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!