Some of my birthday cards had a few things on them that I took off before discarding them. I’d like to keep them all, but it is impossible so I’ve learned to get a bit ruthless. Minnie Mouse was popped up on a lovely card with a great sentiment from a close friend and I couldn’t throw her away. So here she is – newly minted on a background I created.

I made a background recently for a card I forgot to photograph before giving away but it used a Sunshine die. These bits were what was left over and I placed them on some sticky wrap so I could use them elsewhere. I added some glue to the back – turned the sticky wrap over and placed it on the card base. Waited for the glue to dry and then carefully peeled off the wrap. It worked quite well doing it this way and was far less work than doing it piece by piece. I popped up the Minnie Mouse circle – added a bit of bling and decided it was done. Will add a sentiment but not sure yet which one I’ll use. As this isn’t totally my own work, I’m not claiming it on my main blog but thought you would all like to see it.

Here is what I did with a lovely gift of some balloons and clouds that Gayle sent to me recently. She did most of the stenciling and colouring but I did add a little of my own as well.

The one on the left I didn’t do anything except add the card base and the sentiment as it is was perfect as is. But I do like the softness of the stenciling Gayle did. The one on the right I did a bit more too. In fact I could have used these both together but decided to make them as two cards rather than one. I marked about where each balloon would be on white card stock and then inked the various colours checking to see if they fit properly behind each balloon. Thank goodness for those tiny brushes as you can do much finer detail using them. I messed up slightly and got red ink along the edge where I wanted a white border. Cheated a bit as I couldn’t erase it so I used good old white out. Not a perfect solution but it worked. Unfortunately the edge got slightly damaged and wouldn’t you know that the camera picks it up whereas in real life you don’t really notice it. So Gayle – thank you for the gift and I hope you like the results.

One of the small wall decorations on our boat was looking quite ratty so I threw it away and was searching for a replacement. Of course when looking for something specific it can never be found, but during my search I suddenly wondered why I was shopping when it was possible to make my own.

I had die cut a lot of seahorses recently as I had an idea for another card, but hadn’t used them. I spent some time pencil colouring them using some gamsol to blend. I also fussy cut some stamped shells from a GKD set. Using this same set and another with a nautical theme I stamped various images over the watercoloured background. I used the wreath builder template to get this result. Popped up the seahorses and added the whole panel to a darker blue piece of CS. Added this to a small canvas that is quite thin and light which I had painted black first.

In general I usually post to my main blog but as some challenges ask for new images that are anything but a card, and I never link my posts here publically, I figured I could post so all of you can see it and still perhaps use it in a challenge at a later date.