Entering some challenges

Hi folks, well the good weather disappeared quickly, didn't it? One day of sunshine, and we are back to rain again. Oh well, it's good for the water shortage, I suppose.

I'm still trying to sort all of my craft stash out, and I'm at the stage where my craft room is tidy, but I still have lots left that needs somewhere to go. I am trying to be ruthless, and am having a really good clear out, but it's very hard! I am selling some of my stuff on Ebay, I'm putting some aside for a table top sale, but the real rubbish is simply going in the bin.

Anyway, I decided to take a break this morning, and do some crafting for a change. I saw a great inspirational photo on a challenge blog the other day, and the brief fits another couple of challenges as well, so that's a bonus. I've based my project on this photo:

which is over at for your inspiration blog my design teamie Miranda made a gorgeous card using these colours, and it caught my eye. You can get to her blog using the link in my sidebar.

I made a background using Pan Pastels, so that I could enter my project into the Pan Pastel  weekly challenge 'Springtime' as well. The colours remind me of crocuses, with the purples, yellows and oranges in there. I'm also entering my project into the Snazzys Design Team Challenge which is to use 'Spring Colours'.

I have stamped over the top of the background using a great Chaspel Road stamp which is made up of lots of different flower names. I love this stamp, and can see myself using this a lot. I used Perfect Medium, and then used a combination of different colours of Pan Pastels to cover it. I also stamped a Wendy Vecchi flower spray on the opposite side in the same way, and used a dark magenta Pan Pastel to cover the Perfect Medium.

I made several grungepaper flowers, and coloured them with Wild Honey and Seedless Preserves Distress Inks. I also cut out two grungepaper butterflies. I wanted to use the same colours, creating a graduated effect across the butterflies. I used Distress Markers in Mustard Seed and Wild Honey, and then used Seedless Preserves Distress Ink around the edge with a blending tool. I was really happy that the two mediums worked together so well.

Oh well, that's the end of my crafty break for now. I'd better get back to the sorting out. Tomorrow, I have a project posting on the Chocolate Baroque Design Team Blog and I'll be posting some details about it here as well,so pop back to take a look if you are interested. Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx