Clarity East again

 Clarity East again today with Janet Pring and we made 3 Christmas cards using the holly wreath stencil , two holly spray stamps and bauble stamps.
Scans of my versions of Janet's cards are not in the order we did them, as the top was the last one...........having managed to get them relatively straight on the scanner, I wasn't going to put them the right way round!
The long thin card in the bottom of the first scan was the first one - we stamped the large and small sprays diagonally across the card with black archival ink, and the small bauble on an extra bit of card and I coloured mine with ordinary marker pens. Janet had already die cut the gold and black layers for the bauble, so this was layered up and stuck across the join of the sprays. I brushed fired brick and bundled sage inks around the edges before adding a green mat before mounting onto the white card.

The blue card used broken china ink sponged through the wreath stencil to make the background strip. The large babuble was stamped in black archival again, and coloured with promarkers this time, matted onto silvery grey and pale blue card before adding onto a white card blank that had been stamped round the edges with the holly spray and sponged with the blue ink. Large bauble onto precut gold mount and added to one side.
The large square card used the holly wreath stencil run through a grand caliber to emboss the design first onto cream card before inking through the stencil with versamark. After removing the stencil, we used red and green perfect pearls to colour the stencil and also the greeting stamped in the centre.
The large holly spray was stamped in the corners and also round the edges of the white card blank. I didn't like the white base, so stamped it with the holly again and brushed the fired brick and bundled sage lightly round the edges to tone down the white, then on the corners of the cream panel to match it up a bit.

sneaking in.....

A very quick post to add this one to the Chocolate Baroque challenge - definitely last minute!
Stamp from thistle butterfly, stamped in black versafine onto a brusho and distress ink background. Coloured with marker pens.
Butterflies stamped onto spare bits of brusho-ed card, decoupaged over main image, and extra one added at bottom

August tags

 The challenge this month at Chocolate Baroque was to use an acrylic background using 2 different colours, while the second layer is wet, remove some of it using a stamp, scrunched paper etc. I tried various methods, but ended up using stamps from the new harlequin fragments set, and the page I actually used for the tags was this one. I used some yellow card as a background - one I didn't like, and it saved on paint too, as I only had the remnants of a cheap kiddy set of paints from Wilko to play with- and splodged a mix of white and brown paint across it, then stamped into the wet paint with the harlequin stamp sprayed with water.

 I stamped the image from the poppy butterfly set onto white card and coloured with watercolour pencils, background sponged with distress inks, then fussy cut it out and added to the tag.
Did these early, so can't now remember which inks I used - but at least I did remember to scan the tags before I sent them!
Have several options in mind for September tags, but am not looking forward to October, which involves zentangling - definitely not my favourite technique, though I am always impressed by the results some very clever people get, to say nothing of their incredible patience

thistles

Still playing with my new stamps - but this one also uses an old thistle stamp from the wild meadow set and a butterfly from briar rose as well as the thistles from thistle butterfly.
Background was yet another brusho inks one, thistles stamped with dusty concord distress inks. Main image stamped with black versafine, clear embossed and coloured with promarkers- highlights were clear jelly roll and white gel pens. Butterfly stamped on another piece of brusho-ed card, embossed and cut out.
Base card is a 6" square white, mats dull silver and lavender.
Am entering this for two challenges
addicted to stamps - make your mark
butterfly challenge - summertime butterflies

thistle again....

Another card using the thistle butterfly stamp and brusho inks - warning, this may go on for awhile, have a fair stack of brusho backgrounds, and there are several unused so far stamps in this set!
Background this time started out similarly with very wet card, but I added a few sprinkles of purple ink and used a wide flat brush to spread the colour around. I mopped up most of the puddles with kitchen roll, then added as-tiny-as-I-could bits of black ink and let the colour spread. Once it had spread as far as it was going to, I mopped up again with scrunched-up kitchen roll, which spread some more  of the black around the card.
I left it to dry overnight, then stamped the thistle butterfly with versamark and white embossed it - then went over the butterflies with clear wink of stella, you'll have to take my word for that, as it doesn't show up on the scan.
Cut down a bit, matted onto black card, then onto a 5x7 white card base that had been sponged with dusty concord distress ink round the edges and black soot in the corners.
Am entering this into the addicted to stamps and more challenge, which is ' anything goes' - thanks to Val for the link!