p p p pick up a penguin

After the WI meeting, I had several stamped Hobby Art penguins over - quite a few of the older members were unable to come to the meeting -  so rather than waste them I decided to make a slider card. I haven't made one of these for quite some time, and this was the first effort - he slides nicely, but doesn't do somersaults, so need to work out why next.
Background was done with distress inks, sponges and the traditional torn paper, and the penguin is attached to 2 pennies with foam pads, one either side of the slit in the card. Did have to make a quick trip to Jane's to get some small round foam pads - they came out of the clearance basket, too!
The card is mounted onto the base with more sticky pads, so the pennies have room to move.

The second card took almost as long in the actual making - the Chocolate Baroque penguins were actually stamped at the same time as the other penguins, but only got coloured in on Wednesday. Background again distress inks, and the mat is some very ancient holographic silver card.
There are a couple of individual penguins and snowmen in this set as well as the stamp I used.
for those quick off the mark, check out the websites, as both Hobby Art and Chocolate Baroque have sale offers  at the moment.

November tags

The technique for this month over at Chocolate Baroque was to use a distress ink background. My bright (?) idea was to try to create a poppy field background - I eventually gave up after almost running out of time and settled for the nearest sort-of ok tags. (Thanks Margaret for waiting for me, and apologies to everyone else that I've held up!)
I used the first poppy stamp without a butterfly that I came across, from poppy meadow, coloured with watercolour pencils
                                                                                                                                                                 





The other tag was my entry for the Hobby Art
November blog challenge -actually, it is the first one they have run - where the theme was remembrance. I did actually finish this a bit ago,  using one of the distress ink backgrounds, but the scanner was playing up, and the broadband has just come back after being out for most of the day.

WI card

 This is the card we made at WI this afternoon, after the excitement (not) of the annual meeting.
It had to be something simple, so I borrowed Moira's Hobby Art penguin stamps - nice big penguins, and very easy to colour in - admittedly not quite so easy to cut out, but no-one moaned about it!
I had two versions, one with the penguins on a thread to twizzle round, and one using acetate - everyone managed to do the thread version. We did use smaller A6 cards, as I could get those in trifold, so easier to die cut matching holes, and they didn't get the snowflakes, or the brusho lining - I did print out a snowflake backing paper from the Artylicious Seasons greeting cd for them though (now on special offer)

They had a choice of white or blue base cards and round or fancy oval apertures, and I stamped out the penguins in advance, as we only had about 30 minutes to do the cards in. It was very peaceful when they were busy colouring in!









This was the acetate sample card, still had the reverse of the penguin inside, just quicker to do

Gissing Sunday

 A happy afternoon with Moira and Janet at Gissing yesterday - especially so as I hadn't been able to touch my craft stuff since the Clarity workshop last month, due to daughter reclaiming her old bedroom temporarily. There was a benefit in that everything was already packed up and ready to go..........
It took a long time to do the first card, using some of Moira's favourite Hobby Art stamps, as everyone wanted to use the farmhouse stamp, so we had to wait patiently for our turn. I did manage to stamp out loads of penguins while I waited ready for the WI meeting next week, when we will be making Christmas cards, so didn't mind being last in the queue! (thanks for the stamps, Moira).
Everything was stamped with versafine, coloured with a mix of distress inks and watercolour pencils - the sky was brayered with broken china and stormy sky inks, the sprinkled with a mix of glitter and white embossing powder to give a snowy effect , which doesn't really show up on the scan.

Janet's quick card really was just that - same two inks brushed through a circle mask before stamping the Clarity santa and sleigh and the greeting across the circle. Two  snowflake stamps in the corners and on the edges of the base card, and a quick brush of ink round the edges and that was it! There is a little bit of clear glitter on the tree and the snowflakes, which again isn't obvious on the scan.
Just need to sort everything out now and put it all back before I can get back to playing work again....

Clarity on Saturday

 These are the cards I made on Saturday at the Clarity East workshop with Janet - of course, after 3 days of lousy weather, Saturday was lovely and sunny, and even quite warm.............
Still, we had a good time getting inky!
For the first card we used distress inks and glimmer spray mixed on a craft mat and dabbed on with a sponge to create the background - I actually used blue inks, but they turned green as the glimmer spray was a gold one.
The reindeer was stamped on a separate piece of card and glued behind the aperture, mounted onto a green mat and then onto a card blank which had the treestamp stamped randomly round the edges.  Fir trees in front were stamped and cut out, and a bit of glitter added.

The second card used the same stamps - the sky was dabbed with white acrylic paint using the sponge again before brushing with stormy sky distress ink. reindeer and trees were stamped with chipped sapphire, mats are blue card.
This one was my favourite, and I have several spare bits to make more cards.

The final card was based on a design by Lynne Hammond, and used the sweater set of stamps - it was actually easier to do than it looked, but it did take all the afternoon...............and no-one needed the valium!
We cut masks to help with stamping the designs onto the sweater, which were stamped in versamark and white embossed, and used masking tape to help line up the stamps for the background (would have been a lot easier with a stamp positioner..............)

zentangle tags

The challenge for October for the Chocolate Baroque technique tags was to use zentangling - this was definitely not one I looked forward to!
 I can admire the work that many people do - indeed I own a beautiful tangled birthday card, and am totally awed by the skill of Paula - but it is not something that I would in any way describe as relaxing.
I dug out an ancient Elusive Images mandala stamp, (sadly no longer available, they were great fun to do), stamped it in black versafine onto white card and added stripes and dots in black marker pen, and some solid black areas too.
Once all filled in, I cut it out and glued it onto a red tag - first one done!
I did think about just repeating it for the second tag, but decided to try using a newer stamp, the clear peony, which hadn't seen a great deal of use.
Again black versafine on white card, and more marker pen, this time mostly just stripes, with circles where the stamens were in the centre. A quick whip through the big shot with a spellbinders die, glued onto another red tag, and that was it.
The tags went into the post very quickly before I had any second thoughts, working on the principle that almost any swap tag was better than none...............

woodland glade

 Had a lovely peaceful afternoon yesterday at Gissing with Moira, who showed us her makes from the Hobby Art workshop the day before, and let us loose on her collection of stamps - and yes, she did make sure she got them all back!
One of her cards with the robin on wellies had a new fold, which I have to admit drove me mad as I couldn't get it to stand up, so I added another card blank behind and left off the tag at the top of the original.
I chose to use the new woodland glade set, which I love - am sure it could be made to work with any season.........but my version is winter.
The background was using distress inks in broken china and peeled paint and crumpled cling film, dabbing the ink randomly over the card.
 The images for the front panel were stamped with black versafine, and coloured using marker pens scribbled onto an acrylic block and a water brush.
The greeting came from a different set, and the small pine trees were hastily added to cover up a smudge of ink from the edge of the rockablock the stamp was mounted on - benefit of clear stamps is that I could make sure the darkest tree was over the line!

The second card used the same stamps and the rest of the background piece of card, but I used distress inks and a water brush to colour in this time.
Both cards are on  6"x6" blanks, and the smudge on the second one is from the scanner - it is definitely not on the card! But I do admit to needing a new blade in my trimmer...................think I may have had better photos on my phone from yesterday, as the light was so much better  but not worked out how to get them on the computer yet!