25 February 2012

Week 56 - Don't Scrap It

Last week's challenge proved really popular with lots of people and there were some truly stunning entries, however a few didn't realise that we are solely a Clean and Simple blog, submitting multi-layered and highly embellished cards, some of which were reluctantly deleted for straying too far from our guidelines by also combining too many challenges.
 Blogger seems to have changed the format of the letters in the Word Verification section, making it even more difficult and time consuming to decipher them, so as we have so many comments to leave... 
PLEASE REMOVE WORD VERIFICATION
 Instructions for this are on our Help page.
Should it remain, we may not leave comments for you if our first attempt at deciphering the letters is incorrect!

This week we have a simple recipe for you to follow which is to use some of those left over bits and pieces we all tend to keep so this week
Don't Scrap it!

Chrissie

This card has an image from Blockhead Paper Arts coloured with Promarkers. The sentiment is from Stampin' Up.
I was inspired to purchase this stamp by one of our wonderful LIMettes, Birgit. She is a Guest Designer for Blockhead stamps at the moment and as you all know does fabulous work. Thanks for the inspiration Birgit!

I expect that nearly all of us have some receptacle for left over bits and bobs of card and paper and this is one of mine. The contents are vaguely arranged in colours and is where I went to look for the scrap of yellow matting for this card. Sadly the file is rather overfull and is badly in need of a sort-out!
I never buy card blanks and make all my cards from A4 sheets. Naturally there is a piece of card over when a card has been cut into shape and it's these pieces which I use for the front of cards for mounting images. I have another box of strips of card under my desk, but I won't bore you with a pic of that.





This one uses a scrap of backing paper from a Cuddly Buddly print out. The card on the front is all from the scrap box under my desk.
The Penny Black image was gently coloured with Promarkers and the sentiment from Personal Impressions was mounted on a Spellbinder's slider tag.
Once more there are a few more examples on my personal blog. Thank you everyone who kindly leaves a comment for me there!




Mandi

I must apologise for not getting to you all last week. I did try when I got time, but I ran out of time. Thank you for all of you who still visited me, it was very much appreciated.
I had to make a wedding card with the theme as 'proper red' black and ivory. I had one small scrap of what I consider a perfect red hammer card. I made the roses from that, the Sizzix hearts are also from an ivory scrap, cut and embossed.




Using scraps of paper is a favourite of mine. I do this kind of design very often. It's effective and does use up lots of scraps. However I never seem to see my pile going down!!





I use scraps all the time, however they seem to grow ten fold daily! I keep some in a drawer, then I have other slightly bigger pieces separated by colour in drawers.







Your scraps can be anything... paper, card, plastic, metal, fabric...we'd love to see the result of your creative imaginations... and do have fun!

ShowCASe Week 54

You are all so comfortable with one layer cards now and even choose to do them even if you don't have to, which is terrific! 

Here are our superb choices for Week 54, the theme was STRIPES and despite the 
moans and groans you coped admirably!

Please take our showCASe banner from our page at the top to display on your sidebar









Thank you everyone, as always
See you tomorrow!

18 February 2012

Week 55 Theme

We said it was a doozie and so it proved to be... last week's challenge really got everyone thinking and there were some superb ideas...our challenges certainly seem to stimulate the creativity amongst LIMettes. 
Thank you everyone!

Now for this week's challenge and you can sit back and enjoy this one, it's a theme and this week we'd like to see you use
Punches or Die Cuts

Mandi

Oh, gosh what a week here. I have a permanent wedding head on so I can only show some invitation samples as my cards for this week. We also have my Stepson's wedding Thursday so as you can imagine, I'm knee deep here in stationery! Roll on next Saturday when I can breathe again!
I'll blog their stationery next week as it is a surprise for Jess [Bride to be]

Both my cards are using Pink Petticoat Stripes, in navy.
The heart is part of  Nellie Snellen Multi Frames Dies - Hearts, with punched flowers with pearls in the centre.


The second card is using the Stampin Up decorative Label Punch and the starfish are from a Sizzix Sizzlit set.

The couple chose this as their design.

Apologies once more for not preparing early enough, things are just so manic.

If I can  get you any Stampin' Up products, or give you any information please email me
Overmoores@aol.com



Chrissie

Here is a card made from some goodies which arrived yesterday. Dies from Memory Box and a stamp from Hero Arts.
After stamping, the card surrounding the image was masked with Post it notes and the colours Bashful Blue and Almost Amethyst from SU were added using ink duster brushes. I added a few splats from a Paper Artsy stamp in Memento London Fog.
The base card for the butterflies was coloured with the same colours using the same method and then die cut with the Memory Box dies. I glued the base layer and then stuck on the veined version adding Glamour Dust  to give a little glitz! It's a pity that this photograph doesn't show it too well.
The sentiment is from SU.

This one uses an image from Chocolate Baroque in the style of Gustav Klimt, which I  stamped onto deep brown paper and embossed with WOW Pale Gold embossing powder then coloured with Perfect Pearls. I cut it out with Nestie circles, mounted it using gold card and added a couple of embellishments from Cuttlebug ornamental dies.
The sentiment is from Kaiserkraft mounted on extended Spellbinder tag dies.
As usual there are a few more examples on my personal blog

We have added a Linky followers widget to our sidebar, as with all the speculation about Google followers disappearing imminently, we didn't want to lose any of you. You may like to add yourself to that bunch too... just in case!

The availability of dies for use in cardmaking seems to have exploded recently, with many new ones appearing almost daily... do show us what you can do with them.

Birthday Week Spot Prizes and ShowCASe

We would like to thank you all so much for the fabulous entries for our birthday week challenge. As promised there are a couple of Spot Prizes and our usual ShowCASe of fabulous submissions.

To keep you in suspense a little longer we'll do the ShowCASe  first.





I'm sure that you'll agree that these are a bunch of total stunners. Congratulations everyone, do please take the badge from the page at the top of our blog to display on yours!

Now for our Spot prize Winners
We have chosen a couple of people at random to receive a little something from us and they are.....

Nicky  (146) & Margaret (213)
Please email us with your contact details so that we can get your prizes to you straight away!
Congratulations everyone!

Do come back tomorrow for our next challenge!

11 February 2012

Week 54 One Layer

What a busy birthday week!
 So many lovely entries and lots of you came over and commented on our personal blogs, 
for which we are very grateful. Thank you everyone who visited us. 
Please do come back every week!
The second week of each month is when we get back to the basics of Clean and Simple Design... the
One Layer Card.
This week we have a really tricky challenge... I don't think we're going to be immensely popular with our LIMettes, but here goes... we would like to see
STRIPES
Making a one layer card incorporating stripes is not as straightforward as a regular card, but we'd like you be as inventive as you like.
You can use an image with a striped design, an embossing folder which incorporates stripes or draw or make some yourselves.

Chrissie

I don't have any stamps with stripes so I made a little one from some strips of foam stuck onto  an acrylic block.
The stamp was great, but making a decent card with it was another proposition. I did quite a few abortive attempts which were ruined by the stamping of some inappropriate image at the last moment.
This is the card I ended up with minus a flower or butterfly or heart or leaf ar any other extraneous image which didn't really 'go'!

This merely has a Distress ink dusted panel in Brushed Corduroy, over stamped with  a Paper Artsy splatter stamp in the same ink. The stripes were stamped next also in Brushed Corduroy and another round of splatters were stamped in gold Metallic ink.
The sentiment is from Stampin' Up.






The stripes on this one were made with the edge of a Distress ink pad stamped over the edge of a Post it Note used as a mask. The floral stamp is from Unity.
There are more samples on my personal blog.

Mandi

I was 'lucky' as I have a Stampin' up Striped stamp! However, as we said, it is pretty difficult of what else to do with it! It's a pretty tricky week!

OK, so I took my card base and wanted to stamp the cricle off the edge. I cut a hole with my nestie to use as a mask. Because the width of the stamp is exactlty the same width as the circle I found it quite tricky to get the exact placement, even with my Stamp-a-ma-jig! So I held the cut circle onto the stamp and inked through the circle in Versamark Orchid, then stamped it onto the card, just off the edge as you can see. I then stamped the Penny Black 'Ascent' stamp in Versafine Onyx Black over the top. I did make a little 'sun' in glitter using a zig pen and glamour dust.There is a feint look of stripes on the black, but, I think it adds to the effect. Finally added the sentiment, which is from a  Stampin Up set You Are Loved.


Same process for this but using Stampin' Up Whisper White, which I clear embossed. I don't have any sparkly embossing powder so if you are really quick....no quicker than that! you can sprinkle with ultra fine glitter I used Glamour Dust.
 no sentiment for this one, I can add or leave as is when I use it.




This is how the stamp looks once inked. you then stamp onto your card/paper

You will also notice some other stripes I was trying out. But, as my time was tight I couldnt get it quite as accurate as I wanted!
will definitely go back to it and post on my personal blog in a couple of days.




If you would like any Stampin' Up products, I'd love to get them for you.
Sale-a-Bration is running at the moment, until March 31st, where you can earn FREE stuff.


I also have a Stamper's Club starting April 1st, only 2 places left!
Please contact me for more details
Overmoores@aol.com

Don't let us down this week... we know you can rise to this tricky challenge... come on, show us your stuff!

10 February 2012

ShowCASe for Week 52

We had so many entries for our sketch this week.
Amazing how 2 lines drawn on a card could bring such imagination.
It is a sketch we loved too and have found ourlseves using it ever since!

Here are our handful of superb entries
Thank you ladies, they are fantastic














All stunning cards, thank you again!

Please take our showCASe banner from the top of our page

See you tomorrow for our new ONE LAYER challenge!

05 February 2012

January Winner

Good morning from a chilly UK
No snow for us in the extreme south, but it's certainly a cold one!

We are delighted to announce our winner for January.


Sue has been with us from the start, joins in every week....
odd exception when she took a holiday, but that is forgiven....just!
Clean & Simple was completely out of her comfort zone, but as with  lots of you, has grown to feel comfortable leaving white space AND enjoys it!

So a big thank you from us for all your efforts and participation.

Please email us to claim your super £20 voucher prize from

Thank you everyone for all your words of praise and encouragement
It means a lot to us both.


04 February 2012

Week 53 Colour

Now We Are One!

Just over a year ago we met to discuss how we would launch our idea for a Clean and Simple challenge, but never in our wildest dreams did we think that it would have caught the imagination of so many wonderful crafters.
We have to admit that we agree with lots of you... "Less is More " rocks!
Thank you for all your participation and your wonderful submissions. We are truly grateful to have the support of so many talented people.
In celebration of this momentous occasion, there will be spot prizes this week, so anyone could be lucky!
We are also delighted to be sponsored this month by Julia at
Online store
She is kindly donating a £10 Voucher for for one lucky person to use at  her online store.
She also has 30% discount for everyone in operation at the moment so do hurry to check out what she has available.

We have had a request to have a shorter time between the end of one challenge and the beginning of the next, as this is prime crafting time for those in the antipodes... so we have extended our deadline by a couple of hours at the end of the challenge and would be interested to hear you views on whether it should start at an earlier time on Saturday mornings.
All views would be welcome.

COMMENTS
Commenting on all your lovely work takes a large chunk from our week, but is something that we love to do. We are delighted that you visit each other to leave comments and we would indeed feel gratified if you could also visit our personal blogs and leave a word or two.
If everyone for whom we left a comment returned the kindness, we would indeed be blessed. We often add additional cards to our own blogs in line with each week's theme, so there would frequently be an additional source of inspiration too.

For our first Anniversary we are back to a repeat of our inaugural challenge which for the first Saturday of the month is colour... and this time we have chosen 
AQUA

Mandi
I'm quite a fan of aqua, but to my horror there was not really too much on the aqua front in my craft room! In the end I used a Versacolor cube called 'Turquoise' but it's a definite aqua!
I took a piece of 8cm sqaure card and randomly stamped different flowers in varying strengths of ink to create a background. The flowers are Stampin' Up  plus a very old Anita's flower stamp which I love!
The sentiment to finish, is a Marion Emberson designed set. I adore her designs.


My second card is literally a motif stamped in the same ink [The make escapes me but our lovely LIMette Viv will know] Of course if I hadn't thrown out the packet I could have told you. But I'm a bit OCD like that and I throw packets!
So I stamped, then added gems and glittered to finish. No sentiment, which isn't a cop-out,
I simply like it like this!



Sorry about the pale pictures this week

If you would like to purchase any Stampin' Up products please contact me overmoores@aol.com
The new mini catalogue has been launched and it is packed with some exciting new goodies! Plus it is Sale-a-Bration season where you can get extra free goodies for your money.
I have a Stamper's 6 Club starting April 1st For more details, please ask me! ONLY THREE places left [UK only sorry]

Chrissie

This card uses a stamp from SU's Simply Soft set,  which is a two step stamp, the first step stamped in black Archival ink and the second with SU Baja Breeze.
The ribbon panel was die cut with a Spellbinder Edgeability die, scored with an embossing stylus using a score board and decorated with a length of grosgrain ribbon.
Back to my inked panel technique. This was dusted with an Ink duster brush using Tumbled glass DI and stamped using the same ink. The stamps are from SU French Foliage and a flower from Personal Impressions. The computer generated sentiment was cut with a Spellbinder fancy tag die.

Thank you so much for all the wonderful comments you left for us last week, we are truly heartened by the response to our endeavours... here's to another successful year!
It has been pointed out to us that to remove Word Verification is not straight forward with the New Blogger interface... there are instructions how to do this on our help page.
Have a great week!

03 February 2012

Final ShowCASe (of our first year)

What wonderful, wonderful work we have seen during the past 12 months!
There has been inspiration a-plenty from all around the globe and many, many new friendships have been forged. Isn't it great to have friends that you haven't actually met!
As ever we were spoiled for choice with all the fab submissions, but have chosen some stunning work yet again!

'Cut it Out' ShowCASe
Simple beauty

Simply elegant

Perfect placement

Licensed to Thrill
All wonderful submissions, do please take the ShowCASe badge from the page above, to display on your blogs and thank you all for your superb work.
Do check back tomorrow for our first birthday challenge!