The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #107 - Reminder

 

We're in the very talented company of  Carol Mayne for the whole of February over at The Christmas Kickstart Challenge.

 

Carol picked a fun theme and and I'm delighted to say that thus far plenty of you have joined our festive sing-along challenge.

The Christmas Kickstart Challenge #107

 - A Christmas Sing-Along!

Being a kindly elf, Carol has made a second card for our challenge, and you can see it over at Kickstart Central. 

As part of the fun I like to make an 'Inspired by' card for each challenge where I try not to shamelessly CaSE my guest's creation. I always hop my guests don't mind my doing this and I have to say I've learned so much about cardmaking styles and techniques as a result. 

Here's a reminder of Carol's first card for our challenge together. 

I just fell in card-love when I saw this 'pop up' as I opened Carol's email. The colours and that design - just perfect! I loved the bold background too, and hunted through my background stamps for something with a similar feel. 

Rather than sit my partridge in a bauble, I opted for this gorgeous wreath die. I wasn't sure how to colour the wreath and then remembered some embossing powder from The English Stamp Company. The colour is verdigris and it's completely stunning... And impossible to photograph! The very cute partridge is from Jane's Doodles and the Layered Wreath is an oldie by Pinkfresh.

You can find all the details about Carol's cards on her blog here, so please head over and leave her some love.

Let's say 'Hi' to once again our favourite reindeer with his cute February Random Raffle Prize. 

Carol and I can't wait to see what you guys come up with for this fun challenge!

Wednesday, already?

I am on a The Greeting Farm kick right now! I seem especially drawn to the Sprouts as I love their wide eyes and cute expressions. I used sweet little Ruby on this 3 x 3 card (love those boots!).
The background was made using the same combination of distress ink technique and stamps that I used on my Niece's birthday card. I am really enjoying using Distress inks in this way, and plan to make a few sets of these cards as gifts as they are so quick and simple to produce.

I'm entering this card for 'no patterned paper' week over at The Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge #84.

Not much time for creating this week as I am working extra hours... roll on the weekend!

Happy crafting everyone, I'll be joining in again soon!

Happy 1st birthday

I cannot believe that my little niece will be celebrating her 1st birthday on Thursday. Time, as they say, really does fly!

I have been looking forward to using this cute little Gorjuss girl image and was delighted by how quick and easy she was to colour.

The background was created with Spun Sugar Distress Ink and a mixture of Hero Arts and The English Stamp Company images. There is a generous amount of Tattered Angels Pearl Glimmer mist carefully spritzed on for a subtle shimmer. I used Diamond stckles on her wings.

I punched out the butterflies and tiny flowers from white paper coloured with my Cool Aqua Promarker and distressed with Tumbled Glass. The 'sentiment' was printed on my PC after I had finished the background. The sentiment always needs to be printed last as Distress ink can make it blur and bleed.

Hopefully we'll get to see our sweet little niece this weekend. My sister-in-law tells me that she is into everything and full of fun and smiles... can't wait to see her!

Happy crafting everyone!

Yet more kissing!

Okay, so I might not be 100% happy with this card but I know that I love the technique that I used to make that centre panel!

This is another card where I have used the 'kissing technique' of stamping that I used a few posts back. I'm sorry about the poor quality of the photographs but the light here is terrible today.

Kiss, kiss, kiss - part 2

This is a great technique to enable you to get a completely new look from your existing stamps.

You will need an outline stamp with plenty of 'flat space' and a patterned stamp. For my outline stamp I used a flower, but I can imagine this would look great using a heart design. The design on your patterned stamp must be quite dense. Make sure that the pattern on your second stamp is not so spread out that you only get a small part of it on your plain or outline stamp.

I used a stamp from the English Stamp Company called 'Fab Flower' for my outline stamp. I inked it up well with Lapislazuli Versacolour as this technique requires a 'juicy' ink.

For my pattern stamp I used the gorgeous Antique Brocade Cling from Hero Arts, which is such a favourite around Blogland. I inked patches of this stamp using a brown Versacolour ink for contrast. As you can see from the photograph above I experimented to see which colour effect I liked best.

I 'kissed' the flower stamp to the Antique Brocade and then stamped my card stock.

As I hope you can see on the finished card below the outline is still a flower but the inside takes on some of the Antique Brocade pattern, giving brown highlights within the blue.

BTW, make sure that you clean your plain stamp before re-inking to avoid spoiling your inkpad. Also try to use a different part of your pattern block for each 'kiss', or again clean and re-ink to avoid ink transfer.

I cut the panel that I had created to size and matted it on blue scrapbook paper before attaching it to my card. The 'Hugs and kisses' sentiment is from Hero Arts and was stamped in brown Versacolour, and then embossed. The ribbon is from my stash and the button is from Basic Grey. I plan to round the corners as I think this card needs a little something to finish it off.

I would urge you to give this technique a try as I think you will be amazed by the results!

As always if you have any queries please get in touch.

Happy crafting everyone!