Pink and Main/WOW embossing blog hop

October 20, 2018October 20, 2018 ~ donnadoll74 ~ Leave a comment

Welcome, welcome, welcome! What a fun time I’ve had playing with these two sweeties from Pink and Main, and WOW embossing powders.

If this is your first visit, hi! I’m Donna, an Australian living in Japan and crafting as much as I can squeeze into life!

Pink and Main and WOW are collaborating for a blog hop, and I get to share in the fun. You too can share by commenting at the stops along the way to win prizes from both WOW and Pink and Main.

You should have arrived here from Dana’s blog. She makes lovely cards!

Here is what I have to share with you. I used two colours of embossing powder, and the ‘Snow Sweet‘ stamp set and matching die from Pink and Main.

I first stamped the image of the two cuties using my MISTI and coloured them using my Copic markers. I left the stamp in the MISTI so I could come back and restamp once the image was coloured. Colouring an embossed image with Copics isn’t a good idea, and the copic sits on the embossing, so I like to colour first, then emboss. The colour I used for the outline embossing is Metallic Platinum which is a beautiful cool gold colour.

I used traditional Christmas colours of red and green for my images, but chose to make my snowpeople a little more skin toned than snow toned for this card. Somewhere along the way, the boy snowman got ink on his cheek. Sounds like something my boy would do! The little stars are from the same Snow Sweet stamp set, and I embossed these in Platinum too.

I used WOW embossing powder in Kiwi Crush for the sentiment. I die cut the word hello from some plain white cardstock and then smooshed my Versamark ink all over it before dipping it into the embossing powder. I did this twice to get a nice thick coverage and a beautiful metallic shine. I then stacked another couple of layers of the die underneath to get some dimension to the sentiment. This hello comes from a wreath set by Pink and Main, and the word fits perfectly inside the wreath when you use them together.

Next stop on the hop? The lovely and talented Jackie

Don’t forget to comment at each stop to win the $25 gift certificate from Pink and Main and embossing powders and a carry case from WOW. The prize will be announced Wednesday October 22 at 9am EST.

I’d love to know whether you prefer traditional Christmas colours, or if you like to mix it up. (I’m on the fence on this one) To start the hop at the beginning, head to the Wow blog.

If you’d like to follow my further adventures in cardmaking (with a side serve of Aussie living in Japan) just scroll up a little and look for the follow button to appear in the bottom right of the screen. If you’re interested in my other cards, feel free to visit my Instagram account. It will open in a new window, so the blog hop isn’t disrupted.

Until next time,

Happy crafting!

Blessings,

Donna

I’m back…. (and here’s what I’ve been up to)

October 10, 2018 ~ donnadoll74 ~ Leave a comment

Hello again my friends. It’s been a long time, I know, but I promise I have a good excuse!

While I’ve been missing in blog land, I have been busy moving countries! Instead of the rolling hills of Gippsland, Australia, we are now living in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan! What a life change, but one I’m so pleased about.

I lived in Japan for a year as a teenager, and it has been a big part of my life ever since. I’m so happy to be back here, learning more of the language, eating the food, and making new friends.

On the crafty side of things, I’ve been busy too.

I’m now on two design teams, and guest designing for a third company. Let me introduce you…

Firstly, Pink and Main.

I feel so blessed to be on this team. The company owner Michelle is lovely, and the stamps are so varied, that I’m never out of ideas. There have been lots of opportunities to do scene building, and I’ve loved that. Here are a couple of the cards that I’ve made for Pink and Main over the past couple of months.

Secondly, I’ve been designing for Trinity Stamps. This is a brand new company, and the owner, Taniesa is a really sweetie. I’d really love to see her new business thrive, as it’s a great leap of faith to start up a new company.

Trinity has many lovely floral stamps that I’ve been playing with, as well as a great coffee set that I don’t own (yet!)

Here’s a sample of my cards with Trinity.

Finally, I’ve been playing guest designer at Our Daily Bread Designs. I was originally going to be doing that for September and October, but I’ve been asked to stay on for November and December too. Here are some of the cards I’ve made for them.

So, now that I’m more settled in our new life, I’ll be back blogging more regularly. Of course all my cards are always on my Instagram feed, so that’s a good way to keep up to date.

So, here’s to my new life, riding my bicycle everywhere, and speaking another language! I’d better keep blogging to keep my English going!!!!

Blessings,

Donna

This is your Special Day

May 21, 2018May 21, 2018 ~ donnadoll74 ~ Leave a comment

Hello!

Life has been hectic, with lots of packing for our big move to live in Japan. People are starting to ask me whether I’m organised, and the truthful answer is, “I don’t know”. I’ve never done this before, and I don’t really know how big the job is, so I just keep packing! We will travel with only suitcases, so most of the job is getting ready for storage. Actually the hardest part is deciding what to keep and what to throw away, as not everything will fit into our storage space.

However, with the boys away at the football for the day, I decided that it would be OK to give myself the afternoon off and spend some time creating in my happy place.

I had a lot of fun playing with Distress Oxide inks,and the new-to-me stitched stars from My Favorite Things.

I smooshed the inks onto my craft mat, and used watercolour paper to pick the ink up, putting the greens onto one sheet, and the purples onto another. I’ve chosen these colours to fit in with My Favourite Things’ current colour challenge, which uses this lovely combination.

The sentiment is from and older MFT set called ‘On the Line’ and I heat embossed it in white.

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at this card. I’m making no promises about when I’ll next write- I’ll wait and see what life has in store for me. Come August, things will settle into our new normal, and I look forward to having time and space to craft regularly.

Until then, I will still put up some cards on Instagram, and keep packing!

Blessings,

Donna

Stampendous Jellyfish

April 5, 2018April 5, 2018 ~ donnadoll74 ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been wanting to play with this stamp for a while. I love the whimsy of it, and the possibilities for loose colouring, which I adore. I’ve coloured it two ways. In this first card, I’ve used Brusho powders in Sea Green and Cobalt Blue. I sprinkled the powders onto my craft mat , added water and painted them onto the watercolour cardstock. I then followed the inspiration of Kelly Latevola to use Copic markers to colour parts of the image to highlight them. I added a coat of Wink of Stella to the jelly fish and also a layer of Glossy accents. Both of these are difficult to see in the picture.

There’s a bit of a story behind that. My family is soon to move to Japan to live, and I need to be very selective about what I take, so I’m experimenting with photographing without my lightbox, to see if I can do without it. I’m happy with the clarity of the image, but will keep working on getting the fine details to show up clearly. Let me know if you have any tips! For this next card, I again used the same Brusho powders on watercolour paper, but this time I sprinkled the powder directly onto the card and sprayed it with water. The result is a much more vibrant effect, with a lot more texture. I used the same sprinkling technique for the jellyfish, using Color Burst powders in Merlot and Indigo on another piece of paper. I then fussy cut the jellyfish bodies, and glued them into the background. The finishing touch was some sequins . The sentiments for both cards come from a super versatile set from Simon Says stamp, called Lots of Thanks. I really love this small stamp!

I guess I’d better get back to packing! Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you’ll be able to enjoy some crafty time yourselves in our busy lives. If you’d like to see more cards, feel free to visit my Instagram donnadoll74

Also, if you’ve made a project with this stamp, let me know about it. I’d love to see!

Blessings,

Donna

Botanical Birthday

December 31, 2017 ~ donnadoll74 ~ 2 Comments

Hello to all my crafting friends! I’ve got a card to share with you today that I made using the Altenew Botanical Garden stamp set.

I’ve used lime green and blue greens to colour the flowers in Copics, and I used olive tones for the leaves. The frame is from My Favorite Things. This card is inspired by the August Inspiration from Altenew’s Year in Review Inspiration Challenge. Here’s a full look at the inspiration pics from the different months.

It was hard to choose just one, but I thought the August image would give me a good challenge and that proved to be correct. It was fun to use the colours that I usually go to for leaves as the flower hues. Here’s a close up look at the images.

Why not pop along and join the challenge? There’s still time.

If you’re interested in seeing more of my cards, feel free to visit my Instagram account

Until next time,

Blessings,

Donna

donnadoll74

Pineapple Perfection

December 28, 2017December 31, 2017 ~ donnadoll74 ~ 5 Comments

I love the period between Christmas and New Year. It’s like the whole world has slowed down to let me take a breath. I have been doing a bit of colouring, even during the day. (Cardmaking is something I leave until after I’ve done all my daytime work, which leaves night, or not at all some days!)

Just for fun, I’ve had a look at some of the cardmaking challenges that are going at the moment, and I’ve made a card for the Concord and 9th Anything Goes Challenge. (Nice to start easy, huh?)

I’ve coloured the Pineapple Perfection Stamp as though it’s a bouquet, not a pineapple, and used some of the smaller images in the set to create a background. A layer of vellum cut with the Simon Says Stamp wonky rectangles helps to tone the background down. It’s good to have my Copics out again after a bit of a break too!

This stamp will always make me happy as it’s one that I won from Concord and 9th along with the rest of the release from that month. What bounty, to receive 5 stamp sets all at once, with the dies too. I’m still in recovery four months later!

Here’s a close up look at the colouring . It’s always a little daunting to look this close, isn’t it?

I hope that you’re all finding some space in your lives too. Why not enter the challenge yourselves?

If you’re interested in seeing more of my cards, feel free to visit my Instagram account

Until next time,

Blessings,

Donna

donnadoll74

Creative Christmas

December 5, 2017 ~ donnadoll74 ~ Leave a comment

Hi Crafty friends,

I’ve been playing with the Crate Paper Falala 6×6 paper pad, and have made so many Christmas cards! But the papers are good for lots of different types of cards, so I’ve been playing around with some other ideas too, including the lovely rose die from Altenew.

So here’s a Christmas card, and a couple of bonus cards for your enjoyment. For full details, as well as how to pick up the papers in a kit with all kinds of bonus goodies, you can check out the Shop and Crop Scrapbooking blog. If you’d like a discount on the kit, use the code DL5 for $5 off the regular price in the store.

If you’d like to see more of my cards, pop over to my Instagram account and have a look.

Blessings,

Donna

(affiliate links may be used)

Crafting hacks to make the most of your supplies

November 29, 2017 ~ donnadoll74 ~ Leave a comment

There are so many lovely crafting supplies out there, aren’t there? And we see the beautiful stashes and swatch charts of people who do craft for a living, and it can be easy to get dissatisfied with what we have and always be wanting more. And yet we are called to contentment, not envy by Jesus.

Sometimes though, we have more than we realise, if we just look at things creatively. So here are a few hacks to help you make the most of what you have.

This post features cards made with stamps from the Sonshine Stamp Co.

Hack 1

Layer your inks

One of the ways we can get around not having the exact colour of ink we ‘need’ is to layer inks to create new colours. This card was made using just three colours of ink, a pink, a bright yellow and a blue to create the rainbow that you see.

Each of the coloured stripes is double stamped, using either two of those colours, or a double stamping of the same colour. If you look closely, (or not so closely at a couple of the stripes), you can see the two colours are slightly offset. I didn’t use any fancy stamping equipment for this card, just a regular stamping block, so the alignment isn’t perfect.

Hack 2

Use inks to colour your paper.

I couldn’t find the colour of paper I needed to mount the panel on, so I used white, and ran the yellow inkpad that I used for the middle candle around the edges to colour the paper. Now it’s a perfect match with the centre of the card.

Hack 3

Layer your stamps.

I’ve used the paint stripe from the the “Swirls and Stars” set, and stamped the candle from the “Emmanuel” set over the top.

Hack 4

Use the backs of your stamps.

For the next card I’ve used the paint stripe from the “transform” stamp set. This stripe has a butterfly in it, which I love, but I didn’t want the butterfly for this particular card, so I used the back of the stamp. This card also uses hack 1. I’ve only used three different greens, but have stamped them in different combinations to get a multitude of shades.

(Hey, did you spot the ant? I photographed this outside so you could catch the shine)

Hack 5

Don’t forget the small stamps.

Often we order sets based on the larger images we like, but the stars on this card above are two of the tiny images on the “Immanuel” stamp.

This card also used hack 2. I used silver embossing powder to colour my paper to match the card.

Hack 6

Think outside the box.

This final card is one I’ve shared before, but it shows that stamps can be used for wildly different things to their original purpose. Here, I’ve used the ice creams from the “sweet treat” set to make the jellyfish. So really, when it comes to using your supplies, the sky’s the limit!

I hope this post inspires you to have a fresh and creative look at your supplies, and I’d love to see what you create.

Until next time, stay well, stay content.

Blessings,

Donna

Instagram: donnadoll74

Love you lots

October 11, 2017 ~ donnadoll74 ~ Leave a comment

Hello everyone.

I’m on the Sonshine Stamp Co. Blog today, sharing a card that I made using one of their newest sets called “Transform”

love you lots hearts sec

I’ve combined watercolour, and coloured stamping to make this card. Full details and the story behind the card are on the Sonshine Stamp Co blog.

The sentiment stamp is from Kennedy Grace Creations.

If you’d like to see more of my cards, you can see them here.

Until next time, may you be surrounded by those who love you lots!

Blessings,

Donna

Spring Crocuses!

September 29, 2017September 30, 2017 ~ donnadoll74 ~ 14 Comments

Good Morning Crafty Friends and Welcome to Kennedy Grace Creations September Blog Hop

It’s crocus time somewhere in the world, but here in Australia I’m not letting the fact that it’s spring stop me from sharing these beautiful crocuses. The stamp set is called Friendship Blessings, and it has some beautiful sentiments as well as this delicious image. Kg blessings crocus

I stamped and heat embossed the gorgeous crocus image in white. I used watercolour paper so that the paint would flow over the paper for the effect I wanted and not just sink straight in. I used Distress Inks in Seedless Preserves and Wilted Violet for the flowers and the leaves are a mix of Twisted Citron, Mowed Lawn, and Pine Needles.

First I smooshed a little of the inks onto my craft mat. Then I painted each flower (and a bit beyond) with clean clear water and dropped in some wet ink, allowing it to run beyond the borders, strengthening the colour inside the flower if needed. I then dried the panel before doing the leaves. I used the same principal with the Twisted Citron ink for the leaves, allowing it to flow freely. I carefully added small amounts of the other green inks within the lines. Once the panel was dried once again, I spattered on some concentrated inks. The ground is a little Scattered Straw ink painted loosely.

I found a piece of pale lilac cardstock in my stash and used that to layer the image onto the card. The sentiment that I chose to use is actually set with the words above each other but I carefully cut the sentiment apart so I could use it in a horizontal setting. If I want to go back to the original layout, I just need to place the two halves vertically on the stamp block, and they’ll fit together like a puzzle.

Finally, I added some of the new Kennedy Grace Creations sequins in Chantilly Cream. I love the way these sequins reflect the colour of whatever they’re near. I expect I’ll be using these a lot in the future!

kg blessings closeup

We are so happy you have stopped by and joined us for this very special event. Our newest release of Stamp and Sequins is now live and available for purchase in the store.

We will be giving away a prize package to one lucky winner.

All you have to do is join us for hop and leave a comment on each project. The more you comment the more chances you have to win. The winner will be announced on Monday.

We hope you have enjoyed this release and will hop along to see what our talented designers have made using the Stamps and Sequins from our September release.

Your next stop is the lovely and talented Beverly. You should see what she can do with these stamps!

Just in case you miss some one along the way I have included the entire hop for you!

Kennedy Grace

Jill

Donna ←That’s me!

Beverly

Brenda

Kristina

Berina

Martha

Erica

Rachel