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:
Happy New Year from the AAA Cards Design Team! Our clean and simple 2023 challenge programme starts with a moodboard for your inspiration – take whatever elements you like from the featured photos to make your card. The moodboard pic is below. Here is my take on the challenge:
I don’t normally ‘do’ Halloween stuff, but the optional theme over at AAA Cards this week for their clean and simple card challenge is ‘Halloween cats’. I don’t particularly ‘do’ cats either – I’m a dog person – so I dropped that part of the challenge and went with a straight Halloween theme instead. This stamp from Tim Holtz was perfect for this, or a pirate card, and I’ve just coloured it in with alcohol markers.
Challenge number 476 over at Less is More this week is to use a recipe or technique – this time it is to use a stencil…
The next challenge at Less is More is to make a one-layer card using a self-drawn frame. I went a bit mad and hand-drew the whole thing. The finished piece looks like it is layered because of shading using an alcohol marker on the bottom edge of the mandala – a very effective way of adding depth without layers. The background is a masked, dense layer of blended distress ink over which I’ve used a black pigment marker and Stabilo pencils for shading.
Another clean and simple card challenge at Less is More this week. We’ve been set the theme of ‘occupations’. I trawled through my stash and decided to go with the occupation of ‘gardener’… It wasn’t that tricky to choose as I only had one set of stamps that were suitable! Here’s my card:
This week’s clean and simple card challenge at AAA Cards is to use the sketch provided to inspire your own makes. There’s the added theme of ‘silhouette’ to throw into the mix. Here’s my design team card…
This week’s theme at Less is More clean and simple challenge blog is ‘silhouette’. I considered a traditional take on the profile of a person but wasn’t particularly excited by that. Then I worked through all my stamps and came across a silhouette dragon, various cogs, flowers, and flourishes. One of the other design team members had used a floral theme, so that was out. Finally, I came across my well-used, but long-neglected, Stampscapes stamps from way back in the 1990s and decided they were perfect for the challenge:
We’ve reached ‘colours’ on our rotating challenge themes at Less is More and this time around it is purple and yellow. For those unfamiliar with the challenge, it is to make a card or project that is clean and simple – there must be lots of clear and clean space around whatever elements you’re using. Here’s the card I made for the design team inspiration:
Oh, this one is a real toughie! I don’t think it’s a secret that the design team were all scratching their heads with the latest challenge over at the clean and simple card challenge site, Less is More. We could think of several ways of making a monogram, but most weren’t only one layer. That ruled out die cuts, cutouts and all sorts of other clever stuff.
Anyhoo, I scratched my head successfully and came up with three designs. The first, the N, technically didn’t fulfil the definition of a monogram, being a single initial. Then the stencilled and embellished A didn’t fulfil the definition either and turned out not to be a favourite. Finally, the graffiti monogram meets the definition, but might not be considered a traditional monogram.
