green,grey, orange

the original plan was to make one card, using the colour scheme from Playdate 65 of green,grey and orange, and the sketch from Moving along with the times 82 which also needed a flower image.

The rose image is from Elusive Images (yes, I do have an awful lot of their stamps) stamped in smoky grey versafine, coloured with pencils- torn our, matted onto dark green paper. Base card is Stamping up, and the cuttlebugged panel was glimmermisted..This is the one I prefer, and is for the Playdate challenge.

The second card -well,actually it was the first- is for MAWTT - uses the same image, this time with the edges sponged with spiced marmalade DI. The grey panel is embossed using a Tim Holtz music folder, rubbed over with bundled sage DI; the ribbon was coloured with pear green promarker; flowers from a woodware pack. Sorry, the scan isn't too good, will try to get a photo tomorrow

bah humbug 3

The challenge this week was Christmas Cracker - well, not only did I not have any stamps with crackers on, none of my craft cds had any cracker images either, not even as a background, and a desperate search through the backing paper piles draw a blank as well. I did try cutting out a cracker shape, and a more mis-shapen effort you would have  to go a long way to find!
To cut a long story short, I decided I would have to do a different sort of cracker, hence the lady in the bauble - she came from a demo My Craft Studio cd, (winter wonderland) and the background from the Star of Wonder cd I was tempted by at Christmas. I was quite pleased at how easy it was to mix the 2, as I usually just use these for papers and the occasional topper.........the pine branches at the top are stamped using a Tim Holtz stamp and 2 green DIs, know the darker one was forest moss, think the paler one was peeled paint, but not sure!

bah humbug 2

Bah humbug 2 challenge was to use stencils - that had me worried, as I don't have any - then Janet provided the helpful hint that glimmermist masks counted, so I dug out - eventually - my masks. I used the snowflake -like one, even though it was a bit on the big side, sprayed blue glimmer mist over it to make the backing. The stamp from Elusive Images New England plate was stamped with DI in broken china, with stardust stickles rubbed over the tree in front.
One very last-minute entry here!

bah humbug 1

I found the bah humbug site last year while bloghopping, thought it was a good idea, and did nothing about it.........then ran out of time at Christmas, so few people got a handmade card, and the supermarket sold me several very last minute boxes of cards. I decided to be a reformed character this year, and at least make an effort -  I have only just scraped in with the first challenge, which I have to admit does not look good for the rest of the year!

I had great fun getting inky and making the holly background - for instructions see Elaine's blog - this version just used one colour of Distress ink, think it was bundled sage, where I got my revenge on the holly which savagely attacked me when arranging church flowers. Not so pleased with the robin, who came from a CraftsUK set found in a sale bin last year - I used promarkers for speed to colour him, and think he would have been better painted or coloured with pencils. I tried stretching one of my nesties dies to cut him out, which sort-of worked, and then used it as a template to cut out the silver border.

Decided that I would have to post this, even if not too happy, as otherwise I would have failed miserably on the first challenge

I was much happier with this calendar card made for a friend who I didn't manage to see over the holiday - it was started on Sunday at Moira's, where Jill was showing us some  fancy folds. If I can get a decent photo of the inside, you would be able to see that it is a squiffy easel card. The base is stamped with wild meadow stamps from Elusive Images in 3 shades of distress ink - milled lavender and dusty concord were the main ones, and tattered rose, then sponged round the edges. The silver scroll is a Marianne die, and the floweres were from Crealie dies.

Have managed to get a halfway decent photo to show the inside of the card - basically, there is a diagonal fold across the base card to get the squiffy effect

guild card swap

 Every Christmas there is a card swap in the Graphicus Guild - it means we each get a lovely handmade card, but also a lot of anguish trying to do something special for our swap! I had lots of wonderful ideas that didn't work, and eventually ended up doing simple. the stamp was from the New England plate by Elusive Images, coloured with watercolour pencils with added glitter in places. The overlay idea was swiped from Tim Holtz - if you're going to swipe an idea, you may as well go for the top!- who embossed packaging plastic for one of his 12 tags of Christmas series this year - I think the packaging I used was a little thick, but it worked, though  I had  a little trouble gluing it down with glossy accents........The bp was a freebie from Glenda Waterworth, and the lh strip was cuttlebugged and glimmer misted, no idea which glimmers though as I did it ages ago.
The second card is the beautiful one I received from Val, with a lovely misty forest background - have a look at her blog, it's well worth it!

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas, and I wish you all a very prosperous crafty New Year

brown, grey and silver

 The Playdate cafe challenge this week has been for cards in brown, grey and silver - not having done any challenges for some time, I was determined to do one, and the early snow here has helped as traffic was backed up past here most of yesterday due to accidents on the main road, so going out meant walking, which I am not a great fan of in snow!

This card is actually the second effort, and uses a stamp from  the Elusive Images 'New England winter' plate, which I had had for a few weeks and not got around to using.............Just stamped using vintage photo distress ink, ink brushed out with a waterbrush; image cut out and mounted onto a bit of cuttlebugged and glimmered card (it is much greyer really, the scan is very much bluer than in real life) torn and edged with silver EP - the silver EP was also dotted onto the tree by the house. The bp is from my Graphicus Guild pack, and the white card remaining was coloured with DIs in old paper and black soot  .     The second card was the first attempt, stamp was borrowed from a friend, and I think was from Personal Impressions - anyhow, stamped in vintage photo, clear embossed, torn out, mounted on a piece of torn brown paper, then glued at an angle across a grey gatefold card. The inner fold of the uneven gatefold was covered with a piece of the cuttelbugged card, and a silver strip of punched snowflakes (Martha Stewart) added to the larger side.

mica stencils

 At our last craft get-together Moira passed on a technique she saw demoed by Dot from the Stamp Hut at the recent Suffolk Papercraft show in Bury St Edmunds - basically stamping with versamark through a stencil, embossing with stamp'n'bond powder, then dusting with mica pigments (through the stencil? -I didn't see this, as there was almost always a huge crowd round Dot, and she had moved on to other things when we eventually got to see late afternoon)

 Being Moira, she thought it would be simpler to emboss the stencil first, which is what we tried. Being me and born awkward, I had to choose a large stencil - I thought I had something at home that would just go in the centre - well, if I did, I haven't found it yet! Still, I was quite pleased with the result - it probably doesn't show too well on the scan, but the base card is a dark green, with mica in autumn colours over the leafy swirls. I did several versions before the stencil got too filthy, and one has actually made it to a card!!! The base of this one was blue, and the mica was basically the leftovers from the others, mostly a mix of gold and silver. Having had a pre-Christmas present of a

big shot, I treated myself to the Tim Holtz tattered

 florals die. I cut it out several times in various gold cards, layered it up with a green cutout  and added it to the centre of the frame, and it just fitted.

The samll gift tag was more the sort of stencil everyone else was using, and I was quite pleased with the snowy effect using white and green mica, with a gold for the moon.

Maybe now Pauline and Moira will stop complaining about how bad a blogger I have been lately! (sorry ladies, couldn't resist that).