AAA Colourful Dreamy Moodboard

It's time for another challenge with AAA Colourful and I am so delighted to be joining them as a Guest Designer this month. I love colour and was very excited when this new challenge blog started up and here we are at month four, doesn't time fly! 

This month's moodboard is so dreamy and it really reminded me of Craft Consortium's Ink Drop Papers which are perfect for those of us that would like the look of alcohol ink backgrounds.

I'm sure I not the only person who has watched a Jennifer McGuire video and went and bought what she was working with and I must admit this is how I own some CC Ink Drop papers and also some coverplate dies from Honey Bees (Delicate Daisy A2 Top and Base plates) after watching her create her usual magic. I have blogged about my first plays HERE and HERE. When Jane invited me to be the Guest Designer this month I went this will be easy that moodboard looks just like my DSP so I'll just tweak the card design using this time Vivid Ink Drops DSP (CC) and use a different "leaf" and the coverplate dies Jennifer "made me buy" for the background.

I'm really happy with my card but feel that my 3/4" paper strips maybe too green and the yellow seems to have disappeared in the strips. This is a no stamping card as the sentiment is a ready-made foiled sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio. The lovely leave die is Whirl Leaves (SSS)

Well I hope I have provided some inspiration for the moodboard or to just to use up some DSP in your stash as this truly is a really effective card and quite quick to put together which is always appreciated if you need a card in a hurry, this design would also work so well for Sympathy cards. I'm looking forward to seeing what the Design team came up for the challenge so hope you can join in, you have plenty of time to play along.

I'm also feeling like my colours are quite representative of the colours at The Paper Players at the moment so will join in with their latest challenge. Also Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge is to add a die cut and when you add a SSS die cut to your card it would be foolish not to enter as who doesn't want to win a $25 gift card to their store (it will pay for my postage back to NZ).

Thanks so much for popping in.

✿Karen✿

AAA Card Challenge 265: Celebrating our 10th Birthday

Hi everyone! Welcome to the next challenge for AAA Cards. We have an anything CAS goes with an optional twist of Birthday.

We are celebrating our 10th Birthday!!

So we want to party with you as it's not everyday you turn TEN (10).

We have prizes! Quite a lot of prizes!

Some are only available to certain countries/zones due to postage, so please make sure when you link your card to also add your country letters to your name;

e.g. Maaike-NL, Karen - NZ, Kristin - USA, Tristan - AUS etc. etc. etc.

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Please check out AAA Cards Challenge Blog for all the finer details and to check out the prizes!

We also do not have a guest designer as we want everyone to be in with a chance to win a prize, so get cracking and remember to make it CLEAN AND SIMPLE.

  Only CAS CARDS will be considered for a prize.

Wow ten years that truly is a worthwhile achievement for any Challenge Blog. I've chosen my inspiration to make a fun card from the cute monkey with balloons on the challenge photo, but you can just submit a Clean and Simple card as well but who doesn't need a birthday card in their stash. 

But we truly would love you to join in with us to celebrate. If you'd like a chance to win a prize definitely think about how CAS is defined at AAA Card Challenges.

I have KReated a monkey with balloons birthday card as I just love the cheeky monkey in the challenge photo. I have Copic coloured up my image. Once die cut out I have also added 2 blank die cuts to the image for a bit of dimension. I have very lightly blended Salvaged Patina distress oxide behind it all as I'm sure s/he is floating in the sky. This really cool monkey comes from Party Animals (Pink & Main). Then just a tad of Diamond Stickles to the balloon highlights and the bottom of the ice-cream as it is a PARTY!!!

Copics used (I colour dark >> light):

Monkey: E37/33/53/51 E53/51 and RV 21/10

Pink: RV13/21 (10 also added to balloon)
Orange: YR16/Y17

Yellow: Y17/15 (11 also added to balloon)

Green: YG05/21 (09 added to balloon first)
Blue: BG13/11

Well I hope you can join in with us at AAA Cards Challenge and celebrate this momentous occasion, as always you have 2 weeks to create your card. If you can't make it do call by the Challenge Blog and wish them/us a Happy Birthday;)

It's also ironical our sister blog AAA Birthday Challenge challenge for May is a CAS Card so I will enter my card there to play along with them too.

✿Karen✿

Just Add Ink 700th Challenge

Gosh what a worthy achievement, now I thought I would start of by reminiscing about MY Just Add Ink journey, as they have been a BIG part of my challenge life and blogging. 

The very first challenge of theirs was January 2010 and I was a day too late to enter - that's often the story of my challenge life I get the closing time wrong. You can read that blog post HERE and this is my card and the challenge colours (sob I loved all of these colours and ALL retired). Gosh what a fab card even if I say so myself, I still love it, feeling like I need to recreate it again!

I also see I didn't know how to blog as well as I do know and I've just linked to the generic Just Add Ink blog with my blog post.

Back in 2010 I was pretty busy with a full time job running a hospital laboratory plus running my Stampin' Up! business which included prepping for classes, workshops, extravaganzas etc. so I wasn't really into challenges but tried to play along with Just Add Ink, NZSU Blogs (which I ran for awhile) and my stamping idol Kristina Werner's Make a Card Monday's. In all honesty the card I entered for the first challenge I can see was totally inspired by Kristina looking at it now.

So skip forward to 2022 and again I decided I was going to restart doing card challenges to refind my lost MOJO and Just Add Ink (and CAS on Friday) was the first challenge I chose to play along with and you can read about that card HERE. Again it was a colour challenge and no. #598.

So thanks to all the Design Team over the years I see Chantell has been their since the beginning and I can see why I played along originally, my friend Delys Cram was on the original DT. HERE is the link to the first Challenge FYI. I love that Just Add Ink has a range of things for us to do with their challenges, each week is different.

So here we are in 2024 and they want shimmer and shine, now I might have gone overboard and I don't think my photo taking skills have improved but you may need some sunglasses when I really show the shine I got on my card to celebrate this FAB MILESTONE WITH JUST ADD INK.

I decided I would try to do a Mixed Media Technique Libby Hickson taught for WCMD 2023 which I meant to try and never did at the time. So a call out for Shimmer & Shine deserved me having a go at it.

I'll start off with the FINAL card and then show how the card was created and the supplies used. Libby's name above is linked to the blog post with a video if I'm not explanatory enough.

Just in case you can't see the shimmer and shine above:

This is how I KReated my card, I used Hero Art's Neon Bright Watercolors : Brights Sunshine, Brights Orange and Brights Pink and added to a wet watercolour paper panel.

Apply Hero Arts White paste through a stencil; I used Art Deco Dancing Lights stencil (HA).

Remove stencil carefully and throw the stencil and palette knife into water (clean later). Sprinkle Iridescent Gold embossing powder (HA) all over, I was a bit shocked as I thought my panel should have been dried as I had left it for 2 hours plus I had also dried with my Ranger heat tool. At this stage looking at my panel I was worried powder was stuck to more than just the paste.

But nothing to lose so onwards and you heat the paste/powder with a heat embossing gun until the powder "bubbles and bursts" and hopefully you can see below all the "extra powder" actually brushed off.

Now this is where I wish I hadn't used my deckled rectangle die to cut out the panel as I can see it has flattened my puffy gold paste and also my plates have scratched it . You don't see the scratching looking at the card IRL but you can see it is flattened a bit. I actually own Tim Holtz's deckled edge guillotine so wish I had used that but always think a die is more accurate. The deckled rectangle comes from a Mixed Frame rectangle die set by Altenew.

Card stock mat is Sweet Pea (C9) it seemed to tie in with the pink in the watercolours, the fab glimmer paper is an old Rainbow Glimmer paper from SU!. Wee butterfly is from Memory Box Intricate Mini Butterflies and has been die cut out of black glitter paper with a Magenta glitter drop (PFS). The many thanks die is an oldie from Essentials by Ellen.

Well that was a lot of fun and this card packs a wow IRL so I know whoever  receives it will think it's pretty cool as who doesn't love shimmer and or shine!

Once again HAPPY 700th challenge Just Add Ink. Hopefully I'll still be around to do your 1000th ;) I'll also enter my card in Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge for feminine cards as I have been  stuck in bed with a cold but really wanted to make sure I played along with this milestone for the JAI team.
✿Karen✿

Just popping in to say Hello

Hi everyone I seem to have picked up my grandson's head cold and am barely able to craft as my nose is too runny. I've managed a few cards for Design Team commitments as I like to stay on top of them and work ahead for reasons like this. I've managed some homework for next weekend's Weekender Event with Spellbinders but only scratched the surface of what I need to do. OMG so much die cutting. I knew it would be a lot but I truly had no idea what a lot was, until now. I'm doing the event with a few girl friends, hopefully we can all get together so it should be awesome fun once the homework is all done.

I can't believe it Jenn Shurkus has announced save the date, as she is doing another Distress Watercolor Pencil class LIVE and it's in the same weekend but just one of the days, it's her May 18th so she will be LIVE on my Sunday 19th. I think I maybe doing Jenn's class live and not my die cutting but that will be dependent on whether friends are staying with me to do the Spellbinder's Weekender retreat. I absolutely loved  her first class you can see my efforts HERE.

Last but not least Online Card Classes has just announced today there next class: Extraordinary Embossing Folders, happening late May. Their classes are phenomenal value with a big range of tutors and they are always priced at under $30 USD with an early bird saving the first week, at the moment it's $24 to register. You also get to work with what you own.

✿Karen✿