LIM DT: One layer card – flowers

A new one-layer card challenge this week at Less is More. You have to do everything on the card blank. No die cuts, no layers, and minimal embellishments (if at all). It’s quite a tough assignment for those that like plenty of frills on their cards, but it makes for the desired clean and simple card design. This time, the theme is ‘flowers’ and I came up with this:

Pink rose flowers on a French text background, one layer card Continue reading

AAA Cards DT: Pink Birthday

Over at AAA Cards challenge blog we’re celebrating 9 years of clean and simple card-making. There’s even a money prize up for grabs! The challenge this time is ‘pink birthday’. I searched through my stash and remained uninspired by what I had on a generic birthday theme. Eventually, I settled on one of my flower stamps, coloured it pink and made it a birthday card with a stamped mini-sentiment:

floral pink birthday card with tiny sentiment Continue reading

LIM DT: Spring (#483)

It’s another theme challenge at Less is More this week. We’d like to see your clean and simple cards based on ‘spring’. Now, because I know what’s coming up in the next challenge I didn’t want to do a similar image and decided for this theme to play around with some typography. Here’s what I came up with:

Spring card featuring typography and a quote from Robin Williams

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AAA Cards DT: choose a side – Hot or Cold

It’s a colour challenge this week over at AAA Cards’ clean and simple challenge blog. Our task is to choose a side (of the colour wheel) – either hot or cold. Most of my art includes warm colours, so I thought this time I would take on the cold side. This meant choosing purples, blues and greens and I turned to the distress palette for my inspiration card:

clean and simple card design with cold colour palette Continue reading

LIM DT: A is for Automobile (#482)

We have a new type of theme at Less is More this week – working through the alphabet. Unsurprisingly, we start with A and the chosen item is ‘automobile’. I went through all my stamps and found just one featuring a car. I used that recently (actually not so recently I discover) and decided to look a little further. A quick internet search later, I found a suitable file I could edit and cut out with my Silhouette electronic cutter and came up with this:

automobile themed square card with black vinyl outlines of cars on nine coloured panels

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AAA Cards DT: Torn edges

One benefit of being on the AAA Cards design team is that the themes are set a year in advance. This allows me to work without last-minute deadlines – for instance, I’m writing this between Christmas and New Year 2022. It also means that you can get in early with your design so that there is minimal chance of duplicating ideas. On this occasion, one of my teamies had already posted a card using torn edges as a mask, so I have gone on a slightly different tack with my card.

torn edges panel coloured birthday card Continue reading

LIM DT: Anything Goes (#481)

Another ‘anything goes’ theme at the Less is More clean and simple challenge blog. This time it doesn’t have to be a one-layer card which leaves a little leeway for embellishments and matting to be added if needed. Remember that clean and simple requires a large amount of white space around your chosen elements. I’ve elected to add a little dimension to my card by lifting up the butterfly wings. I also added a little star dust to the wings which doesn’t completely show up in the pic. Here’s my finished inspiration piece for the challenge:

anything goes card featuring 'hello' sentiment and coloured butterfly on grey text background

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AAA Cards: A shaped card ± Easter

So, Easter is an optional twist on this week’s clean and simple card challenge over at AAA Cards. The main challenge is to use a shaped card that isn’t square or rectangular, with the suggestion that egg-shaped cards might be fun. Well, Easter celebrations, for me, are more than chocolate eggs, fluffy bunnies and cute chicks so I came up with this card instead:

Easter cross card Continue reading

LIM DT: Black & Aquamarine (#480)

For the new clean and simple card challenge at Less is More for the next fortnight, we have a colour theme – black and aquamarine. I have to admit looking up what sort of shade aquamarine is and decided it was on the greenish side of turquoise/teal. I picked out a light and dark shade from my distress crayons and basically used them as watercolours to fill in the stamped image. Here’s the final result:

Aquamarine and black coloured tiles with happy birthday sentiment

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AAA Cards DT: Inspired by song, book or movie

A themed challenge this week over at AAA Cards: a clean and simple card design based on your favourite song, book or movie. As normal, I worked through my stash and sought out which bits and bobs I could use to make my design team sample card. I’ve fudged my response to the theme a little… Here’s my homage to ‘every black and white movie ever made’:

inspired by a movie Continue reading