Always be a unicorn

Hello lovely peeps

I'm back earlier than I expected as I just realized that I only have a few hours left to enter Squirrel's Not So Random Challenge.  [Edit: the challenge closing date has been extended until the end of July]
 I won the prize for the last one - Spring Fever - and they kindly sent me a voucher for Dies to Die For. It took me weeks to make up my mind, but I eventually put it towards this fab stamp set from MFT. Thank you so much girls, I can't wait to have a play :o)

Squirrel's theme for May & June was 'Fantasy' so I decided to use this month's progressive challenge image from Bloobel - Unicorn Spaghetti Head

I pulled him into CraftArtist (the png version) and added a background from the Natural Landscapes digikit. Really love the inky effect on this one.

He's just crying out for a witty caption but I couldn't think of one, lol :o)
Instead I've used this sentiment that I've seen around a lot lately - I typed it in with the Text tool using Holiday Springs BTN font.

I printed it out to fit a 6x6" card and then coloured the unicorn in with Promarkers/Flexmarkers
Celestial Blue, Ice grey 1-5, Orchid, Pink Lavender

I added a little touch of sparkle on the horn and the moon using a clear Sparkle pen (Crafters Companion)

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
 Squirrel's Not So Random Challenge #5 Fantasy
Bloobel's Progressive Challenge (June) Fantasy Creatures
Glitter n Sparkle #245 Anything Goes
C.R.A.F.T. #421 Animals 
Incy Wincy Designs - Sparkle or shine
Dragonfly Dreams  Add sparkle

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

Get Well Soon Daisies

Hello lovely peeps

Another unseen card from the archives today - this one is from when I was on the Polkadoodles DT. 

I stamped a few of the flowers from the Daisy Days stamp set with Black memento ink onto Elegance Satin 300gsm card then covered them up with sticky-note masks so I could stamp 'behind' them.

I filled in the gaps with the tiny circle/bubble stamps in the same set.

To colour the flowers I used Graph'It markers and a Mix-It Palette. 

For the darkest flower I scribbled 6140 onto the palette then picked up the colour with the blender pen 0000 and coloured from the flower centre outwards.

For the flower centres I drew lots of small lines with 9209 and 9207 

then coloured over the top of that with 8245

The other flowers were coloured in the same way using 6130 and 6110.
I doodled in a border and added a sentiment from the matching CD and layered it onto a 7x7" card.

Tip: Colour around the edges of some white card with one of the markers you've used to get co-ordinating card for matting & layering

There's a new Crafty Calendar Challenge on Saturday so I'll definitely see you then, but I hope to get another post in sometime during the week (depending on how my DT work goes)

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

Hey There Flower for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps

Just popping in with a card that I made with Leonie Pujol's Flower Bursts and Bark Texture dies

First I covered a 6x6 card with one of the papers from Sara Davies' Shabby Chic collection - printed from the CD that came with the Crafters Inspiration magazine issue 14.

Next I dabbed some Twisted Citron Distress Ink onto my craft mat and spritzed with water before dragging some Inkylicious paper through it. I then cut this out with the Bark Texture die and then snipped into it with scissors to make stems, leaves and grass.

To make the orange paper I used the same technique as above but used a few drops of the ink from Leonie's Amber Glitter Pen. I cut one of the flowers from Floral Bursts from this and added a face using shapes cut with the Suffixes die in Leonie's Typography range.

For the sentiment I stamped the 'Hey there' from the Hey There Dreamer stamp set onto a scrap piece of the background card in Black Memento ink. The 'flower' letters were cut from white card using the Typography dies and attached with Cosmic Shimmer glue.

I used the same glue to attach the 'grass' that I'd cut earlier and add a couple of tiny orange flowers

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
 Glitter n Sparkle #245 Anything Goes 
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper  Anything goes with Patterned Paper
Allsorts #421 Flower power
Always Playing with Paper  #88 Keywords

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

300th Post Giveaway winner

Hello lovely peeps.

It's time to announce the winner of the giveaway to celebrate my 300th post.
Chosen by the highly scientific method of sticking my hand in a tub full of names ...

... it's one of my bloggy followers - Kath

Congratulations hon :o)  Please email your address to me at
kernewekkat @ gmail . com
(don't forget to remove the spaces)

Thank you to everyone that entered, I had some lovely comments.

I'll see you again over the weekend with another card,
Katrina x

Posh has a Present

Hello lovely peeps

Just popping in to show you a 50th birthday card that I made with a Stamping Bella image called Posh has a present. 

I stamped onto Elegance Satin card with Black Memento ink and coloured the image in with Graph'It markers
Hair: 3250, 3245, 3210
Skin: 4170, 4155, 4115
Dress: 2110, 0000
Presents: 7125, 8115, 8110, 5120, 5110
Outline/Ground: Ice Grey 1

I wanted to have the age on the card without making a big thing of it so I made a tag with the accompanying sentiment stamp and doodled on a little border with some '50's

Some Lah-de-dah Adhesive Enamel Dots finish the card off.

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
The Ribbon Girls June any image
Southern Girls #162 Stuck on you
Mod Squad Challenge - use lots of colours
Addicted to Stamps and More #247 Make your mark
Star Stampz Challenge  Bright colours/sunshine
Stamping Bella - Inspiration Photo

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

Howdy for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps

I've got another men's card for you today, using Leonie's stencils and her second set of doodle stamps.

For the sand background I stamped one of the images in the Lots of Texture stamp set onto Sheena Stamping Card with Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide ink and spritzed with water.

I added another layer of colour by stamping with Vintage Photo onto my craft mat before spritzing and pressing my card down onto it.

For the sky I dabbed Faded Jeans Distress Oxide onto my craft mat and spritzed with lots of water before smooshing the top half of my card through it.

I dabbed it with some kitchen towel while it was wet to give me some clouds.
For the sun I took another stamp from Lots of Texture and inked it with Fossilized Amber first, then just the edges with Fired Brick

I gave it a very light spritz after stamping to blend the ink slightly and drew the colour into the middle with a damp paintbrush.

Next for the cacti :o)

I drew a few cactus shapes onto some copy paper with pencil.
If you would like to take a copy of this picture please feel free - click on the image to bring up the large version then right click on it and save the image to your computer.

After carefully cutting them out I put the shapes to one side to use as masks later

I covered the sky/sand background with my homemade stencil and sponged through some Peeled Paint Distress Oxide ink.

I dried these with a heat gun before stamping through the stencil several times with one of the stamps in the Flower Burst set, inked with Black Memento ink.

The tops of the cacti are highlighted with a white gel pen.

I used one of the masks that I'd set aside to cover one of the cacti so I could stamp a 'snake' behind it with one of the images from the Super Swirl set. I coloured it in with a red Promarker.

For the frame around the picture I cut some lengths of Sheena Stamping card and ran the Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink pad along each one before spritzing with a little water. I then ran these through my Ebosser with the Wood Grain Textures embossing folder from Crafters Companion.

For the 'howdy' I used the Home and Adore stencils to trace through onto some spritzed blue card and then cut the letters out.
ho is from home
w is the m from home turned upside down
d is from adore
y is the h from home turned upside down

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
 Simon Says Stamp (Wed) Emboss It (dry embossed the frame)
Moving along with the Times #47 embossing
SSS Work it wednesday sunshine
Crafty Purple Frog Make it manly
Unicorn Challenge #22 For the guys
Glitter n Sparkle #244 Father's Day/Masculine
Colour Crazy Challenge #24 Anything Goes 

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

A Lick of Paint on Father's Day

Hello lovely peeps

Just popping in to show you the card I made for my Father-in-Law.

I've used the Simply Print version of A Lick of Paint from Lili of the Valley (he is also available as uncoloured digi or a rubber stamp) and cut him out with a small border

I die-cut 'happy' from one of my papers with a Memory Box die and glued it onto a co-ordinating paper (all from the Wild at Heart 8x8 pad by First Edition/Trimcraft)

then cut it into 1.5 cm strips

I made a little template

and used it to cut the top of the strips so they look like fence posts.

I glued them all onto a rectangle of plain card to give it a bit of stability while I shuffled everything around on the card deciding on the layout :o) 

For the greeting I inked up the second part of one of the Simply Sophisticated stamps with Black Memento ink and stamped onto another paper. The clear stamps are retired now but are still available from LOTV as digi stamps.

I attached the greeting to the fence with a couple of brass coloured brads and added some grass, cut with my trusty Icicle die by Die-Sire.

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
Come and Get It  Father's Day
Glitter n Sparkle #244 Father's Day/Masculine
Tuesday Throwdown #347 for the men
Kitty Bee Designs #97 For the guys
Unicorn Challenge #22 For the guys

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

Bubbling bottles for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps

For today's card I've used Leonie's In a Spin die in two different ways.
First I cut several of them from Sheena stamping card and glued them to an A5 piece with Cosmic Shimmer glue.

Next I dragged some Distress Oxide inks over the top

and spritzed with water.

I repeated this a few times to build up the colour, drying with a heat gun in between each layer

adding a bit of Fossilized Amber into the mix

The die-cuts were starting to lift away in places by the time I finished because of the heat so I just needed to stick them back down in a few places before trimming the excess off.

For my topper I die-cut some Apothecary Bottles - this is a Bigz Die by Tim Holtz.
I coloured these up with the Distress Oxides again, using some applicator foams and spritzing/drying between layers of colour.

For the corks I stippled on Ground Espresso distress ink with a stencil brush

I inked and distressed a rectangle of white card to layer the bottles on top of and added highlights to the bottles with a white gel pen.

For the bubbles I cut the In a Spin die from clear shrink plastic and gently heated it to shrink. There was a bit of a hairy moment when it curled over and stuck to itself but I managed to pry it apart :o)

It's finished off with a sentiment from the Hey There, Dreamer rubber stamp set

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-

Deep Ocean Challenge #157 Die-cuts/chipboards and/or punches

Sisterhood of Crafters Use your imagination

Creatalicious Challenges #117 Anything Goes with optional Diecuts/Punches

Crafty Purple Frog Make it manly

The Mixed Media World Challenge MMW#26: Anything Goes

We Love 2 Create #12 Anything Creative/Mixed Media Goes

Creative Artiste Challenge #27 Anything Mixed Media Goes

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x