Playing with my Christmas Presents

Santa was very kind to me this year and brought me all kinds of lovely craft goodies.

My present from my Mum was a set of 12 colours of Brushos, something I've never used before. (Incidentally, why are they called Brushos when so many ways of using them don't require a brush? ) and I've been having fun experimenting with them.

My first card was made with one of my very first attempts - I used far too much of both the crystals and the water, and thought the finished result might hit the reject pile, but then I decided that as a bold background for some lighter coloured stamping it might actually be very effective.

I stamped the patterned heat over the background in white and then embossed it with a translucent pearl powder. The stamp is a very old unmounted one that I received in a RAK about 20 years ago! Then I topped it with a beautiful pair of die cut hearts, made with my very newest die, the Gummiapan Double Hearts die from Swedish House Crafts - I've added the link as they are a very new site that you may not have come across and they have some exciting dies at bargain prices. The sentiment is from my favourite magazine freebie set from a couple of years ago.

I would like to share this with
Cut it Up - Out with the old, in with the new
Craft Rocket Challenge - Something new
Little Red Wagon - Something new 
Mod Squad - Anything but Christmas
Rubber Dance - Red, white and blue



I was going to share a second card in this post, but you're probably already getting RSI from scrolling so I'll put it in a separate post.

Toucan play at that game.....

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the lovely Uniko stamp set with hibiscus flowers and a toucan that I bought last year. I bought it because I fell in love with the toucan, and since getting it have used the floral stamps and sentiments many, many times and yet the poor toucan had never seen ink.

Well, today I was determined to put that right! I stamped and embossed him in black, then coloured in the bill with Promarkeers. While looking at images of toucans, I discovered that there are several different types of bill colouring, one of which is really funky but would have clashed with all my punched leaves, so I'll try that another time.

 

I used snippets to match the bill for the layering and a handful of green snippets for the punched Monstera leaves. I made some of them overlap the bottom of the toucan, as the image appears to be hovering in mid air with his wings folded, something I'm pretty sure toucans can't do. He needs a branch or creeper to sit on and there isn't one on the stamp. Stamping or drawing one in would require some pretty clever masking so I decided to simply cover the problem up instead!

 

The sentiment is from the same stamp set.

 

This has used up quite a lot from the snippets box, so it's very appropriate that I'm sharing it with Pixie's Snippets Playground 

 

And ever since the 1960s when toucans used to feature in Guinness adverts, I've thought of them as very masculine birds, so this would make a great card for a man (especially an older Guinness lover!) so I'm sharing it with The Male Room where the current challenge is Anything Goes.  

Up, Up and Away at Cardz 4 Guyz

It's time for our first challenge of 2017 at Cardz 4 Guyz, and our theme is Up, Up and Away  so we want to see something like planes, airships, balloons or kites on your work.

For my cards I've used a vintage balloon card from Crafty Individuals. I tried it with two shades of blue to see which I preferred, and not only did I like them both, but I thought they worked best of all when I swapped the images and backgrounds between the two blues, so you've ended up with two cards from me!

I've used cheap household bleach - not the extra thick sort - to make my cards. First I made the backgrounds by cutting the card to size and then using a small spray bottle to lightly spritz with bleach. Then I stamped the image onto more card, using a black Versafine pad,  and heat embossed with clear powder. I used a waterbrush filled with bleach to paint over areas where I wanted to remove the colour.

After spritzing and/or painting, the work needs to be set aside for an hour or so to allow the bleach time to develop. It's always a good idea to test the bleach on a scrap of the card you plan to use because it has a different effect on each different card,  even two sheets of the same colour from different manufacturers. You can see here that the lighter blue card has lost a lot more colour than the dark, but with some other cards the bleach makes it change colour completely - I have one green card that bleaches to pink!

I would like to share this with: 
A Bit More Time to Craft - Anything Goes
Classic design Team Open Challenge - January
World Wide Open Design Team - Challenge #17  

The Victorian Kitchen

One of my Christmas presents was a lovely new storage unit for my craft stuff, and in the process of sorting through my stash to rearrange it on the unit, I found these NBUS Victorian Kitchen papers and stickers from Craft Creations. The large background is actually reproduced from recipe books of the time and the smaller one has pictures very similar to the illustrations in Mrs Beeton.

I've added other long-forgotten elements from my stash - some adhesive cork tape, a doiley, screw headed brads and the last scrap of a spool of lace - plus stamped images using the Sheena Douglass Home Life stamps, stamped in brown and with inked edges to give them a vintage look.

I would like to share this with
The Crafters Café - Monochromatic
Stamping Sensations - Coffee and Cream
Country View Challenges - Anything Goes
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - January  

Something New at CD Sundays

This card was going to be my entry for the latest challenge, Something New, at CD Sundays, but at the moment they are a little bit short handed due to health issues, so I've stepped in to help out as a Guest Designer and will be popping over to visit you if you would like to take part. Remember, if you choose to play along, your work MUST include something from a CD that you currently have in your possession, and you must tell us which CD you have used. You don't need to make the CD the main feature of your work - it could be a background paper, a border or an embellishment, but it does need to be there!

For my card, the "Something New" I have chosen is a new baby.

The image, sentiment and layered background (pre-printed but very realistic looking!) are from the Bebunni Baby section of the Crafters Companion Crafters Inspiration CD, Issue 4. I believe the Bebunni Baby range is also available as a standalone CD. I like the fact that the butterflies in the backing layers are in stronger colours than traditional baby ones, and I've picked these up with the red and turquoise elements I have added.

The button brads are from an old HOTP kit and the wooden butterfly was a real find in a bargain shop I dashed into one day to avoid a sudden downpour - what serendipity!

I am sharing this with

Allsorts Challenge - Something New
Glitter'n'Sparkle - New Beginnings

Feminine at Ooh La la Creations

It's time for our first challenge of 2017 at Ooh La la Creations, and our theme for you is Feminine.

The image I have used is called "Butterfly Vanity" from the Shawn Jenkins CD, which is available here and I have teamed it with a background made with an Mbossabilities folder on very pale pink pearlescent card and a die-cut and embossed ribbon-threading border made with a Marianne Creatables die. The tiny die cut butterfly (Memory Box)  echoes the butterfly on the hat.

I would like to share this with Dies R Us - Anything Goes using dies

Lots of Glitter at Sparkles Christmas

Happy New Year! And before the needles have even finished dropping off the Christmas tree, here I am with the first of my Christmas cards for 2017. Last year my New Year's Resolution was to make at least two Christmas cards a week all through the year. In fact I not only kept to it, I made rather more than that and by the time Christmas was made I was able to donate a fair number of cards to charity as well as having enough for my own use.

One way to help you to keep making cards all through the year is to join in Christmas themed challenges, and our monthly challenge at Sparkles Christmas is one of the challenges designed to help keep you motivated. This month our challenge is Lots of Glitter so we'd like to see lots of glitter on your cards.

For my card, I used a glue pad to stamp the sentiment panel and then sprinkled it with gold glitter. I scored a pair of lines above and below the sentiment (TIP - position the lines by scoring lightly from the front and then turn the card over and score more firmly from the back). Then I used the glue pad  and glitter again to stamp the background stamp from an old Hero Arts set all over the remaining space. I had some glittery peel off borders which I used to fill the spaces in between the scored lines.

I am  sharing this with
Crafty Creations Challenges - Any Holiday
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Anything Goes
Christmas Cards All Year Round - Add Snowflakes