Poles apart!

The image I've used on this card is a pre-printed outline image from Craftwork cards, that has been sitting unloved in my Christmas Snippets box for years, for two reasons:

1. Polar bears and penguins are quite literally poles apart - polar bears live at the North Pole (well, in the general area of it) and penguins at the South Pole (ditto) and the two could never meet in the wild. So Christmas images showing both at once annoy me!
2. That penguin has such a blimmin miserable look on its face! How could I make a happy card with such a doleful penguin on it?

Anyway, both those reasons for not having used it are PERFECT reasons for pairing it with this fun sentiment, from a Dylusions sentiment stamp set. And my snippets box also contained half a sheet of mistletoe backing paper - serendipity!

I coloured the image with Promarkers, and you probably can't see it but I added Wink of Stella to the bear. The sparkly green braid also came from my Snippets box, and I finished it off with a scattering of snowflakes, I chose red, partly to match the red in the image and matting, but mainly because if a penguin and a polar bear can meet up in an ice cave, snowflakes can be red, right?

I'm sharing this with

Winter Wonderland - Penguins
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Cute
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - Funny Sentiment  
Pixies Snippets Playground - Week 221

It's bean a long time!

Here's a very quick and CAS stamp made with one of my current favourite stamps sets, Hero Arts Grow Your Own Salad.

I love that sentiment coupled with the bean pods!

I know lots of you also read my husband's blog, Mark's Veg Plot so you'll know that our small garden is almost completely dedicated to growing vegetables, so in the summer the view from our window always includes beans - broad beans, runner beans, green beans and more. And the challenge at Less is More this week is "What's outside your window" so this fits perfectly.

I stamped the sentiment and  beans, and then doodled in the vine, grass and earth with very fine markers, so I am also entering ATCAS - Delicate and CASology - Doodle.

Pears and blue cheese on toast

I'm having a bit of a posting binge today - it seems to be feast or famine with me! And it occurred to me that I've STILL not got back into the habit of posting about food, so here's a baby  step in the right direction.

Back in the 1970s, when I was at University and in the Officers Training Corps,  formal dinners often ended with a course called the Savoury, a very small savoury dish that was often intensely salty. Anchovies and anchovy paste used to figure a lot in them, as did bacon and strong cheeses. The salty ingredients were often combined with fruit, for instance bacon wrapped around prunes (I can't remember whether they were angels on horseback or devils on horseback, one used prunes and the other kidneys).

Really the only vestige of that left now is cheese and biscuits, but there is one simple savoury that Mark and I still like to end a meal with from time to time. We don't eat it in tiny canapé sized portions though, because we have it  instead of dessert rather than as well as it - Pears and Blue Cheese on Toast.

For two people, you will need:
2 small or 1 large (halved) slices of fruit bread - I used home made "hot cross bun loaf" which is simply made by sticking all the ingredients I would use to make hot cross buns in the bread machine and cooking on a normal cycle.
1 ripe, but not over-ripe, pear
about 70g Danish Blue cheese, sliced. You could use any blue cheese, but the strong saltiness of Danish Blue teams well with the sweetness of the pear.

Toast the bread under the grill on one side only.
Peel and slice the pear and arrange the slices over the untoasted side of the bread. Top with the cheese and return to the grill. Cook until the cheese is melted and bubbling and any exposed bread is toasted.

Serve as a savoury or with a green salad as a light lunch.

Bright flowers

I've been itching to get my hands on the new texture stamp set from The Gentleman Crafter and was delighted when they arrived this week. One of his suggested uses for them is to add interest to die cut flowers, and that's what I've been trying with this card. After cutting, I stamped over each one in pale grey ink, using the round Rough Shader stamp then stamped the large Stippler over that in white ink.

I used the Edger stamp along the bottom of the card to look like foliage and then added ribbons from my huge bag of ribbon oddments to match the die cuts. The flowers are die cut with the Spellbinders Jewel Flowers dies and the leaves with Spellbinders Sprigs

I am sharing this with

Crafting Musketeers - Use three ribbons
Use Your Stuff - Flowers and More Flowers 
Dies R Us - Handmade Flowers

A bit girlie for me!

I don't really make much in the way of girlie cards, but I do like to join in the Sparkles Monthly challenges and this month the theme is Make It Girly. I have some rather girly digis that I won in a blog challenge, so I printed this one out.

When I had problems colouring digis with Promarkers, somebody suggested watercolouring them so I coloured this one in with watercolour pencils and a wet brush. There was no bleeding, but I think you can tell from the photo that the image buckled slightly, so next time I will try putting watercolour paper through the printer.

Lots of pretty papers from my stash and a wooden butterfly .... job done.

I'm sharing this with

Sparkles Monthly Challenge - Make it Girlie
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - March
Fab n Funky - Spots and Stripes

Lucky cat?

I'm not sure which of the characters on this card the Good Luck wish is for - the cat, whistling away innocently before he pounces on the mouse, or the mouse who is tiptoeing away, hoping to make his escape while the cat's attention is distracted by the sentiment!

I computer generated the sentiment, having found to my amazement that I don't possess a single Good Luck stamp (ooh, an excuse for some shopping!) and then stamped the cat and mouse using images from Katzelkraft's Les Chats Russes sheet. I coloured them in with Promarkers - I wanted to make a ginger cat this time to contrast with the green lettering and die cut. The tiny paw print is a very old unmounted stamp, its origins are lost in the depths of history.

I am sharing this with

Make My Monday - Lucky
Show us your pussies - Lucky Kitty
Crafty Gals Corner - Show me some green

Shoes at Twofers

As many of you have probably realised, I'm not the most girly of girls and I don't share the passion for crafting with shoe images that many people enjoy. In fact when Christi chose her topic for our new challenge at Twofers, I panicked and thought I had nothing suitable. But a rummage around my stash produced these die cut heels, the remnants of an ancient Kanban kit I bought from QVC,  a small shoe silhouette stamp and this super snarky sentiment from one of the wonderful Dylusions sets - this set is called "Say it how it is". I needed something to pull all the elements together, and I thought of this stamp, which I've hardly ever used, of two ladies sharing afternoon tea. Now, are they being really unkind to each other, or are they such good friends that one of them is teasing the other for giving the waiter a lascivious look?

 

To go with the die cut shoes, I used copper ink and embossing powder for all the stamping and then coloured in a few parts of the ladies' outfits by blending copper pearl pigment powder with a little water and painting it on with a fine brush.

 

Now why don't you pop over to Twofers and see what Christi and Zoe have created - and why not link up your own shoe themed creation too? You never know, you might win a prize of a $20 Alleystamps voucher.  Remember we only need to see one item, and there must be some stamping somewhere on it, and no digis. I'm looking forward to seeing what you share with us!