Claudia's blog candy - Magnolia stamps

Claudia has been trying for a week or so to get rid of the awesome blog candy she offered!
There is still a chance to be the lucky winner if you leave a comment on her post Here. She will draw 5 winners and will make for each person a nice card making kit.

Hurry up, I don't know for how long the generous offer stays open.

Being a kid on Sunday afternoon :)

I felt like playing and being silly, just to get out (a bit) from heavy thoughts and family problems.

I was lucky to have inspiration at hand - Thank You, Karin! :)

Karin has designed her first sketch two days ago and the moment I saw it I knew I would use it soon. Some time ago, Karin had a blog candy and after drawing out the winner she generously offered to all those who didn't win some very cute downloads.
For my card today I used Miss Hippo - absolutely love her! [maybe because she resembles me so much :-D]

So here's my card made with Karin's sketch and gift...

Wow! It felt great being a child for half an hour :)

Thanks for looking!

Dutch Dare -- Challenge #9

The lovely girls over at Dutch Dare - Card Challenges wanted us to make a Black & White card, using one additional color.
You should really go and have a look at the DT cards in there - beautiful each and every one of them.

I guess I was inspired by the sidebar on their site :) and so decided to put some orange on my card.

I used a cool [in my opinion :D] technique I've read about in a "Creativity!" magazine (from Do Crafts). It's very simple but I think most effective - stick a peel off on a piece of cardstock and then ink over it. When you're done inking to your pleasure remove the peel off(s) and there you are! A nice decorative white contour, or whatever colour your cardstock is :).

I used this easy technique for making my flowers and the "vase". It's a good method for coming up with patterned backgrounds too and I'll try that one for sure.

So I matted my flowers on orange cardstock and cut them out with a border. Cut out the other pattern (and the small base) for making the vase. I stamped a few twigs (TAC stamps) and adorned them with orange and black rhinestones [the orange ones are brighter in real life, cross my heart :)], then I sticked the vase on top. Added the flowers with 3D foam minidots.

Used some ribbon on the side - I coloured a piece of the white ribbon with a permanent marker because I didn't have any black ribbon - and finished everything off with a small tag stamped with "FRIEND" and glued it in place with a small orange heart (I really don't know why the heart shape doesn't show in my photo).
Matted all on black cardstock and then to the white card.

Nothing spectacular but I had a great time fiddling with it and especially trying out the inking over peel offs thing. :)

Thank you Dutch Dare for making me think and putting me to work. It was a very good exercise for my braincells. The few I have left :-D.

Wishing you all a wonderful Sunday.