It's Rudolph Day again!

It's the 25th of July, so it's Rudolph day at Scrappymo's again! And do you realise it is now only 5 months to Christmas? I hope you've got lots of cards made already.

I've used a Bugaboo digi of Santa Claus - actually he's part of a group with a snowman and reindeer too, but I've separated them and just used one of the images. The sentiment is a digi too but I can't remember where it came from. The embossed panel is made with a magazine freebie folder and the papers all came from my snippets box.

I am sharing this with
Scrappymo's - Rudolph Day
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - use an embossing folder
Winter Wonderland - use a digi image
Jingle Belles - Here comes Santa Claus
Little Red Wagon - Christmas in July

Out for a drive

I'm often guilty of only using the items from a set - of dies, of stamps, a pad of paper or a kit - with the other items it came with, when in fact many of them would work perfectly well alone or with other items.

This car die is an example - it's meant to be a London Taxi, from the Xcut Build a Scene London set, and it certainly looks great cut in black and used that way. But it makes a great "people carrier" style car whatever colour it is cut in.

I've cut it in snippets of red, yellow and blue and used a fine marker to colour in the wheels, and added a "hill" and a cute, childlike sentiment as I think this would make a great card for a little boy.

I am sharing this with
CAS on Friday - Primary Colours
Addicted to CAS - Wheels

The ants and the watermelon

It's a photo week at Just Us Girls - here's the inspiration photo they have given us

I've lifted out this cute NBUS stamp from Anitas of a pair of naughty ants making off with a juicy slice of watermelon.

I've coloured it with Promarkers and taken inspiration from the lime green colour of the limeade and the red gingham cloth for the rest of my CAS card, finishing it with a sentiment stamped with a set that was free in Making Cards a few months ago.

Lots of square snippets

This week I got two lovely parcels - an early birthday present of some stitched square and rectangle (at last) and yet more dragonfly dies, and a wonderful parcel of crafting goodies from a very generous Facebook friend, one item of which was this super "Good luck" die. Naturally I had to have a play right away.

I had a good rummage through my snippets box and picked out 10 different scraps of patterned paper (you might recognise some of them as left overs from a card I posted yesterday) and cut them all with a square die then arranged them diagonally over my card and topped with the sentiment and dragonflies, all cut in black.

I am playing along with
Pixie's Snippets Playground weeks 291-292
Less is More - No stamps
Dies R Us - Sentiment as focus

Shedding some light on the matter

I've been venturing into mixed media again - well, tiptoeing really....

All the stamps I have used are from a set I've had for a few years, I can't remember who makes it but I got it mostly for the lovely penny-farthing bicycle, and I think this is the first time the light bulb stamp has seen ink.

I stamped the cogs and screws onto the kraft card then added some dimension with a few screw-headed brads and a couple of chipboard cogs, coloured with gold wax.

The light bulbs were stamped on yellow card, the screw fittings coloured with a gold gel pen and then fussy cut. I've drawn in cords for them but I've just realised that it would be impossible for them to work like that as they aren't actually screwed into anything!

The "adventure" sticker is part of a gift from a friend and the words are from one of the very first sheets of peel offs I ever bought, some time round about the beginning of time. I've added a little white gel pen to give the impression of light and movement.

I am sharing this with
Shopping Our Stash - You Light up my Life
The Male Room - Mixed Media
Watercooler Wednesday - Masculine
Crafty Creations - Anything Goes   

Let them eat cake!

I was a bit worried when I saw that this week's challenge at Sweet Stampin is Cake, because I am so rigorous about my diabetes management programme that I don't even buy cake themed stash! How's that for self restraint? But it means I thought I wouldn't be playing.

Then I remembered this stamp set that was a magazine freebie some years ago - I think it was probably Polkadoodles magazine, it certainly looks like a Polkadoodles stamp.

I coloured it with Promarkers (has anyone else noticed that since they changed from Letraset to Winsor and Newton they sometimes give patchy results?) and teamed it with papers from my stash and a sweet ribbon to make a centre stepper card.

I am sharing this with
Sweet Stampin - Cake
Fab'n'funky - Use a patterned paper 
Allsorts Challenge - Fancy Folds 
ATSM - Anything Goes

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers #89 - Up Yer Kilt

It's time for our new challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers and this week  Edna has chosen the theme "Up Yer Kilt"

 

This doesn't mean your work has to necessarily have a Scottish theme, or indeed to include a kilt, just that there needs to be some PLAID somewhere on it.

However, I have gone for Scottish and a kilt on my offering:

 

The image is a lightly-decoupaged one from the La Pashe CD "The Best of La Pashe 2012" while the background was printed out from the 2014 edition in the same series.

 

I wrote the sentiment out using the font "Stonecross" (note to anyone who tries to use this font, which is available on many free font sites - it has no lower case characters so you need to write all in upper case or you are left with blank spaces where the letters should be) to give it an authentic Scottish look.

 

For anyone who can't read it, or doesn't understand the Scots dialect, click on the row below  and highlight everything between the two asterisks and while it is highlighted, you will see it in clear text!

 

*  I don't know where that wind's coming from but I know where it's going  *

 

It refers, of course, to the tradition of a Scotsman not wearing anything under his kilt! And for that reason, I did consider using an alternative font - our old friend Comic Sans, since "Sans" is the French word for "Without"!

 

I think this would make a great New Year card - after all, Santa must be in a party mood after he's got all that present-delivering out of the way.