ShowCASe #264

Morning Limettes! 

We're here with our latest ShowCASe of CASE-worthy talent

following our 'texture challenge' and what a tricky task you set us.

A whole gallery of inspirational excellence and only three to choose!

So here we go in order of entry:

Bailey Rose

A stunning and dramatic take on the challenge with striking texture 

to both the frame itself and within. Perfectly CAS yet showcasing 

elegant detail too. 

Cara @ Crafting Bunnies

 A subtle and delicately shimmering panel of texture, teamed with a 

textured card base and crisp clean stamping. Can't forget the expanse 

of yummy white space too!

 Kay Wallace

 Designed to perfection from the trendy image, thoughtful sentiment and 

textured background. Striking, CAS and a fantastic creation!

Congratulations Ladies and please collect a ShowCASe badge from 

the tab at the top of the blog. We hope you'll display it proudly

on your personal blogs with our thanks.

We're sure you'll agree these are a fantastic set of textured beauties 

and you'll stop by and congratulate these ladies too. 

There's still time to enter our 'Wire' challenge which ends at 

10pm GMT this evening and we'll be announcing our next 

challenge tomorrow at 8am GMT. We hope you'll pop along then and

 we'll be joined by Sarah G and Susan to complete the new Design Team.

February Winner

Hello there LIMettes are you ready for another exciting post?

There's been so many recently with the birthday bonanza winners, 

a new line-up of Design Team members and loads of new and old talent

to our challenges too! We are delighted to welcome you all!

Anyway it's time to reveal our winner for February - our sponsor 

was the newly renamed craft emporium 

(Make the Day Special - as was)

NOW 

Seven Hills Crafts

and our prize goes to ....

Esther

The Carnelian Wood

Although a relative newbie to the Less is More gallery, Esther

has wowed us with her inspiring CAS talent, beautiful cards, 

and her ability to zip around almost every blog leaving superb feedback.

You are an AMAZING LIMette Esther; we are thrilled with your support 

of our challenges and hope you'll continue to enter. Another worthy winner;

we're sure you'll agree and hopefully you'll pop along and leave a 

little love and congrats on her blog this week!

Please contact us by email for details of how to claim your prize.

LIM2011@gmx.com plus there's a winner's badge waiting for you to 

collect from the page at the top of the blog! 

We hope you'll display it on your blog with pride and our sincere thanks!

Welcome to our new DT members!

Today we are welcoming three new members to our Design Team!

...but first

we would like to thank everyone who expressed an interest in joining us;
the decision was very difficult as there were so many fabulous crafters to choose from. 

They were all so good that we would like to invite everyone who applied to join us for
a Guest Designer spot! So if that was you, please contact us and we'll
sort out a challenge for you to join us as a Guest Designer.

So now let's introduce our new teamies!

Sarah Gray

Hi – my name is Sarah and I am a CAS cardmaker from Leeds in the UK.  I have been cardmaking and crafting for years and spend many happy hours playing with stamps, inks and dies and many more browsing all the fab blogs online.  I love entering challenges and am delighted to be joining the DT at Less Is More!  In addition to my crafting habit I have two gorgeous, football mad boys who are growing up fast and I work as well.  With all of that going on, housework is the main casualty 

Sharon Traynor

I am a UK expat living in sunny Portugal. I have been married for 32 years and been blessed with 2 children and 2 grandchildren. I love all things inky, stamping, dies and colouring. Although I am starting a new blog, my previous design teams include Colour Create Challenge, Pixie Cottage, Whimsy stamps, Creative Card Crew, One Stop Crafts, and Frosted designs.

Susan Wuthrich

I live in Northern California, south of San Francisco. Nearly every day you can find me on the tennis court, cycling or playing soccer! When I'm not outside playing, I'm in the studio either sewing dresses and blankets for children in the community or trying to be an artist :) I'm married to a wonderful man who supports ALL of my many changing activities! We have one son who just graduated from college.

We know that you will give them a warm welcome!

The challenge this week is a 

Recipe 

and for that concoction we would like you to include

SOME WIRE

We realise that this is quite a tricky one, so if there's no way you can produce a card with
actual wire on it, an image or die-cut depicting wire will also qualify!

Sarah G
will be adding her first DT card next week

Sarah P

Here I've coiled some wire around a paint brush then stretched it to sit behind 

my die-cut sentiment from Hero Arts: Stamp & Cut birthday. The butterfly is from 

Clearly Besotted: Elegant Butterfly Duo and die cut from a scrap of distressed / 

watercolour spritzing! To finish a few gems from my stash.

Sharon

I twisted some silver wire and made it into a scribble Xmas tree shape, threaded on some beads and hot glued it to some card. The mats were hand pricked. Sentiment is from Spellbinders decorative curved star set.


Susan 
will be adding her first DT card next week

Anita

I blended Peacock Feathers Distress Ink through a Checkerboard stencil by MFT onto the card base.  The present is an MFT pierced die cut square cut from 
'sherbert pips' cardstock by Kanban.  I looped some wire around to create a bow and secured with some 3D foam which I used to pop up the present.  
The sentiment is by Paper Smooches.

Anne

Chrissie

The wire on this card was just snipped from the roll and gently pulled open a little, then secured on the Design Objectives embossed panel with a glue dot. The floral die cut is from Simon Says Stamp, with an additional leaf spray (that I am still trying to identify) and a sentiment from Clearly Besotted,

As there are soon to be more of us each week, from next time we will not be adding details of how our individual cards have been made, these details will be available on our personal blogs!
***

An InLinkz Link-up

ShowCASe Week 263

Hi everyone, it's time for yet another fabulous ShowCASe of 

One Layer Cards!

It seems that a few people were so keen to ensure that the card was one layer, that the fact that the focus was to include a stem was sadly missed!
However, having said that, there were some simply beautiful submissions and we're sure you'll agree that our showcase this week is stunning!

Here they are!

Sharon T

This is a real work of trompe l'oeil, it looks for all the world that the elements are separate layers... it really tricks the eye... fabulous work! Take a peek at Sharon's blog to see how she achieved this.

Maria

Wonderful CAS style and amazing colouring, just beautiful!

Darnell

Doesn't this beautiful bloom from Darnell bring a smile to your face... super technique too!

There were so many worthy of showcasing that the choice was really difficult! SO well done everyone.

Please take the Showcase badge from the page at the top ladies and join us tomorrow for a new challenge when the new DT members will be announced!

Week 264 Theme and Birthday Winners

At last here are the winners of the prizes from our birthday celebration week!

We have four sponsors and four prizes and so without further ado here are the four lucky winners!

Seven Hills Crafts

Julie

Happy Little Stampers

Birgit

Uniko

Rahmat

Clearly Besotted

Helen

Well done everyone, if you will contact us with your details we'll pass them on to
the respective sponsors!

There's also a Winner's badge for you at the page at the top!

Very many thanks to all our wonderful sponsors too!

Now on to this week and we have 

A THEME

for you

ADD SOME TEXTURE

Chrissie

When making some Thank you cards for a charity, I embossed the front of one card on the wrong side so cut it off to re-use, so here it is as the front panel of this card. The embossing folder is from Hobby Solutions. The butterfly is cut from some smooshed card with a die from All Occasions. The sentiment is from Penny Black.

Sarah

This one uses texture paste through a leaf stencil from STAMPlorations then sprinkled with Glamour Dust. The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted with the 'Happy' heat embossed onto vellum and the matching die used for 'Anniversary' The sequins are by Lucy Abrams.

Anne

My starting point for texture here was the rather hairy twine that the bird is perched on!  I added some embossing to the background and also to the bird's wing.  SU bird punch, Mama Elephant sentiment.

We have been delighted to see that many of you have been visiting fellow contributors blogs to leave a friendly comment, and as ever we have been delighted to receive visits from you at our personal blogs too.

Very many thanks to everyone who has expressed an interest in joining our Design Team, we will be deliberating and letting you know our choices very soon!

***

An InLinkz Link-up

ShowCASe #262

Hello there Limettes, we have another ShowCASe for you today

following our 5th Birthday white on white challenge. 

There was a host of elegant inspiration this week -

 white on white lends itself well to CAS and you certainly all threw yourselves

 into celebrating our fifth birthday with this challenge.  

It certainly didn't make picking a top three easy!

So here we go in order of entry 

Bev

What a stunning and stylish idea!  CAS perfection on a card, 

the number jumble is inspired.

Lols 

 White and nothing but white (on one of her two) - 

love the touch of the white string on the balloon.

The Carnelian Wood 

Home made feather in air dried clay and just enough silver splatter on the 

background to give interest behind it. 

We're sure you'll agree that these ladies are worthy of our ShowCASe and

will share with us in congratulating them!

You'll find our ShowCASe badge at the top of the page with our thanks

and we hope you'll display it proudly on your blogs

There's still time to enter our ONE LAYER CARD challenge

with a 'STEM' theme which ends at 10pm GMT tonight before our

new challenge starts tomorrow at 8am GMT.

Please try to pop back then as we will also be revealing our birthday winners

and if you remember there were some awesome prizes up for grabs!

Week 263 One Layer and DT CALL!

Firstly we must say a huge  THANK YOU for all the wonderful comments we received on our Birthday challenge last week, ( prizes will be announced shortly)!

It's such a good feeling to know that our efforts are appreciated by so many of you!

At this point I (Chrissie) must express a HUGE debt of gratitude to the girls on the DT. I don't think that there is another challenge in Blogland where for the most part, ALL the DT have commented on ALL the submissions to their challenges and I know that their creativeness is appreciated by all who check out the blog each week.

This undertaking has not possible without hard work and dedication and it's for this reason that we have decided to extend the number of members on the Design Team so that the load (particularly commenting) can be eased and the commitment spread a little.  

So....here's a

DT CALL!

We are therefore looking to add two new members to the DT. 

If you wish to be considered for such a position, please add (DT) after your name on your submission this week.

Those wishing to apply should

• be comfortable with the CAS genre
• have a personal blog
• produce a sample card for each week's challenge 
• comment on a large proportion of the submissions to every challenge 
• add additional cards for some of the challenges to their personal blogs

Now on to this week's challenge!

We are back to a

ONE LAYER CARD

 and we would like to have you

INCLUDE A STEM

Anne

My fuchsia stem, stamped off the page, is a Woodware stamp, coloured with Inktense pencils on kraft card.  The sentiment is by Visible Image.

Chrissie

This is a fab digital image of coneflowers from the Wax Fruit Company, coloured with watercolour pencils and blended with a water brush. A little clear Wink of Stella was added over the colour.

The sentiment is computer generated.

Sarah 

Here I've used the floral images from Uniko: Pure Florals Cosmos

and there's a fair bit of masking! 'Love' sentiment is CBS: Say it in Style

and the others are from WPlus9: Sending you Sunshine. 

The images are coloured with Zig Clear Brush pens with some wink

of stella and a blob of glossy accents to the flower centres.

Anita

 is taking  break for a couple of weeks

Do remember to leave lots of that all important white space and as with a couple of the DT examples here, don't be afraid to go off the edge of the card sometimes!

We have always encouraged participants to comment of fellow participants entries and we are delighted that so many LIMettes already do this, but if you haven't yet considered this we would urge you to do so...many friendships have begun this way!

The important thing is to have fun!

An InLinkz Link-up

ShowCASe Week 261

Good morning, LIMettes

We'd like to start by saying thank you for all the wonderful comments we've received from you during our 5th Birthday celebrations.  We really do appreciate your continued support and are so happy that we manage to inspire you to participate week after week, so a BIG THANK YOU to all of you.

So, back to business and Friday morning means it's time for the 

ShowCASe

of our

DOWN UNDER

challenge and what a fabulous selection we had and some great interpretations of the theme.

So, here are our choices in order of entry

Rosemary

We loved Rosemary's interpretation of the challenge theme, wonderfully executed with a gorgeous colour palette and that all important white space.

Julie

This super fun image and great sentiment make the perfect Aussie themed card and Julie's use of complementary colours really make her tag pop.

Kajcyika

Such a crisp and clean creation and clearly some fabulous masking involved here, a super combo of perfect images for our challenge, wonderfully coloured.

We think you'll agree that these ladies are worthy of ShowCASe status this week - many congratulations, ladies!

You'll find our ShowCASe badge at the top of our page and we would love for you to proudly display it on your own personal blogs.

We are still celebrating our 5th birthday with our

White on White

challenge and don't forget there are prizes up for grabs too this week!

You have until 10pm GMT this evening to participate.

And of course our next challenge goes live at 8am GMT tomorrow, we hope you'll join us then!

Happy 5th Birthday "Less is More"

Whoo Hoo!

Let's Celebrate!

We are 5 years old!

We have reached quite a milestone! It's 5 years since Less is More began and  we are delighted to say that we are still going strong... thanks to all the wonderful support from crafty bloggers from all around the world!

For our special Birthday Challenge we are delighted to be joined by some of our wonderful sponsors and there are lots of prizes to be had.

It's a colour challenge of course and what we would like to see is 

WHITE ON WHITE
(Accents in metallic or B/W are perfectly acceptable)

Tara

From Seven Hills Crafts

"I'm thrilled to be back supporting my favourite challenge's 5th Birthday.   For my card I've just used the simplicity of die cuts.  The two heart frames are by Concord and 9th and layer over each other with foam tape.  I added a gold foiled "love" from a Wplus9 die and finished with some tiny matching gold gems."

Tara is sponsoring the February challenge but is also offering an additional prize for the birthday challenge of the Mama Elephant: New Family set 

 

Bev: Uniko Studio

Bev is sharing a sneak peak of a new Uniko set!

Kylie

Happy Little Stampers

White on white using Butterfly Birthday (stamp and die) and Fun Birthday Sentiments!

Jen 
We are delighted to be joined by our former designer for this special week!

A simple White on White card using an edge die from Impression Obsession.  I cut out two layers and then embossed one of them using the Papertrey Ink Linen Embossing plate for some texture.

And the fabulous mug in the background, I have a spare one you can win if you pop over to my blog and leave a comment on the post as a special birthday giveaway.

Clearly Besotted is also sponsoring this special challenge



Anita

Apart from the embossed background, everything here is by Clearly Besotted.  I stamped the flower (Love Quotes II), the 'you' and 'thank' (Thank You set) in Versamark and heat embossed in silver and cut these out with their coordinating dies, and the 'thank' onto a strip of white cardstock.  The leaves were stamped and heat embossed in white and also cut with the coordinating dies, and the smaller leaves (Leafy Accents) were die cut from white vellum.  For the main panel I used some white embossing paste through a stencil, Dot Fade by Tim Holtz.  I then layered these up, adhered to the panel and then popped it up on 3D foam.

Anne


The whole card is made from linen textured card.  The flowery heart is a Memory Box Serafina die, attached to a XCut heart that was run through a Sheena Douglass embossing folder.  I embossed the Clarity sentiment and added a small XCut heart to it.
Chrissie

Here is a die-cut shaker card, using MFT's champagne glass and letters from Memory Box Alphabet Soup, with the @ from Cuttlebug.

Cheers "Less is More"

Sarah


 Being on the Design Team there I've been given the nod to treat you to a card  using one of the brand new sets which hasn't even been revealed yet! So let me introduce 'I Love Tea' and being a birthday month my  inspiration came from the very English tradition of Afternoon Tea,  with delicate china cups edged with gold ... I think my Grandma used  to have some very similar to this too! The image and sentiment plus 2 edges of my card base are heat embossed in Gold Sparkle EP and to  finish a few gems and pearls from my stash! 
As always we would urge you to visit the DT at their personal blogs where there is always additional inspiration for your delectation! It would be great if you could visit our Guest designers too!
Have fun!

An InLinkz Link-up

Week 261 Lucky Dip

As you are no doubt aware, our sponsor this month is Kylie from

Happy Little Stampers

 and as we have 5 Saturdays in this month she is she has kindly agreed to be our
 Guest Designer for this week's challenge!

You may know that Kylie is Australian so in her honour, the challenge is entitled
DOWN UNDER

You may interpret this challenge in any way you choose, but should the link be tenuous,
we would like you to explain the connection to the theme.

We ask that you keep your submission Clean and Simple with lots of white space and
please refer to the guidelines at the top of the blog.

Here's Kylie's super fun, cute and 'outside the box' take on the challenge!

Kylie

 ... and here's what the rest the DT came up with

Sarah

Well my idea of Australia (Down Under) is just One BIG Beach!

So my card uses the Clearly Besotted: On The Beach set, with a sentiment from 

Design a Tree and the Rounded Tag die, also CBS. The die-cut sun is from Lil'Inkers 

and distress inks to create the 'sea' with a  torn frothy / wavy edge. 

The flip-flops are watercoloured with Distress inks and drizzled with glossy accents

and I couldn't resist adding a couple of sequins for added sparkle.

Anita

After struggling with ideas I decided on a surfing theme.  I didn't have anything resembling a surfboard so I popped into MS Word, created an elongated oval with two vertical lines going down the centre, printed it on some patterned paper (Echo Park) and....voila, one surfboard!  I then made a beach scene using a variety of dies.  The sky, sea, sand and sun all started from round dies (MFT) which I then cut using scallop dies (Clearly Besotted) to create the layered up scene.  I nestled the surfboard in between the sand layers, with the top popped up on 3D foam, then adhered the whole circular scene to the card base slightly overlapping the edge, then trimmed off the excess.  I then manipulated the sentiment stamp by Happy Little Stampers into a curve on my acrylic block before stamping around the curve. 

Anne

Kangaroos cut from Silhouette files and inked with Frayed Burlap Distress Ink. 
 Freeform cut hillside.  Computer generated sentiment cut with a SU die.

Chrissie

This is simply a copyright free kids colouring page which I downloaded and coloured with alcohol pens. It's accompanied it with a sentiment from HLS Bold Birthday Sentiments and framed it by cutting some card with stitched dies. I don't have a square large enough for the front of this sized card so I used a rectangle and extended the cut to make a square.

We hope you have a blast with this one! Tip out that stash and see what you find!

We can't wait to see your inspiration!

***

An InLinkz Link-up