Showing posts with label Raise the Bar Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raise the Bar Challenge. Show all posts

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

Konnichiwa Midori!

When I spotted these cute Japanese girls over at Mamidoodles I just fell in love!

They are work of the talented Elisa and belong to her gorgeous and very affordable set of images called 'Midori', which means "Green" in Japanese.
Elisa has created this kit especially with us cardmaking girls in mind. You can get sweet little Midori in three different outfits, and she also comes as a template for paper piecing.

Elisa has just announced her new DT and has opened her first challenge over at Mamidoodles.
I couldn't resist playing along and really enjoyed using the yummy colour combo of 'wheat, pale blue and red' inspired by this picture.
This little tri-fold card is my entry for the Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge #79.
The theme for this week has been chosen by my super talented friend Vicky... so there was even more incentive than usual for me to play along!
Vicky's theme is 'A Day Out', and originally I was thinking about a day out in the country such as a picnic or a visit to a farm. However, after seeing cute Midori I knew that I wanted a little group of girls in their beautiful kimonos taking a day trip to see the cherry blossom or Sakura. I loved the book and film 'Memoirs of a Geisha' by Arthur Golden. The beautiful cherry blossom scenes made a big impact on me and inspired the idea for this card.

I used this beautiful traditional Haiku, translated by Robin Gill in 'Cherry blossom Epipthany', to set the scene:

cherry blossoms
with the morning moon
still in the sky
Japanese people believe the Japanese cherry blossom captures and defines all that is vulnerable about being human. They believe that the brief Sakura season gives a timely reminder, once a year, that life is fleeting and time is precious. For them the cherry blossom season is a time to take stock and evaluate what they have achieved, and what they are going to do next, on their life path. People travel from all over Japan to see the best displays of blossom.
I am also entering this card into the following challenges:
Raise the Bar - Movie Mania: Memoirs of a Geisha
The cherry blossom on this card was created using flower soft. The additional stamps that I used are a flower border clear stamp and the gorgeous 'Leaf Flourish' stamp, both from Hero Arts. The leafy border stamp is from Hobby arts and was stamped using Distress Inks.

Happy crafting everyone, and don't forget to drop by next week as I'll be celebrating my 1st Blogoversary with a few little candy giveaways!

Saturday, 23 January 2010

Randon acts of kindness!

Yet again I am thrilled to have been the lucky recipient of not one but two random acts of kindness or RAKs!

The adorable Jane Beljo emailed me her sweet digi-stamp of Mia and Bosko. How kind!
I especially wanted to post this little card today as Jane has just launched her new digital stamp set called Jane's Bakery over at Squigglefly! The set is a real bargain at $3.00 as there are lots of different images to play with!

The second RAK comes in the form of the cute gingham ribbon on this card. This pretty ribbon, and other goodies, arrived with an eBay purchase from someone who trades as 'Mindysmummy'. How kind is that!!!!
I printed Mia and Bosko onto some plain white card and coloured them with Promarkers. I added some Diamond Glaze to accentuate the little heart on Mia's jersey. This was my first attempt with Diamond Glaze and I was a bit shocked at how quickly it oooooozed from the bottle! The background is the Hero Arts digital friendship stamp, printed on some textured blue card. I layered the image and embossed half the base card with my Cuttlebug.
I wanted to leave the card very simple to showcase Mia and Bosko, so just added the ribbon and those little red punched hearts.

I am going to enter this card for Raise the Bar Challenge #2 as the theme is the 'Gift that keeps on giving' otherwise known as 'RAK'!

As a final little RAK I'd like to send this card to someone who is sweet enough to leave a comment on this post. Please make sure that I can back track to your blog to contact you. I will be using the very technical 'names in a hat' method to make the draw!
Happy crafting everyone!