Crafting With You Times Two AYSI307

Today I'm sharing my design team card for our new challenge over at As you See It where it's time for a fun speed challenge chosen by Heather C:

Hobbies - what a fun theme this week and so many options, even when working against the clock! My hobbies include running, playing piano, cross stitch and stamp collecting (the postal kind although my rubber stamp collection is extensive too!) to name but a few, but I'm sure that my choice of crafting for my card today won't surprise you at all!  - Since we are against the clock with no more than 10 minutes at our disposal, quick cards are the order of the day! I ended up making two cards during my crafting session and each came in well within the time limit, so I thought I'd share both since each uses a different approach to saving time! Both cards feature the 'Crafting With You' bundle and the first card I created uses the sketch layout over at SUO Challenges - take a look:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

Preparation Is Key - The key to a quick card is preparation. You can gather your materials before you start the clock, so knowing exactly what I was going to create I gathered my Bubble Bath card base, offcuts of white and Crumb Cake cardstock, mounted the stamps I was going to use onto blocks and placed them in front of the open ink pads in the correct colours, selected the dies I needed, the necessary tools and gathered together any other supplies such as ribbon and sequins that I had in Bubble Bath in case I wanted to add some final embellishments. Then I pressed start on my stopwatch!

Monochrome Makes Easy - This first card sticks to a simple monochrome pink colour scheme, with just a little grey for the sentiment and outline. This is another good way to save time when you need to make a quick card - keeping colours to a minimum requires much less co-ordination. I stamped and fussy cut the sentiment, stamped the balls of wool and coloured them, then diecut them along with the basket and the stitched frame (I don't know why, but this frame always reminds me of unravelled wool so I thought it would work well with my knitting theme) in one pass through the diecutting machine to save time. I added all of the elements to my card base, then added some tone-on-tone stamped hearts and a trio of self-adhesive sequins to complete my card:

Time taken? Just 6 minutes and 29 seconds!

I even surprised myself at how quickly this came together, especially as one of the biggest time savers - no diecutting - is something I often struggle with. This card just shows though that so long as you are smart about it and at least minimise it or run as much through in one go as possible, you can make it work. I'm also linking this card up over at Less Is More where the current challenge is 'anything goes' - as long as it's clean and simple!

The Ultimate Speed Hack - Having cleaned my stamps and cleared away the debris from my first card, I thought I'd have a go at a second version, this time using the current sketch layout over at Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge, for a second card using my favourite speed hack of all: designer series paper! Designer paper is a great way to maximise pattern and detail with minimal time and effort and I knew I had some of this fabulous, albeit retired, Follow Your Art designer series paper in my stash and I have been itching to pair it with the current 'Crafting With You' bundle, so this was the perfect opportunity. This was the card that I created:

Still simple in design: the vertical panel of DSP does much of the work, with a simple banner sentiment that I decorated with a piece of (retired) Calypso Coral ribbon and 4 cotton reels that I diecut using some co-ordinating scraps of cardstock:

This card took slightly longer at 7 minutes and 16 seconds (no photo I'm afraid, I accidentally reset my stopwatch before I could grab a photo so you'll just have to take my word for it!) - whilst those cotton reels were all cut in a single pass, as there are 4 dies in the set, they are small and fiddly to glue. I also had OCD on those banner ends for the cardstock and ribbon, so allowed myself time to get them even. I think this card is my favourite of the two - hence me using it as my ASYI card. I hope you found my tips and tricks useful for creating cards in a hurry - why not make a card celebrating one of your hobbies and join us for our current challenge?

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's projects for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Here's a summary of our challenge rules:

• Create any card, scrapbooking page, 3D project or packaging project that fits the challenge.
• Please include the challenge graphic and link back to the challenge in your blog post. Turn off word verification so we can leave you lots of lovely comments. Make sure you link the post not the whole blog to the Linky. Use #AYSIXXX when uploading to a public gallery.
• If you’re unsure about ‘the rules’, check the details under the Challenge Guidelines tab on the As You See It Challenge homepage.
• In a speed stamping challenge, please time yourself and say in your post how long your card took to complete. 

Enjoy your day. We are expecting another day of glorious sunshine here so I will be making the most of it! I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

CRAFTING WITH YOU BUNDLE (ENGLISH) (51.25)	STITCHED WITH WHIMSY DIES (27.00)	PASTEL ADHESIVE-BACKED SEQUINS (7.50)	BUBBLE BATH A4 CARDSTOCK (9.50)	BUBBLE BATH STAMPIN’ BLENDS COMBO PACK (9.50)	BASIC GRAY CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (8.50)
BASIC WHITE A4 THICK CARDSTOCK (8.50)	CRUMB CAKE A4 CARDSTOCK (9.50)	BLUEBERRY BUSHEL A4 CARDSTOCK (9.50)	BLUEBERRY BUSHEL CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (8.50)	CALYPSO CORAL A4 CARDSTOCK (9.50)	COASTAL CABANA A4 CARDSTOCK (9.50)