MMM romance

Make my Monday challenge theme is romance for this month, and this week we are asked for hearts and flowers, plus diecuts as an extra. I couldn't find a suitable heart stamp, so the hearts are on the background paper, which was a freebie from Glenda Waterworth. The various pink cards were chosen to go with the colour of this paper. The stamp is the harlequin rose from Chocolate Baroque, rose and scroll painted with H2Os, leaves and the script background with watercolour pencils. Flowers are from a Mariane die, centres are from an idea by Judith (large jump ring filled with seed beads and diamond glaze), and leaves from Tim Holtz die. The crochet trim is new from Stampin up.

White Christmas

Glenda Waterworth has a White Christmas challenge until the middle of December - check out this post for details - the possible prize is well worth winning!                                                                                      I decided to do an all-white card, which believe me I regretted when trying to photograph it, though I was quite pleased with how it turned out.The base card is a pearl 8x8", the plain white layer was embossed with a snowflake folder (no name on it, and I can't remember where it came from ). The angel image from  the angel of light plate from Chocolate Baroque was embossed with white detail EP onto a pearly vellum, torn out and matted onto another torn piece of plain white card, which had the edges swiped with versamark and embossed with vanilla ice EP - I used pinflair glue gel to attach the layers, so they are ever so slightly raised up. the flowers were cut from a pearly paper using crealies dies - 2 with flower die no 1 and one with no 11 - leaves were an x-cut embossing punch. I sprayed the flowers with a homemade glimmery spray - isopropyl alcohol mixed with Tsukineko shimmery ink in frost white - and added a dab of stardust stickles in the centre of each.

I am also entering this into the Make my Monday challenge, which is for a Christmas card with foliage, flowers or snowflakes - I've got all 3 here!

penguins

The challenge for bah humbug 25  is to use penguins - as I live in a penguin-free zone, my friend Moira lent me her Wendie Rhodes stamps, and the lovely swirly  penguins come from the winter wonderland collection. As soon as I saw them I thought they would fit with the Less is more challenge sketch, so long as I used squares for circles. The backing paper is from the Echoes of Italy set by Glenda Waterworth - it just looked iceberg-y to me- and the penguins were stamped with black memento ink. Base card is white pearlescent 8x8, and got the sides trimmed slightly on the scan.
Am also entering this for the MAWTT challenge 104, clean and simple - you could hardly have anything simpler!- and for Crafty Hazelnut's challenge 26, anything goes.

kraft glassine

I have been playing with some of the Tim Holltz kraft glassine papers this weekend - ever since I saw this stuff on Tim's blog I  wanted to try it for making flowers. It does make lovely flowers - the photos on the left are my first attempts. The one on the left in the first pic was the first, which was a disaster area in many respects - all was fine until i tried adding Pearlex powders and heating it - I had totally forgotten that PearlEx doesn't have a binder in it like Tim's recommended  Perfect

Pearls, so a fine cloud of white powder rose in the air the moment I turned the heat gun on, followed by a distinct smell of melting wax as I overheated the paper trying to get the pearls to stick. Fortunately a spray of glimmer mist in dewberry sort of rescued that flower - the next one was just sprayed with the glimmer mist to be on the safe side! For the 3rd one I printed a blue flower download from Glenda Waterworth on both sides of the glassine - i had to tape it onto a sheet of A4 to put it through the printer, and it worked fine - could have been a coincidence that i had to run the headclean routine twice afterwards.... It came out greens rather than blues, but made a nice flower all the same, with a quick spray of silver glimmer to finish.

I printed a different download onto another sheet, which came out very faintly, and I was stuck what to do witrh it at first, then i spotted a corner had creased and the wax showed whiter there - so I got my stampbord tools out and started scratching away. I needed to be careful, as the wax coating isn't very thick, but it certainly improved the look of the images, and I turned  them into these two cards. The first one, the glassine panel is cut from a nestie, with a sheet of white card behind to try to show up the colours better. This is on a gold mat cut after drawing round the nestie die used to cut out the image, then on to a cream base card stamped with an Artemio script stamp in SU creamy caramel ink.- the flowers and leaves are cut from old envelopes. The image on the second card was a scalloped circle originally, and I used the only scalloped circle I die I have to cut it out before adding it to the base card. the flowers this time are from cream card also overstamped with a script stamp - this one was borrowed, and I don't know who it was by.

new stamps

Chocolate Baroque have some new stamps, which I couldn't resist, and this is from the wedding belle set. I used the bride for the LIM challenge this week, and had a play with some of the other stamps to make this. The background is coloured with distress ink in wild honey after randomly stamping the words and the lily in versamark and letting it dry - this way, the image isn't as obvious as when the versamark is clear embossed before inking. The folded effect was accidental - I dropped the versamark pad, so dropped it again a few times in the hope that it work create a creased pattern, and it did! After the first layer of ink had dried, I randomly stamped again still using the wild honey pad. I cut 2  nestie shapes out in white card and a middle one in gold. The larger white one was stamped with one of the flower stamps around the edges (thanks Glenda for the idea)  in green (shabby shutters?), then sponged with wild honey. The same flower spray was stamped twice on the smaller nestie, then when it was dry the words were stamped and embossed in gold.
I think this would make a nice anniversary card as well as a different wedding card

colour splash

Play Date challenge 71 is for black, white and a colour - after rejecting several favourite stamps, I decided to use this image from a set of stamps by Carrie Dennison for Elusive Images as I thought that all it needed was a touch of green for the grass - I was very tempted to just add pale blues and make it a winter scene, but it was nice and sunny today!
The image was stamped with black Versafine, and coloured with watercolour pencils - backing strip is from the Essence of Nature cd by Glenda Waterworth

butterfly squares

I was wondering what image to use for the Less is More challenge this week of  use 3 squares when my new issue of Craft Stamper arrived - the free stamp was this lovely swirly butterfly designed by Glenda Waterworth for her new company Chocolate Baroque - problem solved!  I used the colour scheme from Playdate challenge 70 - I haven't got around to many of their challenges this year - and soon had a pile of rejects; this is the only one that survived, despite the inky squares being on the dark side. The one absolutely perfect pastelly one had the stamp dropped  on it, and of course it landed inky side down...........now I remember why I was never that keen on stamping directly onto my card in the first place!
The squares were sponged in distress inks - wild honey, tumbled glass and shabby shutters - through a punched mask - and I found that a cosmetic sponge worked better than the tool or cut'n'dry, but that was probably due to the card surface more than anything else.

guild card swap

 Every Christmas there is a card swap in the Graphicus Guild - it means we each get a lovely handmade card, but also a lot of anguish trying to do something special for our swap! I had lots of wonderful ideas that didn't work, and eventually ended up doing simple. the stamp was from the New England plate by Elusive Images, coloured with watercolour pencils with added glitter in places. The overlay idea was swiped from Tim Holtz - if you're going to swipe an idea, you may as well go for the top!- who embossed packaging plastic for one of his 12 tags of Christmas series this year - I think the packaging I used was a little thick, but it worked, though  I had  a little trouble gluing it down with glossy accents........The bp was a freebie from Glenda Waterworth, and the lh strip was cuttlebugged and glimmer misted, no idea which glimmers though as I did it ages ago.
The second card is the beautiful one I received from Val, with a lovely misty forest background - have a look at her blog, it's well worth it!

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas, and I wish you all a very prosperous crafty New Year

halloween 2

When looking for more beads in my local Range store, I found some readymade diamond-top cards in black -just right for more halloween cards - and no, I couldn't find the beads! I used the same stamp from Elusive Images as last time, but this time stamped on to a freebie paper from Glenda Waterworth last year. I copied an idea of Glenda's by adding a coat of gesso to the prrinted paper to get a misty effect, then stamping onto this with versamark and embossing with black sparkly Wow EP. I coloured one bat in in black on the background, as it was orange originally, then sponged round the edges with black soot DI.  The image was mounted onto a dark grey mirri paper, then onto black  card bfore mounting across the diamond top. The same paper was printed out on draft to get a simialr misty effect, stuck onto the base of the card, then the word was stamped along the bottom, using two different SeeD alphabet sets that have been lying around for ages, and consequently losing letters....................the edges were again inked with the black soot DI.
I am entering this for 2 challenges, from Moving Along With the Times  68 (halloween) and Corrosive Challenges 86 (no white).