AAA Card Challenge 288: Sketch Challenge and my first Christmas card for 2025

It's time for another fun challenge with AAA Card Challenges and we have an easy sketch to play along with. As we're half way through April I thought let's make a Christmas card so I can say I have started! I'm not sure about you but I never ever seem to have enough every year.

This is the sketch to play along with:

I've used as my shape a die cut circle with the same sized circle die-cut with a snow die on top. I've kept the background circle colour very light to let my Copic coloured image "shine" and pop out. I've also added some stickles and glossy accents to parts of the image as well.

Copics used (darkest > lightest):
Wee reindeer: E37/33/53/51 R20 R35/32 Y35/21
Car: BG01/000/0000 N6/4/2 Y35
Tree: YG17/25/21 Y35 R35/32

Supply List:
Stamps: Loads of Joy (MFT), Itty Bitty Holiday (MFT)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Versafine Clair Nocturne

Paper: Neenah Solar White, Pool Party (SU!)

Dies: Snowfall - Vertical (MFT), Sweet Stacks: Circles (HB), Itty Bitty Strips (MFT)

Other: Copics, white Gelli roll pen, Diamond stickles (RNG), Glossy accents (RNG), 1mm foam square (SP)

Challenges: AAA#288


✿Karen✿

AAA Card Challenge 287: 1+1

We have a new style of challenge starting at AAA Cards, this fortnight we introduce one of our new formats "1+1".  What exactly does this mean; you have to work with the centre circle plus add one. So this time around  you have to choose one other thing to work with silhouettes. I have chosen to work with pets as my plus one.

I didn't think I had a lot of silhouette stamps in my stash but you'll be surprised how many you do own when you start looking. I'm not a 100% sure I have done this exactly right but had a lot of fun making the card so that's a win in my books.

I started off with a 3" square and I masked of a small moon using masking paper and then ink blended blueprint sketch, chipped sapphire, scattered straw and dried marigold distress inks. I then sprayed water with my water mister but decided I would add some stars with an old silver ink pad I found. I then removed the mask and stamped the moon using Buttercream ink (ALT). I stamped Mooch with Versafine Nocturne ink. I've also used a T4 Copic to ground the cat a bit plus a few mossy rocks have been stamped in the grey ink. Mounted everything up on a 3-1/4" square Starry Sky card before mounting on my card base.

Supply List:

Stamps: Mooch (LAV), Forest Moss (LAV), Burst of Stars (LAV), To the Moon (ALT - sentiment), Mini Moon (ALT)
Distress ink (RNG): Blueprint Sketch, Chipped Sapphire, Scattered Straw, Dried Marigold
Versafine Clair ink: Nocturne, Morning Mist

Paper (SU!): Starry Sky, Lemon Lolly

Other: Masking paper, T4 Copic marker, blending brushes, Silver Encore ink (Tsukineko), Mister bottle (RNG), Buttercream ink (ALT)

Well this is certainly an interesting challenge and quite easy, I had so many ideas and to be honest the card design changed from my initial thoughts as I started creating it. I look forward to seeing what your 1+1 is and do check out the Design Team from AAA Cards Challenges they do have some amazing inspiration.

✿Karen✿

Beachy Greetings

This was the name of the class Jenn Shurkus taught for Lawn Fawn at my recent SCT Create and Connect box event and the main reason Sarah and I signed up for the event.

Jenn is one of my favourite teachers and Lawn Fawn never disappoints. We received in our class kit a wee stamp set (Shello, Friend), coordinating dies and coordinating colouring stencil for the stamp set, plus Stitched Seashells dies and Ocean Wave stencil plus some DSP.

We had a great time making some very cool wavy backgrounds and I look forward to playing some more with all these items. In class we just try to keep up. The two of us prefer Copic colouring but it was fun to try the colouring stencils and we both felt if mass producing cards these would be awesome so maybe this years Christmas set something to consider. 

In typical Jenn Shurkus teaching we made all the backgrounds, then coloured all the things, then glittered all the things! One of my crafty friends Anne Shackles had a great idea to also cut down on the amount of glitter we still see adhering to the wee images because of static and that was to use our embossing buddy first to remove the static, then glue with our fine glue pen, then glitter. Great tip Anne, I normally have to brush everything with a soft brush but that sheds glitter all over the place still.

 

We've done water splatters in the background below, in hindsight I needed a darker background to make them stand out more and if I'm honest I'd make my shells darker too and I then placed them down too low so no room for the sentiment, the joys of trying to keep up - you muck up but very minor and still a fun card. I'm pretty sure the background and the shells were all cut out of watercolour paper which was provided.

I love how we've torn our DSP to create the top white wave here. Both panels are ink blended on some Spiffy Speckles DSP to give is splatters without us "mucking them up"

The card below shows how the stencil also has a mask component to it which is one of the cool things Lawn Fawn background stencils always provides. Such a fun happy card!

And the peeks of Jenn's cards to show us we need to practice more! But a fun class and living down under we always appreciate anything beachy as it's a big part of our kiwi psyche.

✿Karen✿

Cheerful Chirps

This was the name of the class from Spellbinders taught by Kim Kesti at my recent SCT Crop and Create Delivered event. I just love these cards they make me happy looking at them but there was a lot of homework beforehand and it took so much longer than the time allotted for Sarah and I to keep up with. As this was the first class the two of us were doing it really got us to off behind the end ball. We started on our Saturday at 8am and went to bed at 11pm that day with all but 2 cards finished from the day. so it slowed us down a bit and we probably went to bed later than we thought but didn't in the end impact on our day's crafting. I'll also blame my local Turkish takeaways they were so busy on Saturday night we should have gone into the Thai next door, that also lost us 40 minutes of our crafting time.

Spellbinders were very generous with our kit we received 2 fabulous bird die sets: Cheerful Chirps Flying High and Pretty Birds; a Bamboo Scree 3D embossing folder, Spread Your Wings sentiments stamp set (but I was shocked at the quality of the stamp set, saying that its stamped OK if you were gentle but I had one real faulty sentiment which they said they would replace, Sarah's by the way stamped fine), yellow sequins and a pack of ColorWheel cardstock which had some new colours I hadn't seen before in it (Sicily, Mulberry, Violet, Orchid, Oceanside and Peach Bellini). The pack of  was half a sheet of each card. They also gave every attendee one of their fine mister bottles as well, so I now own 2.

First card we created I learnt the crown of the parrot goes behind the head and they actually had alignment lines so my front piece is a bit torn plus my sentiment got embossed a bit too so not off to a great start but it is really pretty and I'm sure the lucky recipient won't see the errors.

The second card we worked with the second die set and we created our own background just dry embossing a line every 1/2" on the base panel.

The last card we used a bird from each set plus used the wing from one of the sets to change the wee bird up too. We trimmed our embossed panel and added a wee strip of a close colour behind it but as you can see it's quite hard to get your cuts so precise and I would probably just use the whole panel next time, which would also give me more room to add all the elements to the card (it was very tight).

All the images have had some extra blending with Distress Oxides to add some shading in places or to highlight the embossing. This truly was a magical and fun class and would be my favourite if not so fiddly. I do love die cut cards but they can be a lot of work but they do have a lot of WOW. What was also confusing was we were given for our homework a generic die-cutting list so it meant we had to sort out for each card what die cuts were going on it amongst the 133 other die cuts in our tray (I just did a quick count but approx. 133) and Kim our tutor had her die cuts arranged by card so she was able to glue quicker than us. This is Kim's sneaks below. I also have to say buying the Sweet Petunia Precision Glue Press has been one of my best crafting purchases for 2024. I think glue everywhere would have driven me bonkers as so many die cuts but there's very little mess using this glue gun, it is precise and controllable.

Just blogging these cards makes me happy so another fabulous item to add to your wishlist for when fully released.

✿Karen✿

More thank you cards

I'm really pleased that one of the classes I participated in the weekend the stencil and dies we received were perfect for making more thank you cards. This was probably my favourite class from the event though there is another one that is probably cuter but it's extremely time consuming so Taylored Expressions for the win. Looking at the class albums after the event this class album has twice the number of cards so it was a real winner with the other 3100 people taking part with me worldwide.

Our stencil set we received actually creates 4 card fronts. There are 5 stencils in the set which provides depth and detail and it was all so easy to line up as your stencil is the same size as the card stock and there are little alignment squares on the side which you colour in but trim off at the end.

I didn't take a picture of my stenciling before cutting into 4 card fronts but have "borrowed" one from the album, stenciled by Kristin G beautifully.

If this wasn't enough wow, this is truly where the magic begins and we do all sorts of magical things to the background.

For the card below I have stamped a script stamp on the panel with a white pigment ink . The script really shows up on the inked wings and we have splattered a bit of "blue gold" Gansai Tambi paint as well. Then using 2 rectangle dies cut out a middle panel and then popped up the middle panel with foam tape.

The card below was really fun as we sprayed our backgrounds lightly with Pixie spray and then used a piece of gold foil to stick tiny flecks of gold all over the background. It is really obvious in the 2nd photo below and looks amazing in real life.

Next card is so effective, again the script stamp is stamped on a piece of Kraft card and then we used the die we received with our stencil set and cut out the flower bunch and the wee butterfly from the stenciled panel. Few sparkly gold glitter gems and popped up on foam and all done.

Last card for the moment (until I start playing with different colour combos); we also received with the dies for the set two that cut out the big humming birds. After die cutting them out we then embossed our background panel and added a bit more blue gold paint. The panel was stuck down to the card base and then off set the birds so the dark background could provide a shadow behind the images. The birds are popped up on dimensional foam as well.

This was such an amazing class and stencil set, I would definitely mark it on my wish list when released fully by Taylored Expressions: Create in Quads: Flit & Flutter Layering stencils and dies. And all together:

Taylor was very generous she also provided us with the card stock to make our A2 top folding cards plus four pale blue envelopes, as well as well as a pile of other goodies plus an amazing storage folder which we surely did need as this is such a BIG stencil!

Items I used that were not part of the official class kit as we had to provide "our own": Positive Script Bold Print stamp (HA) and Organic Linen 3D embossing folder (ALT). The glitter drops are all Pinkfresh Studios as are the various sentiments and thanks die apart from the thanks die on the 2 hummingbirds cards is a really old many thanks die (EBE) and I chopped off the many and offset it on some Bermuda Bay (SU!). The sentiment strips Taylor provided to use for the class were lovely but I was on a roll making more thank you cards!

Thanks for popping in.

✿Karen✿

Quick thank you cards

Don't you just love it when you partner says can I grab a dozen thank you cards and you only have 3 in your stash. I managed to whip up half a dozen yesterday and if I realised I could do two as quick as one yesterday I would have created 2 more.

I grabbed out the Build-A-Garden: Pristine Peonies (ALT) and stenciled in different colour palates. This is an interesting set as it contains 2 big bloom stamps, each bloom has 3 stencils. I chose to use the stamp that was a double flower but both  flower stamps are stunning.

Each stencil has elements for petals and leaves on it. I found it really easy to use apart from stencil 3 for one of the leaf clusters but this maybe due to the fact I had decided I was stamping off the panel and I may have got a bit confused with what was the place I was looking for. This was only one element I couldn't really work out and in all honesty I don't think it really matters.

All the images have been stamped and blended with Pinkfresh Studio inks. The base colour is Rocky Slope and I thought about restamping with my Versafine Nocturne ink once I blended but decided I actually liked it with the grey outline and it made the black thank you pop more. 

In case you didn't know Versafine ink is very slow drying and I would have had to wait to blend with the stencils BUT by stamping in a grey or brown ink you can work out where to place your stencil, blend and then just put the panel back in the Misti or your stamp positioning tool and restamp with black afterwards.

The first card was done with Grey inks: Misty Coast, Rocky Slope and Metropolis. Green inks Fresh Pear and Grassy Knoll. Yellow inks: Sweet Mustard and Marigold. I used my Gina K Master layouts to do the wee black mat but didn't really line it up perfectly so decided that was an extra step that we weren't doing again!

Second card Peachy inks: Sunkissed, Mimosa, Mango Sorbet. Yellow inks as above. Green inks also added Olive to the blend as well.

Pink inks: Ballet Slipper, Sparkling Rose, Bubble Gum. Yellow and green inks same.

Aqua inks: Waterfall, Turquoise, Paradise. Yellow inks: Sunshine and Marigold: Green inks: Mint, Meadow and Emerald City.

It was probably a couple of hours to create them all but I feel I'm on my way to create him a dozen by the end of this coming week easily!

I have a real crafty weekend coming up with my friend Sarah so should have something to blog and share real soon. Hope yours is as equally as fun!

✿Karen✿

AAA Card Challenge 286: and it's time to follow Kristin's lead!

Hi everyone and it's time for another challenge at AAA Cards Challenges and our latest challenge is to be inspired by our lead Kristin Sluhan's card below.

I thought that looks pretty easy and have ink blended up a panel with Sweet Mustard and Salvaged Patina distress inks. I decided there wasn't enough green created at the overlap of the two colours and bought my Sweet Mustard down further. When I see how my die cut looks that might have been the wrong decision as I don't have enough blue showing on my die cut or I needed to have placed the die further down.

I had 3 ideas for my die-cut : either a flower OR 3 small butterflies OR a leaf with whirls; I went with the die Whirl Leaves (SSS).

 I'm still really happy how my card turned out and I splashed a bit of re-inker to make my splats with a wee paint brush. The lovely sentiment is from Tulips Treasure (ASD), I just loved its font. I think this is a lovely card and could even be used as a sympathy card if required.

Thanks Kristin for the inspiration! I certainly made a card I wouldn't normally create but love it. What inspires you in Kristin's card. It's really rather cool seeing what everyone takes from the same card and the design team at AAA Cards has some great ideas to inspire you too, so do check them all out! I'm also going to play along with Just Add Ink who have a very cool inspirational photo with lots of tropical leaves. I have to admit their photo has got me dreaming about a tropical holiday.

Thanks for popping in.

EDITED 20/3/25: My card was chosen as an honourable mention at Just Add Ink

✿Karen✿

A real CRAFTY card!

Gosh this card was so fun to create!

It truly is a work of art. This is another card from Jenn Shurkus 2024 Creative Art Retreat. In our kit we received the stamped images and sentiments as well as our Distress watercolor paper. These were from a Honey Bee set called Crafty, we received in our kit the dies from a set called Lovely Layers: Paint and Palette to create our artist palette.

I did a lot of the fun bits for this card last year and as I recall we ink blended on the Distress card stock with our Distress ink pads and blending brushes and then we added more layers on top with the corresponding or a darker Distress watercolor pencil. We added the layer on top by wetting the pencil in our water pot letting it get soupy and then scribbling a line on a cello bag which we made into a U and smooshed down on top of the "matching" colour below. Dry with heat gun and repeat with next colour. It really made a fun background with so much interest. We also watercoloured in the palette and the "paint spots" using the Distress watercolor pencils. Then added a double layer of Glossy accents.

I'm going to have another go at recreating this card but will use the wee artist mouse we received in our 

kit from CCC as I couldn't justify buying a stamp set and die with paint brushes and paint tubes but I definitely want to practice creating the background like this plus make another palette!

Thanks for popping in (3 cards to go now I think from this kit)...

✿Karen✿

Tofu Hugs time

Gosh it's been awhile since I've blogged about a class card. I went through a phase of signing up for countless card kits and I love them but as I've shared last year the breast lump found mid-year effectively wiped out the last six months of 2024, so my class kits have got on top of me with my DT commitments which never seemed to go away. Which is why my resolution for 2025 was less class kits and only one DT commitment. I hope to resume doing challenges again but I really want to finish of what I started in 2024 and in some cases I have a few kits left from 2023 too.

The relentless heat is finally dissipating in NZ as we head into Autumn so I thought it's time to finish of a class kit that I received in June 2024 as only a few cards to go. It was part of Jenn's Shurkus' Creative Art Journey and this if I'm honest is the only kit I will sign up for as long as I can afford too. She still has a few spots left for 2025 if you wanted to join in on the fun.

I've ended up doing the card twice with both the stencils that came in the kit, the one on the left is Flower Garden by Gina K Designs and the one on the right is an exclusive stencil designed by Jenn for the event called Sun Arch. Tofu has been stamped, then Copic coloured as a calico cat and I loved the technique she shared for doing this. The colour is laid down with 2 darker colours and then 2 lighter colours are added as a dab to make it more organic I think it worked great by the way. We then masked Tofu and stenciled over the top finishing at his tail. We just blended our pink ink to finish it off and we made the "ground" by using two of our darker Copic colours. A bit of Prisma glitter to birdie bottoms as it wouldn't be a Jenn card without some glitter! Tofu Hugs by the way is a Purple Onion Designs stamp.

Four cards to go to finish of the kit, all the Copic colouring done, its just a matter of creating the backgrounds so hopefully this kit will be put to bed in the next week. 

Thanks for popping in.

✿Karen✿

Anything CAS with a twist of Spring

This is the new challenge at AAA Cards. Thinking about Spring I think of lambs, spring bulbs, green grass, green leaves and flower blossoms. So pretty easy to make a CAS card.

I started off looking through my bin of small Altenew stamps when I spied this mini delight set called Apple Blossoms. Even though it's a mini set it has multiple layers of stamps (4 for the petals, 2 for the centre/stamens and 2 for the leaves). I've used all Altenew inks apart from the stamens where I used a PFS ink called Sweet Mustard (A6). Altenew inks: Blush (A1 and A2), Rouge (A3), Crimson (A4), Buttercream (A5), Frayed Leaf (B1) and Forest Glades (B2). The wee set comes with 3 dies one for the flower, one for the leaves plus the mini care die. I always look forward to seeing what the Mini delight set is in each Altenew release as (a) they work perfectly with CAS cards and most importantly (b) I can still afford to buy them!

Well I'll start reminiscing about Spring now, we are still in the heat of Summer and it's being very hot, dry and at the same time humid but I can tell at night that Autumn is coming down under.

Hope you can play along with us, as always you have 2 weeks to play along and if you don't like the optional twist of Spring or Spring colours; "anything CAS goes too".

✿Karen✿

AAA Card Challenge 284: Sketch Challenge

It's time for another challenge with  AAA Card Challenges and we've got an easy sketch to play with. Saying that I am always amazed how the design team dome up with so many different ideas for what looks really straight forward.

I decided it was time to play with my Little Signage Agenda stamp set by Mama Elephant, some simple Copic Colouring and a wee sentiment from Itty Bitty Birthday (MFT) and all done.

We'd love to see your twist/take on the challenge, as always you have 2 weeks to play along with us and don't forget to make it clean and simple.

Thanks for popping in.
✿Karen✿

AAA Card Challenge 283: Colour Challenge (pick at least 3)

It's time for another challenge with the AAA Cards and we're introducing one of our new challenge formats for 2025 - a colour challenge. You are provided with FOUR colours and you need to pick at least THREE (neutrals allowed for skin and hair/fur and black and white as well- see graphic below).

I have to admit I thought of wintery scenes looking at the colours but it's mid-Summer in New Zealand so I went for an underwater scene and thought I'd make a "mess" with my Lindy's Magicals. I thought the 3 pots I chose represented the 3 darkest colours above.

My watercolour panel was a bit messy so I trimmed it to 2" and mounted onto a 2-1/4" panel of Soft Succulent (SU!). Once that was completed I Copic coloured in my Mermazing (MFT) mermaid with a Soft Succulent vibe. A very talented crafter called Kim Singdahlsen kindly offers on her blog a link to the closest Copic colour to EVERY Stampin' Up! colour. It's an amazing resource; Kim is also worth watching as she makes fab cards!! I actually have a link on the RHS of my blog to Kim's colour matches for easy reference but do check out her blog. Her colour suggestion for Soft Succulent was BG72/93, so these are the colours I coloured in my mermaid with:

Hair: E57/23/21
Skin: BV04 E04/00
Cheeks: R00/30 
Mermaid tail/bikini: BG72/93

Star shell: BG18
I've stippled the mermaid tail with BG93 and my white Gelli roll pen and added some Prisma glitter (LF) to her star shell.

Well I had a blast making a messy water scene and I need to let the magic of working with Magicals happen more often, the photos don't reflect how sparkly and "magical" it all is either but trust me it is. Thanks for popping in and I do hope you can join us this fortnight. Make time to check out all the fab inspiration from the rest of the AAA Cards Design Team there are so many cool ideas for working with this cool palate of colours.

✿Karen✿