The Paper Players #281 - Cats and Dogs

This week on The Paper Players the theme is "Raining Cats & Dogs" - use a cat or dog on your card.

I've put together another digital creation:

I love CraftArtist.  It's such a powerful program considering that it was designed for hobby crafters and scrapbookers.  I didn't have any actual images of cats or dogs, but there are some animal punches that come with the program so I punched out the cats and dogs from various patterned papers and added a black outline to help lift them off the background.  I did the same for the bench.  I really couldn't think of an appropriate sentiment, but it looks like all the animals are hanging out so in the end I went with "Let's Get Together".

White On White

I'm taking part in the Simply Less Is More challenge, with the theme of 'white on white' this week.

I created my card using a Sheena Douglass embossing folder for the background.  I LOVE that swirly pattern. The die cut is the Love Scroll from the new Tattered Lace Melded collection (more on that soon) which I've highlighted with Dovecraft's Crystal glitter glue.  It has pink and green highlights which was really hard to capture on film, so to speak, but does a great job of lifting the die cut from the background.  I also placed a length of ivory ribbon behind the die cut and a trio of pearls in two corners for added interest.

Do What You Love - Love What You Do

I bought the "Frame & Love Set" embossing folders by Sizzix because I loved this sentiment, but it sat unused for quite a long time because I didn't really know what to do with it.  So I started with the basics - I embossed a piece of coloured card with a white core and sanded the embossing back.  Then I highlighted some of the decoration around the word 'LOVE', that looked a bit like foliage and flower buds, with Flowersoft.  Then I added some butterflies and a punched flower.

The butterflies were from a stamp set by Clearly Besotted, which I coloured with Spectrum Noirs.  To help the colours pop I highlighted some of the detail with a white gel pen.  The wings were curled a bit and then propped up with small foam pads to help make the piece look more dynamic,

I punched two flowers, which I layered up, shaped a bit and then added black beads to the centre.  The leafy vine is a Britannia die, which I really love.

Once done I liked the way it looked, but it needed a mat, so I used bright pink card to echo the colour in the larger butterflies.  I then matted the whole thing onto black mirror card which seemed to tie the whole thing together, as it picked up the back from the butterflies as well as the centre of the flower.  I intend to mount the whole thing on grey board and then hang it up somewhere around my craft space.

Well, hello!

The other day I was tempted into buying a set of digikits from Daisytrail that were on special offer.  Looking back over my past orders I realised that I'd collected quite a few. OK, a lot!  The worst thing is I hadn't even downloaded half of them, and the half that I had downloaded had barely seen the light of day.  The Paper Players challenge blog accepts digital submissions, so that seems like a good way to make good use of all that wonderful content that is going unused.

 The theme this week is a Tic Tac Toe challenge:

I chose flowers, die cuts and yellow, and here's my card:

I think it would make a nice Valentine's Day card.  Something a little bit different from the usual hearts and red.  I've used bits and pieces of various digikits and I can't remember where they all came from, except that the sultry lady is from the "Pin Up Starlets" digikit and the "die cuts" are from the "Photo Cutouts" kit.  I had no idea what I was going to do when I started, but it all came together rather well.  Isn't it a wonderful thing, to start off with a blank slate and end up with something lovely?