Hot Christmas

Yes, another Christmas card - I'm keeping up my two-a-week target in the hope of having enough to be able to sell some for charity this year, as well as all those we send ourselves. This time it's made with papers and toppers from the Papermania Folk Christmas range, and the colours are hot, hot HOT - more traditionally summer shades than wintery ones, so just right for Christmas Cards All Year Round's August challenge of Bright Summer Colours.

The tag is made from a die cut decoupage sheet. I usually think of that as an ultra-easy option but oh my this was challenging! Some of those baubles are tiny - only about 1mm in diameter, and very easy to lose or even get stuck behind a fingernail (not that I'm admitting that may have happened to me....)  and very close together, too, so they are hard to position even with the finest of tweezers. And I felt like crying when I finally finished and realised the tiny soldier ornament was standing on his head and had to be sliced off and re-applied the right way up!

Three of a kind

At Jingle Belles, the current challenge is to include three of something, so I've used the Bugaboo digi "Christmas Trio Blocks" which I coloured with Promarkers and Wink of Stella, and added a stamped sentiment using a very old unmounted sentiment stamp that has no brand name on the backing sheet (they must all think we have photographic memories!).

The Heat is On at Twofers

It's time for our new challenge at Twofers, and although Christi is not yet back with us, she has chosen the them of The Heat Is On.

Here in the UK we've not had much hot sunny weather this year, so we're having to get our heat from other sources, like chillis! I've used a great set of chilli themed stamps from Rubber Dance for this card. The background is blended distress inks, overstamped in Stazon and finished with a white Gelly Roll pen, and the chillis were stamped on separate paper, coloured and fussy cut. If I hadn't thrown my Glossy Accents away in a fit of pique recently, I would have added some shine with it, but failing that I used the white pen again to give just the illusion of shine.

 

As I've used hot colours, and our garden is always full of chillis in summer, I am sharing this with Hot Summer Days at Country View Crafts.

Age is just a number

The August challenge at Naughty or Nice is "Your number's up" - they want to see numbers on our cards. Instead of going down the obvious route of a card with an age on it, I decided to make a number themed card. I stamped the sentiment, from Rubber Dance, then masked it off while I used Versamark ink to stamp the number panel from PaperArtsy over it three times. Then before removing the masking, I brushed all over the Versamark stamping with a blue-green mica pigment powder.

The background paper is from an old K & Company compilation stack. It was sheer luck that they seem to have used an almost identical typeface to the one on the stamp, and that the background colour was such a close match to my mica powder!

I am also sharing this with Mod Squad, where I got the idea for masking the sentiment  rather than layering it from the current Bordered Sentiment challenge.

Winter Woodland

Here is a card made with a stencil and Sparkle Medium that I bought on the recent craft day I attended with BJ Crafts. I chose Diamond Sparkle Medium, which is white but semi-transparent so the background colour of the card shows through, meaning the design appears to be in a paper shade of the same colour.

The photo doesn't do justice to the lovely sparkle of the scene, perfect for a frosty winter night, nor to the sparkle of the pale glue glitter card I have used for matting. But trust me, this card is VERY glittery!

I have finished it with a stamped sentiment from an old Anna Griffin set.

I am sharing this with

Cardz 4 Galz - Monochrome
Craft Rocket - Glitzy Glitter
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Anything Goes
Christmas Card Challenges - Anything Goes
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra - August   

Stylised heron

The current challenge at Shopping Our Stash is Silhouettes, which gave me a great opportunity to play with this gorgeous stylised heron silhouette stamp which came from Katzelkraft.

I made a background for it on watercolour paper by scribbling water soluble wax crayons onto an acrylic block and then picking them up with a wet paintbrush to use as watercolour paints. The heron was then stamped in Stazon over the finished background.

I am sharing this with

Shopping Our Stash - Silhouettes
CASology - Watercolour

It's an up and under.....

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as far as my Eddie Waring impression goes. (For my non-UK friends, let me explain - he was a popular and much-impersonated rugby commentator about 40 years ago).

Which leads me on to my card, a rugby-themed card using a sheet of two decoupage images printed from the La Pashe CD, The Best of La Pashe 2012

I am sharing this with The Male Room where the latest challenge is Olympics/Sports . I don't think Rugby is an Olympic sport - yet - but maybe one day it will be!