Something Sweet

A couple of girls in my card class bought the latest copy of Die Cutting Essentials which had a great die and stamp set based on ice cream and wanted to use it for a class. And the new challenge at The Paper Players is Something Sweet so I'll be entering the cards there

This is a very quick and easy card using the dies, embossing folder and one of the sentiments and lots of snippets so I'll be entering this into Pixie's Snippets Playground

A couple of them don't have a die cutting machine so I also came up with a couple of ideas that didn't use a machine

 (Not sure the proportions are right for this one)

My favourite one and my favourite lolly too

Vases and Vanilla

The current theme at The Butterfly Challenge is Vases and/or vanilla. I've taken the easy way out for this and used vanilla card stock as my base. I've also used these colours from Colours and Sketches:

I've stamped the JOFY image with Chocolate Chip and coloured the flowers with plum and coral pencils as the closest I had to these colours. I've added water using a Versafine pen and clear embossing powder. And the teeny tiny butterflies were on the free Hummingbird set I used in my last post which was free with Simply Cards and Papercraft

Something Exotic

The new challenge at Less Is More is Something Exotic. A little while ago I saw a beautiful hummingbird stamp on Darnell's blog and I so wanted it but as I'm supposed to be destashing I resisted. And then I saw the same stamp on Di's blog and was so tempted but again managed to resist. And then my copy of Simply Cards and Papercraft popped through the door with this hummingbird and embossing folder set as a free gift. It's a fabulous freebie and as well as the hummingbird and 5"x5" folder you get 7 sentiment stamps, a frog, two flowers, a leafy branch and the teensiest ever butterfly stamp which is so cute

I coloured it with various orange and yellow watercolour pencils and blended the colour with a clear Wink of Stella brush

Des Abeilles

I bought this stamp set after doing a class with Jo Firth-Young and although I've used the other stamps, this is the first inking for the sentiment - and it fits perfectly with the challenge at Less Is More  which is Something French. It's also a one layer week so I've stamped and painted directly onto the card blank. I was going to add some lines around but didn't want to mess it up!

The sentiment says " the hum of the bees is the voice of the garden".

JOFY sets 14 & 36
Fresco Paints Prawn, Tangerine Twist and Pearl Glaze

Too Late

I saw this sketch at Colours and Sketches before I went on holiday but didn't get a chance to enter the challenge

but I liked it so thought I'd combine it with the latest colour sketch:

I only had Marina Mist and Night of Navy so the base of the butterfly is a snippet of an unamed blue from my stash. A combination of my favourite butterfly dies and an old Fiskars border punch called Treading Water. I remember when this punch first came out (way before dies were popular over here) and it was very difficult to get hold of. The sentiments are from Stampin Ups Because I Care set

And because the current Butterfly Challenge is Punches and/or Pink I've done a pink version:

All the pink card is from my snippets folder so I'll be taking this to Pixie's Snippets Playground