Less is More Week #313

Good morning!

Wow, these weeks are just flying by, I can't believe we're back to another Saturday morning...they are always very welcome though!

So, as usual this marks the start of a new challenge over at Less is More and we're back with a Recipe challenge.  And this week, the ingredient we want to see is...

Balloons

(one or more)

And first things first, we have a Guest Designer joining us this week who was our December winner, and a fabulous artist I'm sure most of you are familiar with....the super talented Birgit!  She never fails to wow me with her creativity and her card this week is fabulous so, if you have time please do pop over and show your appreciation.

Right, onto my cards, and I have two for you this week, both of which have already been posted off for birthdays during this past week.

My first uses a stamp from a wonderful set by Katzelkraft which Santa very kindly brought to me.  I decided I needed some fun and quirky stamps in my stash and as a cat lover these were on my Christmas list.  The card was mailed off to a friend who is also a cat lover, and as she has four furbabies this had to be the theme for her card!

This week I wanted to make use of something I haven't used for ages.....patterned paper!  It was getting neglected in the bottom of my cupboard so I had a rummage and pulled out a colourful design to work with.  That was my starting point so, after stamping the cat in black I used some co-ordinating ink colours to stamp the balloons, and used a fine liner to draw the balloon string tying it to his tail.  The speech bubble was also stamped in black, and this is from a set I managed to buy from the lovely Michelle Short when she had a stash sale last year.  I then die cut the bottom of my white cardstock panel with a pierced border and adhered this over the patterned paper onto the card base.  I would have preferred to have the patterned paper section a little shallower but I had already die cut my panel so to preserve some white space I left the cat uncoloured.

Materials used:

• Patterned Paper: Pebbles - Sunny Side
• Stamps: Katzelkraft - Les Chats Russes; Clearly Besotted - Let's Party; Lawn Fawn - Chit Chat
• Ink: Memento - Tuxedo Black; Versa Color - Rose Red, Bamboo, Lapislazuli, Orange
• Die: Avery Elle - Dotted Border Dies

Challenge entries:

Seize the Birthday - Anything Goes (not played along with the toppings option this time)
Penny Black and More - January Challenge - Anything Goes
Darnell's NBUS Challenge #9 - Two NBU stamp sets (not played along with the optional theme this time)
Addicted to Stamps and More - Challenge #226 - Anything Goes



For my second card I used a great set of dies from MFT to make a masculine celebration card...

This was super easy to make.  I die cut the balloon base from some polka dot patterned paper, adhered it to the top of my card base and trimmed away the excess.  The bow and string were die cut from green cardstock, and the happy from blue.  These were adhered in position and the remainder of the sentiment was stamped at the base in green.

Materials used:

• Patterned Paper: Pebbles - Sunny Side
• Coloured Cardstock: Papermania
• Dies: MFT Die-namics - Blueprints 26
• Stamp: Clearly Besotted - Laugh Out Loud
• Ink: Versa Color - Bamboo

Challenge entries:

Moving Along with the Times - Challenge #37 - Swirls and/or Curls

Happy Little Stampers - January Challenge - Anything Goes with Dies
Inkspirational - Challenge #127 - Polka Dots

Thanks so much for visiting my little space in blogland today.  For more inspiration please pop over to the main challenge blog where my teamies have worked their socks off this week to create some great cards to share.  I hope you find time to play along this week.