All stitched up, my 1st GD card for I Love Promarkers

Hello and welcome to everyone, new and old, who is visiting my journal here. I have been asked by Karen of the I love Promarkers card challenge blog to be their guest designer for June. Thank you very much Karen and I hope my cards do your invitation justice. If you are a first time visitor here you are most welcome, I am a "multi craft" girl and my blog features my silver smithing, jewellery making and my card making ( as well as the occasion cake creation). I am someone who always has to be creating something when I am not at work.   I do love my job as a physiotherapist in the NHS but it is very demanding. I also adore gardening and I love to create in my garden studio at the end of my tiny outdoor space.

So without any delay the theme of this week's I Love Promarkers challenge is "All stitched Up" . The challenge is open now until next Tuesday.

 I no longer own a sewing machine so all my stitching on my cards is faux stitching and I bought a brilliant piercing ruler at Ally Pally recently. I wanted to use a stamp from one of my favourite stamping companies Lili of the Valley. This one is called "Hand Picked" and was released a few months ago.  Here is my card.

You will notice that I have "stitched" using my piercing ruler and used a silver pen...my Hb thought is was real stitching! I was in "distress" mode again so got out my distressing tool as I wanted the card to have a very hand stitched look.
I added LOTV sentiment tags and also some buttons and twine.
I coloured my image with Promarkers and you will also notice one new thing today.....yes I created a "sky" for the first time!
I have seen lots of skies on peoples cards but never been brave enough to risk adding one myself. After spending a long time colouring my image there is always the chance of it going wrong. Undeterred and perhaps a little gung ho I decided to have a try.
There are lots of ideas of how to do it but I actually did this my way and thought I would share it with you as it was pretty straightforward.

I cut out some Memory box fluffy clouds dies. I used the smallest of the pair.  First of all I thought of using the negative as a mask but after practicing on scrap paper I found it best to actually use the die cut itself. I bought  a sky blue coloured pastel chalk which I shaved little pieces off.

With my finger and a paint brush I added the pastel with the cloud in place.......when you take the cloud away.....

Ta dah...clouds appear.I carefully blended the colour in to remove any harsh lines. I then just filled in the gaps with more pastel chalk.

Here is a close up of the finished sky. I must admit I was really pleased with my first effort.
The other idea I had with the theme was to use buttons and although most got covered up I used some really cute button themed papers from my stash.

I always think its a shame how much disappears under the finished card!
And here is one last photo with a close up of my twine tied buttons.

So there we are ....all stitched up!

I hope those card makers who are visiting will be inspired to join in the fun over at the challenge here?

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

The Hobby House, their 1st challenge anything goes
Emma's Cards Buttons and bows
Crafty Friends, another new challenge and their 1st Anything goes
Joanna Sheen Spots and stripes
Stamping Sensations summer blooms
Ali Craft another new challenge and also an anything goes
Cutie Pies  3,2,1,  I have used 3 buttons, 2 tags and 1 image.
Lili of the Valley Ideas to Inspire Use a sentiment
Cupcake Craft summer scene #245
Visible Image Characters

I would like to thank everyone for visiting me and I will back with another Guest design card next Wednesday.

In the meantime I will back with a non GD post at the weekend, so do stop by and see what else I have been up to.

Bye for now,

Jane x