Butterfly and Bronze

For this card I used a very old cardboard stencil and sponged Versamark ink through onto my card blank. Then with the stencil still in place, I used a cottonwool ball to press mica pearl powders in gold and copper through the stencil. After removing the stencil, I spritzed lightly with water to set the mica powders and give a slightly misty background to the squares.

When it was all dry I stamped the butterfly - an Indigo Blu stamp - and the sentiment - an ancient unmounted one whose origins I can't remember - and coloured them in with water based markers so as not to show through on the inside.

I am sharing this with

One Layer Simplicity - As you wish
Less is More - Geometric Shapes or Patterns
CAS Mix up - Stamping, stencilling and your choice  -mica pearl powders
AAA Cards - Anything Goes 

Rainbow Sprinkles

I love this sentiment, from one of the Dylusions sentiment sets, it's a real celebration of unique-ness. And perfect for the current challenge at Naughty or Nice Challenges, Over the Rainbow.

I've used a plain vanilla card base, of course, and then used the small stipple stamp from Gentleman Crafter's texture sheet to stamp random splodges of rainbow colours over a strip of white card. Each side of that, I put a strip of narrow double sided tape and applied rainbow foil from Foilplay The foil has reflected the light too much in the photo, as always with shiny or pearly things it looks much better in real life.

Pretty Prehistoric

The latest word prompt at Inkspirational challenges is ROCK.

That immediately made me think of the Clearly Besotted "You Rock" stamps, so I used them to create this little dinosaur landscape on a die cut circle, finishing the card with words from the set and from a Studio G mini set. I coloured the scene with Promarkers....... whaddya mean, dinosaurs weren't purple? We've only got their bones to go by, so we don't know what colour they were. In fact maybe they WERE brightly coloured, and that meant they couldn't hide from bigger, hungrier dinosaurs. And perhaps that's why they died out - the little ones were so easy to spot that the big ones ate them all, and then when there was nothing left for them to eat, they died of starvation.

Well, it's a theory......

I am also sharing this with Suzy Bee's Blooming Challenge where this week's twist is Clean and Simple.

Scalloped sympathy

I don't like to make sympathy cards, because of  the occasion they imply, but it's always as well to have one to hand, or a few ideas for making very quick ones, as they are usually the kind of things one can't plan ahead for. I keep my sympathy cards CAS and stick to colours of purples, black and sometimes grey, with a theme of flowers and/or butterflies.

This card uses an old Penny Black stamp called Quite Dandy (although those can't be dandelion clocks, the leaves are all wrong) and a butterfly from an Indigo Blu set that was a magazine freebie. I stamped it all with purple ink and used a scalloped square Nestabilities die to die cut a mat for it. The sentiment is a La Pashe "easy-peely" one.

I am sharing this with

Allsorts Challenge - Purple Passion
Dies R Us - Use Scallops
Just Add Ink - Just add Sympathy
Creative With Stamps - Butterfly  

Being ignored by a cat

There is no truer saying than "You've never been truly ignored until you've been ignored by a cat", so the Dylusions sentiment I've used here is a perfect one to use with cat images!

I stamped the gorgeous Katzelkraft image onto a snippet of white card and coloured it in with Promarkers - I've made the markings match those of a cat that frequently visits our garden. He's obviously having a post-nap stretch (or is that pre-nap? Being a cat, probably both) and doesn't care one jot what is being said to him! The matting is the penultimate scrap of my favourite piece of green card, I've made a 12 x 12 sheet of it last for about 5 years, and the corrugated card is also from my snippets box.

I'm sharing this with

Alphabet Challenge - C for Cats
Show us your Pussies - Furrything Goes
Pixies Snippets Playground - week 224
Quirky Crafts - Raining Cats and Dogs

Karma Camellia

Here is yet another card inspired by last weekend's visit to the beautiful gardens at Nymans. There were lovely camellia bushes all over the gardens, although it is a little late in the year for them and many were past their best, but there were still some beautiful colours to be seen. I thought they looked best of all in the circular garden, where there were swathes of really deep purple-red Snakeshead Fritillaries around them, such an unusual and excitingly different colour for spring,  and the ground was littered with perfectly skeletonised leaves.

It's a very long time since I used any of my skeleton leaf stash, but I dug them out along with a tiny scrap of hand-made patterned paper that echoed the colours in the fritillaries to combine with an old unmounted camellia stamp (Personal Expressions, possibly?) to make this card.

I am sharing this with

Crafty Gals Corner - Colour Palette Challenge
Clear it out challenge - Springtime/add a flower

I'm back - with another Christmas card

Phew, it's lovely to be back with a fully working computer again. I'm having to get used to a lot of changes though, as some apps have had to be removed, so bear with me if my photos don't look very polished, I have a whole new editing system to get used to.


Anyway, first up is this week's second Christmas card. For this, I have used a bordered paper from an old Hot Off The Press pad with a scrap of toning plain paper, and a Craftwork Cards printed greeting. I've kept it all pretty CAS in order to show off the star of the piece, this fab glittering bauble which was a gift tag on one of the presents I received last Christmas. I couldn't possibly just tear it off and throw it away, could I? To tie it in with the background, I have decorated the bauble with some red vinyl peel offs.

I'm playing along with


Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Green 
Winter Wonderland - Christmas Baubles
Jingle Belles - Recycling