All at sea

Couldn't get a very good pic of this, its not quite as dark as it looks on here. Its my husband's birthday card. He likes all things nautical so think he will like this. He never looks on my blog or at any of my craft stuff so safe to post it on here. The stamps are Stampin Up and the DP and die cut are both freebies from a magazine. I'd like to enter my card into

 My Time to Craft Challenge which is Transport

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Rudolph Day is here again !

A whole month since we were celebrating Christmas and here I am starting on Christmas cards again. It's time for Rudolph Day Challenge once again, many thanks to Maureen for running this challenge that gets us making a head start on our cards.  My card is made entirely from bits and pieces left over from earlier card making. I have two boxes, one with Christmas die cuts and the other with stamped images and off cuts of paper etc, everything left over from my card making marathons gets swept into these boxes, this year I am intending on trying to get them used up! The Lily Of The Valley snowman was already stamped and coloured on a stitched square, mounted on a fleur des lis square die cut from a scrap of glitter card, the die cuts were in the box and the DP was also a left over piece. I feel quite virtuous when I've used up scraps ! As well as Rudolph Day I'd like to enter my card into

The Merry Christmas Challenge  - Anything goes / option of ornaments

 and

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge - Anything goes

Pixies Playground - I've used loads of snippets

Fire and Ice

The new challenge this week at Try It On Tuesday is Fire and Ice, use either or both.

My card was inspired by the fabulous sunsets we see at the rear of our house, over the beautiful views we have for now.  I've used Penny Black Restful stamp for the main image, the rabbits and birds are Inkylicious and the snowman is Lyndsey Mason designs. All colouring done with pan pastels, added chunky glitter and white pen snow on the branches

Stamp layering with mica powders

It's my turn to do the mid month at Stamping Sensations and the theme is to showcase a technique that I have not tried before. Please excuse the lack of stage by stage photos as I kept forgetting to take them.  I started out with a set of Altenew Peony stamps but only needed to use two of them.
The first stage is to stamp the base stamp with versamark ink onto a piece of dark cardstock

Next stage is to cover the stamped image with mica powder, I used some ancient Pearl-ex

Then brush of the excess powder to leave the pearlised base layer. This unfortunately is where I forget to take photos so I'll explain as best as I can . Take the next layering stamp you want to use, this is the one I used , think its the third one in the set

Ink it up with versamark and stamp it over the pearlised base you have stamped. It lifts some of the mica powder off and shows the base card underneath

You can add extra layers with colours if you prefer but I really liked this effect using only two stamps. I went ahead and stamped another one and some leaves in the same way and fussy cut them and added them to my card.

My Favourite Things

For our first challenge of 2018 on Try It On Tuesday the theme is My favourite things, could be stamping or a favourite technique etc. Well for me it has to be stamping every time, I rarely make anything that doesn't involve stamping some where. My second favourite is making my own backgrounds be it with inks,paints, pan pastels or in this case Brushos, also at the moment I'm really into white embossing, there is a little on this card but it doesn't show up too well. All the stamps I've used are Lavinia or Inkylicious. (I really NEED more Lavinia stamps ! )

For my second card I've used Brusho again, white embossed the Hero Arts stamp , the wording is an Inkylicious stamp.  Hope to see your entries on our challenge.

Cold and Frosty Coloura

This is the lovely prize from Sizzix this month

  

This month at Stamping sensations the challenge is for Cold And Frosty Colours. My first thought was Christmas but as I had already packed away most of my Christmas stamps etc I thought I would do something a little different. I stamped and embossed in white the large Hero Arts vine stamp and then coloured the card with pan pastels, wiping the excess off the stamping. Stamped the leaves and flowers and fussy cut them and added them with the greeting banner. The little butterfly was in the box of bits on my table.  The flowers are actually lilac and not the bright blue they look on here.  Hope to see you on our challenge this month but do remember it is a stamping challenge and the focal part on the card must be stamped.

White Christmas

This month at Christmas Sparkles Jane has chosen for the challenge " white on white ". Now as you all probably know getting a decent photograph of a white card is not the easiest of tasks! this is the best of the ones I've taken and its not very good.  I've used a Christmas word embossing folder, think its Crafters Companion, Sizzix die cut tree and a star bauble that is from a friends die and I don't know the make.  Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year and hope to see you in our challenge.