A Flamingo FUSION...

I don't know why, but when I spied this gorgeous FUSION inspiration photo with all it's shiny pink and reflections of palm trees, the first things I thought of were Florida and flamingos! Combining the sketch and inspiration photo this fortnight, I paper pieced this cute TAWS flamingo, and paired it with the Mama Elephant die cut banner and "feeling tickled (pink!)" sentiment.

How to join in the fun...

1. Play with just the sketch challenge.

2. Play with just the inspiration photo challenge.

3. Or you can create FUSION by combining BOTH challenges into one card.

4. Use the challenge graphic and link back to Fusion in your post.

5. Please read the other considerations on the Our Rules Page before playing along.

Can't wait to see how you will be inspired by this fortnight's FUSION!

The Design Team have some FABULOUS creations to inspire you!

The fabulous Amy Tsura is back on the team!

Betty J - Dannielle Robeson - Deepti 
Jeanne Jachna - Julia Aston - Katie Brooks

Kelly Griglione - Kimberly Wiener - Lynn Mangan

Michelle Folland - Michelle Lupton - Stephanie Severin

Please check the linky for the days left to play with us.

Playing along with Virginia's View Patterned Papers Challenge, 

and a reminder there's still time to play in KIS Baby Challenge too!

A Little KIS Splatter...

Had super fun with this fortnights Keep It Simple Splatter theme, perfect for this gorgeous Ink Splatter stamp from Neat & Tangled, combined with this cute birthday sentiment stamp by The Alley Way Stamps, and finished with three little MME enamel dots. 

Hope you take the time to get inky with Splatters! 

Remember to stop by the blogs of the Keep It Simple DT for some super Splatter inspiration

Anni

Christine

Mia

Tanja

Tenia

Love to see how you are inspired this fortnight!

Used the colour inspiration from Little Tangles Inspiration Photo Challenge, and 
The Alley Ways Stamps Be Inspired too!

N.BUS to French Ship...

To help celebrate the fabulous Darnell's 500th birthday... oops, no, that's not it! 500 followers, you can hop on over and join in the fabulous #1 N.BUS to French Ship Challenge! (I'm wondering whether this qualifies for Addicted to CAS Transport Challenge, or perhaps I've missed the boat LOL!)

I broke open my NBUS The Alley Way Stamps True Colors to play along (plus "you" from Jibber Jabber), so I'm joining in the fun at TAWS Be Inspired Challenge...

 

...and just because good things come in threes, and they have fabulous sketches, I'm playing along with CAS{E} this Skech too.

This made me SMILE :)
This too...

Seize the Runway...

 

E.T.A. Joining in the fun with Moxie Fab Hip on Handwriting Challenge

Even though I LOVE the DTs cards and gallery created each fortnight for the Runway Inspired Challenges, they always challenge me LOL.  This time I thought I'd deconstruct the process for creating my Runway Inspired Challenge #57 Markus Lupfer card.  If you look closely at the dress, there are a number of pigeons on it, and "love" speech bubbles, so I thought this sentiment was most appropriate.  The sentiment was the first element I chose for the card, as I liked the similarities between the graphic style of the doodle font of the Autumn Leaves sentiment and the dress. The Alley Way Stamps Lighter Than Air birdies are a similar graphic style. I chose this weeks fabulous Seize the Sketch as the basis for my card, as it replicated the overlapping graphic shapes found on the RIC inspiration dress, my bottom panel became a die cut window, though which you can see the inside decorated panel.  The floral pattern and paperpieced colours are chosen straight from the dress, as well as the Simon Says Stamp speech bubble. Thought it appropriate to play along with Catered Crop Put a Bird on it Challenge too!

Hope you are having a super creative weekend!

This made me smile...

A CASE of Happy Birthday TAWS...

The Alley Way Stamps are celebrating their third birthday with fabulous discounts and giveaways, so I thought I'd join in the celebrations with this birthday card featuring TAWS Wish BIG balloons and sentiment, coloured vellum and gold embossing powder.  

Also playing along with TAWS BE Inspired (over on their new challenge blog), CASE Study with this gorgeous inspiration card from Donna Mikasa, Seize the Birthday and JUGS Paper Piecing Challenge.

  

This made me smile...

Win a Birthday KIS...

Another quick birthday card featuring The Alley Ways Stamps to celebrate the first birthday of Keep It Simple (KIS) Challenge Blog.  Be inspired by this fortnights Challenge colours, join in the fun and you could win a fabulous prize from The Alley Way Stamps!

Featuring The Alley Way Stamps Tropic Topic flamingo, with sentiment created from Jibber Jabber and Chatterbox, together with Distress Inks in Picked Raspberry, Dusty Concord, Salty Ocean and Peacock Feathers.

Inspired by CAS(E) this Sketch and playing along with Seize the Birthday

 

WIN a Birthday KIS...

One of my favourite Challenge Blogs, Keep It Simple is turning one today!!!  So when Christine invited me to play along as a guest, of course I said YES!  To mark the occasion this special celebration is being sponsored by the fabulous The Alley Ways Stamps, so now you have NO excuses not to come along and join the party!!!  All you have to do is create a CAS card inspired by this fabulous graphic.  I was so inspired I created two cards (and there may even be a third before the challenge is over!)

KIS Inspiration Photo

My first card (above) is inspired by the colours and the graphic lines of the inspiration photo, together with the birthday theme. It's a bit difficult to see in my photo, but I have added embossing lines above and below the sentiment. The sentiment is created from The Alley Ways Stamps Chatterbox and Jibber Jabber, with these gorgeous Castaways jelly fish. The background panel was created using Distressed Ink Peacock Feathers, stamped and then embossed, with and the jelly fish being a combination of Distressed Ink Picked Raspberry and Dusty Concord.

As much as I love my first card, I thought it may have been stretching the Keep It Simple philosophy, so I created a second, more CAS card, using The Alley Way Stamps Tag Alongs heart house and arrows. To create the house shaped card I stamped the heart house onto a scrap of paper and photocopied the image at 500% enlargement, cut a cardstock template using the photocopy image as the outline, then cut the card to size. The fabric letters are American Crafts Patchwork Aqua.  Inspired by Virginia, I had originally planned on stamping on coloured paint chips (samples from the hardware store) to create the house and arrows but unfortunately my Stazon ink has dried up, and other inks just tended to smudge on the paint chips, so I just used my inks and markers to colour the house and arrows, and the heart stamped on a piece of the leftover colour panel created for my first card.

You have until Wednesday 27th November to link you cards up here.

First card is playing along with Seize the Birthday Texture Challenge, and 
Simon Says Stamp Got Ink? Challenge too!

It's a Spring Thing...

Can you tell we're heading into Spring this side of the world... just thought I'd let you know in case my last few floral creations didn't give the game away!

Inspired by these gorgeous strong hues of pink and orange from Runway Inspired Challenge and The Alley Way Stamps Be Inspired, together with this fabulous Freshly Made Sketch.  Combining Memory Box Cluster of Carnations with the sentiment from The Alley Way Stamps Wish BIG... I love that the "c" ducks down perfectly to fit around the die-cut! This Rose Moka paper combines oranges and pinks perfectly and would be fun to re-create with inks.

  

Playing along with Seize the Birthday too!

A BIG FUSION...

A very literal FUSION from me this week!  Will you be inspired by the shapes (rectangles, circles, car, bows...), colours (pink, monochromatic, black & white with a pop of colour...), textures (paper, cloth, brick, glass, metal...) or theme (cars, gifts, industrial, fashion...) from this weeks cool FUSION graphic, or this funky FUSION sketch - or both?!?

I had such fun this week pairing my favourite The Alley Way Stamps car and gift with the BIG sentiment from My Favorite Things.  Stamped in Hero Arts Bubble Gum - originally stamped in black ink, but it just looked too harsh with all that pink!  Papers are from Echo Park, Authentique and Doodlebug (all at least three years old!), with die cuts from Lil Inkers Stitched Rectangles and Paper Smooches Fishtail Flags.

Hope to see you at the FUSION Challenge Blog soon, in the meantime, here's some more FABULOUS inspiration from the Design Team...

Amy Tsuruta

Geri Freeman

Kelly Griglione

Lynn Mangan

Stacey Schafer

I thought this was a perfect opportunity to Link Up for Pink

and Shopping Our Stash Pink or Cancer Awareness Challenge too!

This made me smile...

Shakin' all Over and Fallin' for You...

ETA. I think this card fits perfectly with this weeks 

Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger - Enthralled with Fall (see photo inspiration below)

You can play along til October 27th!

Thought I'd turn this weeks CAS(E) this Sketch into an Fall (Autumn!) leaf shaker card and play along with CASual Fridays Fall Colours & a Leaf, and CASolgy Autumn too.  The leaves were created by spraying a sheet of watercolour paper with water and a combination of red, orange, yellow, gold & brown mists. Once this was dry, the sheet was stamped with The Alley Way Stamps It's Fall About You leaf and fussy cut - the best leaves had more than one colour on them.  The shaker was created by die cutting with Lil Inkers Stitched Rectangle mats and edging the back of this with two layers of foam tape, sandwiching a spare piece of clear plastic packaging between the back of the cardstock and the first layer of foam tape.  Dropping in a handful of leaves, and sealing up the shaker against the front of the card.  The sentiment was created using Paper Smooches Graffiti, Alphadot and Nutty for You sentiment, stamped in Cup O' Joe on a fishtail flag diecut.

Freshly Made Craft Dash

9 Minutes and 59 seconds later...

This is about as close to the wire for the 10 Minute Craft Dash as I've been - using my new electronic kitchen timer the beeper started going off just after I finished rounding the last corner! For this Dash, I flipped this weeks versatile Freshly Made Sketch  and found inspiration in the direction of CASology Arrow ;)

First up the strip for the sentiment and the red backing strip were die cut using Paper Smooches Fishtail Flags.  The Fancy Pants Down by the Shore azure wave paper was cut to size. The sentiment flag was stamped with The Alley Way Stamps Life is Short.  Next the Verve Learning to Sail sailing boat was stamped on the grey timber paper, white cardstock, red paper and azure wave paper.  The relevant sections of the stamped sailing boats were fussy cut and adhered to the azure wave paper using a glue pen.  The corners of the azure paper were rounded before it was adhered to the cardstock base. The fishtail flags ends were trimmed and secured together, before being adhered to the cardstock base with foam tape.  Decided at the last minute (literally!) that the cardstock base would look better with rounded corners.

10 Minute Tips:

• Stick to what you know when Dashing.  Looking back at my Craft Dash cards, I almost always choose die cuts and/or fussy cutting as my "go to".  When you're in a hurry, you usually find whatever your "go to" is already, is it the easiest thing to do FAST.

 

 

Happy Bee Day...

OK so this is one of those cards that started in one place, and ended up in a whole other postcode - maybe even a whole other country LOL!  Inspired by The Alley Way Stamps BE Inspired, those lemon pom-poms reminded me of this cute The Alley Way Stamps Priceless Joy bee, and the rest of the card evolved from there!  I stamped the bee onto the back of some yellow vellum, so he would be facing the right way, coloured in the black stripes on the reverse side too, then added some yellow paper behind his body, leaving the wings opaque. The cork hexagon was left over from an earlier project, but fitted the theme perfectly.  Added a couple more MFT die-cut hexagons, MME word stickers, and Neat & Tangled sequins, backed with Lily Bee Design papers (of course!!)  It was only after I finished the card that I realised how closely I had followed this weeks fabulous Retro Sketch - must have been lurking in my sub-conscious!  

Playing along with Keep It Simple Birthday Challenge,

Seize the Birthday Anything Goes Challenge, 

Moxie Fab Birthday Card Challenge and

Jackie's Rockwell Designs Lemon Zest Challenge too!