New resources, Clearly Besotted Challenge & Freshly Made Sketches 153

Good afternoon all,

Its a horrible rainy, foggy day here in Edinburgh and the kids are on holiday….again! My husband has been working night shifts this weekend which has meant I have been busy on my own with the kids during the day, I've had some time to myself at night (crafting time!!) and today, he is off and has taken the boys away out to give me some time to myself - and I have been told not to clean as he is also off tomorrow and has said he will do it!!! Brilliant :-).

I have LOTS to share with you…..I ordered a huge bunch of new resources from one of my favourite stamp companies - Clearly Bessotted

and so I have been diving straight in and been playing with these.The first two cards to share with you are made using my new resources….

I knew I wanted to use a black backing card to make the poppies really pop!! I black embossed the stem, stamped and then colour with my spectrum noir pens, the poppies before fussy cutting them out. The sentiment which is oh so appropriate for the card, was then heat embossed with gold. A CAS card (which really seems to be my way of it right now) with lots of white space (albeit in this example, black space!!) The current challenge theme is Autumn at Clearly Besotted, and although this does not follow the usual 'autumn' style/colour schemes etc, Remembrance Sunday is in November which still counts as Autumn??

The second card which again was creating just by playing around with new Clearly Besotted resources,  made use of a new ink I recently bought and LOVE - it is called London Fog by Memento. I finally bought a tag die (hurray!!!) and so I made full use of this….This is going to be an Anniversary card for my Mum and Dad who celebrate this next month.

Finally, I have a card that was really inspired by the amazing Debby Hughes…..I absolute adore Debby's work and would go so far as to say that she is the card designer that I really aspire too, and I think this is starting to come through in some of my designs. I saw this amazing card by Debby of Pinterest and I was desperate to try something similar (determined not to copy though!!)

Isn't this just absolutely stunning?? Well I decided to do something along these lines, using vellum and colouring on the reverse…..Here is my take on it-

I do feel there is something missing with my card - something down the left side…I tried ribbon, thread and twine but none looked right….I will need to ponder this for longer. For now however, it fits in nicely with the challenge over at Freshly Made Sketches…. and so I will be entering it in there.

Finally, I have a set of three cards to share with you - told you I had been busy!!! I made a card for my friend who was having a dreadful time at work and took the brave decision to hand in her notice. She was feeling quite emotional about it and so I decided to cheer her up with a wee card. She loved it so much, that she asked if I would make another 3 exactly the same for her friends. I suggested that she might like the same card done in different colours…..and here they are - 

I had made it in the pink shades for my friend but as soon as I completed the lilac/purple ones, I decided I like that more…then I made the turquoise/teal ones…..now think that one is my favourite!!

I have one more card to share, but I will save this for another post.

Many thanks for reading and any comments as always are so very much appreciated! Laura xxx