butterflies

I had trouble with this month's quintiles - too much choice! The theme was 'anything goes' , and I have a LOT of Chocolate Baroque stamps - in the end, as I was also supposed to be making ATCs I used the one theme for both sets 'Things that fly'. To my surprise I found that I only had one teeny tiny dragonfly stamp, so that ruled out using my gelli plate background using a dragonfly mask, so butterflies it was. Almost too much choice there, but I eventually found 2 matching butterflies in differing sizes, and used those for the quintiles.
The first one had a stippled background of distress inks, then the stamp from wild meadow repeat stamped to form the meadow effect - can never remember what sort this is, but it must be one of the most-used stamps from this set. The butterflies themselves were stamped n embossed in black, coloured with very ancient H2Os, cut out and glued on.

 The second tile I stamped the butterflies first, coloured with H2Os again, then went over them with a versamark pen and clear embossed them. The background uses distress inks and leaves from the garden as explained by Elaine. This gives a lovely effect, and is quite addictive - also works with die cut leaves.

 I used the same techniques for the ATCs, and the smaller of the butterfly stamps, with the addition of a punky flower stamp from a grab bag of stamps.

Clarity east

 Yesterday was a Clarity East workshop run by Janet - I think this was about the fourth one Janet has run, but the first that I was able to go to, and these are the card we made. As there was quite a lot of us, we split into 2 groups - one doing birdhouse cards, one Christmas with the holly tree. The Christmas ones were the more complicated, and I don't think anyone actually finished both cards in the time we had...........
My group started with the birdhouse stamp and the matching set of small stamps, and a rather nice floral stencil for the background (so nice one came home with me). We had a large selection of distress and adirondack inkpads to choose from, and I lazily used mostly the nearest ones, so my stencil background was mainly done in frayed burlap distress ink, with a dash of spiced marigold and and stonewashed. We cut the stencil down slightly, mounted it on black card, then on pearlescent white card base.

 The scene was stamped in black archival ink across a strip of white card before we added a moon and sky - sky was lake mist, tattered rose and mountain rose, with a bit of olive and peeled paint for the ground. Strip again on a thin mount of black card, trimmed at the sides to match the background layer.
Second card is all masked, and looks surprisingly dimensional when done................ We cut a mask for the centre first, and stamped the border around the edges using the leafy stamp from the set - I used frayed burlap again, with tattered rose and lake mist. Then we masked the border off and created our central scene - i used the same colours again, plus some mustard seed for the sun. I did the background first, using torn copy paper to make the hills, then put my birdhouse dead centre just to see if it would work.

 As some people didn't make it, I was one of the lucky ones to have a set of stamps to myself, so I had time to stamp another scene before lunch, and this is it.......using the leafy stamp to create tree branches, with stonewashed and mountain rose for the sky and lake mist for the ground. I put the cat in front of the birdhouse, as I thought he was a bit out of proportion anywhere else - when I got home I mounted this onto a 5.5" square of black card, then onto a 6x6" white card base.
In the afternoon we finished one card completely using the holly tree stamp, and most of the second card.

We stamped the holly tree onto white card, gold embossed it, coloured with perfect pearls, then cut it out. The background card was brayed in the corners with bottle and cranberry inks, then the holly sprays were stamped with versamark ink and dusted with perfect pearls. Holly tree stamped and embossed again in the centre, trunk painted then the cutout tree glued on top before mounting onto red card mat and a white card base.
The second card is still in pieces - hopefully Janet will have blogged it as it should have looked - mine is awaiting a nicer stamp to use in the centre of the two embossed and resist panels of holly at the sides ----------sorry, I really don't like the holly tree, so am still looking for a similar size replacement.................

canada goose

 Another card using the wetlands stamp set, and the same technique as the last post - on a bit of a roll here!
This time I added the canada goose (identification courtesy of ancient bird-spotters guide) which has been coloured using a water brush and baked brown sugar inkpad, with some wild wasabi marker pen over the rushes that he's standing in.
Both these cards are A6 landscape, and deliberately left without a greeting, as they are headed for my spares box...........

As the male room challenge is still open, I'm adding this one too

wetlands

There is a new challenge blog around this week -The Male Room, cards for men (obviously), and I thought I would try out my new stamps, a present from my daughter.
Base card is 6x6 pearlescent, and I started by masking off a stripe across the card and brushing it with coastal cabana and pistachio pudding inks from Stampin Up. I brushed some more ink on after removing the masking - just wondered what it would look like if I needed to cover up any stray ink once the masks got a bit tatty (have been making quite a lot of this style card lately using the same masking pieces), and decided I liked the effect!
The small wading birds were stamped in smoky slate ink, reeds and greeting in basic black -am not impressed with this inkpad, doesn't seem to have much depth of blackness, so will be back to versafine- then the tops of the reeds coloured with a wild wasabi marker pen.
Am entering this card to 2 challenges, both anything goes this week
 The Male Room
 Addicted to stamps