Mothers Day Card Challenge

Jo has kindly offered to help us out by running a cardmakers challenge for us!

We'd love for you to join in! Please make Jo feel welcome here on our little blog - all comments are enjoyed and appreciated! 

Welcome everyone to the first of many card makers challenges that I'll be running on here.  The idea behind these challenges is to stretch your creative muscles and try something new.  Every few weeks or so I’ll be giving you a challenge and it’s up to you how you interpret the challenge to create a card!

The challenge will vary; it might be an inspiration photo, a colour scheme, a sketch, a technique, supplies, etc.  Feel free to interpret the challenge your own way and substitute where necessary.  The idea is to have fun with it so there are no hard and fast rules.  With each challenge, I’ll show you the card that I came up with using the challenge inspiration as a jumping off point.  Please link your creations here so we can all see.  We can’t wait to see everyone’s creativity and individuality shining through!

To kick off our very first challenge, I thought I’d give you an inspiration photo and ask you to make a Mother’s Day card.  Take a look at the photo and see what inspires you and how that dictates what direction you’ll take.  Maybe it’s the colours, shapes, texture or even the feel of the photo, etc.  There truly is no right or wrong!  If you have your Mother’s Day card already sorted, perhaps make a card for someone who is like a mother to you, or even your best friend!  Who doesn’t like getting some happy mail for no reason?

Back to the photo - I was inspired by the colours and the beautiful mason jars.  Mason jars are a big trend in the scrapbooking/cardmaking world at the moment.  The beautiful patterned papers in the Dear Lizzy Neopolitan range from American Crafts fit the bill perfectly for me.  

Here’s my card for the inspiration challenge!  I hope I’ve given you a nudge to have a go and share your creation with all of us.

The closing date for this challenge will be the  20th of May - that'll give you enough time to make a card for Mum (or Grandma!) snap a photo of it, give the card and then upload it so you don't ruin the surprise!
To "Link" to this blog post, upload a photo to facebook, flickr, photobucket, picasa or any photo sharing website and then copy and paste a link into the comments section.  
I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with! 

Wet & Wild layout

I had a bit of a play tonight with some of the papers from Echo Park's "Splash" collection. There's just something about the bright and fun colours that make me feel happy all over! 

The "Sunshine" paper caught my eye, and I thought it'd be perfect for these fun photos that I took of my Gracie the other day. 
This is a very simple layout - when I'm using a busy base paper, I like to keep my layout fresh, clean and very uncluttered. I used "Sunshine" as the base, the fun in the sun strip across the bottom was from "Borders".  I used the reverse of this to mat my photos onto, and for the title block and journal cards, I used two cards from the "Journaling" sheet.  I inked the edge of each piece with a fine edging of dark blue ink, just to add a slight feeling of depth.  The title block is lifted up from the page on foam squares.  I think I'll add some glossy accents to the title to make it stand out a little more, as well as the cute little crab :).   
And I still have enough scraps left over to piece together another layout... which you'll see tomorrow! :)