Stencilling

The challenge from CAS Stencil came a little late for me, as I had just been to the charity shop to donate a lot of unused stash, which partly consisted of many packets of Designer paper. When I first began card making I thought that this was what I had to have, until my personal style of making CAS cards evolved. Thereafter lots of designer paper remained unused in drawers. I kept a little of the stuff which was 'less patterned', this piece of splodgy green was amongst it. I simply inked over a Stamplorations leaf stencil with Versamark and heat embossed in gold. A die cut from Alexandra Renke and a simple sentiment from Sugar Pea Designs completed the card.

CAS Stencil Patterned Paper

Maple leaf

Here is another watercolour Maple leaf card. I used Aqua tints again for adding colour to the die cut leaf, leaving the others inlaid with a contrasting, textured white card. After spritzing with water and drying with my heat gun, I smeared just a little gold brilliance ink here and there, just to warm it up a little.

The die cut sentiment is from Penny Black... I think the leaves are from Memory Box, but can't exactly remember!

CAS  Watercolour - Maple Leaf

Singing Chicken

Would wouldn't love a singing chicken on their birthday?

This is a simple DT card for the Perfectly CAS challenge, where every entry needs to be just one third or less of the card front used.

The chicken is one of my favourite Penny Black images, coloured with Copic markers; I think these chickens are SO cool!

The sentiment is from LOTV.

Do join in the fun!

Winter Scene

If ever I'm in a rush to make a Christmas card, this sort of design is one of my 'go to' methods of making one in double quick time.

I simply tear a Post it note to give an irregular edge to use as a mask in order to brush a little Distress ink over to create snow hills. I used Weathered Wood. Next I use the same mask over the hills in order to make the trees look as though they are just behind the hills. For the trees I used Iced Spruce Distress Ink. For the deer silhouette I used  a Sizzix die with deep green paper... although it gives the appearance of a silhouette it's not as harsh against the background colours as using black. The sentiment, stamped in a couple of shades of Distress Ink to tone with the scene, and stamps are from Memory Box. I used Framelits and SSS stitched dies for the mounts

CAS Christmas - Winter Scene

Christmas Kickstart Challenge - Woodland creatures

Just Us Girls Frame It

Foiled again!

Here is another attempt at foiling. This time I have foiled a couple of die-cut maple leaves. I stamped the die-cuts cuts with Versamark and clear heat embossed them before adding silver foiling sheets and popping them through the laminator. This time I wanted to add some colour using alcohol inks, which I simply dropped onto the leaves with a little Blending Solution.

I really rather like the effect. I simply mounted them onto a piece of hessian, one directly and one on dimensional pads and added a few swirly die cuts. I thought they looked a bit like the tendrils that one can see in nature, but this die cut was actually from a Memory Box Needle and thread.

The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted.

It's another card for the challenge at CAS Mix Up.

Maple leaves

It seems amazing that the CAS Watercolour Challenge is celebrating its 3rd Birthday. Where has that time gone?

Happy birthday everyone!

              

I love the Maple leaf and I have quite a few dies in my stash, today I chose this stitched trio from Poppy Stamps.

I started by using Brushos to add some autumn colours but wasn't too happy with the result, I was about to toss them out but decided to keep going with adding colour, this time with Spectrum Noir Aquatints and a little more water. I quite liked the effect but couldn't help smearing just a touch of Brilliance Gold ink over the top.

The grid stamp is from Stampin' Up and the sentiment from Clearly Besotted.

LAst weekend we were ar the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London for a performance of Agrippina by Handel. We were celebrating a friend's birthday and had supper in the Balconies Restaurant before the performance, having the final course between acts. It was fabulous!

Here are the three wives of the party having a pre dinner G&T!

This evening, the lady on the right of the picture, myself, together with our respective husbands will be travelling to Wimborne to join in with a Come and Sing Dream of Gerontius. That should be fun too!

Foiling

Quite a long time ago when I first heard about foiling, I thought that it was definitely the way forward and in my enthusiasm went all out on trying to achieve the perfect result.

I began by driving miles to a craft shop where there was a demo of the Heidi Swapp Minc machine. Enthused I thought that the price was a little high so I got a cheap laminator instead. My first efforts were not the most successful and so I bit the bullet and got the huge Minc machine (the smaller one hadn't get come onto the market). Sadly my results were not hugely improved. I also bought a laser printer so that I could foil from that (supposedly). Well, all in all things did not go as well as expected and the printer was little used, the Minc sat on the windowsill and the cheap laminator was simply used for laminating downloaded  knitting patterns... til now!

Those glas at CAs Mix Up certainly have had me dragging out my stash which was often purchased on a whim or when suddenly fired with enthusiasm. 

So here is foiling revisited.

For this card I used a stamp from Indigo Blu which is a lovely splashy kind of image. I inked it with Versamark and heat set it with clear Embossing Powder, before putting through the laminator with gold foil. I'm not really sure of the make of the foil as it was unwrapped in the drawer with other packs of foil. I used the same process for the sentiment which is from an old wooden stamp from Hobby Art. As it was a splodgy kind of butterfly image I thought that this background EF from Sheena Douglass would complement the image.

Thanks again to the CAS Mix Up team for their fabulous inspiration and for getting me going with another long lost technique! I really hope for more success this time!

Optional Twinkle

It was quite difficult for me to get a decent picture of the twinkle on this card. As you can see I didn't quite manage it. I used a bunch of glittery embossing powders on my black, die-cut snowflake... Gold Tinsel, Metallic Brass and a final sprinkling of  Gold Glamour dust. The sentiment die is from Sizzix. I dry embossed a stitched frame border with an MFT die.

The challenge at Happy Little Stampers Christmas challenge as ever is Anything Goes but with the option of Twinkle!

Do come and join in the fun!

Adventure

The challenge at Happy Little Stampers CAS is ADVENTURE

For me adventure does not entail scaling mountains, exploring jungles or trekking over the tundra, but rather visiting places of interest. I have been fortunate to visit quite a few, often from the comfort of a cruise ship. Here is one such case. I have visited Russia, albeit briefly and not actually to the Kremlin, but I enjoyed every moment.

I don't remember where I got these stamps from but they are grey rubber and have been in my stash for a very long time. I knew they would come in handy one day! In fact they give a really good impression. I simply embossed in WOW pale gold EP. I cut an aperture with a SSS Stitched rectangle die. I think that this set must be my most used go to set ever and it still cuts beautifully after quite a few years.

Do join in the fun, crafting is an adventure after all!