More from Cookie Cutter Christmas

Just when I thought I'd done as much as I could for one season with the Cookie Cutter Christmas stamps and punch, I spotted a pin on Pinterest that I just HAD to CASE - the pin took me to the blog of Geniveve Ko and you can see her fun card here.

This is my take on her card

Everything came from the snippets box - the woodgrain paper, the canvas effect card and the kraft. For the middle reindeer, I masked off the nose area while stamping the image, then removed the mask and applied red marker direct to the stamp and stamped again.

I am sharing this card with
Christmas Card Throwdown - Canvas or wood
Pixie's Snippets Playground - weeks 305/306 (actually everything I used on all 3 cards in this post were from the snippets box except the pine bough background of the gingerbread man card.)

-o0o-

Well, I still had a scrap of the canvas paper left and I liked that card, so I decided to use the same layout only this time using the gingerbread men from the stamp set.

And I am sharing this one with
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - October
Watercooler Wednesday - All About Christmas

-o0o-

And then, I thought the layout didn't need to be used exclusively for Christmas, and neither does the stamp set. The bear in the set can be used all year round. Pity he has to be fussy cut though as the punch would chop off his ears!

I'm sharing this third card with
Sweet Stampin - Bears
C.R.A.F.T. - Ribbon and Distressing

Now I need to dream up matching cards for the eskimo and santa stamps so I can use the whole set!

Heron on the Lake

.. is the name of a local restaurant, not that I've ever been there. But I do have a rather nice stamp of a heron in the bulrushes.

The stamp is a very old Linda Luckin design, no longer available. I love the serenity of it!

For this card I made a background by blending shades of turquoise and green ink, using a sponge dauber then stamped the image and added a couple of metallic dragonfly brads.

I am sharing this with

The Male Room - Silhouettes 
AAA Cards - Ink Blending

Reversible stamps

With all the excitement of having a Misti, and being able to layer stamps with it, I'd quite forgotten about a couple of lovely wood mounted reversible layering stamps I have in my collection. Two Autumn leaf stamps, from a US company called Just for Fun, and the date on the wood blocks is 2006 so I've had them a fair while.

They need to be used with a stamp positioner to get the veins in the right place. I masked off the outside of the card, then first stamped the solid side of the stamps with a Kaleidacolor pad then reversed the stamps and stamped the veined side with  dark brown one. I filled the rest of the masked area with sponged dabs of orange and light tan ink and then used peg stamps to fill in the gaps.

I am sharing this with
Addicted to CAS - Leaves 
Less is More - Stamp Layering

Good friends eat cake

.. is the sentiment on a Polkadoodles (I think) stamp set I've had for several years. Here I have teamed it with a cake image stamped with a Gummiapan stamp and a selection of old papers from my stash.

I used a sketch I found on Pinterest, here - I followed the link to the blog but the picture no longer shows there, possibly because it's an old post from 2011?

I am sharing this with
Just Add Ink - Just add cake
Shopping our stash - That's sketchy

Buttermilk Butterfly

The current Butterfly challenge is Zodiac and/or the colour Buttermilk (which has reminded me that it's far too long since I made buttermilk scones).

I hummed and ha-ed for ages, but really couldn't come up with anything to link any of the signs of the zodiac  with a butterfly, so this time I've just gone with the colour challenge.

I used "That folder" for the embossing, adding a flower cut from the same card, made using a set of unbranded dies I was given for my birthday. The butterfly is a gorgeous metal filigree charm I got in The Works, I thought they were a real bargain at 6 for £2. The upper wing tips are held in place with  tiny matching brads, and the body is slightly curved to make it look as if it is flying towards the card. Those little recesses on each wing and the body look as if they would be good places to add a tiny gem, to tie in with perhaps a more colourful card. I think I'll try that next time I use one of the charms.

New stamps!

I've been wanting to order some stamps from So Suzy for ages,  so when I was lucky enough to win a voucher for any US stamp company in Darnell's recent NBUS challenge I jumped at the chance - and here's my first make with two of them.

I stamped the silhouette onto a white die cut and emphasised the necklace with liquid pearls. The background is made by daubing white card with Cosmic Shimmer Colour Cloud ink but not actually blending it, to give a patchy, sky-like finish with a very slight sheen to it.

I don't know who originally wrote that quote, but she must have been a lady after my own heart! It sounds a bit like Dorothy Parker, but I think if it was her it would be even better known than it is.

I am sharing this with the Alphabet Challenge - Q is for Quote

Just for You

I have several bold sentiments stamps from Trimcraft - while they have a lot of visual impact, they are also so big that they are quite tricky to incorporate into a design so really need to be used as a stand alone feature.

For this one, I made a simple brusho background and then stamped the sentiment - it needed several stampings as the watercolour paper seemed to slurp up the ink!  I dithered for ages about whether to add a black mat, but when I tried it, it made the whole thing look too heavy so I kept it simple.

I am sharing this with Addicted to Stamps and More where this week's challenge is this inspiration photo 

SOSS challenge #96 - C is for Chipboard

This time Edna's chosen C is for Chipboard as our challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers, and we have an extra incentive for you to join in this time as the person chosen to be our Queen of Snark will win a  US$10 voucher to spend at Make It Crafty  - and if the cost of postage from their home in Australia worries you, check out their fantastic range of digis which of course don't need to be posted!

Now I don't know about you, but chipboard is one of those things that I buy, but never seem to know what to do with once I've got it, so Edna's challenge has persuaded me to think about actually USING the stuff, and I chose these lovely pieces of musical notation from Tando Creatives.

I brushed the chipboard with gesso, then when dry coated it in black embossing ink and powder and heated - it has a lovely glossy, almost metallic looking finish in real life.
The background is sponged with yellow and ochre inks leaving a clear-ish space in the middle to stamp that lovely Beethoven collage stamp (sorry, I can't recall the brand, I bought it from Create and Craft many years ago)  then stamped a few more musical images lightly around the edge.

The sentiment - inspired by a meme on Pinterest - is computer generated using a font that was as close as I could find to the standard old fashioned German typeface. After printing, I stamped all over it, very faintly so as not to obscure the text, with an ancient music manuscript stamp from Kanban. I mean the style is ancient, although the stamp is pretty ancient too.

I am sharing this with
Crafty Gals Corner - Anything Goes
Crafty Creations Challenges - Anything Goes
Country View Challenges - Mixed media with Autumn Colours

Leaping Reindeer again

I was so pleased with the leaping reindeer card I made the other day that I decided to use the same idea again, but this time picking out the red from the background paper and combining it with a bought doyley and more white, to give a lighter, less masculine look. This is the result:

I added a strip of self adhesive felt snowflakes by way of contrast.

I am sharing this with
Allsorts Challenge - Christmas Creatures
Jingle Belles - Not a creature was stirring
Little Red Wagon - What's Red All Over?
Watercooler Wednesday - All About Christmas

    

Leaping Reindeer

The reindeer image is stamped with a Gummiapan stamp. I have some brown doileys but they looked rather flimsy, so I die cut one instead. It's a die I've had a very long time, so I can't recall the brand name. I thought it was docrafts but it's a blue die and theirs are silver.
The papers are all from the Tonic Studios Winter Wonderland pad and the sentiment was a magazine freebie stamp.

I am sharing this with

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - anything goes/traditional Christmas Colours
Crafty Creations Challenge - Anything Goes
Crafting by Designs - get ready for Christmas
Fab n Funky - Christmas

Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's

Today it is two months to Christmas day - and that means it is October's Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's.  And this month I am delighted to be guest designer so I'm looking forward to seeing your festive makes.

Here is my own card for this month's Rudolph Day.

I decided to make my card in black and gold to give a strong, almost masculine look, as men are so hard to make cards for especially at Christmas when we all feel like a bit of sparkle. The pine cone, a very old PSX stamp, is stamped and embossed in gold and I've used a strip of hand made paper to make the border. Because the paper neither cuts neatly nor tears well, I cut a piece of card to a hair's breadth smaller than I wanted the finished strip to be, then covered it with the hand made paper, folding over all the edges and sticking them down on the back so they don't show.

The sentiment is an NBUS one from an old Dimension 4th set and I don't think I'll be using it again - the lettering is uneven and doesn't stamp nicely, even with a stamping platform.

Remembrance at Cardz 4 Guyz

It's not long now to Remembrance Day in the UK and Veteran's Day in the USA, and with that in mind, our new challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz is Remembrance, Thinking of You or Sympathy.

I've combined the Remembrance and Sympathy aspects of the challenge.

The poppy stamp is an old favourite unmounted one that I've had for years and all the papers are from among the very last scraps of an old Hot Off The Press masculine card making pad.

Include an Animal at Ooh La La Creations

Today's new challenge at Ooh La La Creations is to include an animal. EDIT - I have just heard that due to unforeseen circumstances the challenge is taking a break, so there is no current challenge but I've already made my card and written this post, so here it is for you to see!

I have chosen this lovely cat from the Paula Oakley Collection - the image is called Autumn Catnap. She is obviously resting after a strenuous game of conkers, which I have celebrated by making a background of conkers stamped using a very old set of stamps from Artylicious (no longer available)

Just a thistle

There are several colour challenges around at the moment that are obviously trying to lead us into making Halloween cards, but I don't really want to make any more this year so I've taken a different angle.

The thistle is an old Artylicious stamp - it is intended for use as a silhouette, but instead I have coloured it with marker pens, huffed to moisten the ink and stamped it that way. I've given it a very simple treatment with black and green matting on  purple card base, and not added a sentiment because I think it would serve equally well as a birthday or general purpose card, a sympathy card or even a Hogmanay card.

I am sharing this with
Glitter and Sparkle - purple and black
Just us Girls - colour challenge

Floral fantasy

This card started out to be something completely different but while I was looking for the stamp I wanted to use I came across these old Linda Luckin flower stamps that I haven't used for years.

I've always used lots of colours on them in the past, but I think keeping to just the two colours has given them a whole new sophisticated look!

I am sharing this with
CAS on Friday - Flowers
Just add ink - colour challenge

When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall at CD Sundays

We have a lovely new theme for you at CD Sundays today - When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall.

One of my favourite things about autumn is kicking piles of crisp fallen leaves into the wind, so I was overjoyed to find this super design on the CD "Through the Year with Seraphina" from Creative Crafting World.

I printed an image and embellishment sheet and the leaf paper from the CD and then picked out the purple from the layered backgrounds with some purple dotty paper from my stash. Having the large and small images made it ideal for an easel card. The medallion in the top left had three layers, all in the olive green, so I used the middle layer as a template to draw around and cut a purple dotty layer to use instead.

The button is from my stash - the design is carved onto it and I think is intended to look like a bunch of lavender but to me it looks a lot like the bare stems and trees in the image!

Now we'd love to see what you can create on this lovely theme - remembering, of course, that we need to see something from a CD on your work and you must tell us what it is and which CD it came from!

Grumpy cat again

I really love this Grumpy Cat image from Katzelkraft, as you probably realise from how often I use it!

 

Today I've paired him with a selection of papers from Simply Creative's Azteca pad, and used Promarkers to colour him to match. The sentiment stamp is from Rubber Dance - it looks like exactly the kind of thing he would say!

 

This is my first entry for the Rubber Dance challenge "Use an animal stamp" - I'm planning to be back with another tomorrow!

 

 

 

I am also sharing it with 2 Crafty Critter Crazies - challenge 7

Falling leaves

I'm going to be waxing lyrical about the joys of having a stamping platform again in this post, sorry if I'm getting too evangelical about it but it has advantages I'd never dreamed of before I got it, like in this case being able to ink different areas of the same stamp repeatedly to layer colours.

The leaf background is a large stamp, I think when I got it it was called a "texture mat", and today I inked it first all over with yellow  and stamped it lightly to give a base for the colours, then sponged on inks, one at a time, in orange, greens and browns, stamping between each application, so that in some places the colours blended.

The copper leaves are cut with a "Die Cutting Essentials" freebie and the orange ones with dies from a mixture of Spellbinders sets. That pretty copper peel off border is some left from a bundle of peel offs I bought from QVC many, many years ago.

I am sharing this with
Sparkles Monthly Challenge - Autumn Colours
Dies R Us - Leaves

It's almost Mo-vember

Actually maybe I ought to have waited until Mo-vember to make this card!

The specs and 'tache were stamped with stamps that I think were a cover gift a long time ago, but work a lot better now I have a stamping platform, and the moustache border is washi tape. I added a button that looks like an ad for an old Ronnie Corbett show and some googly eyes.

I am sharing this with
Addicted to Stamps and More - CAS
Watercooler Wednesday - Masculine anything goes

Elegant Butterfly

Today I'm dropping in to the Butterfly Challenge again with a second entry for the Vertical and/or Damson challenge, since my first one was vertical but not damson!

The vertical column is cut with a die that I won from Liz at Crafty Sunflower and the card, too, is inspired by one she made, but hers was in her signature elegant style and I felt the big, bold colour of the damson cardstock called for a big bold butterfly and sentiment too  - they are both cut with Spellbinders dies.

Cookie Cutter Christmas

As you may have gathered, since I've not been bombarding you with posts for a few days, Mr Mojo has been MIA.

Now one thing I find helpful when I encounter a mojo-blank is to browse through a magazine. I have an ipad sub to Quick Cards Made Easy and the latest issue had a really sweet set of cards using the Stampin Up Cookie Cutter Christmas stamps and punch, both of which I have. So I decided to CASE the samples shown in the magazine, using my own papers and dies, otherwise very much copying the samples, something I find rather comforting when I'm lacking imagination.

Most of the papers are from an old "My Mind's Eye" pad that was a magazine freebie a few years ago, with a few additions from my stash.

I am sharing these with
CRAFT challenge- Christmas
A Bit More Time To Craft - Anything Goes
Glitter 'n' Sparkle - Anything Goes
Christmas at Sweet Stampin - Anything Goes
The Holly and The Ivy - Anything Goes    

Pink Christmas

It's time for the annual Pink Christmas challenge at Jingle Belles,  where Lauren and Stephanie donate to Breast Cancer research for every card in the gallery. And it gives me a chance to air my Funky Hands "Funky Little Christmas" download which often seems a bit TOO pink for Christmas cards. I've used one of the background papers from it for this card.

With paper as in your face as that, there's little more you can do - some die cuts, some twine and a button and the job's a good'un.

Naturally I am sharing this with Jingle Belles - Pink Christmas
and also with
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Stripes/anything goes
Allsorts Challenge - Think Pink  

Seeing stars

This weekend I decided to have a try at a technique I've not used before - using an embossing folder for partial embossing. To do this, you use strong card to cover the outside of the folder in the areas that you DO want to emboss so that the pressure is greater there and (hopefully)  the extra depth of that area keeps the rollers of the embossing machine apart while the rest of your card is going through.

I have a folder with alternating bands of stars and a textured background, and I measured the width of one of the star bands, with borders each side, and cut a piece of card to size.  I taped it over the folder and embossed.

 

As you can see, a little of the textured pattern did emboss too - I have seen this technique referred to as "diffusion" embossing and I think that must be because the edges come out a bit diffused.

 

Anyway, I got my starry border! I masked the edges and inked it with yellow DI  then stamped the blue sentiment star - a Debbi Moore stamp which works a whole lot better now I have a stamping platform. I'd intended to stop there but the top and bottom looked a bit disconnected so I added a line of glue between the two raised stripes of the border and sprinkled it with blue glitter.

 

I am sharing this with

Less is More - one layer/stars

Sweet Stampin - Sparkle and Shine 

AAA Cards - Inspired by a film (the 1968 Julie Andrews film STAR!)  

 

Down in the Jungle

For this card I've used a set of stamps that was a magazine freebie a few months ago, I think the animals are incredibly cute!

I stamped the giraffe, tiger and monkey (yes, I know tigers and giraffes don't live on the same continent as each other - they also don't have cute smiles so I reckon two wrongs make a right) onto a scrap of stamping card - I save all my white snippets in a folder untidy heap on my table - and coloured them with Promarkers. The sentiment is from the same set, stamped and die cut.

 

The aperture card is one that's been hanging around in my stash for years - I stamped tropical leaves all over the inside back of it to show through the window as a jungle background. Then I delved into my snippets box and came up with a handful of assorted green scraps and used my Monstera leaf punch to make enough leaves to frame the aperture. Finally I arranged the animals so that the monkey and giraffe were peeping through the frame of leaves.

 

I am sharing this with

Pixie's Snippets Playground - weeks 303/304

Little Red Wagon - Leftovers

Just Us Girls - Window/Peekaboo card 

 

#95 Z is for Zombie at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers

Tis the season for ghoulish goings on so our new challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers has gone all zombiefied!

Yes, the theme is Z is for Zombie.

I need to put my hand up and confess that I've never seen a zombie movie or read a zombie book. I think once, about 50 years ago, I may have seen a Scooby Doo cartoon featuring zombies, but I probably "watched" it from behind the sofa. So, not having much experience to draw on, I trawled Etsy until I found this kitty image at Aurora wings.

I printed it out, along with a computer generated sentiment, and coloured it with Promarkers.

The background is made with distress inks, stencilled in grey with a partial wall, and the rest stamped with fishbone and pawprint stamps from my stash.

I have to say, I've never thought of zombies as being particularly cute but I reckon this one is!

That cuteness means I'm going back to Naughty or Nice to enter this as my "nice" entry for this month's Something Spooky challenge.
I'm also sharing this with
Crafty Gals Corner - Spooktacular 
Cardz 4 Galz -  Monochromatic

A CAS DL card for a change

Isn't it odd how you may have a vague idea of what you want to make for a challenge and then another challenge comes along and as soon as you see it, you know how you want to interpret the first. That's what happened with this card.

I'd already seen that the theme for CAS-ology was Odd  and had decided I simply HAD to use this Dylusions sentiment, but then along came the Butterfly Challenge where the theme is Vertical and/or Damson and immediately my vague idea gelled into a certainty.

We hardly ever make DL shaped cards in a CAS style, do we? And yet they can be very striking. Must make a note to myself to do it more often. The die I've used is the old familiar Cuttlebug Butterfly, and for the middle one I used an old scrap of parchment. It is very thin, so rather than use a shim I folded it double, only really expecting the top layer to cut. Both layers cut beautifully so now I have another rainbow-spotted butterfly to use on another project. Two for the price of one - bargain!

Just a number

I've had this Sizzix embossing folder for a few weeks now but today is the first time I've played with it.

I used Coredinations card and sanded it after embossing, then distressed the edges and layered it on top of more Coredinations. The sentiment is from Rubberdance, stamped in grey and distressed, and the background light grey edged with darker grey and also distressed. I attached the embossed panel with screw-headed brads to add to the masculine look.

I am sharing this with
Sweet Stampin - distressing (I hope it's enough to only have the sentiment stamped!)
Fab n Funky - Word Art
The Male Room - Use Metal
Rubber Dance - colour challenge