cheiro urgia: July 2023

31 July, 2023

Ice cream

One day, I will spend more time in blogland again. More time crafting with anything and everything I have in my stash: from papers to napkins to all kinds of beads.

Until then, it looks like I'll do the bare minimum to fulfill my DT tasks over at the Alphabet challenge blog. With chronic pain issues and a fatigue situation that doesn't seem to improve, I can't help feeling overwhelmed by basic daily tasks. I hope to get better still, and crafting is a wonderful escape for me, however, it's hard to incorporate into my daily routine. Anyway, for our current challenge theme, I prepared some ice cream for you. And to challenge myself, I decided to prepare the summer refreshment with a twist, namely by working with some autumn-ish papers.

If I remember correctly, I purchased them in Pardubice years ago, when I decided to do a one-day trip to this beautiful city from Prague. I stumbled upon a crafting shop by chance and left with quite a few beautiful papers. I didn't put many into use yet, except for a wood-inspired card background I used in one of the previous challenges.

This time, I opted for a bit of Halloween-feeling. The outline of my cards is similar to the ones I created for the last year's "Ice cream" challenge: I fussy cut the individual parts of the popsicles and I tried to cut the paper in a way that would enable me to incorporate as many spooky creatures as possible. Once that was done, I placed the parts onto white embossed background paper. I picked three different embossing patterns for the popsicles, and I find it interesting to see how they influence the whole look of the cards. One would think those white-on-white patterns won't make a big difference, but to me, they certainly do: The swirly one looks super cute in my opinion, while I somehow can't warm up for the polka-dot one. What about you?

To finish the card, I used a layer of purple card board and placed it onto a kraft card base. In the very end, I added a couple of shimmering gemstones. I like the look of my popsicles, especially the effect of the Halloween paper - it's not your typical lolly in summer pastels, but not too spooky either thanks to the cute creatures it features. I don't usually make Halloween cards, but those were quite a fun project to create.

challenges:

- krafty chicks: all occasions

- 613 avenue create: ATG
- a place to start: ATG

- cards4galz: something with "P" (popsicle)

- creative inspirations: ATG with optional twist "feathered friends" (owls)
- creative moments: ATG

- cutie pie challengeblog: CAS

- day of the month: national simplicity day

- lil patch of crafty friends: ATG handmade

- love to craft: ATG

- pennys papertake: ATG

- use your stuff: 3 item cluster (3 shimmering gemstones)

- vesela hiska: polka dot song (polka dot embossing background)

- wortartwednesday: ATG
- worldwide crafters and colorists challenge: ATG

14 July, 2023

Humour

Hello and welcome to a new task over at the Alphabet challenge. We have arrived at the letter "H", and we'd like to see humorous projects this fortnight. As always, you may create whatever you wish, just make sure to make us laugh.

Now for my DT project and the story behind it. I have wanted to use this sweet Bugaboo digi for ages, but I never had the right inspiration for it. With that challenge theme, however, I couldn't think of a better digi to use. And so it happened that I created a Christmas card in July.

As always, I coloured the image with coloured pencils. The grumpy lady in the Santa costume wears classic red Santa attire, and for a bit of contrast, I decided to use green shades for the Christmas she's holding in her hands.

For her appeal to Santa I used blue colours and a bit of shading.

Parallel to that, I picked a grey polka dot background paper to cover the white card base. I like to think that those tiny white dots look like snowflakes on a grey winter day. The paper was actually the first thing that caught my eyes when I was about to start creating this card, collecting items I might use in my project. Initially, I was worried that all the grey would make for a rather sad card, but as the digi is pretty huge, it would cover most of it anyways. Also, I placed the finished digi onto red shimmering paper for a bit more colour. On the lower part of the "frame", I used my new border punch. It's not technically new as I've purchased it a while ago, but I've never used it before. I think it fits perfectly for the Christmas theme, adding a bit of stars/snowflakes.

In the end came the inevitable: I took a couple of tiny yellow gemstones and a star, and placed them around the motif for a bit of bling. I then added another sentiment by using golden stickers in an attempt to fill the awkwardly empty left upper corner of my image. I opted for a simple "XO XO XO", which covers the emptimess while still leaving lots of space, and I hope it turned out allright. What do you think?