Spot Prize Winner

It was such a hard decision but the winner of the spot prize for Butterfly week is

Jenny

Congratulations, very well deserved

your card had that 'certain something'

Please email me with your address and I will post your prize

LIM2011@gmx.com or Overmoores@aol.com

Thank you for your continued support 

Week 17 Recipe - Pick a Square

Hello and welcome to "Less is More" for our 17th week!

Another frustrating week for us with Mr Blogger playing up and not letting some of you comment. Some of you lost your followers, do hope everything gets sorted out and stays that way!

What a bumper week we had with all those wonderful butterflies. At one point we thought we were going to hit 400 entries!

It was lovely to see our LIMettes happy and smiling, albeit a few mentions of 'what do we have in store this week!'

Well here it is

PICK A SQUARE 

        For our challenge this week we have a multiple choice.... well sort of ... you can choose which of the 5 SQUARES from our plan you wish to use to place the image of your card, leaving the rest as PURE WHITE SPACE!

The image may overflow the area slightly if necessary  and the sentiment, should you choose to use one, may extend outside the area also, but it should be obvious exactly which area of the card you have chosen to fill.

" We will allow a rectangle, but, following the strict guidelines as the squares "

Chrissie

Did you miss me last week?

I was enjoying a cruise starting in Venice and so had a break from blogging for a while, so I apologise for not popping by your blogs.

We had a wonderful holiday but now it's back to visiting all our super LIMettes once more.

This card was made using the 'Thumping technique'. 

I inked the stamp with Baja Breeze inkpad and then using a Docrafts grey marker, tapped it randomly in various directions (thumping it) over the blue ink. I did give a quick huff of breath to the stamp before making the impression, to ensure that the first ink hadn't dried too much. I rather like the mottled effect it gives. Sadly I don't have  any SU Markers as I would rather have liked to use Sahara Sand for the contrast, but didn't have an equivalent colour in my stash. A little Glamour Dust was added to the blossoms.

 I used the same process for the sentiment, which I carefully positioned using my Lego and acetate. Both stamps are from the SU Just Believe set.

As you can see my chosen square for both cards is the bottom left corner.

This card is again using SU stamps and  has simply been stamped, masked (the sails) and sponged using Bashful Blue and Baja Breeze inks.

OK, so now it;s my turn Mandi

This stamp from Stampin Up 'So Many Thanks'
[you can purchase from me here]
I put a paper strip mask over the THANKS and stamped the rest in black dye based ink. Then taking my Stampin Up markers a i coloured the letters of the THANKS in different colours!At this point you need to 'huff' over the inks to moisten them again. this is why dye based are best, Stazon types will have dried.
The best thing with Su is that they colour match card, pens, ink pads, ribbon perfectly. Therefore; taking the corresponding card colours I cut mats at 0.5cm increments to mat the Thanks on [4.5cm] Last one is 7.5cm Card base is 15cm square [6" in old money!] I matted the Thanks square using 3d foam

For my second card I used the fabulous Blossom Petals Punch from Stampin Up [available from me here] I matches a stamp set perfectly, bur I decided just to punch card and keep it very plain.

I mounted the largest petals, shaping them and adding  a little 3d foam under the bulbous bit. Continued for all three layers. Then added my super blingy spacer gem in the centre Available here Im going to add something similar to my wedding port folio. Im itching to make this is other colours!

We want to thank you all for visiting our personal blogs, we do love to see you there and much appreciate your comments.

Before we go we would like to tell you about a fabulous cause our

 lovely LIMette Jen is doing for charity 

Click the image for further details

Happy crafting and have a great week

showCASe for 'Embossing' week

As usual we had soem wonderful entreies and we thank each and every on eo foyu for all your time, commitment and dedication to 

"Less is More"

Every week we choose a few cards to showCASe. This is a very difficult decsion as you can imagine, but, some jsut have that 'certain something' that fits our criteris to perfection

Thank you adnd well done

We would love you to take our banner and display on your sidebar

[In no particular order]

Brenda B [69]

 

Mustavcoffee [70]

Lisa A [113]

Thanks again and very well done!

Week 16 - Theme

Hello LIMettes and welcome to another week.

Thank you for all your fabulous support for 'Embossing week' you all worked so hard.

Look out for the showCASe, to be published in the next couple of days.
Chosing them is  a very difficult job, but we both tend to agree instantly, which is quite spooky!

So onto this week's challenge. It's theme week and we have chosen

Butterfly/Butterflies

How easy peasy is that! We are so good you you! [But what are they building up to we hear you cry!]

So as usual, as long as your design is CLEAN & SIMPLE, the worlds your oyster...or butterfly!

You can do one or a whole flutter, it's entirely up to you.

We look forward to seeing your entries.

 **There is a little difference this week in the form of a 'spot prize'

it will be awarded to one LIMette, whose card has that' je ne sais quoi'

Good Luck! **

It's me first this week Mandi

For my card this week I stamped the wonderful Woodware Bubble Butterfly [I got mine here]and embossed in gold. I then used a mixture of 'Silkies' and 'Glitzies' to randomly fill in the bubbles. Not forgetting a few various sized gems too! I hadn't used Silkies before and have to say I quite like the effect specially in the black card stock. At first I wasn't adding enough        and they were drying a bit streaky, so I decided to add Glamour Dust
 to them before they completely dried. For a different effect I did find that 'flooding' with the colour gives a more pleasing effect, so will remember in future! For a glossy look I also added Diamond Glaze to some of the spots.




I also tried it on white card stock, for a different look.

** Click the images for a larger picture,to see more detail **

Now it's me Chrissie

The background panel was cut with a Nestie and embossed and inked with sponge daubers using Mellow Moss and Bashful Blue. The plants are from an Inkylicious clear set of stamps and the butterflies from an old stamp I've had for years.

I stamped the latter in black Archival Ink which I then embossed with Holographic embossing powder.Next I coloured the gaps with a green Sakura pen which I then sprinkled with some Glamour Dust.

The sentiment is mounted very crookedly on the wooden block and the only way to get it stamped straight is to use some form of stamp positioner... I used my Lego bricks and a piece of acetate, (see week 1) but you could purchase a Stampamajig through Mandi.

TIP  You can remove stamps from their wooden blocks by popping them in the microwave for a few seconds, which softens the adhesive and allows the stamps to be re-stuck if required, I did this with some stamps which had already been mounted but which weren't trimmed closely enough for my liking.

We do hope you wil have fun again this week, we can;t wait to see your beautiful butterflies.

** The time for your entries has been extended by 2 hours to 10pm Fridays

Hope this will help those of you who work and struggle to meet the earlier deadline **

Happy crafting and have a good week.

ShowCASe for 'White on White' Week 13

We have decided to post the showCASe  in a separate post giving our LIMettes

the worthy recognition they deserve!

Without further ado, these are the 3 we chose [in no particular order]

Gibmiss (No 19)

Di  (No 55)

Caroline (No 88)

Please take our banner and display on your sidebar.

Congratulations to you all and thank you.

Week 15 - One Layer Card

It was wonderful to see so many new people joining in our challenge last week, with some truly amazing WoW cards. It makes choosing our ShowCASed cards so much more difficult when the standards are so high. We also thought that instead of simply adding them to our Slideshow and our ShowCASe page we should give them the accolade they deserve and so from now onwards we will be adding a short post to show you the ShowCASed cards each week.

A huge thank you too to all those LIMettes who visited our personal blogs to leave a comment... we leave hundreds each week and it's wonderful to receive comments on our work in return.
With the problems with Blogger this past week we apologise as it appeared that we hadn't visited you... we did come but obviously couldn't necessarily leave a comment. 

And now onto this week's challenge... you know it's going to be a 

One Layer Card,

 but what you don't know is that it's going to be...

EMBOSSING

You may use heat or dry embossing.


Chrissie

For this card I began by stamping this new little Artemio frame stamp with  Sahara Sand ink and then embossing with Detail Clear Embossing powder. Then I stamped the trees with Early Espresso and again embossing, but the image came out with the frame bisecting the trees as you can see in the lower image in the picture below. SO then I realised that if I stamped the trees first, then they would have complete coverage and the frame stamped in the lighter ink, magically disappeared from on top of the trees and just appeared behind and around them, after I had done the embossing. Interesting huh!

I did have a fancy for using the buff coloured card, but after my test run decided to use white, where the image had more impact. The bird below, came with the tree and frame stamps but I decided to go with a smaller version from Inkylicious. The sentiment is from Hero Arts, positioned using my Lego (see week 1).

Now on to me, Mandi
Firstly, I must apologise for apparently not getting round to you all this week. 
Blogger breaking down was so not good!

For my card I have, as you can see, stamped flowers. I want to share a little tip with you.
I wanted the Stampendous 'Ruffled Flower' in black as the detail shows up much better using a dye based ink pad, or in this case 'Stazon' I stamped 3 times, going off the edge of the card, then stamped the other flowers randomly in pink [Melon Mambo] and orange [Peach Parfait]
To purchase Stampin Up from me click here
The sentiment I stamped with Versamark and heat embossed with gold. 
To emboss the little dots in the middle of the ruffled flower I used my Quickie Glue Pen. Whilst the glue is still wet, sprinkle with embossing powder and then heat just as you normally would. This is particularly great when using a digital image. You are able to pick out little elements, such as dots, swirls or flower centres.


Many people have expressed difficulties when embossing using black embossing powder. Here are a few tips as there are various ways of avoiding the dreaded black dots.

• The first thing to consider is the type of cardstock you use... certain ones love to grab those tiny suckers and hang onto them. The smoother the cardstock, the easier to heat emboss is the general rule.
• Using a little talc on a cotton wool ball and rubbing it over the area to be embossed acts a little like an anti-static bag.
• A piece of used Tumble dryer sheet is another way which people swear by.
• If card is too absorbent, then too much of the Versamark or other ink is absorbed by the card and is not so attractive to the embossing powder.
• If you use too much heat or leave the heat on the embossing for too long, then a very grainy finish occurs instead a a smooth glossy image.(This is also dependent upon the type of powder used.)

** A little note about embossing. Chrissie has given a lot of tips to you all re keeping your card stock mark and dust free. I'd also like to mention that an alternative way to emboss with black is to stamp with a pigment black ink, then clear emboss. It keeps the detail well and tends to have a 'cleaner' finish. **

The last few days have been very odd with the inaccessibility of Blogger... then with people's posts disappearing, sometimes to reappear minus their comments. All very bizarre, but hopefully this week things will be back to normal. 

DO join us... how inventive can you be?