silver and gold

My first crafty effort of the year - the snow and cold have driven all inspiration away, despite having new goodies to play with, crafting wearing fingerless gloves just doesn't have the same attraction somehow! Anyhow, thanks to Chrisf for the link to the Play Date Cafe - the idea of gold and silver just seemed to be right. The stamped flowers are from the Elusive Images butterfly poppy plate, stamped in black versafine onto gold and silver card - some embossed in detail black, some in clear EP - funnily enough, the clear powder made the stamped image seem a deeper shade of gold/silver rather than black....the multi flower is just layered and held together with a brad. The single colour ones are my version of grungepaper roses, although they don't look very rose- like! This is also entered for Rainbow Lady's challenge, which is 'recycle' - the backing paper is from rescued gift wrap, as is the ribbon - the embossed card is cut from a chocolate box, long since empty.
Apologies for the rather poor photo, would have been better in daylight!

Guild card

After much mucking about with 'clever' ideas that weren't- and a heap of scrap in the bin - I decided to stay simple for the card to send to a fellow -member of the Graphicus Guild

in what is becoming an annual swop, thanks to Moira's organizing abilities.

Having devotedly followed the 12 tags of Christmas on Tim Holtz' blog, I felt that a tag had less opportunity for being ruined, and the tags featured seemed to have the blessed ability for a rescue job at several stages! So I dug out my last few remaining tags from the stash I bought when Woollies closed last year, my new distress ink pads and the cut'n'dry foam, and proceeded to get inky.

Following Sir Tim's instructions, the tags were first inked with a base of old paper, then with splodges of peeled paint and fired brick inks. It looked a bit messy, but a lot better after overstamping with the pine needles from the retro holidays set by Sir Tim in vintage photo ink - somehow this sort-of merged into the background and muted the colours nicely - I then inked the edges of the tags with black soot ink. Until reading the blog I hadn't realised that the distress inks could be embossed - I did heat dry the first two, but the ink was still wet enough to pick up the embossing powder, although they felt dry. The next two sat on a storage heater for the afternoon, and were much better, although there were still some stray specks of powder that I didn't notice until it was too late!

The tree stamp was a Graphicus Guild one, and embossed with white detail powder, and the sentiment was by Elusive Images. The tags were finished with a scrap of gold ribbon, mounted on a piece of paper printed from the Artylicious Seasons greetings cd (the lovely smudgy holly set) mounted on a gold card - the pattern down the side of the card usd the pine needles stamp again, this time using brilliance black ink.

meningitis campaign

Jak Heath is raising money for the Meningitis Search4avaccine CVampaign, in memory of her greatnephew Layton who died recently from this disease. These digi images have been donated by Mo Manning and Jim Harker - check out Jak's blog for details.


These cards are very simple, as I haven't had much time for crafting lately - both images are coloured with Inktense pencils, and the backing papers are from Artylicious. It may not show on the scan, but there are glitter spots around the snowman, especially in his broom.
.

not a card

The bag is for this week's Corrosive challenge - no cards. This was a very hurried entry for a WI competition - the first one ( a patchwork grungepaper one based on a Craft Stamper article) went sadly wrong when I tried to sew it together - having tried to get away with not using the Tim Holtz ruler for lining up the holes, I decided it really would have been an essential! This last-minute one was a small tote shape cut out of brown card, with acetate panels added - the handles have come out rather too large for the size of the bag, but had to be big enough to get a hand in! The acetate was stamped with an old leaf stamp from Rubber Stampede, then coloured with alcohol inks - not sure now whether I used clear glaze as a medium or Klear floor polish - and yellow tissue paper.

halloween

As I don't usually do halloween cards, I was a little stuck on what to do for Rainbow Lady's challenge this week - then I remembered that I had downloaded a sheet of Papermania decoupage featuring Pumpkin and Aubergine, and Glenda kindly put a halloween freebie paper on her Artylicious blog............card sorted! The letters came from a Sizzix die that my friend Barbara got in a show raffle and passed on...........just don't ask which cat is on the broomstick!

poppy challenge

This card is my entry for two challenges - Rainbow Lady's for a poppy, and the sketch from Corrosive Challenge. The main poppy is from the Elusive Images Flora & fauna plate, and is one of my favourites. It was stamped onto white card with black versafine, then coloured with inktense watercolour pencils. The image was then coloured using a versamark pen and clear embossed, then spritzed with glimmer mists in wheatfield, meadow green and english ivy. The mini poppy heads came from a Graphicus Guild stamp set, and were coloured the same way as the main image, then stuck on with pinflair glue gel. The greeting is a peel off.

star card

Cynthia's latest challenge is for a Christmas card with at least one stamp and a star....I wanted to make the lovely star from Elusive Images Christmas fusion plate the main image, then decided it needed something else added................ in the chaos that is my craft room I couldn't find the stamp I wanted to use of the 3 kings (still haven't come across it despite a tidy-up in progress) so tried the village scene and the nativity stamps instead. On the whole, I prefer the village scene, it looks much more atmospheric.
Anyhow, both cards were basically made the same way - star stamped and embossed in white EP, backgrounds coloured with inkpads and cut'n'dry foam. Village card used pale and dark turquoise from a Marvy blending block , then weathered wood and old jeans distress inks, with the village (Personal Impressions) stamped in the old jeans.
Nativity card, the image (Angie Bhatia from Friends Stamps) was stamped in Memories chestnut ink,,clear embossed and coloured with distress inks then clear embossed before the background was inked using blues from a kaleidacolour pad. The star was painted over with mica powder, and I tried to use the powder to suggest rays of light, but not very successfully