Guest designing for Less is More

Hello, yes I know that I don't often blog on a Saturday but I was delighted to be contacted my fellow Visible Image DT buddy Sharon, who leads the Less is More Challenge, and asked to be one of their Guest Designers in March. 

 For my non paper crafting friends Less is More is a challenge where the nature of the challenge is to make clean and simple or (CAS as they are known) cards with minimal or no embellishments and lots of white space. Now I am a girl who loves creating in all genres, from CAS right through to full on mixed media. I also find that a lot of my customer's at Dotty's Tea House where I sell my card like CAS cards too so I make quite a few of these. 

Visible Image ( I am on their DT) are sponsoring the challenge so there is a really good reason to try your hand at a CAS card and enter. 

The theme for this new challenge is horoscopes and before you throw your hands up in the air to say that you don't have any horoscope stamps, you can also use anything to do with the theme...i.e constellations, stars, zodiac signs and their associated animal or characters; lions (Leo), scorpions (Scorpio) etc etc. Just let your imagination run wild! You can find all the details here

Now I am lucky enough to own some fantastic Visible Image Zodiac stamps so I knew just what I would use for my card.

I used the zodiac cancer set as I love the crab in this set.

I did a bit of brainstorming and woke up with an idea for my design...what I call my light bulb moments...my brain obviously designs in the night while I am asleep!

I know from previous projects I have made that the zodiac stamps work really well with a galaxy background so I got out my Distress oxides and made a background on black card.

I use a star die and cut out some stars (in the final design you will see that I didn't use the medium size one).

I also stamped the large crab using some sparkly embossing powder and cut him out. It looks white below but IRL it is very sparkly.  I embossed the words in gold onto the large star.

 I also stamped the small and large constellations from the set in gold ink.

Here is my finished card.

with a close up.

and one last shot.

I would also like to link my card up to the following challenges;

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes
Happy Little stampers watercolour challenge anything goes
 Craft stamper Take it make it 1/3 anything goes

Thanks for stopping by today and if you are a first time visitor to my blog it's lovely to see you here. Have a lovely weekend and I will be back as usual on Monday with my Visible Image design team Monday make.  

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

************PS I would like to also give a little heads up that I also have a post up today over on the Country View projects blog showcasing the new Visible Image Wizard of Oz collection. I would really love it if you would pop over and even say hello. I have lots of photos of my projects, including some ATCs and coins made using the Tin Man set. Here is a tiny sneak peek

just click here if you would like to see more********

A little fishy zodiac stamping fun

Good morning, here we are in the last week of January. I hope you enjoyed your weekend? We had a lovely one and saw Ovo by Circe du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday. It was amazing and I will share some photos soon.  I took this photo of part of the Albert memorial opposite the Hall..I do love those fishy tails on the mermaids. This also links in nicely to my project today.

It is of course my weekly dose of inspiration for Visible Image stamps. Wow they really did take Creativation in the USA by storm last week and have come back with an order book which is bulging. I was thrilled to see some of my work on display, together with my talented design teamies.  Their stand was truly awesome. Here is a photo shared from their Facebook page. There are so many exciting adventures which lie ahead.

 Now if you look at the left wall of their stand you will spot the Pisces tag which I am sharing today.
Here it is in close up

I made an underwater inky background on my tag using salty ocean and broken china distress inks.I used the Pisces zodiac stamp set which you can now buy here It is one of the brilliant 12 new stamp sets from the Written in the stars zodiac collection. All the new release are currently in stock on the Visible Image website here. They will also be available to buy from your favourite stockist in the UK and internationally.

You will spot that I used another of the new stamps on my tag

I used the crack from How fragile which you can buy here
I stamped and embossed it onto heat resist acetate and had my distress inked fishes swimming out from it. I fussy cut my fish which were also inked with distress.I stamped and cut out 3 of the 5 words which also come with this great set. I linked everything up using the fun star constellations using red Versafine Clair. I die cut and added a snippet of inky mop up card too.
Here are a couple of close ups

and one last shot.

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

C.R.A.F.T 2/2  distress your project/vintage
The house that stamps built 2/3 anything goes
Creative Moments 3/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Monday tag it
Penny Black and More 3/3 something new my new are my awesome new stamps!
Fussy and fancy 1/3 fussy and fancy
Allsorts 1/3 use your old favourites mine in this tag are my distress inks..they really are my go to inks when I am creating tags...or backgrounds.

You can also check out Visible Image via these links;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group can be found here ...it would be lovely to see you. You can add work to the "Show and Tell" album where one randomly chosen winner each month wins a £25 coupon to spend on the website.

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; there are weekly stamp giveaways...open world wide!

And the shop web site is here; where all these gorgeous stamps and stencils can be purchased. 

You can also follow via:

 Pinterest

Twitter

and

 Instagram

Have a super week ahead, it's turned mild here for a few days and I even dried washing outside yesterday.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x