A Christmas Card in Non Traditional Colours

I cant believe how late it is. I left my run very late today. Just as I was ready to hit the craft room, my son approached me with a mending job on some work pants he wanted to wear tomorrow (of course) so I was late into my room and now its just short of 11.30pm and I need to be up at 5.30am and on my way to babysit so will just post with minimum chatter -yes I know I still managed to chatter didn't I, lol.

Coloured my sweet little elf from MFT with Copics and finished off with silver and gold gel pen and a bit of glitter glue.

Just love the sparkle and depth to hat, cuffs and star. Drew on the lines on the tree with glue pen

and added glitter then added some gems.

A bit of glitter washi for the side to finish the card off perfectly and a 'cheers' sentiment

from one of those paper sentiment sets we all get and hold onto just in case....

Love my elf in blue and purple.

Challenges:

Merry Monday Christmas Challenge #262 :Gifts

Stamp Ink Paper Challenge #122 Washi

Watercooler Wednesday #142 All about Christmas

Thank you so much for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.

A Couple of Halloween Cards

I have to admit I'm not really into making Halloween cards as Halloween isn't something that we celebrate big time over here. It's only in the last 10 years or so that people have been getting their kids dressed up and even that is rather hit or miss. I would say probably the kids in their late teen's and early 20's are enjoying dressing up and having parties. And very young children are now being taken around just within their street to neighbours they know dressed up.

Cards are not exchanged as far as I know so even though I made Halloween cards I didnt have any sentiments other than the ones I used last year 'Trick or Treat' Smell my Feet' which didnt work with these cards so I looked at other sentiments I had that could work as well and I really liked how these turned out.

My cards are fairly plain, I have seen some of the most amazing cards with brilliant backgrounds and scenes but I have settled for pretty CAS. These stamps are from a set I bought on line for $5.00- cool hey. They all come as separate parts you stamp and build a body.

So here we have a Zombie with a bit of leakage, a glowing pumpkin

and a bodiless cat saying 'hi'.  Fab sentiment 'Let's get together' for

Halloween or any occasion and finished off with this brilliant Washi tape.

My next card I decided to use three Characters from the set. Just love Frankenstein 

and stamped him and the Zombie and the pumpkin and then The Vampire -ooops

he looks like he is tangled in the pumpkin and that glow is shining right up his bum.

Must be getting pretty hot, probably why he looks the way he does or it could be because

Frankenstein has his fingers stuck right in his face, probably up his nose. too graphic? Sorry!!

All coloured with Copics. This one is finished off with some glitter ribbon on the side

and a few sequins in the Halloween colours and a perfect sentiment

"We're all quite Mad You'll fit right in".

Again perfect for Halloween or just some other occasion.

Challenges:

All sorts Challenge Blog #438 Halloween

We're all quite mad here!

A Gem of A Challenge #205 Spots or Strips or Halloween 

Lets get together

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers #95 Zis for Zombies

I think the second card  picture & sentiment suits

 your challenge perfectly

'We're all quite mad

You'll fit

right in'

Addicted to Stamps and More #264 Clean and Simple

Lets Get Together Card

Crafting By Designs : Its Halloween!

'We're All quite Mad Card

Shopping Our Stash Weekly Challenge #325 TheWalking Dead

Lets Get Together Card

Thank you so Much for Coming to Visit

Started On My Christmas Cards

Four Christmas cards each made the same way. First I used a piece of acetate that I cut an oval shape from the centre of with my Scan 'n' Cut. I then placed this where I wanted to do my blending and used the Clarity brushes so I get a nice light blending. I love using these brushes and find them very easy to use. I have one foreach colour and have wrapped a piece of coloured washi tape around the top area of each so I can see clearly what colour they are for.

I do clean then when I am finished with them, not totally but as much as possible on a baby wipe just brushing away excess ink to keep them so they are for light colouring.

I have done light blue for two.

A lavender.

And a pink. For the lavender and pink I cut pink coloured metallic 

cardstock and for the blue silver cardstock.

So easy and pretty with the die cut sentiments from  Stamplorations.

Challenges:

Stamplorations Never-ending Anything Goes Challenge

Crafting From the Heart #179 Anything Goes

Merry Christmas Lavender colour

HLS October Christmas

Merry Christmas Lavender colour

I think I hit the twist on the head with my die cut too :)

Thank you so much for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.

Reminder for The Flower Challenge 1st Birthday Celebration

Now don't forget its a really easy one.

It doesn't have to be your one and only most favourite flower stamp,

it just has to be one of your favourite flower stamps.

But also remember its important to share our new blog button that

Vivien put so much work into designing for you to add to your blog post

and direct link so we don't have to go looking for your card. Also don't 

get too zealous when linking to challenges, we have limited it to 6. And you can

only enter two cards this time. These rules apply if you want to be in the draw for 

one of the fantastic prizes that are being offered for those who participate in the challenge.

Now onto my cards. This time I have done two. I did another one using the same Hero Art stamp

but this time I stamped and heat embossed with silver embossing powder.

I did this card as an even easier version without an outer frame. The silver embossing is done on vellum and as you can see it has embossed beautifully. I never have any problem with this embossing and the vellum never warps. 

I have used the Zigs again dark and pale blue but I have been unable to catch the difference in colour here in the photos no matter how I shifted the card around, IRL it looks fantastic.

I die cut the window for the vellum to sit in then added a few sparkly gems and the silver mirror card die cut 'incredible' with a couple of mini diamond gems for the 'i' dots.

My next card I used one of my favourite stamps from Altenew

I stamped the flower onto Linen look cardstock then coloured with copics.

I went over the copic colouring with some Wink of Stella to add a bit of sparkle.

I die cut the flower then added foam tape to the back of the negative.

I attached the negative to the front of the card then added glue to the die cut

flower and leaves and inset them flat onto the card base.

You can see the sparkle in the close up. I also attached some sequins and stars

from a sequins set from Pretty Pink Posh and finished the card off with a die cut

'Happy Birthday' sentiment that I had blended some blue ink into.

Two very easy quick cards using flowers that I love to use.

Now its time to go over to The Flower Blog and see what the rest of the Design Team

and our Guest Designers have been up to.

Heres hoping you decide to join us this month for our exciting 1st Birthday

at The Flower Blog and show us some of your favourite flower stamps.

Happy Birthday card and some Alcohol Ink on Yupo

Needed a sweet birthday card so what better than the little ballerina's whispering

to each other. These are the ones that are digital images and I have manipulated

the lines so that in this instance the lines are a light purple (why purple you may ask? well

I don't know purple appealed to me at the time) and I have printed through the laser printer

onto watercolour paper. 

 I watercoloured my little sweeties with Zigs and lots of water so its light on the skin

but trying to get the hair right meant more colour than originally planned. A little bit of grey

around where they are sitting to ground them.

This watercolour paper is not as white as others I have used but brilliant

for printing on and watercolouring so although the card isn't 'white' 'white'

I think it still looks very pretty. I finished it off with a strip of glitter washi

top and bottom and a silver mirror cardstock 'happy birthday' die cut

and my usual odd number of glass gems.

Challenges:

Seize the Birthday Anything Goes

Watercooler Wednesday #140 All About Birthdays

Crafty Creations Challenge #352 Anything Goes

Thank you so much for coming to have a look and I hope you come again soon.  

Now I thought I would share a few pieces I have been playing with using alcohol inks and Yupo.

Ohhhh my goodness I feel like setting up a room that is just for Alcohol inks, Yupo, trays,  

all the bits and pieces. There are so many videos and amazing photos where people are experimenting and Yupo comes in full A3 sizes so you can do full on art and if not happy, clean it off or turn it over and use the other side.

Now I have to decide what to do with these pieces.

I have just put a frame from inside a photo frame around the piece to take the photos here.

This piece was inspired by TaeEun after she had done an amazing card using these colours and she had explained she had used her Copic Markers. I tried with my Copic Markers and the piece didnt turn out so well the first time but with this piece I used both The Black Copic Marker as I didnt have

refill for it but I used the refill inks for the greys.

I used different greys from the Neutrals and the Warms and I used my Colourless Blending Solution that I have in a large bottle. I poured some into a small container and tried a mix of ideas. Some dropping solution onto colours to cause the solution to reactive, some flicking for small dots and some using cotton bud for controlled dots. Love the end result just not sure what to do with it.

This piece was just a lot of dropping Alcohol ink colours and blending solution and moving the yupo to blend and move the colours. All the colours were from my Copic refills and I used so many I lost track of what I used so I cant list. Will have to get better at it. This piece looks better IRL than in photo and is really rich looking but again not sure what I will do with it.

This piece is Copic Ink refills blues and yellows so of course we ended up with greens. I went a bit nuts doing the cotton bud dots and you can barely see the bits where I blew the colours with a straw. Will end up cutting this piece up for backgrounds or die cuts as the colours are wonderful and vibrant.

This piece is a mix of pinks and reds again Copic refills and blending solution but it has warped, too much playing and not knowing when it stop. Hopefully I can use bits for die cuts or parts of backgrounds, its amazing how much torture a piece of Yupo can go through especially as this piece

had also been used on the back, as a dismal failure, thrown in the bin, retrieved because its too expensive to throw away (for me anyway) and played with again.

I now have more background pieces to add to my never ending collection of background pieces, I just need to remember to check them out and use them for challenges.

I hope you enjoyed this little additional piece and please let me know if I forgot to share anything that you would like to know.

The Flower Challenge is having its 1st Birthday

You can't have a birthday without balloons and Vivien has made us

some wonderful graphics to help us celebrate our First Year

in Blog Land.

This month the challenge couldn't be any easier. Use one of your favourite flower stamps.

I have so many flower stamps,and so many favourites that I decided to go back to one of my originals.

My Her Arts Background Stamp. Its not a big background stamp as you can see here on my card front this is the full size of the panel. I stamped in VersaMark ink and gold embossed this design on vellum. I then used my Zigs without water to colour the flowers.

I put a very small amount of the darkest pink  in one spot on the petal then used my palest pink to move the colour around until I was happy with the colour and design.

The photo really doesn't show the beauty of the flower on the vellum as well as it looks IRL. I then die cut some gold mirror card to look like a frame around the flowers, added some enamel dots and a die cut 'fabulous' from another piece of card stock that had been white embossed and watercoloured.

Very simple and very pretty.

Challenges:

HLS October Watercolour Challenge :Anything Goes Optional Twist Gold

Addicted to Stamps and More : Make Your Mark

Work It Wednesday Simon Says August/September

Now its time to go check out all the wonderful creations at the Flower Challenge and also see who else has joined us in celebrating our first year anniversary and the wonderful prizes on offer. I am blown away by the different businesses that have gotten behind us and decided to donate a gift or gift voucher for us to use as a prize during our Celebration Month. I can not express to you enough how much we appreciate your generosity.

Next I cant thank the wonderful Design Team enough for their support this year especially Vivien who has taken on the design and maintenance of the blog as well as the running of the team when I fell ill earlier this year. I didnt think I would actually make it to this special day with a post and I am so glad that I have been able to make a card just to be able to thank  Vivien, Ruth, Shona, Maria, Cara, TaeEun & Karen for being so very wonderful and supportive through the last six months.

Its just amazing to see how well this Challenge has done in the last 12 months and I thank not only the Design Team but all my Blog friends and all the wonderful people out there who decided to enter their amazing cards in our challenges. We love seeing every one of your cards.