CB spring quintiles

 Panic set in when I realized just how little time I had left to do this months quintiles, followed by increasing panic when my original idea of blossom -laden trees just would not work.
Our long-suffering organiser Margaret agreed to give a few days grace - which I ungratefully overran - before awarding me a  huge black mark - many thanks, Margaret!
In desperation, I binned the trees, and searched my stamp heaps for inspiration, and came up with several sets of bird stamps - as the local birds are rapidly costing me a fortune in bird seed , peanuts and fat blocks/balls I thought  they were very appropriate to this perishing cold weather.

The top one used the main stamp from Chocolate Baroque Let your heart sing plate, stamped in black versafine onto a sponged distress ink background .The feather stamp on the background was from the Wise owl plate, stamped in versamark, clear embossed, then the card inked with distress inks.
The not very successful second tile started out with a background of glimmer mists over the foliage stamp from Tim Holtz urban tapestry set offset in green and blue inks - the image didn't fade into the background as much as I had hoped it would though. The bird image and the foliage were stamped again in black versafine and clear embossed - parts of the bird were highlighted with SU white craft reinker as my white gel pen decided not to co-operate.
I added distress stains round the edges in picket fence and burnished brass to add a bit of colour.

vintage glassine

I really didn't need to add another challenge blog to the hopeful-to-do list, but I discovered Make my Monday through Val's blog, and as the theme is vintage, it fit in quite well with my current fixations on using the Tim Holtz kraft glassine aand making flowers! As MAWTT is also on the list, I decided to try a vintage style Christmas card - I stamped the angel from Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque) onto the glassine using Stampin Up  chocolate chip ink, heat dried it, then carefully scratched the flower detail and the edges of the wing feathers. The image was torn out, mounted onto a beige card embossed with a Provocraft houndstooth embossing folder which was then rubbed over with another SU ink, creamy caramel - I used to be rubbish at inking embossing, but have found that the mini pads seem to work better, probably because I can't be as heavy-handed with them. The edges of the embossed bit and the base card were sponged with  brushed corduroy distress ink. The flowers were made using the TH tattered florals die and old brown paper envelopes, with a quick spritz of copper glimmer mist to cover the different browns - gold leaves from an EK punch.

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.

'green' blue card

not amused by having to redo this post thanks (?) to Blogger having a major hissy fit, especially after having to have several goes to load it the first time . due to another hissy fit.................at least, thanks to Blogger, the deadline has been extended for bah humbug 18, so I can actually redo it.

The challenge was to use green or a recycled element - I am totally out of green card, so it had to be recycled, and the image came from a card I received last year which had fortunately escaped the recycling bin! I dotted cutout snowflakes onto a blue base card, and sprayed it with sapphire glimmermist - it doesn't show up too well on the scan, so will try to get a photo this weekend if the weather stays camera-friendly . I trimmed the image down, rounded the corners, and matted it onto gold card, also with rounded corners, then onto the base card. very simple - had to be, I ran out of time this week!

photo now added, snowflakes show up better here - sorry for gravel background!