Rudolf day for October

 Hi there! Sorry I haven't been around much! I'd intended to post a couple of cards after my visit to Doncaster, but it took a bit longer to get home than anticipated. To cut a long story short, I broke down quite dramatically (and expensively) outside the Dome and had to be towed home. We finally got our car back on Saturday. You don't realise how much you rely on the car until you are without it, and also how much longer it takes on public transport! Anyway here are my cards for this months Rudolf days. I used some of my goodies from Doncaster, a new stamp from Inkylicious called Evening walk. The snow on the first is fluffy puffy stuff, and the background is memento grey flannel ink.

The ink on the second card is Memento Paris Dusk and the snow is white gel pen and gellyroll star dust.My third card is something completely different. The sentiment is an inkylicious stamp, but the background is an Imagination Crafts stencil and sparkle medium over an inky dylusions background. It is very sparkly and the colour comes through the sparkle medium too!

 Do pop over to Scrappy Mo's Rudolf day challenge on her blog and join in the fun getting ready for Christmas in plenty of time! Theres some great inspiration from Mo and the DT too.
We had a lovely time at Stamp Magic, despite the car, and enjoyed meeting up with crafty friends. I don't normally have much luck with selfies, but for once I was quite pleased with this one which features 3 members of Stamping Sensations DT. I think you can tell how much we were enjoying ourselves from those smiles!

 

Thanks for looking!

Top 5 Christmas Cards of 2015

The lovely Debby is again hosting  Favourite five Christmas cards. Here are mine, although with making them throughout the year I had to search for them this year! First up is one of the snowy scenes like I made last year, using inkylicious stamps. I don't know about you, but I am pining for a bit of snow or frost. All these warm wet days are depressing!

This next one represents all the cards I made using white ink on Kraft, as I couldn't choose a favourite. It was so lovely to see this new Technique from Deby at Inkylicious.

The next represents my re-found love of colouring, especially this beautiful digi from Teri at Delicious Doodles, and using my wonderful Be Creative Markers

My fourth card was made with a stamp from Honey Doo Crafts, a company I was introduced to this year and I now own quite a few of their stamps, lol (Thanks Lesley!)

Finally a card made with a stencil, something I will be doing a bit of more of next year, as I have loved experimenting using different media recently.
Thanks for looking, and do pop over to Debby's blog and take a look at her beautiful cards too.

Rudolf days for August

I can't believe the end of August is approaching already! Five weeks of summer holiday has flown by and I am getting everything ready to start back at work next week. As usual, I am finding lots to do that aren't school related - Procraftinating is an excellent word for it!
As it is the 25th August it is Rudolf Day, and the perfect time to get distracted by Christmas cards! I was away for July Rudolf day and had intended sharing 4 card with you today, to make up for it. Unfortunately, one of my creations became bin fodder, So here are 3 cards
First is a card made with dylusions, a poinsettia stencil and some silkies from Imagination crafts, and a sentiment from Inkylicious.

 I heat embossed the sentiment using kaleidoscope embossing powder. You can see a bit of the sheen and sparkle on the photo below.

I added a bit of extra sparkle using a clear stardust gelly roll pen.
There was some of the silkies paint left over, so I used it up on a scrap of white card and added a touch of sparkle medium to made my next card.

 I added a Craftwork Cards sentiment and some gold liquid pearls.

 If you add the sparkle medium on a baby wipe in circular movements through the stencil, it just goes round the edges and gives quite a subtle effect.

 Finally I made a very traditional card using some new papers from Dovecraft, some added snippets and a very old stamp from Stamporium (No longer available) I coloured the image with Promarkers and added quite a lot of  stickles. here is a glimpse of the sparkle.

The circle and the border were two different snippets of red card that weren't quite the same colour, but I used a promarker to try and make it more uniform.
I am of course entering Scrappy Mo's Rudolf Day challenge, but I am also entering the second and third into Di's snippet playground.
Thanks for looking!

Warm Autumn Colours at Stamping Sensations

Good Morning! How are you feeling this Sunday morning? Here it is time for a new challenge at Stamping Sensations where our theme is Warm Autumn Colours. It was a great chance to use tree or leaf stamps so I am very happy!!!

Here is my card. I started off by running the Imagination Crafts leaf swirl stencil through the cuttlebug with a 5" square card and my no more shims mat. I then used my ink dusters and kaleidacolor autumn leaves ink to make the embossing pop.

For the main panel I sprayed the reverse side of some centura pearl card with Dylusions and glimmer mist, before stamping and embossing the Imaginations crafts Leaves decoupage stamp set. I added a bit of red glaze to the ladybird and a bit of ribbon from my stash across the top.

When you tilt it you can see a little bit of the sparkle from the glimmer mist.

This month we are sponsored by the very lovely people at Imagination Crafts, who are offering a whopping £35 voucher to spend in their store...wish I could take part!

 

Do pop over to the Challenge blog and take a look at the wonderful inspiration that my team mates have created, and I will look forward to visiting to see your fabulous autumnal creations!

Thanks for looking!

A card and a gift

Before I tell you all about my card I want to say a big thank you for your continued visits whilst I have been a little pre-occupied with real life stuff. It has been a busy few weeks here. Meg is applying for university and I had definitely forgotten or not realised what that entails these days. We have visited 5 universities, 4 on consecutive Saturdays. Bless her, she has taken on board my advice to go close enough to home that she can get home, do a load of washing, get it dry and have a bit of time to relax before heading back again! I am so proud of her and she has worked so hard. I just hope her dreams come to fruition.

On top of that we have had one of our HMI visits at work. I won't go into details, but it was a very intense 5 days leading up to his visit. Positive but intense. At the moment I feel I could sleep for a week!!!

Anyway, on to my card...

 

A friend of mine had a birthday recently, and as well as making her a card I decided to make her a gift too. Her card is a simple scene created with ink dusters and memento inks in dandelion, rose bud and elderberry (I love this colour!) All stamps are from inkylicious. I also used a mountains and valleys stencil with my ink dusters.

A while ago this friend bought one of my cards featuring this stamp from Inkylicious and put it on her wall. I thought it was time to make it into a proper framed picture.

I sponge-painted the plain wooden frame from Ikea with paper artsy fresco paints, before using grunge paste through an imagination crafts stencil. a bit more painting and some treasure brass finished it off. I was quite pleased with the result, so am now working on an Ikea mirror with the same paints and stencil, with a few additional stamps too. I will let you see it when I have finished it. In the meantime I am entering my picture in this Month's Penny Black and More Challenge where the theme is Autumn.

Thanks for looking!