Joy to the World

Sometimes when I decide to colour die cuts, I begin by inking some card and then choosing the spot I would like to die cut. This time I began by cutting out the dies and then spritzing them with water before sprinkling with Brushos and then spritzing again. The smaller pieces I just dabbed into the residue of colour left on my craft mat. It's not any special card, just a bunch of off cuts. 

I knew that I wanted to have the word JOY in  the centre of the wreath, but didn't like any of the dies in my stash, because of size or style or whatever, so decided to make one with my Silhouette. I'm not exactly sure which Font I used but I chose one with a serif so that there would be areas which would make the welding of the letters together a little easier. I cut three and layered them before triple embossing in gold. You can see where the serif of the 'Y' joins to the 'O'. I like to weld the letters into a complete word as it's so much easier to deal with a whole word, rather than trying to stick down individual letters.

I didn't intend having the diagonal trail of tiny pearls, but a teeny smidgen of ink forced my hand!

I did just drag the leaves over a gold ink pad before attaching to the card.

The Holly and the Ivy Christmas Challenge  - Anything Goes

Christmas Kickstart -  Last minute Madness

ABC Christmas Challenge - Y Yuletide

MOD Squad - Christmas or Winter

Paper Funday - Christmas

CASology  - Branch

Just Add Ink  - Photo inspiration

Delicate leaves

Today I was watching a video of Jennifer McGuire using Shimmer Powders and loved the effect she was achieving. I don't have any shimmer powders, but I do have some Brushos and some Mica powders, so I thought that I would combine the two to see if I could achieve a similar, shimmery effect. I rather like the delicacy of this one It's a couple of shakes of Green Perfect Pearls and Leaf Green Brusho, spritzed with water and allowed to dry. I didn't use any special watercolour paper, just some offcuts of card on the non textured side.

The branch die is by Alexandra Renke. I'm not sure of the sentiment die... it's very old. I cut a panel for it to rest on, from a pennant die, cutting part way from each end, to make a rectangle just long enough to accommodate the letters.

CASology  - Branch

Just Us Girls - Anything Goes

Inkspirational - No Stamping

Time to celebrate

The challenge at Perfectly CAS this time is 

I guess there are so many reasons for celebration... but at this time of year, I'm thinking about Christmas. 

We will be spending it with both of our children and their families, which couldn't be better.. a real reason for celebration. We all love to see the cousins playing together.

For my card I used hammered card stock and masked a thin strip with washi tape before stamping the trees with a couple of colours of Distress Inks, using my MISTI. After removing the tape I again used my MISTI as a positioner before stamping and embossing the sentiment in gold. I think I must have been lucky that the washi didn't leave any tacky residue for the EP to stick to, but the anti static bag must have done its job well!

There's something about the combo of green and gold which really pleases me!

Tomorrow we will be celebrating our 46th Wedding Anniversary, yet another milestone and an excuse for a celebration! Last year we spent our anniversary on a cruise..,. this year it's just going to be a glass or two of fizz!

Cheers!

Candy Cane

Here is a digi image from Dustin Pike. I've had it for quite a while and it took a bit of searching through the files on my computer to find it, as I couldn't remember what heading I had filed it under. Anyway all's well that ends well and here it is coloured with alcohol pens and simply mounted onto the deep red card base. I double stacked the sentiment, as the card seemed rather flimsy!

It's my DT card for the challenge at Happy Little Stampers Christmas Challenge.

Hopefully I am ahead of the game this year as far as Christmas card production goes... I haven't actually done a count, maybe I should and hope that suppositions are correct!!

Frozen

When I saw the topic for this month's Happy Little Stampers CAS challenge, I immediately thought of the film FROZEN

I don't know if any stamps are available, but I thought that OLAF should be fairly easy to draw, (even though I'm no great artist) so I looked at some of the images of him online and drew this little chap. I shaded him with  Copics and gently twinkled most of him with Glamour Dust and used Wink of Stella on the rest of him. The sentiment is from Mama Elephant.

I think my grandkids would quite like this card!