AAA Cards DT: Teal and gold colour challenge

Over at AAA Cards, there’s another colour challenge for a clean and simple card design. This time it’s my choice of scheme: teal and gold. A classy and classic combination in my opinion, with lots of potential choices for metallics and media. Here’s my card design:

teal and gold coloured folk art card Continue reading

LIM DT: Birthdays theme

After a short hiatus over Christmas and New Year, it’s great that the Less is More challenge is back! This time, it being our 11th birthday, the theme is, well, ‘birthdays’. Make a clean and simple card (lots of white space and minimal elements) and enter the challenge 🙂

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AAA Cards DT: One layer + big sentiment

Another clean and simple card for you, featured in AAA Cards latest challenge: one layer with an optional extra of a big sentiment. The mood board for this week’s challenge included hearts, I’m sure, in time for Valentine’s Day. I looked out my only stamp to feature a heart, hoping it wasn’t too fussy for a CAS card, and used it along with a big sentiment for my card:

card with big sentiment

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LIM DT: Photo inspiration

It’s the last challenge of the year at Less is More and this time around it’s a photo inspiration. The idea behind this is to use the colours or textures or style within the photo to make your clean and simple card/project. Here’s my take on the photo inspiration (further down the post):

photo inspiration

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Craft Label DT: Butterfly Kisses Cards II

The thing with a 6×6″ paper pad is that when you’re using the papers to make cards, the pad doesn’t last very long – go with the 12×12″ pad! This also gives you the opportunity to do scrapbook layouts. The paper pad, stamps and embellishments I have revisited are from Dovecraft – Butterfly Kisses – available from Craft Label. Here are the five additional card designs…

As well as the paper pad and embellishments, I used two coordinating Distress Oxide colours to stamp with: Dusty Concord and Bundled Sage. Top tip: give the clear stamps a good wash before first use to remove the manufacturing film that can cause the ink to bead up rather than lay flat.

LIM DT: CAS inking

One of the challenges of [C]lean [A]nd [S]imple card design is keeping some white space around your elements. This week’s challenge over at Less is More is CAS inking. We’re hoping that entrants will restrain themselves and keep roughly two-thirds of their card free of inking or texture as per the challenge rules. I created several inked pieces and chose two to go through to card stages:

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LIM DT: Theme – Baby

Another Less is More challenge blog design team post… I had to go very deep into my stash to find some baby-themed stamps, but after almost getting lost in a drawer I managed to look out three suitable images. All have been stamped on paper for acrylics as I couldn’t immediately lay my hands on watercolour paper. I then cut out the images and stuck them onto the cards.

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LIM DT: Clothing/Fashion

After a Christmas hiatus, Less is More is back with a new clean and simple card challenge. ‘We’re probably all sick of sweat pants and casual clothes, so let’s look forward to a time when we can all dress up again’ sets off the clothing/fashion theme. I remembered that I had done some paper piecing of dresses when I was with Craftwork Cards and managed to unearth the ‘Sophie’ stamp set from 2016 which is perfect for dress-up!

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LIM: More than one type of foliage

It’s recipe time at Less is More and the theme chosen is ‘more than one type of foliage’. One of the main aims of the challenge (aside from making sure the card is clean and simple) is to make the theme to be the focus of the card. There was only one stamp set I could think of in my collection that would fit the bill – a set of five fern fronds by Hero Arts. Here’s the eventual winner, from three I made, for my design team card:

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LIM DT: Shades of Purple

It’s a colour challenge at Less is More for the next fortnight and the chosen theme is ‘shades of purple’. I had three goes at picking out the colours – it’s curious how when you put some colours together they show up different hues in adjacent colours that you didn’t notice before (and weren’t purple). One technique, in particular, showed this up perfectly (read below). Anyhoo, here’s my take on the challenge and two bonus cards…

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