LIM52 - It's a Bit Sketchy

With just another day or two to go, you still have time to leave a comment for the drawing on January 31st.  Just pop over to this post and leave a comment.  I'll be giving one lucky person a nice gift card in celebration of my 4th anniversary as a blogger.  Come on, now...you know you'd like to have a gift card to buy a few more craft goodies!

This week marks one year of the Less is More challenges.  Chrissie and Mandi have challenged us (and I do mean challenged me!)  for a full year to create cards that are clean and simple.  I had some favorite weeks (loved the silhouettes, something with legs, red and orange, and leaves) and I've had some weeks that I almost gave up (snow, acrylics, and one word)...but I hung in there and always gave it my best.  I think I only missed one week of the challenge.  I can honestly say that I believe that playing along with this challenge has made me try things I might never have tried and I feel like my cards are much more CAS than they were a year ago.  In fact, I'm so used to the CAS style, I have a great deal of difficulty making anything else now! LOL!  Thanks so much, Chrissie and Mandi, for the challenges!

Okay...on to the challenge.  Here's our sketch this week.  We were given specific rules for this week and they are as follows:

We would like the card to be

• rectangular
• in landscape orientation
• with the band remaining in a vertical position 

As it's a very simple sketch,  we would like it to remain as is without any rotation of either the card or the vertical band.

I've made three cards this week. The first one looked good in my head, but didn't transfer to paper very well.

This card is a 4 x 8 inch card.  I used PTI stamps for the vases and flowers.  The background piece was made with TH glimmer mists - two shades of blue and a touch of pearl.  The shelf under the vases was an afterthought...and it looked much better before I added the doodling with the white pen.  I also doodled on the vases after coloring them with Copics.  The "shelf" was made by punching an edge and trimming it down.  Sentiment is also PTI.

This card is a 5.50 x 4.25 inch card.  I cut a red strip, punched out part of a circle, then backed the red with the black card stock.  The hearts were punched with two different EK Success punches.  I punched out several of each of the hearts and then glued them together to make 3 thicker hearts.  Added a bit of twine and hung the hearts with a bow.  The sentiment was generated on the computer...so...no stamping on this one.  I also added a small piece of bling to each heart.

I like how this card turned out.  Images are from Flourishes.  I stamped the stems on the green card stock, then trimmed it down to the width I wanted, leaving the stems hanging off the edge.  I stamped the blooms on a piece of white card stock, then colored them with Copics.  I cut out each bloom and added them to the card....some are pop-dotted and some are flat to the card.  The sentiment is an old stamp...not sure who makes it. I backed the green strip with a pink strip to make the flowers "pop".

I thought I'd share a layout I finished last weekend too.

These photos of my darling little granddaughter, Maggie, were taken in April 2011. I used Echo Park Summer Days collection for this layout. I used my Cameo for a lot of the cutting for this layout. The swimsuits, the sun, the title work, and the "little miss sunshine" image. The clothes line is a QK die. Swimsuits are pop-dotted. I cut the sun to fit in the corner of the layout, popped it up with pop dots and coated it with yellow stickles. The little banner tags down the side of the photos were made from scraps of paper, then attached with multi-colored brads. LOTS of doodled stitching on this layout. I generated the photo collage in Picnik (which sadly is closing down on April 19). I guess I'll have to find another free program to create my photo collages! The little miss sunshine girl is a cutting file in the Silhouette library, but I used the print and cut feature of the Cameo...cool stuff! Journaling is tucked behind the photo mat. It's difficult to tell here, but I cut some 1/4 inch strips to put at the top of the green tab. I stacked about 3 strips on the tab to keep the journaling from slipping behind the photos...and as it worked out, the pink strips I added makes it "look" like the green journaling tag is behind the big pink background...pretty cool, huh?! (The black border is not on the layout, it was added in photoshop to keep the edges from fading.)  Journaling reads: 

Maggie, you're our little ray of sunshine! You brighten up a room just by walking in. You look so precious in your little bathing suit and wearing your sister's sunglasses. You're all decked out and ready to head out to the pool. Photos April 14, 2011 

Whew! That's all for today.  I'll be back in a couple of days to announce the winner of the drawing for the gift card.  Don't forget to pop over to this post and leave me a comment, if you haven't already done so! Everybody loves free stuff...Right?!

Thanks so much for stopping in! I always appreciate your sweet comments!! Until next time...

Hugs!