Joyful

There's still time to play along with the challenge at TIME OUT where I am Guest Designer.

The challenge is to be JOYFUL!

Well I must say that there are many Penny Black Stamps which give me joy and I hope that  this one together with the sentiment from Paper Smooches will bring a smile to someone's face!

Actually I have a smile on my face today as I am off on a cruise aboard Queen Victoria to the Canaries. Our friends will be coming to take us to the terminal in Southampton just before noon!

 We are celebrating our 45th Wedding anniversary on the 15th and as we went to the Canaries for our honeymoon it seemed like a good place to go!

To get back to the card... the image was coloured with alcohol markers and gently twinkled in a few strategic places with a clear Wink of Stella pen! The Christmas duck was put behind an aperture on the front panel which was cut with SSS dies.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

Joy

I was lucky enough to be chosen as the winner at Time Out Challenge and offered a Guest Spot for one of their challenges... and here I am!

The challenge this time is to be Joyful!

For my card, I inked a piece of glossy photographic paper in various shades of green using alcohol inks  and let it dry. It leaves a beautifully shiny finish with great depth of colour. I used uncoloured glossy photographic paper for the berries and the sentiment. I added a little colour to the tips and stems of the berries using an alcohol marker.

The die set is from Crafter's Companion. I came across some dies from this set at a crafty day in Amesbury and my friend Julia offered to let me borrow hers, but in the end I caved and bought a set for myself. Because of the vibrancy of the greens on the glossy paper, it looks quite dramatic against the black backdrop.

Don't you just hate it when dies go AWOL!

I bought a set with lots of family names... mum, dad, brother, sister etc and used some of them once and thereafter the Dad went walkabout! It could have fallen in the trash I guess, but both me and my husband went through the bins but to no avail.  It could be anywhere... these things often hide in plain sight!

Hey HO!

Time Out with Kim

The current Challenge at Time Out is to take inspiration from a card by the talented Kim!

Here is my card taken from this inspiration

It's a fairly close 'take off'. I stamped the  Stamploration flowers with Versamark and embossed in white. I then coloured them with pink and yellow watercolour pencils over a white base layer, (I believe it's called the Black Magic technique) adding a little Glamour Dust at the end.

The sentiment is part of the 'Pawesome' die from SSS with the 'p' removed and a little twinkle added!

TIME OUT Guest Designer

I was lucky enough to win a challenge at TIME OUT and so was invited to be a Guest Designer for this Photo Inspiration challenge, sponsored by Uniko Studios.

This is the card I came up with.

Here is the inspiration picture

The background was created by stamping a Hero Arts background stamp with Versamark and then applying Pan Pastels over it, blending the colours in places. I hadn't used Pan Pastels in a while but as the box fell off the shelf onto my head, I thought it might be trying to tell me something! I coloured the Spellbinders sentiment with Pan Pastels too. I think they work pretty well for this technique.

The front panel was cut with Simon Says Stamp stitched dies. These are particularly great dies as the stitching effect is on both sides of the cutting edge, making them perfect for the edges of both panels and apertures. The rectangle one was extended a little to fit the front of a British card base. (See video  here for how this is done)

The 'hello' is a triple stack, cut from a Mama Elephant die.