It’s Thursday which means it’s time for another challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. Since it’s the fourth Thursday in the month, it’s time for a sketch challenge which rounds out my sister’s first month as challenge hostess.

Here’s the banner which inspired my card

I decided earlier in the week that I wanted to have a bunch of balloons but the challenge was going to be how to make five sizes! I started with the balloon framelits dies and the orange corrugated paper from this month’s Paper Pumpkin kit. I’m not sure whether using just the paper really counts as a Paper Pumpkin May 2016 alternate though. [Edit: After discussion with my sister, we decided it counts!] I cut out the first balloon and then turned to the circles collection of framelits. I cropped a circle smaller than the balloon in pacific point and then used the balloon framelits dies to cut the neck of the balloon. This made a fairly odd shaped balloon and required a little trimming with my paper snips. I then repeated the process using smaller and smaller circles until I had my five balloons.

I decided to have the balloon strings be gathered at a point off the card, so to ensure that it looked consistent, I used post-it tape to anchor my card a little and placed an X on my grid paper for where the strings would gather. Then I glued the balloons on with their necks pointing towards the X with the smallest one popped up with a dimensional . I then used the string from Balloon Celebration which I stamped in archival basic black.

To finish off the card, I added one of my favourite sentiments from Endless Birthday Wishes in pacific point and then, just as I was about to photograph the card, I added the epoxy star which is one of the embellishments in the Itty Bitty Accents Epoxy Stickers pack.

I hope that you’ll head over to the CAS Colours & Sketches blog to have a look at the inspiration from the rest of the design team and to have a go at the challenge yourself. You don’t have to have a blog to take part, you can upload to public galleries and link to your card there.

See you tomorrow,

Liz