as their challenge is to make a card for a child I think the inclusion of Messy Rabbit (although he's not just for children - he's for big kids like me too!) makes this card fit the bill.

Cute Card Thursday have the theme of Animal Magic and I think Messy is definitely magic. I just love that look on his face saying 'Hmmm are all these eggs for me? I'd actually rather have carrots!'

Another Animal challenge is at Charisma Cards where you can feature any animal including dinosaurs.

On the Joanna Sheen forum we have a monthly challenge and this month the theme is handmade paper flowers.

My flowers are made using my Wizard flower die and then to give them texture I use the good old Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder and then fastened the two flowers together using a white brad.

At No Time To Stamp they are fed up of the cold and asked crafters to enter cards that would remind them that Spring was on the way. To me yellow flowers are so evocative of Spring so I'm pretty sure my card will help with their 'cabin fever'.

At the Cuttlebug Spot Nilda asks everyone to put bows on their creations - my ribbon is threaded through the lattice border made using a Cuttlebug border die and finished with bow.

Wow eight challenges in one card - mind you it is a big card - think that puts me right up there in the record book with Ann Whitfield! Hmmmmmmm would it be cheating to enter it for the Pink Elephant challenge of using a die cut and ribbon? I think it might be so I'll stick at eight and take the rest of the week off!!!