Floating high

Yay, I have finally gotten a chance to play along with Skipping Stones Designs sketch challenge. It seems like its been ages since I got to join in the challenge. I have been sick for the last two weeks so have dragged myself out of my sick bed on one or two occasions to try make myself feel better and have made one or two things. I usually have cards made pretty fast but its taking me ages lately, blame is on the germs :/ Hopefully I am on the mend and will be back to normal soon though. Well as normal as I can be Anyway here is the fantastic sketch we had to play with:

I saw the sketch and was going through my stamps in my head thinking about what I could do. Then I had one of those eureka moments and leapt out of bed* and headed for my craft room. (*Translated: sat up, coughed up a lung and shuffled like a 90 year old to my craft room). Here is what I came up with:

I had great fun paper piecing the hot air balloon and inking up the sky. Its hard to tell in the image but the clouds have been defined with a pearl paint dabber so they have some texture and subtle shimmer.

Flying by….

Does it look like the hot air balloons are pulling along the congratulations banner? I do hope so because that’s what I was aiming for. This was one of those cards that looks fantastic when you picture it in your hear. In real life it just doesn’t look as fab as you thought :/ I do however LOVE the hot air balloon stamp from 100 Proof Press. Again its so beautifully detailed and stamps beautifully. I coated the balloon in glossy accents to give some dimension and shine.

I hand cut the banner and created little ropes from some seam binding scraps. Then I sat and stared at it for a while. What is missing from it?? I then gave up and took a photo and am posting it to get it out of my system!

I am entering this to the Black and Blue challenge over at Cards for Men. Men like hot air balloons right?

Up, up and away….

I have created this for  the ‘In My Beautiful Balloon Challenge’ in the Moxie Fab World. Hot air balloons are everywhere at the moment and I love it! I used a fantastic hot air balloon digi paper from Create With TLC. The balloon I drew freehand, cut out, inked up and then added some pearls for colour. The banner was again hand cut and stamped with a Tim Holtzstamp.

A hot air balloon trip is so on my bucket list!

Stripes!!

Simon Says Stamp and Show some stripes – and of course I was happy to oblige! Some of my stripes are a bit hard to see. The kraft card base is stamped with the Kaisercraft grid stamp making lots of stripes. The ink I used matches the greens in the papers perfectly but the camera did not want to oblige by actually showing it properly :/ I then have a stripe of tissue tape, and a piece of card that has notebook lines – aka stripes – on it. If I am really pushing it I could say that the ropes holding the hot air balloons looks like stripes on the paper too. That may be going a bit too far though! Can you tell I am still working on using up my G45 scraps? The flower I made following the tutorial here, I love how it turned out!

Ok I am all striped out now, I am off to enter this card in the challenge and go sit in a room with no stripes!