Sweet Sixteen

Hello!! :)

Well, I said I had something else to show you a week ago but it's been one of those weeks when my brain's just not been playing nice on the words front and I've not been upto writing about it!! :S Not sure how much sense I'll make even now- I've lost count of the typos already! :S - but I've had a fairly crafty week making several simple cards and a more difficult/interesting one, which is the one I'll show you in a mo', so I'm going to have a go before I get too behind...

So next on 'the list' was a birthday card for my cousin. I was going to keep it fairly simple and just use one of the extra cupcakes I stamped and coloured while making my friend's 21st card...but then we realsied it was her 16th and thought something a little more special was called for...time for a bit of a rethink!!

I decided that sticking with the cupcake theme would be a good opportunity to try using a digi stamp image for the first time. It turned out to be a card with several firsts- digis, Promarkers, computer generated sentiments, colouring my own ribbon- all with varying degrees of success!! ;) All in all, a bit of a hard slog but (I think!?!) I'm reasonably happy with how it came out in the end...

I used Butterscotch from Lexi's Doodles (which I bought when it was being sold to raise money for Ayme a few weeks ago) - I had the idea of her leaning on a giant cupcake when I was using the stamps (Kanban's Fairycakes set) not long after getting the digi- and started by sizing her to go with the cupcake stamp in My Craft Studio. I then began my lengthy attempts (!) to colour her:S When I finally managed that- about six images and trips to the printer later but more on that in a mo'!! :S - I cut the panel to size and used a cotton wool ball to apply sparkly chalk over the paper (you can't see it too well but it's darker at the edges and fading in towards the fairy) to take the edge off the stark white. I also edged that piece and the purple paper (from the Forever Friends With Love pad) with a light swipe of purple Brilliance ink straight from the ink pad- no Cut & Dry this time! Once I'd layered those up and attached the cupcake I coloured some white organza ribbon with the same Promarker I used for her dress and attatched that before sticking the whole thing to the white base card.

A close up of the fairy coloured with a mixture of Promarkers and Whispers/Papermania pens...and with copious amounts of Sakura Clear Stardust pen to hide the worst of my colouring :S As I said, this was about my 6th attempt and by this point no way was I going to print any more off or I'd never be finished...so out came the glitter pen- how did I get by before Clear Stardust?!! I wasn't going to use the Promarkers for this as I knew I needed more practice but my water-based pens made the printer in run :( Had to use them for the flesh tones, though, I'm afraid. I'm really hoping practice will make perfect- or, at least, much better!- with the Promarkers as I really like the effects I've seen other people achieve- I just need to figure out how to use them without the colour bleeding outside the lines and making a horrible mess that looks like a 2yr old's been playing!! If anyone has any tips for getting a good look with few colours then I'd be very grateful!! :)

And one of the sentiment- made in MCS Pro but using the techniques learned from Rachel's great tutorial here- is printed and cut out with Nesties using the same Promarker again to get a co-ordinating scalloped layer :) Using MCS Pro rather than Word meant I could group and resize the whole thing when I was happy with the proportions of the words. Does anyone else have a problem with MCS working one minute then refusing to let you do the same thing- in this case, move the sentiment aroung the page- the next? So frustrating at times!! :[ So much fun to have new fonts to play with since I discovered downloading free ones, though!! :)

I'm going to enter this in a few challenges: the Crafty Catz challenge which is embossing- the cupcake is heat embossed with silver glitter powder :) ; the Crafts and Me challenge which is to make something for a friend or family member :) ; Cupcake Crafts challenge 94 which was 'Dazzle us' so I think all my glitter pen and Twinkling H20s have that covered :) ; and Papertake Weekly's sketch challenge :) Think I should stop there or I'll be here all night linking them up!! ;)

Well, not sure that this is the most eloquent piece of writing I've ever produced but it's the best my brain will manage for now- I just hope it makes some kind of sense!! I have a masculine card I made last week to show you next- and the next ones I have to make are my dad's and grandad's Father's Day cards so I guess there won't be quite so much purple, pink or glitter around for while... :( Men's cards aren't easy but I do enjoy the challenge of doing something different :)

I hope you've had a good weekend!! It's been miserable here today- it's virtually dark already- still, on the bright(!) side, perfect excuse to stick in front of the computer with a cuppa and check out some more of the lovely blogs around, I think!!:) If you've made it this far then thanks so much for reading my ramblings!! I'd love to know what you think and thanks for all the lovely comments on my tent card- so lovely to read!! :)

hugs,