Less is More - #310 COLOUR

The Less is More challenge them this week is a colour challenge...OMBRE (meaning gradual shading /shadow of one colour to another)...

hmm...not sure if what I've made really shows gradual too well in the photos, sorry, but in real life the flowers really blend from a soft pink to quite a deep claret. I really wrestled with this card as it kept going 'wrong' or at least not how I envisaged it to be. And I thought I'd never hear myself say this but an ancient sheet of peel-offs really gave me the final touches that I was searching for. Who-da-thunk it?! :) 

The black 'smudge' appearance on the stems is part of the 'In Stitches' stamp design, representing areas of thread. .

You can see the richness of the flowers as the colour gradually gets darker below.

I tried colouring the house...nope, looked wrong, coloured the fascia of the house...nope...so I left it colourless. 

Stamps used are all by STAMPOTIQUE ORIGINALS. 

CAROL'S FLOWER SMALL

IN STITCHES (for flower stems)

STITCHED HOUSES (just one of them!)

HAPPY NEW HOUSE!

Always love to play along with Less Is More...such a challenge keeping that clean fresh look.

Papillon...Something French - Less Is More

'Fraid its more butterflies from me....

Its a SOMETHING FRENCH ONE LAYER challenge at Less Is More this week,  #289, so here is my Papillon card using two of my stamps from Stampotique Originals.(This butterfly is a fabulous 5" wide (woodblock measurement)  )- simply coloured with watercolours.

PAPILLON SCRIPT

LARGE BUTTERFLY

Thank you for stopping by...(dont worry I shall put all my butterflies away now - for a while at least ;)  )

Less is More colour challenge #288 - Blue and Brown

BLUE AND BROWN...colours that look fabulous together but are a combination I rarely use...until this week when I spotted the Less Is More challenge theme #288 and decided to make a little butterfly range. The LIM challenges are always great for taking me in a direction not often visited and I always enjoy them.

I used  SMALL BUTTERFLY and ONE SECOND stamps , both from Stampotique Originals to create this postcard, card and ATC.

Hope you like them. The Butterfly is very versatile (I stamped it flat, painted it, left it black, cut it out, cut it in half and stamped more than once to create a faded look.).

The greetings card, just the top part of the wings are 3D

The ATC, watercoloured.

The faded effect card (although the left wing on the middle image didnt quite stamp evenly, sadly ....booo). The top butterfly is totally 3d.

MESSAGE TO LIMETTES.

...I checked the guidelines of the challenge as I was unsure on this occasion which photo to add to the link page on the challenge site...I've added the top main pic as I see them as a little set, but if this doesn't meet the guidelines please Limettes let me know and I will re-post one of the single creations on to the links page instead.

Thanks - Jo  x

BOO !!,,,,

I fancied making a CAS card. Its been a few years since making one , but I had two challenges in mind when I was putting this together. One was a theme challenge- Coby is hosting  'BOO ! ' at Stampotique Designer's Challenge (SCD#247) and Less is More's sketch challenge #278.

I used STAMPOTIQUE ORIGINALS stamps:

Seaweed #3066

Owl with Wings #3040

Altered Alphabet #7230

So my starting point was OWL WITH WINGS, which looks like this...

 This stamp design gives you the option of adding the wings to create any wing position you like. I fancied putting this owl into a 'peepo' pose (a take on 'Boo' ), but to be honest if you look at Owl below,I think he looks more like he's going OLE' ! and doing a Spanish dance.

The sketch I based this layout on is from Less is More's latest challenge. My final result is quite removed from the actual sketch given (see below) but its what I used to create the end result, so I hope its ok and close enough.

Thanks for stopping by ...x

p s...as I type this, there is 20% off Owl with Wings from A Sprinkle of Imagination here in the UK and 10/20% of other Stampotiques too.

Life is Nothing...

Less is More...colour challenge

After being away from stamping for so long I couldn't resist taking part in this weeks Less is More 'WINTER BLUES' as it's always a challenge  that inspires me due to the nature of its simplicity. I have to think hard to keep it simple and 'Less'.

The theme this week is being sponsored by Creatin' and Stampin's Lizy who is kindly offering a £15 Stampin Up gift certificate. (please see challenge link for more details).

I tried to capture both meanings of blues...blue colours and blue feelings. I used Tim Holtz's butterfly and a phrase from Art Journey.

Apologies once more re the quality of the photograph(its so dark here this morning) and lack of cropping. I'm a bit lost without my old set up which contains all my photo cropping tools and watermark etc. Hopefully it can be repaired soon. Hopefully you can get the gist of it.

Have a good weekend. x

Summer Buzzin'

For a second week, Stampotique Originals are sponsoring the Less is More challenge. This week is quite a tricky one as it's 'Use a Flourish'. Now those of you that know Stampotique stamps well  will realise that flourishes don't dominate ANY of the artists ranges there and so the members of the Stampotique team that decided to take part all had to be a little extra creative by using our drawing skills, masks, templates, rub-ons, etc...and the extra twist for us  this week is its a OLC (a one layer challenge) too!

It's half term for the kids this week and my youngest lad has been REEEEEEEEALLY poorly, so a Less Is More challenge was just enough to get my head round for a 10 minute stamping fix  in between my Florence Nightingale sessions.

I used my Stampotique Medium Bee (which comes with a mini bee on the side of the stamp) which was the first stamp I ever designed and Enjoy Life, a really handy tiny text by Janet Klein for Stampotique. The scroll and dottiness were all rub-ons that I discovered in my stash. I coloured the bee with coloured pencils as it was nice and easy to sit with my poorly kiddo and colour quietly whilst he was asleep. Stampotique Stamps are available directly from Stampotique in the USA or many places here in the UK (please email me if you are searching for the range of stamps and cannot find a stockist)




Now.... Blogger is tricking me today and I seem to be unable to centre the above image, but I'm sure it won't make a great deal of difference ;0)
If you have a spare half an hour today, or this week even, why not join in LIM challenge and be in with a chance of winning a $30 gift certificate... you can use any stamps for the LIM challenge...

Don't forget to read the rules over on LIM first. :0)

I'm off to catch up with the kind comments I've been receiving this week as its quiet here at the moment on Nightingale Ward :0)

Grrrrrrrrrumpy!!

I was making something else for the Frame theme over on LIM this week. Then Grumpy arrived from Arizona and I had to use him.

Isn't he cool lol

All stamps by Stampotique. I used Grumpy and Splatter Long. The frame was hand drawn (obviously lol)

Please take a look at the Less Is More Challenge. Lots of fabulous clean and simple one layer cards to be seen!

Less is More- Mono

Less Is More this week has the theme of Monochrome.

That can be black and white or shades of a colour.

So I did Blues...

And I did Greens...



I made these two cards using all Paper Artsy stamps.



Is this too busy for a Less is More? Its lots less than I'm used to doing anyway ...and only took a couple of minutes as you can tell (no great technical ability needed for these lol), so I hope its 'less' enough.

Acetate Rain

The theme this week on Less is More is ACETATE.

I'm totally addicted to my LIM fix on a Saturday morning now...the kitchen still needs sorting and the washing needs going in, but I needed to get this card made lol

Girl and heart circles by Art Journey from the Umbrella Girl plate..
I would have liked the phrase to be slightly higher but I had to cover a tiny crease in the acetate...it was damaged in transit in the post and all my acetate has the same indentation ...grrrrrr, but hopefully this still looks ok.

Have a good weekend all. x

Less is More

Too simple to blog?

Less is More's latest theme is to have the text as the main focal point. Not sure I succeeded as I keep looking at the bee, but the text is the thing I read first, so the jury is out on that one.

Both stamps by Stampotique. (A World All Her Own and Medium Bee with a tiny bee on the side,...this is the tiny bee.

Also available from Happy Daze here in the UK.