Don’t forget that in the crafting world, new Christmas releases occur from any point in June to the end of July. I’m not entirely sure why, but, presumably, it’s like fashion, a season in advance. Thus, the Less is More challenge this time is ‘Christmas in July’. I’ve created two cards: initially, the watercoloured card, which I decided wasn’t clean and simple enough, and then the snowflake and sentiment.
For the unfamiliar, a sketch challenge starts with a block drawing which you then adapt with added elements to make your card. Over at Less is More, the clean and simple card challenge blog, we have set sketch 26. Here are two cards based on the sketch.
It’s time for another challenge at Less is More… This time we have a colour challenge: Blue and Silver or Red and Gold. For me, they are classic Christmas colours, so I’ve used that theme for my cards this time around. First up, my choice for my design team card. It’s hard to see with the reflections, but the snowflakes are heat embossed in silver. The watercolour is Chipped Sapphire Distress Stain flooded into water, then splattered with water and blotted dry.
I recently took delivery of the latest Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous mini-stencils, along with a Crafter’s Workshop 6×6″ stencil. Along with those came some DecoArt Americana acrylic paints. I decided that I would have a play since I haven’t done much art journaling during COVID lockdown. The text was an image transfer, put together in Adobe Illustrator before printing in reverse ready for sticking down. The woman’s head mask is by That’s Crafty!.
It’s a CASe challenge over at Less is More. Ok, it was a new one for me too. Apparently, CASe stands for ‘Copy And Share everything’ and the aim is to take inspiration from any or all of the elements of a starter card, all the while keeping to the clean and simple principles. Here’s my card, and below is Sharon’s card that she made as our starter for ten:
I’m on a roll! Today’s make is an art journal page featuring the new First Edition Deco Maché decoupage paper in the Modern Marks design. I decided to augment the marks and colour matched the marks to Distress Paint colours (listed below). The paper behaved itself today – I used less of the glue and the wrinkles were kept to a minimum as a result. It’s certainly a lot harder to work with a sheet rather than pieces, so bear this in mind. Time-lapse video below.
Next week’s Art Journal Session has the theme ‘butterflies’. I’ve three new pages to share, but there are several in my past library that you can find using the search facility.
Another weekly challenge has landed over at Passion for ProMarkers. I was pleased to be in the top five chosen submissions in last week’s challenge, so I thought I’d have another go. Gotta be in it to win it after all. The theme is ‘animals’. Some time ago I encouraged people to use the tag #nbu – never been used – in an effort to use that crafty stash that once purchased languishes unloved in a drawer or box. This stamp is one such example…
Our next Bible journaling session has ‘rubber stamping’ as its theme. It will be a departure from my normal style, and it took some time to find suitable stamps to match some verses and themes. When creating, I also chose to break my ‘rule’ of not working over the text areas of the page. I made sure, however, the work I did was transparent and the text still readable:
As I’ve previously mentioned, the August art journal session at The Studio is all about ‘tints, tones and shades’. Playing with light and shade on a page helps give depth and interest to the piece. Here, playing with the properties of distress ink and distress oxide provides the opportunity to get every shade of the same colour. The use of water also helps with the lighter tones.
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