Retreat Layouts 1

I got seven layouts completed and a few more partially done at the ADTML retreat.  I hadn't actually scrapped since the previous retreat last April, but it was like meeting up with an old friend, I just took up where we left off!
Here are two:

The photos have come out a little dark!  Silver Birch has a beautiful background paper which didn't really need much adding to it.  I used this sketch from Pinterest, the banners and long strip are punched, the doily is die-cut, as is the title.  It is also straight in real life, not as wonky as it looks, I swear!
The Mad Hatters also lets the background paper do most of the work.  I punched out two different Martha Stewart snowflakes, several times, to make a flurry.  The journalling and date tags at the side of the photo were supposed to be done with a label punch, halved - until I discovered I hadn't packed it!  But in my die folder I had the nestabilities labels four set and it was perfect.  The title is die-cut.

Pin-spired Wednesday: Get Well cards

I am going to try and blog something inspired by one of my Pins, every Wednesday .... feel free to join in :-)
Today I have a couple of get well cards, inspired by this Pin.

I reversed the design as I prefer the stamped image to be on the left.  For the agapanthus card, I stamped the splotches in shades of aqua/green/grey and added some grunge lines and a sentiment. The butterflies are stamped over pink/green splotches with grey water droplets.
Then I trimmed the image to size, matted onto silver and job done!
I am pleased with both of them, but I do prefer the agapanthus card, I think it's a cleaner silhouette than the butterflies. 

Pin-spiration: colour block card

Another Pin-spired card today :-)  The original Pin is here and this is my take on it.

I had a rummage through the half-prepped cards box (now doesn't half-prepped sound better than half-done??) and there was this card with just the background done.  I found the rest of the 6" paper pad - possibly My Minds Eye? - the pad cover has become separated.  The three different yellow papers were cut into a square and two sets of two strips, then attached to a square piece of cardstock, which I then close-cut to fit the shape made by the blocks.  The sentiment stamp was free with a card making magazine recently, I believe it's Lily of the Valley and the border stamp is from an old (and mostly unused!) Inkadinkadoo set.

Pin-spiration: Circle wall art

A few months ago, Sy showed me Pinterest and I have spent many many hours a bit of time browsing through the  many boards and pinning ideas for cards and other craft projects.  I decided that I should probably stop Pinning and start actually doing something with the ideas! 

Ok, I haven't stopped Pinning, but I have done my first completely Pin-spired project.  A few days ago, I blogged the decorated caddy for my work colleague here, and I did intend to hand it over on Monday.  But I thought I would also make her a surprise piece of wall art, which I started at the weekend crop, but didn't finish in time for Monday.  The original Pin is here, and this is my version of it:

Close up of some detail:

It was very easy to do, at the crop I brushed paint in three colours (two oranges, one yellow) randomly over a 12 x 12 sheet of white card, making sure that there were brush marks and random bits.  Then I used a Paperartsy splotches stamp and stamped/embossed in gold randomly over the whole sheet.  Then it was just a matter of punching circles which had really good bits of pattern on them.

I stuck 12 circles down on a piece of 10x8" card in as neat a grid as I could manage - thank goodness for my centering ruler! - and I think it looks fabulous.  I am definitely going to make more of these in different colours.

But I must be honest ...... this is my second painted sheet of card - the first one went horribly wrong!  I stamped a background pattern in white ink and dried with a heat gun before adding the gold embossed splotches.  It turned out to be not so dried as I had thought and the background pattern picked up the gold embossing powder as well!  Far too much gold for how I wanted the finished item to look ...... so I cut it into pieces and it will appear on a card soon :-)

This afternoon I handed over both the caddy and the artwork to my colleague and she absolutely loved them - what a relief :-)