Card Swap - April

The theme for my CraftMad card swap for the month of April was

Black & White + Sketch

we were to make two cards, one following the theme and one following both the theme and the sketch.

So here are my cards - which I was late in making and late in sending:

Card #1 - Following Theme

I have been playing with a new die set I got from Amazon ..... a coneflower (built with several layers)  It's a cheapie version of Honey Bee Stamps, Lovely Layers Coneflower.   I would have loved to be able to buy the original brand version, but here in Australia with our lousy exchange rate at the moment, the conversion from USDollars is just too much.  So for now, I go with the Amazon copies.

 

Onto how I made the card ....... I die cut all the layers of the coneflower out and used a blending brush to colour in with black ink.  As I knew I was going to ink blend all the layers, they were cut out from the various off-cuts of white cardstock I have lying around.  Layers were coloured with slightly different intensities of black, then layered together with glue.  Leaves were ink blended and positioned accordingly.  White background layer was run through Cuttlebug using Provo Craft 'Swiss Dots' embossing folder  (this was one of my very first embossing folders ever bought back in 2008, and is often a 'go to' background) . Sentiment 'hello' was die cut several times from black and layered to provide dimension.

 

 

The embossed background was added to a black cardbase, then the flower and sentiment were positioned accordingly. 

 

Linking with the following challenges:

Addicted to CAS - #258 - Flower

Cut It Up Challenge #303 - Add a sentiment

Snippets Playground Challenge #480

Card #2 - Following Theme + Sketch

I played with some cardstock/papers from my stash for this one!  The black & white papers I have had 'forever' along with the black & white mulberry paper flowers.

 

I stamped & die cute the sentiment 'thank you' using black ink and added another layer to add dimension.

The card was laid our following the sketch - the black diagonal border being added with foam dots to add interest.  A final touch of bling with a gem in the centre of the flower. 

 

I have finally put my cards in the mail - they sat completed for quite some time before I got out to the Post Box - my bad!

Thank you for visiting my blog today - I hope you have a good day.

Remember, any day doing something you love makes it a good day ;-)

Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.