blue postcards

My postcards for the September Chocolate Baroque postcard potpourri swap - had to go with the colour this month, wasn't any too sure exactly what an aster or a forget-me-not looked like, though there must have been a CB stamp featuring them at some point!
I used a brusho background for both of them (why are you not surprised?) - the silver came from a can of webbing spray that I discovered in a drawer. I was a bit heavy handed with it, and think it would look better if the can was further away from the card, but can se it coming in useful for Christmas cards.
The poppy stamp was stamped onto the base with versafine, and again onto another piece of brusho card. I cut the poppies and the butterfly out, and glued them over the first image after colouring the stems and leaves with promarkers.
The Mackintosh beauty stamp was done the same way, apart from the second stamping onto white card, and more promarkers. I was very pleased to pick this set up in a sale bin at the recent Thetford show, so another one crossed off the wanted list!

Hobby Art with Moira

Sunday was the second of  Moira's Hobby Art workshops, this time at a new venue at Costessey  - lovely light hall, plenty of parking, and best of all a caretaker to put tables and chairs out, and away!
We did 3 cards, all using Christmas stamps,
The first one used the bauble stamps - baubles were stamped in black on white card, coloured in (glittered if wished), cut out and mounted behind the circle aperture with its acetate centre.
I cheated and brushed wild honey distress ink all over my stamped baubles, which drastically reduced the colouring, and chose to mount mine onto black, adding the strings with a gold metallic market, which I also added to the bauble tops. The edges of the aperture were stamped with the holly sprig first, using memento london fog ink, and coloured with iced sprice distress ink for the leaves and marker open for the berries.
Not a quick card, but a very effective one.
Our second card used a snow globe die, and a pre-embossed snowflake background. I chose to use the mice for my image - just love that choirmouse- stamped twice with the central one stamped onto extra card, cut out and glued in the middle of the first two after colouring with promarkers.
Background,  the base card and the edges of the globe were all sponged with broken china distress ink.

The last card took rather longer to do, involving stamping the word in black ink, colouring in with promarkers, with a bit of liquid pearls on the berries. I used iced spruce distress ink to stamp and roughly colour the pine sprigs on the background card, and also brushed some round the wedges. Two narrow mats of red card, and a couple of holly sprigs finished it off

This one I did mostly last night - had the idea yesterday and started it then. Snowflake stamps randomly stamped across the black card using white pigment ink, which dried rather paler than I had hoped - one day i will find a really good white inkpad,  there must be one somewhere!-
with lots of glitter highlights using clear glitter and a quickie glue pen.
father Christmas was stamped in black onto white card, coloured with promarkers and cut out. Once he was glued onto the starry card, I added white fluffy stuff onto all the fur and heated it to give a bit of dimension, and some glitter onto the lantern.

Sunday at Gissing

 another Sunday afternoon at Gissing with Moira, Janet, Jill and Barbara in a toasty warm hall despite the dull weather outside.
Moira had a Christmas version of this owl card, which involved using practically every Christmassy Hobby Art stamp set she could lay her hands on, and a heck of a lot of cutting out. I thought I had a bright idea using different stamps, then found I didn't have them with me...............but I did have the set of leaf stamps.
I stamped the leaf onto green and orange card, added more colouring using sponges and distress inks and cut them out.
Moira had kindly provided the embossed square and its backing card, so I just added the owls in the hole and scattered the leaves down the left hand side. The white base card was randomly stamped with the leaf stamp in greens and sponged over with vintage photo distress inks.
 Janet's sample card was very simple, with the Claritystamp tree stamped in black and decorated with dots of  Paper Artsy fresco paint added with an embossing tool. Background layer was  from an old paper pad.
I had a quick play with the new stamp of the month from Hobby Art before packing up - a very quick card, took longer to finish up at home than to do! Masked off the central stripe with paper, brushed blue and green distress inks across it, then stamped the seed heads twice down the left and coloured the leaves in with marker pen.
Sentiment added later from some magazine freebie stamps, and base black card.
The random grey splodges are from the scanner, which obviously needs a good clean again!

crazy birds

Just  a quick play with my new bird stamps from Tim Holtz - I had a load of small 4" square cards left over , and these birds are just the right size for notelets.
Background stamps from Chocolate Baroque and Ryn, and the birds were stamped onto left over bits of brushoed paper, cut out and decoupaged over the orginal image stamped onto the card. Could sit and cut birds out while watching the Vuelta on tv, less hassle than masking and also used more bits up!
A couple of the images look a bit pale, I originally stamped using black versafine, but it seemed to go grey over brusho, so the rest I used black archival ink, which stayed black.
As I used bits up, linking these to Pixie's snippets after a long absence

August postcards

 The August theme for the Chocolate Baroque postcard potpourri swap was either gladiolus or poppy or orange.
My problem this month was that I have a LOT of poppy stamps, and was therefore faced with the problem of which one to use! I thought I was being very sneaky deciding to use a patchwork layout, where I could cram in as many poppy stamps as I could easily lay my hands on............what I hadn't though of was how long it would take to do!
I ended up with 2 versions, one with the hexagons just masked off and stamped and the second with them cut out and separated by a border from each other.
Images stamped with versafine in both, coloured with pencils and distress ink smudged round the edges of the hexagons.
I am blaming all this work on my friend who showed me her stunning patchwork and quilted wall hangings, but on the other hand I owe her thanks for the inspiration......

Christmas starts here..........

Yesterday was the regular monthly get-together at Gissing - due to holidays, it was definitely a case of quality over quantity, and the four of us did rather rattle around in the hall! It did mean that we got a whole table each to spread our stuff out, and we had a very pleasant time drinking coffee, eating cake and even doing some stamping!
Moira brought her new Christmas stamps from Hobby Art for us to play with - it didn't feel quite right making Christmas cards on a hot sunny day, but we managed. After last month's Clarity workshop, I now have 5 cards, which is already way more than at this time last year...........
I stamped the large greeting using Memento white ink onto black card, trimmed it down and added glitter with a glue pen. It was mounted onto silver card, which doesn't show up in the scan, then onto a base stamped using snowflakes and distress ink in broken china, milled lavender and iced spruce. Those colours didn't quite work out, so a quick sponge round the edges with more broken china to do a rescue job before mounting the panel on top.


The smaller Noel stamp from the same set as the first stamp was stamped in black versafine and coloured with watercolour pencils, as was the bird from the same set. Background card was randomly stamped with the holly swirl from the penguin set from last year, which was also coloured with pencils before more sponging with broken china.Another silver matt - I have managed to cut a bit off the left hand edge of this card scanning it, the topper is actually central!








The last card used the new Father Christmas stamp, this time coloured with distress inks, and a lot of glitter over the furry bits. Another snowflake background, this time stamped using a  multicoloured ink pad in blues and purples.
A silver matt again, and a diecut snowflake also in silver to finish him off (Memory Box die).

July postcards

quick post to add July postcards for the Chocolate Baroque postcard potpourri swap - I was even later than usual sending these off, but at least I did remember to scan them first!
This months themes were larkspur or waterlily and/or coral.
I completely forgot that I did have some small modern waterlily stamps, but did remember having the waterlily mandala  dating back to the days of Graphicus (showing my age here!) and I could even find them.........and, wonder of wonders, the set is still available!..The smaller image was stamped in versamark across a piece of coral card, larger image stamped in black versafine onto white card, coloured with promarkers and fussy cut out.

I have to admit that this was the fall-back option, after failing to make my not-so-brilliant other ideas work!
The only usable one of these was this one - image from the fancy flowers  set was stamped in black versafine and clear embossed onto watercolour paper, then sprinkled with orange and green brusho powders and heavily spritzed with water. Once it was dry, I added more orange in the centre of the flower and spritzed it again. Tore it out, then simply glued it onto a piece of the orange card.
The August theme is poppies - only problem here will be deciding which stamps to use, I have a LOT of poppy stamps - think there may well have to  be a patchwork theme here.......