Movement and Colour

Happy Sunday to all,

Yesterday we had a great day out at the London 2012 Paralympics. We watched the sitting Volleyball. To sum up-truly amazing athletes, fantastic organisation and most of all, a fun and friendly atmosphere! Check out the photos later in this post.

My card today is for the Moxie Fab Movement Challenge. I had been directed to this from a few of the blogs that I read and wanted to learn more about 'movement' in design. Movement is the way the different features of the design, such as the shapes, lines and textures, cause your eyes to move around the design. I was fascinated by this and decided to give it a go. A real challenge but interesting. What made it more of a challenge for me was to use the Colour Q combo of coral choc chip, saffron, sky blue and white. I found this combo a bit freaky but, after a bit of playing around, did manage it!

The movement I have tried to show through the flourishes to the ribbon (led by the blue gems) to the sentiment and then to the bottom of the page, again led by the gems. I hope it works!!

And now for some photos of us enjoying the Paralympics

Me, before the game, proving I was there!

Actually in the stadium before the Brazil/Egypt match

Hubby, not being very athletic, eating pizza!

 And me on the journey home doing the Mo-bot (is that what it is called??)

Have a great Sunday x

Thanks

At last its Friday and time to kick back and chill.

We are off to the Para-Olympics tomorrow to see the seated volleyball. I am so excited. We plan to get the river boat from the London Eye to the Excel Centre then the new cable car across the Thames to get back. I have my London 2012 T-Shirt ready to wear and intend buying a Para-Olympic sweatshirt whilst I am there. I will post some photos next week.

I was looking through some notelets that my cousin Lynn gave to me when she came to visit this year. I loved this one notelet that had a variety of stamps on it and I remember her telling me the principles of how to make a card like this (stamp the biggest image first etc). Her advice, at the time, was to try stamping simple things first until I got more comfortable with stamping and then try something more complicated.  I have been trying over the last few months to stamp more and so decided today was the today to step out of my comfort zone.

I saw this picture on Inspired by Stamping and loved the sunflowers combined with the blue so used this as my inspiration to enter thier colour combo challenge. I also decided to enter the 'Thanks' challenge at A Passion for Papertrey as I knew that I wanted to use my new leaf PTI stamps for this card.



I decided to go all the way and use 3 sets of PTI ('turning leaves', 'grunge me' and a 'garden of life' stamps and came up with this:

I had a lot of fun doing this and I just love the little blue birds that seem to give movement to the whole card.

Have a great weekend x

Love across the Nations.

Ever had a holiday romance or fallen for a guy who lives far away in another country??

Most of us have but usually it only lasts for a short time, although memories may last longer!

Today my card is for a couple who are celebrating 45 years of marriage. 2 people from different countries-Italy and Canada- who managed to make that Summer romance last a bit longer than 2 weeks!

I wanted to make a card that recognised their respective Nations. It has taken me a while and lots of searching on your blogs and the net for ideas. Then after making this card the other day (originally inspired by Angeline's card) I thought why not do the same thing but use the Canadian and Italian Flags. And with the help of my PTI impression plate, I came up with this:

This will be entered into the 'heart' challenge over on Card Makin' Mamas and the 'Anything goes' challenge on Stamp and Create

Enjoy the rest of your Thursday and here to love across the Nations!

Sisters

Happy Wednesday (or, what is it you call it in the US...hump day??)

I am just popping in to share a card I made for my sister's Birthday next week. Tina (my sister) and I go away with my Mum and Dad in October. I am very much looking forward to it, although Tina is pretty active and I am not sure I will be able to keep up with all the hiking she will have planned! My card was inspired by the challenge photo on Jay Gee Nook's  blog.



I was immediately drawn to leaf designs on the cushions and the soft colours in all the photos. I used my leaf dies and stamps from PTI and came up with this:

I also am going to enter this into a new challenge site for me Cas-ology, who challenge us to make a CAS card focused on 'family'. This site is great for us lovers of CAS designs!

 Have a happy Wednesday (hump day just sounds so wrong to us Brits!)

The sentiment is from Desert Diva

My Favourite place to be!

This coming Sunday is my seventh Wedding Anniversary and today Runway Inspired challenged us to make a card taking inspiration from this picture:





It was the bright orange and blue combo blocks that caught by eye and then I saw Angeline's card here on her blog and immediately I knew what card I wanted to make for hubby. I already knew the sentiment I wanted to use from Paper Makeup Stamps but had been struggling what design I could use to match the gorgeous words. Well, thank-you Angeline for the inspiration!

This took me ages to make as I kept getting the hearts placed wrong but after my sixth attempt I managed it BUT then I realised that the sentiment has the US spelling of 'favourite'.  However hubby is worse at spelling than me so I thought you would probably not notice (lets wait and see!!).
And the sentiment is very true, being with him is my favourite place to be!

And here is my card:

I will also be entering this into the 'Boys and Men' challenges at:

By Cute and Girly
Hooked on Crafts

Back to School time!

 Cas-ual Friday this week challenged us to make 'Back to School' cards. All over blogging land there seems to be 'back to school' challenges. I am not a Mum and so had not really thought about entering any of these until I saw Laurie's card here (and at the bottom of this post). Laurie's card inspired me to play along-Mum or no Mum! Also her card reminded me how much I wanted to use my new PTI text stamp and thought I would combine this with the digi blackboard 'thank-you' from Create with TLC

And for a bit of background...from a little girl I always wanted to be a teacher and would play with my blackboard, calling the register for hours. And yep I did become a teacher but only lasted 2 years. My dream job was not what I had imagined from being that bossy little girl!

Dreams don't always work out but I managed to draw on my experience of writing on blackboards to come up with this card:

I will be entering this into the 'Back to School' challenges at Cas-Ual Friday
Do You Stack Up
4 Crafty Chicks
Digi designs
And here is Laurie's card that inspired me:

Time for a Play Date!

Yippee its the weekend and time for me to play along with the The Play Date Cafe colour combo challenge.

It is my Mother-in-Law's Birthday on Monday and we are off to have lunch with her tomorrow. I had already made her card but hubby came home yesterday with a bag of jewellery for his Mum. I decided in these times of austerity, rather than buy wrapping paper, I would decorate the shop bag to match the card I had made. All I needed to do was cover over the shop label with my own design.

So out came my PTI goodies and lots of ink, matched the colours to the Play date challenge-a bit different than the card colours but close enough!

I had a lot of fun with this and like how it turned out, especially next to the card. And naturally saving a bit of money can't be bad whilst playing!!

Here is the bag in the Play Date colours:

And here it is next to the card:

 I'm hoping MIL likes it-I know she will love the jewellery especially as her little boy picked it out for her!

Enjoy your weekend x