pan pastels and clarity stamp

This is one of the cards made today at Moira's - original design by Janet (and using her pastels and stamp!)
Janet is a firm devotee of pan pastels, and is working very hard on trying to convert me............I do have to admit that they do blend beautifully, and are far less messy than my old (virtually untouched) pastels - the price makes me reel with horror though!
The pastel background was on white linen-finish card, sprayed with fixative before stamping the Clarity stamp of cherry blossom  using versamark and Crafty Notions black/silver EP - a new brand to me in EP, and a very nice black. The blossoms were painted using a Stampin up craft white re-inker and a waterbrush - will try to find the link to this technique later.
Butterflies were cut using Spellbinders dies, with brads to hold them together and onto the card. Matted onto black  card, then onto A5 white pearlescent base card .
The second card needs to be photographed, once I have replaced the batteries in my camera - to be honest, this one would have been better photographed............

make a background

I finished this card yesterday, and struck lucky today with the new
  Make my Monday challenge, which is to create a background. This is something that is quite addictive, and I often take longer making the background than the rest of the card - meanwhile  a pile of dsp paper remains relatively untouched..........
All the stamps used here are from Stampin up, and the card was originally created as a sample for a craft day with a local WI.
Background started out as white card, and I used almost all of the stamps from the Gently falling set of leafy stamps to create it. the stamps were all inked with marker pens so that I could have 2 or 2 colours on the one stamp easily and randomly stamped over the sheet. I used all the green markers I had, also 2 blues and a coral - the intention was to create an autumn background, but it came out more summery..................
The main image is the big swallowtail butterfly, just stamped with versamark and embossed with black EP

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.

literary inspiration?

Literary inspiration is the challenge this week on Make my Monday - Mynette wanted something related to Jane Austen's Persuasion, which floored me totally. I studied English literature under protest many many years ago, and hated Jane Austen's Emma with passion (one of the set books) and have never touched one of her books since......and had no intention of reading it for this challenge!
Fortunately, Val  provided the inspiration for this card - thanks Val!- when I saw her bicycle card, I realised this penny farthing stamp from Stampin Up fitted the bill nicely - definitely Victorian.
The square card base is 6x6 coredinations card and the backing papers are from the discontinued SU mocha morning set. The penny farthing was stamped on white using vintage photo distress ink - it was originally  torn out and inked round the edges with more vintage photo, but I felt it was too large, and ripped more off the edges, then decided I quite liked the white edges on the smaller piece. It was mounted onto a linen finish gold card cut using the window frames framelits die, also SU

one for the boys

this weeks challenge on Make my Monday is 'one for the boys' - I had originally intended to use ships, then finished off this card started at craft club instead.........
Base card is a 6x6  pearlescent dark brown, matting layer a dull silver.
Stamp from the SU feeling sentimental SAB set, stamped on white card with black versafine ink - edges torn and inked with brown versafine, then sprayed with SU vanilla shimmer smoosh spray. The backing was using an idea of Moira's - having bought a lot of bargain tissue paper, then you have to use it! -a 5x5 square of card was sprayed with adhesive, then covered with crumpled tissue paper - black in this case - swiped with a versamark pad then embossed  with lava black EP, with another spray of smoosh spray.
No sentiment yet - I much prefer adding that when I know who will be getting the card.............

tripletime stamping 2

Had another play with this technique - this time I used the red and gold colour scheme for Chocolate Baroque Christmas card group, and bauble stamps from the CB Harlequin Christmas set of stamps.
The smaller baubles were stamped with versamark and gold embossed, the larger one with versamark, heat'n'bond powder and gilding flakes to give an impression of more dimension - the branch in black versafine ink is the top part of the large tree from the SU Lovely as a tree set of stamps.
I have other stamps i want to have a play with using this technique, so there may be a lot of entries this week for 52cct from me - in keeping with the weather, after the drought the deluge!

tripletime stamping

I've seen this technique before, first  on Technique Tuesday and several blogs since then, but never actually tried it until today - it is this week's challenge on 52cct which provided the spur I needed.
It didn't help matters that I used the SU watercolour winter set of stamps - it's a lovely set, but I've never been too successful with the two-stamp technique, and I wasn't today - this is the best version, and even that had some remedial work with a matching marker!
I cut white  card out to 4.5,4 ad 3.5 inches square, temporarily glued them together with tombow glue, then stamped. Foliage used pear pizazz, old olive and crumb cake inks, flowers primrose petals (apparently some American primroses are pink) and raspberry ripple.
I also added some summer starfruit marker and glitter glue to the centres of the flowers, though it doesn't show up well. Once everything was dry, separate the white layers, and mount onto red card 4.75,4.25 and 3.75 inches square ( I used cherry cobbler) and then onto a square card base from gumball green card. I'm still thinking about whether to add a sentiment.........................