NBUS #6 Quickly sneaking in!

With only hours to go I wondered how (with my lack of mojo) I could enter the NBUS challenge at Darlene's place. Then I remembered this NBUS that I had made a start on but not completed - voila!

I fell in love with the (NBUS) Katzelkraft Grumpy Penguins rubber stamps that are stocked by That's Crafty and while I was there the water drops set and some crazy birds also fell into my basket, well you have to get the free postage don't you?

The background is a technique I tried from Craft Stamper magazine, you stamp onto watercolour paper with Versamark and heat emboss it with white EP. Then you get messy by spritzing the paper with water then sprinkling on tiny buts of Brushos, letting some run and flicking water on it when it's dry - isn't it lovely?

The penguins were also stamped on watercolour paper in black Versacolor ink and heat embossed with clear powder, then I coloured them a little with Pan Pastels cut them out and mounted them on the background. How unusual, a totally hand stamped card!

The penguins are grumpy about the rain, they are all wet!

Happy Birthday is from a Hero Arts clear set, and Brother is from a Papermania clear set of stamps, both stamped in Indigo Versacolor and heat embossed with clear EP.

There are so many things I wanted to do but haven't got there yet. At least I made it for this one!

So that's my Brother's birthday card sorted for this month! Need one for Dad now.

Challenges entered:

NBUS #6 - Sunday 13th March

Tuesday Throwdown - create a scene.

Love to create - #6 anything mixed media (27th March)

Craft Stamper - Take it Make it for March, anything goes with a stamp.

It's Quirky Clean and Simple for the New Year.

I am hosting the first challenge of the Quirky year, and it is Clean and Simple. Now I think I am normally a CAS sort of gal, some folks put everything including the kitchen sink on their cards so CAS might mean something different to them!

So here is my even cleaner and simpler card, our sponsor is the wonderful Stitchy Bears Digital Stamps, and I used two images together, the Blue Tit 4 is by IkeSart, and the bird house is called A Sign of Spring and is by Lil Diva. The image is coloured with Promarkers, I tried hard to get the colouring right on the bird, I cut out the panel leaving a lot of white space with a Spellbinders Grand Labels 1 die then edged it with pink Promarker. The Grand Labels 1 die set is one of my Christmas presents to me, and just arrived from the USA - perfect timing) and this is the first use so I guess I can enter Darlene's NBUS challenge with it (also the images are new courtesy of Stitchy Bears Digital Stamps). I used a bigger size of the die to make the card blank in yellow, and the blue panel to go on top. Darlene's plan is to get us to use that NBUS and convert so - this is officially now ABUS (Already Used Schtuff). Does it matter that I haven't used all sizes of the dies yet?

No sentiment, so it is a multi purpose card, and even simpler and it is Spring like to cheer me and everyone else up, I might take it to the hospital for Mother in Law, or get Shaun to take it as I have a really awful cold or virus so haven't been able to visit for a couple of days.

I am working on another version of this, if I could only find my Sansador I would finish it!

 I love Blue Tits and we have many of them in the garden visiting the feeder, and usually nesting in our next box which is high up on the apex of the garage roof, and never gets cleaned out by us - but they seem to survive.

My definition of CAS is very few or no embellishments, clean and simple lines, lots of "white" space, this can be any colour but lots of plain unprinted, unstamped, undecorated space of any colour. It will be interesting to see who can actually do this, including my teamies!

Come and play Quirky CAS with us, and maybe you will make top 3 and win one of our wonderful prizes, or you can just come and see the wonderful examples we have from the team and heap of guest designers this time at Quirky Crafts Challenge blog.

This little birdie has flown into the following challenges:

Through the Craft Room Door - anything goes (6th Jan)

I love Promarkers - anything goes (Tues)

ABC - A for anything goes (Thurs)

Cute Card Thursday - anything goes

My Time to Craft - #273 all things new (Sat)

Pink Gems - Something new (16th Jan)

That's Crafty - blue is the colour (16th Jan)

NBUS 3 - use your never before used Schtuff, cos Darlene said! (22nd Jan)

Pan Pastels - CAS (17th Jan)

Die Cut Divas - Anything goes (month of Jan)