Darnell's NBUS Challenge

Our lovely and very talented blog buddy, Darnell, has hit the magic number of 500 followers and there are BIG celebrations over at the Playhouse. Darnell has a fabulous giveaway and to join in all you have to do is to use some NBUS (Never-before-used-schtuff) from your craft goodies. If you can work the theme of Friendship into your card that's even better - so why wait? I bet every single one of us has NBUS just waiting for a first outing.

 

Sheesh, I was horrified at how spoilt for choice I was - need to put the brakes on buying new stuff before the walls of this place suddenly explode outwards. I found goodness knows how many unused goodies but one kept coming to the top of the pile - a stamp set I've had for over 20 months, ever since I saw it in a magazine article. I spent bally ages quite a while planning and making this card so I hope it gets the Darnell seal of approval :)

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card blank

- blue card stock

- all the stamps are from the Hero Arts stamp set called 'Kiss for the sun' (strange as the sentiment uses 'from' the sun)

- first of all the grass was die cut using Marianne's Creatables Icicle die (LR0135) and a snippet of green card

- the branch, birdies and clothes were stamped onto the blue background and then paper pieced. The branch, leaves and pegs were stamped onto thin white card then coloured using Whispers markers before being cut out and popped onto the card. The clothes and birdies were paper pieced by stamping onto snippets of Raspberry Road's 'Love Lives Here' paper pad (free with QCME magazine last year sometime) - since taking the photo I've given the little birdie on the left some feet so he isn't levitating!

- the sun was stamped onto the card and topped with a big yellow button threaded with bakers twine

- the clouds were die cut from a snippet of white card using dies from MFT's 'Cloud Trio' set

- the sentiment comes in one long strip, I just masked it to stamp in two parts in the space earmarked (too cowardly to snip it apart - yet!)

- all that was left was to add some foliage and flowers to the bottom of the card. I used a snippet of green card and the Memory Box 'Fresh Foliage' die, which I just cut into pieces to suit. The flowers/daisies were punched using a sweet little Tonic punch and snippets of white card - then little domed self-adhesive centres were added

And that, after a few hours worth of planning and making, is my first entry for Darnell's NBUS Challenge #1. Then I went and had a lie-down!

Di
x