Laura Rumble - Crafter

 It's a sketchy Tuesday at CC&S ... What a fabulous starting point for a card.  I've gone the patterned paper die cuts route but I had so many other ideas for this one too. The dies are from Simon Says Stamp and the papers are from Honeybee Stamps.   There's not a lot more to say really... verstaile dies that I keep coming back to and uber-cute papers that I hoard. Hope to see your version linked up at CC&S!

 I don't know about you but playing with colour and shape is incredibly therapeutic for me. These pieces are cut with a few geometric die sets from Simon Says Stamp, all on scraps of brightly coloured cardstock. I have some circular, some triangular and some square pieces but the key is that they are all the same scale.  It's the scale/size of the pieces that makes them fit together so nicely into an imaginary 3x3 grid.  Some pieces are double stacked and triple stacked to give a little more interest to what is a very simple concept of pieceing shapes together. I assembled my piece leaving lots of white space to give a light uncluttered feel to the design.  I felt a narrow black border was needed to set a boundary between the collage and the card base which is also white.

 Happy Tuesday!  It's time for a new colour swatch at CC&S ... It's a beautiful colour palette and one I tend to be drawn to often as a lover of all things green and being partial to a bit of peach, specifically Nectar from C9.   I've added a touch of stencilling in the background and layered up three butterflies on top.  A simple stamped sentiment (W Plus 9) underneath finishes it off nicely. You know I love a chance to play with my extensive thread collection and it's not a surprise that I had a perfect match to my inks.  The thread is simply wrapped around the middle of the butterfly with the loose ends acting as antennas. I hope you'll join us at CAS Colours and Sketches for this beautiful colour combo!

    I was rather taken with this month's Altenew colour challenge - greens and yellows are my favourite and the pink was tolerable as an accent!  (Haha, if you're new here, I'm not a fan of pink to the point that it's become a bit of a joke now!)       I pulled out my Altenew leafy die set that really doesn't see enough use and decided to make a piece of mixed media card to die cut.  I've been asked for a tutorial and I thought this was the perfect opportunity...   As with so many ideas this one looked better in my head.  The texture on the mixed media piece got lost as the dies had all the fabulous apperture detail built in.  Any way, it's a great card, just not what it looked like in my head and not the tutorial I was after!  It will follow at some point... I popped the leaves up on a couple of layers of dragonfruit cardstock and placed them on top of a touch of ink blending.  I finished up with a small sentiment in the matc...

 It's new sketch day at CAS Colours and Sketches ... I had a lot of ideas for this one!  Up first is my official dt card... This is a Time For Tea coverplate, Concord and 9th cardstock and a Simon Says Stamp thanks die. My original idea was to use this Time For Tea coverplate and highlight just the centre motifs with inlaid pieces... Again I've used Concord and 9th colours.  I cut the whole plate in grapefruit and half each of nectar and sorbet.  Of course this produced more than one cards worth of die cuts so... I made a couple more with the leftovers. These alpha dies are from Trinity Stamps and have a beautiful embossed line detail too. There where quite a lot of the tiny hearts so the obvious thing to do was to make a shaker card.  This is a flat shaker made with recycled packaging.  The panel is an embossed coverplate (from Alex Syberia Designs) and I've also used the leftover larger hearts from the first card. Hope to see you over at CAS Colours and S...

It's the third Tuesday of the month which of course means there's a sketch up at CAS Colours and Sketches .  Take a look... I've gone for three shades (ombre-ish) of Concord and 9th cardstock to create my stripes.  They are layered up so there is a small amount of dimension too. The 'happy' is from Concord and 9th and the birthday is from Create A Smile.  I've layered them up too. Such a simple design but I kinda want to make it over and over in different colourways. This is for the CC&S challenge which runs until the 4th of March - we'd love you to join us!

All of The Hellos! The die is an old favourite from Concord and 9 th , and I’m quite fond of using hello on my projects.   I’m also a fan of zero waste and that is where this all got a tad out of hand! Card number one is a cut Honey Bee patterned paper with three hellos cut out.   The original plan was to bump the stripey hellos up on 3 layers of white cardstock and pop them back in place.   I believe this is called the eclipse technique.   I did this, cutting 9 white hellos along the way, and really was not blown away with the look.   It needed gold glitter, as so many things do!   So, I cut three gold hellos – these then needed another nine white hellos…   I was happy with card number one. I now had spare stripey hellos, gold glitter negative hellos and a whole bunch of white negative hellos.   These can’t go to waste! Card two was simple enough. The gold negative was simply stunning.   I die cut a panel, added the counters and ...

 It's time for another colour challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches ... We've got these three bright beauties to play with.  Just match to the swatch as close as you can! I've gone for stripes of the three colours, building a panel that I then die cut out of. I die cut a skinny frame, some stars, a 'birthday' and then filled the rest of the space with other dies to get as much as I could from the panel.  The other pieces will show up on cards and layouts soon! I stacked up my frame and word on a few layers of black cardstock to add some dimension and a little flash of contrast from the white card base. I stamped a happy in coordinating ink to complete the sentiment.  This is where ink swatches come into their own - it was easy to flip through and colour match to my patterned paper. Dies and Papers frame die, red and yellow papers from Heffy Doodle birthday die from Create A Smile blue paper from Bella Blvd star dies from Honey Bee Stamps Hope to see you joining us o...

 I am loving the *really* clean and simple look right now... This is made for the new challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches which you can find out more about here.   It's based on this sketch... Obviously I switched the heart out for the greeting which is die cut (Create A Smile), stamped and die cut (Heffy Doodle), stacked, popped up and glittered.  CAS is all about those tiny details! Father Christmas Mum got me a fancy set of glittery threads for Christmas and I used three colours to mimic the triangular split of the card base indicated on the sketch. I dotted in a few iridescent circle confetti pieces.  They are tiny but very shiny.  They flash pink, blue and aqua in different light and are almost invisible from some angles. I hope you are inspired to play along with us at CAS C&S !

I'm excited to have joined the team at CAS Colours and Sketches .  This is my first make for them and it is a colour challenge. I struggled to find an exact match for the berry burst shade but Pinkfresh's Regal Kiss was a good enough match.  I also went with Hydrangea, Spruce Tips and Lush Forest, all from Pinkfresh's ink line.  If green is in a colour swatch I immediately go to leaves and I fancied pulling out my Alex Syberia florals so that was an easy decision.   Keeping it CAS I stamped off the edge of the card base and embossed in white for a subtle look.  I then used the coordinating stencils to ink blend.  As I was blending rather than stamping my colours are a touch on the softer side.   Then I decided my greeting would go smack bang across the middle of my image.  Perhaps controversial?  Why place it over the prettiness?  I don't know really, I just like the closeness of everything design-wise. Come over and join us at CAS Colo...

 Lots of chickens!  What could be better?! These are from a set by Time For Tea Designs called Ewe are Moovelous.  I'm yet to use the sheep or the cow but I just adore the chicken.  (And the chick, and the little daisy!) I cut the chicken shape out of a panel of teal card in as even a grid as I could manage.  I then used that as a template to stamp the chickens on to a white panel.  When the teal panel is popped up over the white panel it gives a really fun sunken chicken look. I reversed this on a second card for popped up chickens.  This time I stamped the chickens in different shades of blue, aqua and green ink. The background is a heart die cut layered (Time For Tea Designs) on a stitched panel (Heffy Doodle) and the greeting is a die cut birthday (Create A Smile) and stamped happy. Which do you prefer - Sunken Chicken or Popped Chicken?!