Reindeer trio

 

This card is made using a trio of reindeer stamps from Lili of the Valley, coloured with Promarkers. The base card is smaller than a DL card, it came from a QVC set I bought years ago that had a few unusual sized cards in it that I never really found a use for. I kept the card very bold and simple so as not to detract from the fun images.

 

I'm sharing at Sweet Stampin Christmas - Animals.

Stamping with....... A PARSNIP!!!! (with apologies to Di)

Oh dear, Di from Pixie's Crafty Workshop is never going to forgive me for this! But I really don't mean I've been stamping with a small white bear, I really DO mean the delicious root vegetable.

It all started last night when I was preparing some parsnips to roast for dinner. I remembered how I used to show people how to make carrot butterflies to decorate stir fries with, in the days when I used to give evening classes in Oriental cookery, and I wondered if I could carve a parsnip the same way.

Then I stated to peel the potatoes and thought about childhood days of potato printing and my brain made the link - what if I were to carve a parsnip and print/stamp with it?

So, I kept the parsnip tops, left them overnight to dry out, and dug out the old lino-cutting tools I used to use for carving carrots with.

I kept two tops, in case I messed one up (which turned out to be a wise move).

To carve a butterfly, first cut it so there s one long edge and one shorter one, and cut diagonal lines between the two

Then use your lino tool or a sharp knife to cut V-shapes either side of the centre, top and bottom, and halfway up each side for the wings. I also distressed the edges a little with a knife.

And now you are ready to print! The core of the parsnip recedes slightly, giving an interesting "starburst" effect in the middle. I used a very juicy pink Versacolor pad to stamp with, setting the stamping with a heat gun when it was finished.

Then I cropped the stamped area to fit a card blank and added a ribbon that has been in my stash for many, many years - it was part of the very first Hot Off The Press kit I bought from QVC so it was while my daughter, now almost 37, was at 6th form college (I know because she was doing a project about TV shopping in her media studies class, that's how I started to watch QVC!). It's ribbon with a very odd scrunchy but soft, distressed feel to it, which gives it a rather distressed look, perfect with these "distressed butterflies" and exactly the same salmon pink colour. All it needed to complete the card was a tag and a peel-off greeting.

And that, my friends, is how you stamp with a parsnip. Di please note, no small furry animals were harmed in the making of this card!

I'm sharing this with

Shopping our Stash - You stamped with WHAT???
CASology - Pink

Playing with my Gorjuss papers

This week's challenge at Fab 'n' Funky is Girly and Pretty. Well, as you know, I'm not really a girly and pretty type, except for the occasional foray into shabby chic, but I think these Gorjuss designs are definitely girly, and have a kind of dark prettiness about them. I'm not 100% happy with the die cut decoupage, I'm more used to doing it by hand; I think next time I will sponge a little ink around the edge to hide the white lines.  I mounted the little fox above a punched black circle of exactly the same size, so that you can only see the black when looking at it at a slight angle, just to add a bit of interest to the card.

Dog Daze

When I read that this week's Make My Monday theme was Pets, as always my mind leapt straight to cats. However I do seem to have made a LOT of cat themed cards recently, and I had this lovely doggy ribbon just begging (do you see what I did there? Begging.... dogs... oh, never mind) to be used. And  so was this lovely stamp from Little Claire's, which must be my most favourite doggy stamp ever. So dogs it is, then.

I found this lovely stripey paper in my stash, I think it came from Craftwork cards. It probably doesn't show on the photo but it has a very slightly pearlescent sheen on it, a great contrast to the heavy matte finish of the kraft card I was planning to use for matting, and used Promarkers to colour the dogs in to complement the paper and card.

Since I used lots of kraft card on this. I am also sharing with Use Your Stuff, where the current challenge is Kraft.
And I think this is my first ever visit to House of Stamps, where the theme is Who let The Dogs Out?

Not too sure about this one!

I'm going to apologise in advance for this card - I made it for the Glitter'n'Sparkle blog's Sun/Moon/Stars/Space challenge, but the idea in my head and the finished card really don't match up with each other and I'm very disappointed with it. Where's Darnell's Boo-Boo challenge when you need it? I'm sharing it anyway, just to show how much can go wrong with one little card.

For a start, the base card I used was one of two I have left from a pack of hologram cards I bought many, many years ago. It's been lurking in my stash for all that time, and really, if I'd liked it, I'm sure I would have used it long before now. Sometimes there are stash items we really ought to admit have defeated us!

Next the moon and stars image, which is a very old unmounted stamp. My idea was to stamp it with a blue water based ink, then use a waterbrush to draw out some of the blue to form a background. So far so good. But I wanted the moon and stars to shine to go with the hologram card, so I coloured them in with metallic gel pens, and they simply don't give a good enough coverage over large spaces. I tried going over it again, but I could feel the card beginning to give way under the pressure of the pen. But heigh-ho, the real moon isn't evenly coloured, is it?  It's riddled with craters, well, so is my image after all that colouring!

Now on to the sentiment. When I was a little girl, my grandma always used to say that if you saw the new moon, you should turn your money over and make a wish. So this Craftwork Cards "Make a wish" diecut sentiment was the obvious choice. The trouble is, with everything else matted and layered, it looked a bit lost just plonked on the card, yet I don't have any dies that fit it, so had to hand cut the layering. You have NO IDEA how many times I recut that blinkin' cardstock! And it's still not even.

I added some peel off stars to the bottom corner, but I'd used up all the ones I wanted to use and these are far too small. And finally, take it from me, trying to photograph such a large area of holographic card is a complete and utter bu$$er. Can you see that blueish cast towards the bottom of the card? I think that's a reflection of the air around me as I spewed out a collection of unladylike words.

Oh well, at least I tried, and you Glitter'n'Sparkle ladies are going to have to take a look at it if only yo laugh at all my failures!

Keeping Christmas CAS and Classy

I think clean and simple Christmas cards can look very classy, especially when using a very restricted colour palette - and what could be more restricted than simply white and gold?

For this card both the image and the sentiment were magazine freebies from some time ago, embossed with gold ink and powder.

I am sharing this with

Addicted to Stamps and More - Clean and Simple
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - White and Metallic Gold

Food and Drink at Cardz 4 Guyz

This week it's my turn to choose the challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz, and since you know how much I love eating and drinking, you won't be surprised to learn that I have chosen Food and Drink as the theme.

Here is my card for the challenge:

The stamp set I have used is from Honey Doo Crafts - it is called "A bottle of vine" <groan>  and I think it is all set to become one of my favourite sets. The wine glass is stamped onto heat-embossable acetate - normal acetate will shrivel and melt if you try to heat emboss it.

We'd love to see what food and drink themed cards you can come up with it - remembering, of course, that they need to be suitable for a male recipient.