Just Because Pet Sympathy for CI #215

Hello and welcome! It's the weekend and I'm grateful for finally starting to feel better after battling fevers for a few weeks now. Hopefully it will be onwards and upwards from here on.

Today, I'm playing along with the team at Colour Inkspiration Challenges  who have this very pretty Colour combo this week. I love Pool Party and Night of Navy but the other two colours I must admit I haven't looked at for a little while so this is a great opportunity to show them some love.

During the week, a friend shared how upset they and their kids are over having to say goodbye to their family dog at the vets. It was just a two week illness and came as such a shock. Saying goodbye to a dog where the kids can't remember life without them is such a tough time for kids and parents alike. So this card is for their family.

To create my card, I started with the four Challenge colours in card stock and cut these into 1cm and 1/2" strips. These were used to create a horizontal background pattern, on a piece of Basic White which was then added to a Basic White card base.

Next, there is a little spray of leaves using the beautiful Fern and Flora dies. I love the fabulous, deep textural details these dies produce and the little butterfly also has a pretty and detailed design and here is white embossed.

The white strip of paws sits just under another layer of navy card, white embossed with the sentiment. And the finishing touches are a swirl of white twine and a little sprinkling of silver sequins.

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope that you enjoy your weekend and the last week of Winter ahead.

You too can enter and see more details about this challenge at Colour Inkspiration Challenges. You have until Monday at 5pm to get your project in.

Card stock: Pool Party, Night of Navy, Flirty Flamingo, Calypso Coral, Basic White

Inks: Versamark

Stamps: Fern & Flora, Flowering Meadow

Accessories: Die Cutting Machine, Fern & Flora dies, Cutest Crew Dies, White EP, White Twine, Metallic Sequins Assortment.

'Til next time,

Jan

Happy Birthday JAI #790

Happy Friday and welcome!! It's three weeks since the Shortest Day and the mornings and evenings are slowly but surely getting lighter. I love this time of year! The garden starts to grow again and there are little signs that Spring will come despite the cold nights and often grey days.  It also makes taking project photos a little easier!

This week at Just Add Ink we have one of our regular Challenges for you: Just Add Dies, Stencils or Both. It currently has an open theme so you can choose whatever takes your fancy. This means the design team cards have very varied themes and colours too so I hope you can pop on over to Just Add Ink and are inspired to join us. You have til Wednesday 29 July to enter your project. 

This week I chose to make a birthday card for a lovely friend and my own dog's best Westie friend's owner. So my dog is a black Lab and of course her Westie is White...plus I know that her favourite colour is Fresh Freesia and/or Grapefruit Grove which pairs well with a soft green. And so that is how this card came to be!

As today's card is about the Dies and/or stencils, I've used LOTS of dies.

There's the wonderful Eyelet Blooms Die that forms the main background, Cutest Crew Dies, Spotlight on Nature Dies and the Attention Shoppers and Stitched Circle Dies (both retired). 

It is very special to be able to create a card for friends using images and colours that you know they will enjoy. That is the joy of handmade cards!

Thanks for popping by today! I hope that you can pop on over to Just Add Ink and join us for this Challenge. You can use whatever Dies and/or Stencils you have  and I look forward to seeing what you will create!

Card stock: Fresh Freesia, Basic White, Mint Macaron, Specialty Foil
Inks: Momento Tuxedo Black, Versamark 
Stamps:  Cutest Crew, Attention Shoppers

Accessories: Die Cutting Machine, Eyelit Blooms Die, Cutest Crew Dies, Spotlight On Nature Dies, Attention Shoppers Dies, Stitched Circle Dies, Subtle Enamel Dots

'Til next time,

Jan                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Best Day Kitties for JAI #788

Happy Friday and welcome! This weekend we will have the Shortest Day here in the Southern Hemisphere or the Winter Solstace on Sunday. It's a day that I really look forward to. As after this, the days start to get longer again despite being cooler and we can start to look out for all the colours of Spring. So whilst we might still need our woolly jumpers, it is all downhill to Spring and we also get more time to take daylight photos of our craft projects too!

And this week's Just Add Ink's Colour and Inspiration Image from Kerry continues with the warm, woolly thoughts with this cute little kitten curled up in it's knitted blanket or jumper. 
Just a reminder that for these challenges, you can choose either the image OR the Colours OR Both. But if you do choose to go with Colours only, you will need to use at least 3 of them.  And you have until Wednesday July 2 to enter your project in the challenge on the Just Add Ink blog.

For my card this week, I chose the Image Only option but I did end up using 2 of the colours as well. I hope that is not too confusing!
I was initially inspired by the cute kitten, the wool and the textures in the woven baskets and the jumper or blanket. I also needed a card for a cat lover who has a couple of colours of cats. So I coloured the image from Cutest Crew first and that is when I decided on using Coastal Cabana to emboss using the Crochet EF (retired) as it went better with the browns in the images than the challenge blues/ purples. Then the kitties and little butterflies all received a liberal coat of Wink of Stella.

Keeping all those little paws inside the in line die was a challenge in itself! Adding adhesive needed to be done carefully and I was probably more OTT with how I wanted this to line up and stay together than I was with most other elements on this card! 😅The sentiment is stamped and placed on dimensionals and so sits above both the paws and diagonal lines and it also provides a spot for the woolly bow to sit on.

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope that you can pop on over to Just Add Ink and see all the design team projects and we'd love to have you join us! 

Card stock: Basic White, Basic Grey, Smoky Slate, Coastal Cabana.

Inks: Momento Tuxedo Black, Coastal Cabana

Stamps: Cutest Crew

Accessories: Die Cutting Machine, Cutest Crew Dies, Crochet EF, Coastal Cabana Twine, Basic Rhinestones, Wink of Stella.

Til next time,

Jan

 

Happy Mothers Day for JAI #783

Happy Friday and welcome! Here in Melbourne we are definitely experiencing Autumnal conditions this week. The leaves are changing colours and falling. Yesterday we had a sunny, warm 25 degrees and windy morning and by 2pm we had thunderstorms and the temperature plumetted. More of the good old four seasons in one day that we are famous for to come for sure!

At Just Add Ink we have a Colour & Inspiration challenge for you suggested by Nikki. With these types of challenges you can either add at least 3 Colours of the ones suggested above, OR use the Inspiration photo OR both of these options. Our design team have, as usual, created a variety of projects to inspire you using all these different options. We'd love to have you join us!

For my card this week, I chose to use the colours - there is a pink, caramels, greys and whites to create a Mother's Day card for my friends at Guide Dogs Victoria here in Melbourne. 

I have been asked to facilitate a Mother's Day crafting morning for Guide Dogs clients and volunteers. This will be a card I will have on display and will create a slightly less detailed (and time consuming) version for the class. I was inspired by Andrea Sargent to create a puppy heart for this card.

This card features the wonderful Online Exclusive bundle, Cutest Crew for the pups, the Family Ties set for the sentiment and the long retired Happy Tails bundle with a coordinating punch for the "Mum". 

It was so fun to colour the potential Lab pups from the Crew set to look like the colours that Guide Dogs breed along with the much loved Happy Tails Lab "Mum." 

The pups are stamped and coloured with Copics and Blends, then die cut and fussy cut. 

The sentiment is stamped first on a piece of Basic White card using a stamp positioner to help align the three stamps and also because my hands shake these days so this makes it so much easier for me  to get that crisp and clear image that we all prefer. 

Next, the stamped Basic White card was embossed with the Crochet EF and the pups are arranged around the sentiment in a heart shape. A sparkly, shiny ribbon that was once a Saleabration option was cut lengthwise to make it thinner and used to form the bow and wrap around the card. 

Thanks for stopping by today! This challenge at Just Add Ink is open til 7pm on Wednesday 22 April so you have almost 2 weeks to make your project. I look forward to seeing whether you will choose colours  or the doughnuts to create with. I hope you are having a fabulous Autumn - or Spring - whichever Season it is in your part of the world.

Card stock: Crumb Cake, Pretty In Pink, Basic White

Inks: Momento Tuxedo Black, Blends and Copics

Stamps: Cutest Crew, Family Ties, Happy Tails

Accessories: Die cutting machine, Crochet EF, Cutest Crew dies, Dog Punch, Basic Rhinestones, Pink sparkly ribbon (retired).

'Til next time,

Jan

 

 

Cutest Puppies for JAI #782

Happy Friday everyone and welcome to the last Friday in March. In a week's time it will be the end of Daylight Savings here in Australia. For some it means another Summer done and dusted. For many of us crafters, it means a little less daylight to take photos of our projects and some adjustments for blog post and Social Media timings. 

At Just Add Ink this fortnight, the lovely Lou Kitzelman has given us this challenge. It's to Choose Two or More from: Twine, Ribbon, Sequins, Buttons, Brads or Rhinestones. So there is a lot of choice amongst all the embellishments many of us have in our crafting stash. The ladies in our design team have all created some fabulous projects to inspire you. So I hope that you can pop on over to the JAI blog and hopefully join us.

For my card, I chose Twine, Sequins and what the heck, I added some Rhinetones over the flower centres as well!!

The fabulous Cutest Crew stamp bundle is already a favourite for me and I have plans to use it for a future, special card making workshop I've been asked to run for an organisation close to my heart. More on that later...

But getting back to this card, the middle dog is the focus and so is popped up on dimensionals for added emphasis for the recipient as that's the dog special to them.  Normally, I would've popped the DSP up on dimensionals too but I knew this card was going to be posted overseas so I wanted to keep it a little flatter. 

When posting a card that has rhinestones and sequins etc on it,  it is a good idea to add a piece of loose card stock in the envelope over these as they can pierce an envelope when the weight of other mail is added onto them or through the postal system's machinery.

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope that you can pop on over to Just Add Ink and be inspired by the rest of the design team and other challenge entrants to join us. I look forward to seeing what you create for this challenge.

Card stock: Shaded Spruce, Basic White

DSP: Full of Life (retired)

Inks: Momento Tuxedo Black, Blends and Copics

Stamp: Cutest Crew

Accessories: Die cutting machine, Cutest Crew Dies, Nested Framelits (retired), Linen Thread, Rhinestones, Metallic Sequins

'Til next time,

Jan

Cutest Birdies for JAI #781

 

Happy Friday and welcome!! It's been a busy week in our little household and we are looking forward to the weekend and hopefully start some new craft projects. What do you have planned for your weekend? Maybe you might like to join in the challenge at Just Add Ink with us!

Kerry has suggested that we Just Add...Wings for our next Just Add Ink Challenge. There are so many creatures with wings that you might be able to think of and we would love to see them! Our design team have created lots of projects with all sorts of types of wings and we hope this inspires you  You have until Wednesday 25th March to enter your project at the Just Add Ink blog.

For my card this week I used a new Online Exlusive SU! bundle called The Cutest Crew. It features several cats. dogs and these cute BIRDS too. It is a very cute set for all pet lovers and I will use the dogs and cats in the set for future projects for sure!

But for this challenge, I chose to use a repeat stamping technique to create a Clean and Simple card.

A stampin Positioner was used to stamp the birds image three times down the page. Then it was stamped a 4th time and this image was coloured with Blends and Copics before using the coordinating dies to cut the birds out and mount on top of the third image using dimensionals. The green embossed line is another die in the bundle and helped give the birds something to stand on. And the greeting is also part of the set! How wonderful to have all of this in one cute bundle!! I can't wait to play with the other images in the set!

Thank you for popping by  today! I hope you enjoyed this CAS card and that you might be inspired to Just Add Wings to your latest project and enter our challenge. I look forward to seeing what you create!

Card stock: Shy Shamrock, Basic White

Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black, Shy Shamrock

Stamps: The Cutest Crew (Online Exclusive), 

Accessories: Die Cutting Machine, Cutest Crew Dies, White Twine, In colour Accents.

'Til next time,

Jan