Quirky crafts all white alright!

Monica set us a very challenging challenge over at the Quirky blog today, and it is All White. Everything on your project has to be white with the exception of any image you use. 

Our sponsors are the wonderful Stitchy Bear Digital Outlet, who provided the team with images and will provide our top three with prizes.

I used Cartoon Elephant leaning on a large pencil by Ken Benner, It is cute and funny and I wanted to stamp Happy under the pencil, which I hope I can get away with as it looks like part of the image (I hope).

I used Spellbinders labels number 1, one of my favourites which I have in plain, scalloped, fancy and grand varieties.

I coloured the image with Promarkers and some silver pen for the pencil metal bit. the elephant is fussy cut and decoupaged on top of another one (I hate fussy cutting, but you will read why in a minute.....). The panels behind are: scalloped, embossed with an Embossalicous banners embossing folder (which was NBUS until today), plain pearlescent, embossed with a Crafts Too Tied Together embossing folder in two parts (would have been a similar but bigger folder - see below), all then mounted on a scalloped 8" x 8" card blank. I added white brads, a gem to make his teeth sparkle and a gem star. The stamp is from a set by Marianne, and the word Birthday is the die from the same set which I used to cut out glitter card. The star border is also a Marianne die and has ribbon threaded through it, I had to cut two of them to fit and trim them a little at the ends. I used stars punched out by the die from the border to add round the edges. Finally Liquid Pearls in Opal White were added to the biggest embossed panel.

So what went wrong this time you might ask?

First of all after spending an hour or more colouring the image I reached for the stamp pad to stamp "Happy" then dropped it not once but twice onto the image. Luckily it only ruined the part where the pencil had doodled, so I had to either start over (this time stamping "Happy" before starting to colour like sensible people do), or fussy cut the image and decoupage it over a quickly coloured second one, I did the latter.

Second thing to go wrong was the second embossed panel, the first one was no problem, the second folder the eBosser took exception to and jammed it half way in. I tried the rubber mallet procedure but could not budge it. I went to bed and in the morning asked Hubby to help me. He couldn't shift it either, we took turns, he got a lump hammer instead of the rubber mallet, he got more bits of wood. We tried both ends, we took it outside onto a little wall so it was firmer, with cushions strategically placed for it to drop onto. Nothing, so we used half a bottle of washing up liquid trying to lubricate it. Later after stopping for lunch I had another go on my own and ended up with a large bruise from the rubber mallet on the base of my thumb! So I had to give up, get out the other die cutter and cut another panel and emboss it. So now I have a totally jammed ebosser with an A4 embossing folder jammed in it - any ideas (maybe bin it)?

Could it go any more wrong? Yes it could, if you add Liquid Pearls to your work, then forget and a) press down a corner that is sticking up, b) the whole card falls face down on your brand new home stitched hot pink mini photo studio background!

The moral of that story is wait for it to dry first!

Do you like the new pink background by the way? I bought an oddment of material, it has been cut and pinned for ages and finally I got the machine out and stitched it, not in my craft room where there is no room to work, but in the dining room! I wanted to make it a bit wider than I did, miscalculated the amount needed for hems, although it is the same width as the white, blue and grey panels that came with the studio.

This card has twinkled it's way into the following:

Tuesday Throwdown - bingo, stamp, enamel dots, die cut

Inspiration Destination - anything goes (Wed)

A Gem of a Challenge - Birthday (Sat)

Sketch Saturday - #370 

That Craft Place - words (Sun)

Little Miss Muffet - anything goes (Tues week)

The Ribbon Girl - Ivory (July)

Fab n Funky - no patterned paper (Aug 11th)

Won or top 3:

Allsorts - #320 add a banner or flag