holly

I came across this holly stamp from Elusive Images (available from Chocolate Baroque) whilst looking for something else, and it was ideal for the colour challenge 2 to use red,green and gold from 52cct.
the base card is A5, and the red is fairly accurate on the scan - but the next layer is actually a pale dull gold, not the orange it has scanned as! This layer was slightly smaller than A5 to start with, and I cut both short edges using the Tim Holtz on the edge snowflake die.
 The stamped image in black versafine was coloured with H2Os, and a very pale green wash added to the background to tone down the harsh white of the card. The matting layers for the stamped image are a brighter shinier gold and green, with the corners rounded on all the layers.
One for Judith's Forgotten Friday as well, as the holly stamp hasn't been used for over a year.

dragonfly tag

the challenge this week for CD Sunday is 'tag it', and I combined this with the Make my Monday challenge 'butterflies and dragonflies'. I had plenty of tags cut out to use for the Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap, so used one of these as the base of the card. The stamp is an ancient one from Aspects of Design, that hasn't been used for ages - actually, that will qualify it for Judith's Forgotten Friday too! - stamped in smoky grey versafine and clear embossed. It was then swooshed through distress inks splodged on my craft mat and spritzed with water - mostly tumbled glass and peeled paint, but there was some broken china in there too. I coloured the dragonflies with H2Os - practically all the blues and greens I had just splodged on fairly randomly. I distressed the edges of the tag, then sponged broken china round the edges to give it a bit of definition, added some fine ribbony bits that must have come from a mystery parcel at some point, as I  am not noted for buying ribbon., and stuck it at an angle onto a card covered with paper from the Artylicious Butterfly bliss cd - something else that hasn't been used for months. I did go round the edges of the paper first with some more broken china ink .
The butterfly from Chocolate Baroque was stamped onto white card with black versafine, clear embossed, then coloured with watercolour pencils before a quick spray with spray & sparkle in silver and cutting it out - I did chop off the antenna as it was just too fiddly to cut out!

MMM32

the new challenge at Make my Monday is to create a scene - I wanted to use tree stamps originally, but couldn't find the particular ones  I had wanted to use, and the ones I could find just weren't right -grr - that will teach me to put stamps away properly  (perhaps!).

In the end, I did my scene using distress inks and sponges - sky is tumbled glass, broken china, tattered rose, milled lavender and wild honey;. the land is shabby shutters and peeled paint, with a little bit of forest moss as shading. The foreground stamp was the large image from the SU set Just believe - I couldn't resist this set when I first saw it, but it has sat in the heap ever since without being touched until today - why is that stamps you just need when you see them can then sit there neglected once you get them home? Tjhis stamp didn't seem to like the distress ink, so I used the SU always artichoke pad and stamped it 3 times across the front of the card.

The finished scene was mounted onto matt silver, then onto a square blank cut down from A4 in always artichoke card - I may not use the few SU stamps I own much, but I love their card!

This card is also for Judith's Forgotten Friday - I don't usually get around to this one, but this definitely qualifies!

old and new

Another forgotten and recently excavated stamp here in the background - a map stamp from Inkadinkadoo, which was stamped with black memento ink onto white card.The  image was torn out, crumpled up within an inch of being a total wreck, sort of smoothed out and inked with distress inks in old paper, antique linen and tea dye - definitely looked ancient by then! The netting was originally holding lemons, and the bright yellow colour was more or less hidden by using denim alcohol ink, which was rubbed over using the felt pad on the tool - I now also have an interestingly blue smudged background piece of card as well. The new bit is the sail away stamp from Stampin up, just stamped in black onto white card, matted onto a pale blue card. The base cream card was sponged with tea dye ink round the edges
A second card this weekend for Judith's Forgotten Friday!

think bike

I had been very tempted to buy a motorbike stamp recently, but resisted - was very glad I had when I came across this stamp by PSX during the ongoing clearout - didn't look as if it had ever seen an ink pad, so thought I ought to at least try it out! I had also recently bought some seam binding ribbon - I know this is somewhat earth-shattering,   as I very rarely put a ribbon anywhere near my cards, but I really like the soft effect of this stuff, (sorry for the shock Moira - hope you were sitting down comfortably!)  and the muted beigey colour goes well with my favourite autumn colours............
It had to be a very simple card, to get away with adding the ribbon as required in Less is More 25 - stamped on white card using early espresso ink from Stampin up, with a bit of added shading using a waterbrush, then matted onto a piece of milky-coffee colour card which had a ruffled strip of the ribbon taped around it, pushing the ruffles to the side of the image. Edges of the white piece and of the base card were sponged with more of the ink - there are ladies who ride bikes after all, and I don't think it is too frilly for a man anyway...............
Am also linking this to Judth's Forgotten Friday challenge, as this stamp  definitely qualifies as forgotten