Bold with Gold

Today I have been playing about with all sorts of bits and pieces - my desk is a right mess now - and so far the nly finished item to emerge from it is this card - a one layer card, very CAS but using black for the "white space"

I stamped the sentiment, from a lovelt stamp set I recently won in the Playground, using versamark ink and then dusted it with a deep gold pigment powder. Then I used Imagination Crafts gold Sparkle medium to stencil three butterflies around it. I'm afraid I'm not very experienced with stencils yet - that one on the left has a rather smudged look to it!

I am sharing this with CAS on Sunday - One Layer. 

Autumn Colours at Cardz 4 Guyz

Autumn is well under way now, so our latest challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz is Autumn Colours.

Here is my inspiration card for this week:

The delicate  leaf background is stamped using a background mat I've had ever since I started stamping - I can't recall where it came from. I brayered the mat with a Kaleidacolour Autumn leaves pad and then pressed a sheet of glossy photo paper over the mat. The sentiment stamped over it using Stazon ink is from a SU set I recently won in the playground.

The panel of stylised leaves is made with a stencil and Imagination Crafts Sparkle Medium - the camera is, as usual, lying and it actually has a wonderful raised texture and sparkle.

The leaf was die cut using a snippet of the beautiful card embedded with coffee grounds that I bought at the Eden Project some years ago with a little Alchemy Wax added to the leaf tips.

Everything is brought together on a background of ready-embossed Hunkydory card, again from my snippets box. As I've mentioned before about this card, it might be scorable but it isn't awfully cutting-friendly - with hindsight, I wish I'd added a little ink to all the edges after cutting it.

Boingy boingy boing!

Every time I think of kangaroos, I think of the children's TV programme "Alphabet Zoo" that was popular when my girls were small, and included a song about a kangaroo that went "boingy boiny boing all over Austraaaaaaaaaalia!" So you'll have to forgive me for singing along as I type.

I've made this card for a friend who has a birthday later this week. She lived in Australia for several years and goes back there to visit as often as she can, so as she isn't going this year I thought an Australian themed birthday card might give her a little taste of the country.

The roos are cut with the lovely Australian Animals die set from Dies R Us. For the Uluru background, I searched on my ipad for a suitable photo and pinched it to the correct size for my card, then used an indelible pen to trace it onto acetate. Then I cut out the acetate and used it as a double mask,  first to cover the sky while colouring the rock with distress inks, then to colour the sky. I made the sun first by sponging ink through card with a circle punched from it,  then used the punched circle as a second mask while painting the sky using a waterbrush and two shades of blue from a kaleidacolour pad. The foreground is torn Core-dinations card.

I am sharing this with

Make my Monday - no patterned paper
Glitter and Sparkle - Happy Birthday  (it's their 4th birthday - why not pop over and help them celebrate?)
AAA Cards - masking

Toot-toot!

The current challenge at CD Sundays is "Things with wheels". Normally I would go straight to my La Pashe CDs for this theme, as they have so many super images from Teddies on bikes to crazy lorry drivers. But several of the DT have made fab cards with some of my favourite La Pashe designs, and anyway I wanted to have an excuse to browse through some of my other CDs.

Eventually I settled on this sweet topper and border from the CD "The Rachel Anne Miller Collection". I wasn't too keen on the backing papers designed to go with it, so I picked out a couple that had been magazine freebies - recently I went through  pile of old, unloved mags, ripped out the papers and stored them in a folder so I wouldn't feel obliged to always use them together, kit-style. For embellishments, I used cut some wheels using the X-cut Gears die set, going for a pastel yellow instead of the dark and metallic colours I usually choose, to give them a fresher, younger look. The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards.

The leaning tower of...... robins!

A few weeks ago I read one of the worst books I've ever read. I can't think why I bothered to read it, actually. It was a free download I got for my kindle, and I really ought to have deleted it rather than ploughing on to the bitter end. The subject was, of all things, an American cheerleading team who were learning to do a stunt that involved standing on each others' shoulders. The climax of the story was that on the day of the big event, the tower toppled and the woman on top fell off.

Anyway, while browsing some blogs or Pinterest for craft inspiration this week, I spotted a beautiful Christmas card that was a superbly masked heap of stamped robins, and somehow it set me thinking of the cheerleader book. What if, instead of being so perfectly packed, the robins were attempting the cheerleader stunt?

So, I got out the lovely Woodware robin stamp set that I won in the Playground (where I hope you are playing along this week - I'm head prefect for the week and you DO want to make me work as hard as possible, don't you?) and stamped a selection of the images into a very precariously balanced tower of robins, doodling in some "wobble marks" to make it look as if they are about to topple. The sentiment and holly leaves are from the same stamp set. The holly berries are some gorgeously blingy gems from Foil Play.

Today is September 25th - we are three quarters of the way to Christmas - and that makes it Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's. We have until the end of the month to link up a Christmas card in this fun challenge.
I am also linking up to
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Use a sentiment
Fantasy Stampers - Watch the Birdie

Very old stash frame

A long, long time ago - I can't remember exactly when but about the time I first started reading craft blogs - I bought a couple of goodie bags from Craftwork Cards and among the items in them were some embossed die cut frames. I've never really been able to think what to do with them, as they are so big they dominate the front of a 15cm square card, so they've been loitering in my stash for years.

However the current challenge at CASology is Frame and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to see if I could use one. I've added some simple stamping using a Uniko set called Flower Power #2.

The witch of PMS!

September is drawing to a close, there's a definite nip in the air in the mornings - and it's time to start thinking ahead to making Halloween cards! As I don't celebrate Halloween, I try to make my cards dual purpose whenever possible. This one, for instance, while using traditional Halloween images of a witch and a cat, could be used for almost any occasion provided it was sent to somebody with a suitable sense of humour!

The witch is a free digi which I downloaded from Sweetly Scrapped and coloured with Promarkers.   The cat paper is a download from Coosty Creations  and the cat is cut with a die I got very recently and was absolutely SURE I would remember the brand name of...... #fail. The sentiment is one I computer generated and sized to fit my Spellbinders labels.

I am sharing this with

CRAFT - Autumn/Halloween/Thanksgiving
Addicted to stamps and more - Make your Mark