Dare To Get Dirty 2011

It's the annual Dare To Get Dirty Challenge at Splitcoast Stampers! It began last weekend and ends tomorrow night. I posted one of the challenge cards early yesterday, today I'm posting two more cards that I have completed which cover a combined 7 challenges. yeah!!


This first card is my favorite so far. I just love how the blue pops against the kraft; unfortunately the touches of blue in the DP don't show up very well in the pictures I took. It looks so pretty IRL.

The flowers are made from punched Baja Breeze; sponged with Baja Breeze and Pacific Point. I then spritzed the pieces with water and crumpled them up. After a few minutes I semi flattened them out, let them dry, then layered the flower together, finishing it off with some old SU! beads that were gathering dust. The DP is framed in Baja, then i distressed both layer and sponged the edges with BB and PP. The lovely wood frame is from Kaisercraft, the leaves are die cut using SU!s Little Leaves and the lovely seam binding is also Baja from SU. The kraft card stock and DP are from Memory Box.




The card above covers 4 challenges and I really had fun making this one. I rarely make masculine cards so I tend to struggle with them, but this one came to me fairly fast and though it will never be in my top 100 I am pleased with it. I'm especially pleased with how the globe turned out. I'm not sure how to explain this, but what I wanted was to give the globe a roundness or to have the center puffed out as if I cut a real globe. So using the large handle on my scissors and a soft pad, I stressed the image from behind starting in the center working my way to the edges with decreasing pressure as I went. Not sure if that made sense, but the result was what I was after. I tried to capture the "roundness" in the second picture, but it doesn't really show up very well.

I used SU! Real Red, True Thyme and cream naturals card stock. The inks were True Thyme and Early Expresso.



So there are two more submissions for DTGD2011 and if I'm lucky I might be able to make two more cards today and maybe even come up with something for the LIM challenge. :)

Thank you for stopping by.

Eating Crow ...

This past week Splitcoast Stampers has been holding their Annual Dare To Get Dirty Challenge Week. Thirty eight (38) challenges over the course of a week hosted by current and past Dirty Dozen members. Its a fabulous way to spent a week especially if you are lucky enough not to work, or can take the time off. Unfortunately June/July/August are incredibly busy for me at work so I'm playing catch-up today and tomorrow. Needless to say I'll be lucky to finish maybe three or four challenges before Monday's cutoff, but if I combined a few challenges I might just get in a good 40%. :)

So now to the eating crow part:
I hate one layer cards. I suck at OLC. They never sparkle, say "wow" or even garner a "ohhhh". I never like the way they turn out and to be honest, I'm simply not talented enough to pull them off. OLC are the HARDEST to make in my opinion. So here now is a OLC that I just finished and for once, I absolutely love how it turned out. Its very plain but I think it works; more so IRL because the embossing doesn't stand out in the picture. So I guess I now have to say I suck at one layer cards 99.9% of the time. LOL!!

I embossed the image using SU!'s Chocolate Chip craft ink and clear embossing powder (lord only knows how I managed to get it centered); pulled out my re-inkers and colored away. Low and behold, the first OLC that I can truly say I like. :)

Thank you for stopping by, as always its wonderful to hear from old blog friends and new ones alike.

PS - Would have loved to have had this stamp for last weeks Less is More challenge; unfortunately it didn't arrive until yesterday.

Carole

Supplies:
SU! Faith In Nature
SU! Inkers: Pear Pizazz, Old Olive, Wild Wasabi, Sahara Sand, So Saffron, Early Expresso ...