Cuddly Critter Elephant

The challenge this fortnight at I ❤️Promarkers is

 'CAS'

and the sponsor for this challenge is Dr Digi's House of Stamps with a prize of 2 digital images of the winners choice.

CAS cards were something I always used to find very difficult but it seems these days nearly all the cards I make are CAS, I think it is because the images I am using are so fabulous that overly decorating the card seems to distract from them.  For this card I used the image Cuddly Critters Elephant by the awesome Dr. Digi and as it is a CAS challenge I only added the Birthday text for him to sit on.  Coloured with Promarkers - Salmon Pink, Baby Pink, Cool Grey 1 to 5.

I am entering this card into the following challenges : -

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Autumn Colours

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #93
Autumn Colours

This fortnights challenge 'Autumn Colours' has been chosen by Chriss.

I decided to go with the yellows and golds of Autumn more than the browns as I wanted to play with this Dandelion rubber stamp from Crafter's Companion which I have had for a while and not used.  The background was created using Distress Inks and then I added the sentiment in gold stamping and heat embossed it.  Next was the fun part, lots of stamping and masking, not something I am very good at but do so enjoy.  Once the images were all stamped I quickly coloured with Copics, finally I added mica flakes in bronze and gold just to bring a bit of brown into the creation.  The image layer was matted on black then orange and I covered my card base with some beautiful brown and orange wrinkly paper a very good friend gave me several years ago.  What a joy working with this paper as lots of very happy memories came flooding back.  We knew each other while our hubbies were working in Saudi Arabia, she alas, also retired now is back in the USA so we have not seen each other for 4 years.  One day I am sure we will meet up again, until then memories fill the gap :) 

• I am entering this card in the following challenges : -

Knitty Kitty Digis

The challenge this fortnight at I ❤️Promarkers is

 'Use an Animal'

and the sponsor for this challenge is Knitty Kitty Digis with a prize of Prize 3 single images to the winner (or one set).

A cute wee Hi card from me this fortnight using 'Hearnoevil, Seenoevil, Meownoevil' by our sponsor Knitty Kitty Designs.  I coloured the image with Promarkers and then hunted out some geli printed backgrounds I did during a manic moment to used up sheets of printer paper that were for the scrap - oh I do have fun saving things from the bin when I can lol.  I think that day I ended up doing about 40 A4 sheets, got very messy but had a ball :) :) A die cutting frame and letters along with a few gems completed the card,

I am entering this card in the following challenges : -

Foiled Rose

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #92
Tic Tac Toe

This fortnights challenge 'Tic Tac Toe' has been chosen by me.  I have always loved a Tic Tac Toe challenge, just enough to help focus the designing but lots of freedom too.  For this card I chose the right hand column - embossing, a stencil and blue.  

I heat foiled the sentiment and the rose which I always class as a form of embossing as an die is used and the text, once foiled, has the feel of debossing.  It is a bit of a shame as the scanning of the image is not showing the metallic effect of the foiling, hope you can imagine the shine though. Next I created the background by first blending in a pretty blue shade of Distress Ink followed by stencilling again with Distress Inks and using a Sheena Douglas stencil and a bit of stamping to give a distressed feel.  For the layering I grabbed a Promaker and quickly went around the edge of a white square I die cut with the darker blue and finally these two layers were placed on the card base which I had back with another blue. 


I am entering this card in the following challenges : =

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Hippo Badge

 At the start of lockdown hubby, knowing we would be in the house for many hours with be among 'The Sheltering' bought a new toy for me to play with, something I have wanted for a long long time but far beyond my budget lol - a laser cutter.  He had found a cheap way for me to add this magical piece of equipment to my crafting items - a K40.  The laser is a small one but will take just over A4 size and due to the cheap price needed a tremendous amount of his time and knowledge with electronics etc. to make it work as it should.  Not a machine for the faint hearted as it really does not work 'out of the box'.  Anyway after his tinkering for about 8 weeks, levelling the bed, strengthening this and that, creating new brackets etc. for the mirrors and a bunch of other things finally it was working like a dream and worth every penny.  So with a new toy I wanted then to try ways of using digis other than just for my card making and have lots of ideas lined up.  One of them is making some layered badges which is what I have done here.  The badge below is cut out of 3 layers of 1mm MDF and then painted with acrylic paint, the digi used is Cuddly Critters Hippo.

In order to have the laser cut the sections I converted the image to a line vector graphic using Illustrator. I then removed all the lines I did not need and changed the colour to red for the lines I wanted the laser to cut deep enough to leave a mark but not deep enough to cut through the MDF.  The black outline is the cutting line.

 

With the base layer sorted (I should have mentioned earlier that I copied the vector line image 3 times so I had a copy to work with for each layer), I then carried out the same process for the middle layer.

Finally I created the top layer.

With all three layer ready I imported the images into the software I used for the laser, in this case, Lightburn.  I then set the black line to be a full cut sorting out my speed and power %, enough to cut without setting fire to anything lol, and the red lines set to a faster speed and lower power so as to leave a mark but not cut through the MDF.

Once the sections were cut I then glued them together with wood glue and when dry painted with acrylic paint.  To finish off a badge clip was glued to the back.  A great fun project and quite a learning curve but worth it I think :) 

Hi There

The challenge this fortnight at I ❤️Promarkers is
 'No Patterned Papers'

and the sponsor for this challenge is Paper Nest Dolls with a prize of 3 images from the store.

The image from Paper Nest Dolls I have used for our challenge is Sun N Fun Emma, I fancied a flamingo card so just used the flamingo from the image twice.

This is what the full image I took the flamingo from looks like - 

I coloured the image with Promarkers - Salmon Pink, Cocktail Pink, Baby Pink, Lemon, Mustard and Black.  Next I stencilled the design onto the card as it needed a bit of texturing and as this is a 'no pattern paper' challenge stencilling was one way I could add the texture to the image layer.  Next I added some very pretty lace flowers which I have had for ages and totally forgotten they were in the box, a lovely find lol.  A very simple card but I do love how it turned out and perfect to send to somebody for no other reason than to say 'Hi'

 The Prize for the winner is 3 Digi Images

I am entering this card in the following challenges : -

Under the Weather

IKEsWORLD

Challenge 136
Under the Weather

Welcome back to the IKEsWORLD challenges :)  do pop on over to IKEsWORLD to join in the challenge, it is always so much fun and  Ike produces the most amazing stamps, everything from off the wall to cute and fluffy :) :) :)

Every now and then the brain goes blank on what to do lol - today was one of those days.  In the end I decided to use a couple of different IKEsART images to create this rainbow get well soon card.  The main image for the rainbows I used was from 'Cute Unicorn' - the second image I used was 'Merry go Round' where I removed the roundabout and just used a couple of the clouds.  The rainbow was used several times with each one being resized and rotated a bit in Photoshop and then were coloured digitally, next I added a rain overlay.  I then resized the clouds and added text to them, these too had just a tiny bit of digital outlining and shadowing added to give a dimensional appearance.  I then brought the prepared image into Illustrator, created the scalloped border and added some digital brads.  An all digital creation, quite handy to have on the computer to send to friends as a digital card or to add to a comment in FB :) :) 

I am entering this project into the following challenges:-