Crafty Girls Challenges

The new challenge at Crafty Girls begins today. The theme for this challenge is “paper piecing” and our sponsors are MilkCoffee and Sassy Design Studios.

I chose Little Mermaid by MilkCoffee for my DT card. I paper pieced the mermaid’s tail and the starfish, and coloured the mermaid and sky in using ProMarkers.

Aside from the paper pieced areas, I hadn’t really thought about the rest of the image in much detail, which led to a “head-in-hands” moment earlier when I couldn’t figure how to create waves or depth in the sea…. After a cup of coffee, things became much clearer and I picked up where I’d left off! I had printed a spare copy of the image, so I cut along the tops of the waves and laid the spare mermaid and sky part to protect the partly coloured image while I applied Distress Inks to the bottom half of the image. The coffee must have kicked in around then, as I suddenly thought about moving the mask down a little and added a little more Distress Ink, to make a darker more intense colour. I carried on a couple more times, using a mix of Tumbled Glass and Peacock Feathers for the bottom two waves to deeper the colour even more. When I took the protective cover off, I was delighted to see the final effect – the mermaid was surrounded by a beautifully coloured sea!

I framed the image with some shimmery turquoise cardstock and based the rest of the layout around the current sketch over at From The Heart Stamps:

The papers are from the American Crafts Hip Hip Hooray paper stack. The final touches were the yellow and white twine, threaded through a starfish bead that is from my stash and a liberal sprinkling of Crystal Stickles to make my little mermaid sparkle!!

Make sure you pop over to have a look at the projects created by my Crafty Girls team-mates! I look forward to seeing your paper pieced projects soon too.

I’d like to enter this card into the following challenges:

From The Heart Sketches: Sketch 54 (see above)

Little Miss Muffet Stamps – Birthday (balloons or birthday sentiment)

Milk Coffee – Girly

Seize The Birthday – Anything Goes

Fab n Funky – Spots and Stripes

Craft Your Passion – Girly Girl

Cutie Pie Challenge – Cute + Spots/Dots

Catered Crop – Birthdays

Thanks for reading x

Hi everyone! I’m excited to share with you today my first DT card for the Crafty Girls Challenge 🙂 The theme is for this challenge is “Anything Goes”, so it’s the perfect challenge to showcase all your Christmas projects! Our lovely sponsors for this challenge are MilkCoffee and Floppy Latte.

The snow globe image is by Floppy Latte – it’s the first time I have used one of their stamps, but most definitely won’t be the last!! I really enjoyed keeping this card in cool, pastel, wintry shades – it may have helped that it was also the first morning we had to de-ice the car before we could drive to school!! I used Pro-Markers to colour the image, choosing light fresh colours and then making them even paler by drawing ink from the chisel end of the coloured markers onto the bullet nib of the blender and diluting the colour down a little further. For the fresh snow on the ground, I used a Tea Green Pro-Marker around the “edges” of the snow and again, blended it further. Star Dust Stickles gave my snowy scene a crisp, sparkly finish. I added the sentiment to the base of the globe as it felt too crowded anywhere else. The sentiment is a peel-off sticker from the Forever Friends Christmas set – I usually avoid peel-offs as I’m not a big fan, but I liked the way I could easily adjust the letters to follow the slight curve of the snowglobe.

The background papers are from an old Forever Friends Christmas paper stack and I added little Stickles dots to the centre of the snowflakes, so that it catches the light, even on the gloomiest of days! I borrowed the layout from Sketch 42 at From The Heart Stamps; I liked the way the two circular cuts of background paper echoed the snowglobe’s shape and the colour I chose for the sky. Finally, a little strip of narrow satin ribbon and a few gems as the finishing touches!

I’m sure you’re right in the middle of some amazing Christmas creations – why not head over the the Crafty Girls Challenge and show us! Don’t forget to take a peek at the other amazing DT projects while you’re there!

I’d like to enter this card in the following challenges:

Sprinkle n Sparkle – Anything Goes

Paper Crafting Journey – Bling It Up!

Crafter’s Cafe – Anything Goes

TTCRD – Anything Goes

Paper Minutes – Christmas CAS

I Love ProMarkers – Anything Goes

MIM – Contemporary Christmas

Happy Campers – Glitter It!

Lexi’s Creations – Christmas

Sister Act – Anything Goes

Creative Craft Challenges2 – Non-Traditional Christmas Colours