Autumn Beauty with Laura's Loft

Welcome to my very first blog entry for Laura's Loft's blog hop! The theme this month is Halloween or Fall (Autumn for my English readers!). There are some wonderful prizes to be won, and don't forget to check out Laura's fabulous shop too! We are very lucky to have a great Design Team and several Guest bloggers for you to check out.

I am featuring some wonderful stamps this month, Heidi Swapp's Woodgrain and Altenew's Hennah Elements sets, both available from Laura's shop.

Start with a plain white card in the dimensions of your choice. On the middle section of the front of the card use a Ranger blending tool to apply shades of blue Distress Inks (I used Tumbled Glass and Salty Ocean- use more of the paler shade). Spritz with water and blot. Use some of the Salty Ocean on an acrylic block and then spritz with water then dab gently on the card to get the darker spots. Repeat around the edges with brown shades, I used Vintage Photo. Cut a branch from the front of it, you could cut by hand or use a Silhouette Cameo or Cricut. Cut a piece of brown card the same size as the front of your card. Stamp Heidi Swapp's woodgrain stamp on it using a white pad, the stamp again, slightly off set using a chocolate brown Memento ink pad. Mount behind the cut out using your favourite adhesive.
Cut some leaves out of pale yellow card stock. You could use dies, or a Silhouette or Cricut machine. Blend the edges of all the leaves with Antique Linen Distress Ink. Then randomly over blend using Wild Honey, Festive Berries, Vintage Photo and Peeled Paint. You don't have to put every ink on every leaf. Spritz with water to get a little blending and some white spots. Let dry. Spritz again then stamp the leaves with stamps from the Hennah Elements set to get designs on them. Crumple and let dry, then flatten out.  I liked the effect of the ink bleeding, but if you prefer, stamp dry to get a crisper look, then just bend the leaves. Work out a pleasing arrangement before adhering to your card. (I used Aleene's clear glue).

To Enter Giveaway Requirements

1. Follow Laura's Loft on IG @InLaurasLoft, like the IG Hop/Giveaway post and tag a friend. Tag as many as you like, but one tag per comment please. 

2. Follow Laura's Loft store page on facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lauras.Loft.Shop .

3. Leave a comment at each stop on the blog hop.
 The giveaway runs from Oct. 14th- Oct. 20th at 12 noon EST, winners will be posted October 21st.

And here are the goodies you could win! I am jealous!

And as if that isn't generous enough, there is a coupon you can use too! You can get $10 off a $75 purchase with the code $10TREAT. (valid till Nov 8th)

For full T&C's please see Laura's website.

Missed the previous blogger? See Cindy's lovely creations here....

Anxious to see more delightful cards with products from Laura's shop? Hop on over to Joy's blog..... 

Just in case you got lost here is the complete list of blog stops.....

Guest Designers this month:

Jasmine Burgess

LeeAnn Mckinney

Design Team: 

1. Laura's Loft

2. Deana Benson

3. Robbie Rubala

4. Jasmine Burgess

5. Cindy Dooley

6. Heart of Craft ....← you are here!

7. Joy Hadden

8. Lisa Bedigian 

9. LeeAnn McKinney

Lastly but definitely not least October is Breast Cancer Awareness month!

Do get a free screening and look for early detection signs.

More birthdays

Another male birthday I need to make a card for...what do you do for someone who doesn't like football, camping, beer, computers.... well with the stamps I had, I went for neutral ferns! I was inspired by this card:

Let it Snow card

It's part of the Create Along With Us challenge by Papertrey Ink.

I used Papertreys' Meadow Greens set to stamp and emboss the leaves, using a white embossing powder. ( See this post on how to emboss). I then patted some distress inks on my Teflon craft sheet, spritzed them with water and dabbed my card on them. Following that I sponged on some more colours directly to the card to give a different look and spritzed again. 

I used the same colour Distress Inks to stamp on the kraft coloured background card. 

Happy Birthday was cut using my Silhouette Cameo machine, and the front card was matted on blue then tied with white twine. 

Distress Inks used: Tumbled Glass, Peacock Feathers, Chipped Sapphire.

Stamp-a-Faire 2015 Last challenge ,make it work.

As mentioned I wasn't very happy with the last one...so I decided to revisit it with the Make it Work challenge.
Here is what I came up with:

This time I put a die cut spiders web over my ombre stripe and used a bigger bolder sentiment, accented with glitter glue. And a spider just for fun! Stamps by Inkadinkado.
Here is the old card for reference:

Still needs some work in my opinion but I will get there!

Stamp-a-Faire 2015 - Mix and Match challenge

More tough challenges from the Stamp-a-Faire day! This time the mixing colours challenge from Dawn McVey. I definitely don't use enough yellow so that was my challenge....I picked out a pinky toned purple...the two colours had alot of punch being complimentary, so I picked a moss green (another colour I don't use too much) to tone it down.

I then used a die from Memory Box called Sunburst Cutworks on the purple card. It reminded me a little of a waterlily so I added some colour with Prismacolour pencils. The edges were sponged with Distress Inks and Finnabair pines stamp with the ink splodge from Stampin Up's French Foliage set. I then stamped the dragonfly from Prima Marketing Butterfly Wings Stamp-N-Add Stamp & Embellishment Set on the moss green cardstock using Memento ink pads, let them dry and coloured them in with Prismacolours again. Finally I used some glitter glue to add some sparkle to the wings and assembled the whole with tape.

Stamp-a-Fair 2015 Challenge- Using Twine

Having been using lots of bright colours as an antidote to the all white bridal card that kicked off the day, I decided to go back to more muted colours for the Stamp-a-Fair using twine challenge.

I went back to one of my favourite sets, the topiary trees from Papertrey Ink. I made two tags and stamped them in muted colours using Memento ink pads. I accented the flowers with a little Recollections purple glitter glue for a little sparkle! Then I tied the tops with two colours of twine. The background was sponged with a sea sponge, then over stamped with the specks from Tim Holtz Cracks and Specks ste. Et voila....quick and simple (well it would have been had I not spend an hour working out the design...).

Stamp-a-Faire 2015 challenge- Threads

Stamp-a-Faire threads challenge....
Build a thread nest....Problem one...I bought thread...but it was NOT on a spool...so it didn't want to curl as the instructions wanted...not even when I wrapped it round stuff.....so I went hunting and found a tiny spool of thread...it wouldn't fall nicely like in the video ...but at least it was a start! I wanted to do something different from a sentiment, so I picked a butterfly as my focal point.
Here is what I came up with:

I cut my butterfly out (matching die and stamps by Sizzix) and coloured him in with Prismacolour pencils. I added a touch of sparkle with a clear Wink of Stella pen.
On green cardstock I sponged the flower stencil using cosmetic sponges and Distress Inkpads. I then further sponged the edges with more distress inks and sprayed it with a mister. After I stamped it with Finnabair bubbles stamp and Inkadinkado dot flourishes. The "nest" was made of gold thread and tucked under the butterfly which was adhered with a sticky foam pad.

Stamp-a-Faire 2015 Challenge- Unconventional Materials

I really enjoyed this one...given license to go round a hardware (DIY for those in England!) store and spend up to $10 on anything that took your eyes...I didn't know if we'd be given any ideas or we were on our own...so I picked some washers, some aluminium plumbers tape and some funky shaped tiles. In the end the tile was too heavy for a card, and the tape turned out to have "3M cold weather" written all the way through (I thought it was just the packing outer!! LOL...next time...)...but the washers were fun.

 I coloured them with alcohol inks applied with a felt applicator and let them dry. Then I coloured some pearlised textured paper with dye inks (it didn't take alot of colour and remained very subtle). I cut this paper and white vellum with a butterfly die cut from Sizzix.  Several layers were adhered together and I drew on the butterfly details with my favourite white jelly roll. The background is layers of blue and pearlised blue card stamped with a checkerboard background from Close to my Heart in a blue memento ink.  The edges were distressed with a Tim Holtz distressing tool. Lastly they were all adhered together and some glossy accents by Ranger used to decorate the washers.