Happy New Year! After a break for Christmas, and some online classes taking up some time, I’ve been crafting. I’m working on a dragon sculpture, currently curing in the pond, and I’ve been learning 3D modelling software – part of which included animation of a lamp model you may spot in the blog header from time to time.

Anyhoo, today’s bit of crafting was the latest ‘Less is More’ challenge – a project with minimal layers, minimal embellishments with lots of white space and this time using the Pantone colour of the year 2019 and 2020.

They’re not two colours I would immediately choose to put together, so initially, I had a mental block. I ended up with two cards, one of which I don’t like, and one that I do!

behind the scenes

It’s all well and good seeing the lovely creations that others have made, but often the process behind the making is hidden from view. Here’s my workings-out for one of the cards, from the colour choices to the possible layouts:

In the end, I used a peel-off for the text which I coloured with the ProMarker. I added a sparkly heart, again colouring it with the ProMarker. As long as you don’t prod them too hard, the colour stays in place. I do recommend, however, not heat drying the ink on the peel-off as subsequently, it is much more curly and hard to place. All the final placements were off-kilter, so I ended up chopping up the card and layering it on a new one.

The second card was a lot quicker to do with a couple of squirts of distress stain and then stamping with distress ink over the top. Cut to size and stick down.

used in these cards

• Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Oxides: Abandoned Coral / Blueprint Sketch
• Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Stain Spray: Abandoned Coral
• Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Ink: Blueprint Sketch
• Carabelle Studio Art Stamp: Collage Typographique [SA60325]
• Claudine Hellmuth Studio ‘Bloom’ clear stamp and foam stamp collection
• Winsor & Newton ProMarker: Royal Blue
• Various embellishments