ADDICTED TO STAMPS AND MORE - #495

I've just come back from a fabulous week's holiday in Greece where we celebrated my niece's wedding.  It was so magical and here's the card I made for them.  The stencil is from Creative Expressions by Sue Wilson.  I cut it out of pearl white paper to give it extra shimmer.  The little love birds were part of some ribbon I had in my stash.  I kept the card simple and let the beautiful rose stencil shine.

THE HOLLY AND IVY #187

I'm back from a fabulous holiday in Greece where we celebrated my niece's wedding.  What a fabulous time and I must admit I'm having a hard time getting back into crafting.  What better way than to create a Christmas card in June - especially as the weather has turned again here in Wales and it's cold and wet.  

Once again I've turned to the lovely stamps by Tracy Evans Boutique Designs - I just love this mistletoe stamp and as my daughter adores penguins this will be tucked away for her until Christmas.  

In order to get the penguins to look at each other one was stamped onto some acetate and then stamped onto the cardstock to reverse the image.

CREATIVE ARTISTE MIXED MEDIA

Something a little different from me this month for Creative Artiste Mixed Media as I've created a set of three tags in varying sizes.  I  had great fun putting this together. 

I recently had a birthday and a gift of some new stamps which I couldn't wait to play with.  The gorgeous butterflies on this tag are by Sara Naumann for Paper Artsy and this one is ESN62.  All the butterflies used on all the tags are from this set.

The backgrounds were made from a gell press session playing around with some Tim Holtz paints.  

The extra stamping comes from Alison Bombers set Pressed Grasses EAB40 which was also a new set to me.  

I added some pastes and ideaology pieces from Tim Holtz to complete the tags.

I'm adding this into the following:

I spy - at least 1 butterfly 

Dragonfly Dreams - Butterflies 

We love 2 create - AG 

WE love Stamping - Nature 

Triple B - butterflies 

Tag Along - AG 

THE MALE ROOM - FUN FOLDS

This month we want to see your fun folds for your male cards at the Male Room.  I decided as a male card I wanted to do quite a simple fun fold and found this great simple idea from Gina K Designs. 

I used an old stencil from Visible Image and added three different colours of blue Distress Oxide Inks for the image -  Chipped Sapphire, Faded Jeans and Broken China.  I added the steam punk heart in the middle.  I cut out the sentiment with a die cut and kept it simple.

You can see the inside of the card which I think is a great design and one I think I will be trying many times. 

ADDICTED TO STAMPS AND MORE #494

Welcome back to another Any Occasion challenge at ATSM.  It's been a while since I've created one of these style of cards where you mask off the middle and stamp around the edges.  

I used a variety of stamps from Tracy Evan's Boutique Designs and some extra foliage from Alison Bomber.  I used some new Posca pencils to colour in. Oops - I don't mean Posca pencils sorry - I meant Prismacolor pencils.  I do like the vibrant colours they give.  I used to Versafine ink colours in similar colours of pink and green to create the sentiment. 

HOLLY & IVY CHALLENGE #186

Welcome back to another challenge here at The Holly & Ivy and as usual it's Anything Goes.

This card took a while for me for it to come together - I knew I wanted to use the robin from Indigoblu but I couldn't find something for him to sit on.  I finally found my old set of stamps from Tim Holtz called Winter Watercolor which had some gorgeous foliage and this card was born.

The background had previously been created on one of my gel press play times with Peacock Feathers making an appearance so I decided to use it for htis card.  I stamped a mixture of all the foliage from the Tim Holtz Set for the background.  The bird was stamped and cut out with a stitched die and then extra foliage added.  I added touches of red with a Prismacolour Pencil  and used these too to colour the bird.

I added some touches of white to the foliage and added extra musical background stamps.  A simple greeting from Tim Holtz for the sentiment and some doodling around the edges and a touch of Spectrum Noir sparkle pen finished off the card.  I love how it turned out in the end. 

I'm adding this into the following :

Simon Says Stamp Wed - Fur Feathers 

Colouring with Pencils 

Peace on Earth

Lets craft and create - AG 

Polkadoodle - AG 

Outlawz Festive Friday - Christmas 

Krafty Chicks - Christmas 

INSPIRATION STATION - #74

Welcome back to another challenge at Inspiration Station and I'm looking forward to seeing what you create from our image.  

I used one of Tim Holtz Stamps from the set Ringmaster Blueprint which I thought was perfect for the image.  I added a pointer arrow and adhered it to the number 18 and decided this was going to be an 18th Birthday Card.  Not sure when I will need it but you never know.

GUEST DESIGNER - HEARTS QUEST FOR SHAPED CARDS AND TAGS

I was lucky to win the Best of Shaped Tags for this new blog and delighted to be offered a Guest Designer spot for Hearts Quest for Shaped Cards and Tags (HQRSCAT) run by Becca Sadler.  The challenge is Anything Goes.

I dug out some shaped tag die cuts I've had for years and forgot about so this was a great excuse to use a different shape.  I've created two tags from the set - a large one and a smaller one just to add a bit more interest.

The large one uses the cat from Anita Jeram's set Thank You.  I used one of the stick on stencils from Lavinia stamps to create the arch for her to sit in and various stamps from Lavinia for the outside.  For the little tag I also used the same floral stamps and a tiny cat stamp from Lavinia.  The word hugs is from an old Clearly Besotted set.  I added a brad - remember those lol - and some twine.

PEARLY SPARKLES - MASCULINE CAS

Welcome back to another challenge at Pearly Sparkles where our challenge is a Masculine CAS card.  CAS stands for Clean and Simple. 

This is a card I made for my son in law who has just started beekeeping on their small holding.  This was a perfect card for him.  The imagery came from Bipasha BK for Aallandcreate.  I kept it simple with an embossed image in brown embossing powder of the bees and then extra stamping in the background.  Of course I had to use Tim Holtz Wild Honey Distress Oxide together with some Dried Marigold. 

ADDICTED TO STAMPS AND MORE BIRTHDAYS #493

Another birthday challenge this week at Addicted to Stamps and More.  I started off my card using some Distress Oxide in Dusty Concord.  Purple is not a colour I often use but I thought I'd go for all the purples with this one.  I smooshed the ink onto the mat added water and then picked up the ink on the paper and left it to dry.  You never know what sort of background you will get.

My flower which is from Tracy Evans stamps was stamped in Wilted Violet and clear embossed.  I then used Tim Holtz water colour pencils in the purples to colour it in.  I added one of Tracy's fern stencils at the bottom and various background stamping in a very faint purple.

HOLLY & IVY CHALLENGE #185

Welcome back to another challenge at The Holly & Ivy Christmas challenge.  This is an image from Visible Image stamps I haven't used for a while.  I stamped the image of the santa first and coloured him in with Distress Inks.  I then created the background around him with Distress Oxide and added some snow splatters. There is some texture snow on the top of the wall.

THE MALE ROOM - #198 - UNDER THE SEA

This was a great challenge for me too this month from The Male Room as I realised I don't really have much in the way of Sea products in my stash.  It's not a theme I often go to.  But looking through my stamps I was delighted to find this image from AallandCreate designed by Bipasha BK from a set called Navigate Home. 

I decided to do a Tag and used my gel press to create the background with Distress Oxides in Salty Ocean, Salvaged Patina, Chipped Sapphire and Iced Spruce.  I then used black embossing powder for the stamp.  I then found a very old stamp set from Kaisercraft which had the fish and the coral images.  They were also embossed.  The words from Tim Holtz Ideaology I thought fit the piece as I'm not very confident in the sea and I loved the little metal piece with the word lost on it. 

I'm adding this into the following:

Creative Inspirations - AG 

Hearts Quest for shaped tags 

Dragonfly Dreams - Sea Life 

We love 2 create 

We love Stamping

Outlawz - card free

Tag Along - AG 

ADDICTED TO STAMPS AND MORE #492 - CHRISTMAS BAUBLE

 

Another Christmas challenge at ATSM this week.  I'm sharing a card I made with stamps by Tracy Evans.  Some are her old ones from Aallandcreate and some are her new ones under her own brand Tracy Evans Boutique Designs.  The bauble is one of her stencils and is such a great stencil to work with. 

I stamped and masked the poinsettia flower before I added the bauble to give that effect. All inks used are Versafine and Tim Holtz Distress.

I'm adding this into the following:

Krafty Chicks - Christmas 

My time to craft Christmas 

Outlawz Festive 

12 months of Christmas 

Girls Creative Christmas 

Peace on Earth

THE HOLLY AND IVY CHALLENGE #184

Welcome back to another Anything Goes Christmas Challenge at The Holly & Ivy.  

I've used the wonderful Robin stamp from Tracy Evans together with some of her foliage stamps to create this little wintery scene for my robin. I've kept it in cool colours with lots of white splatter for the snow.

I'm adding this into the following:

Krafty Chicks Christmas 

My time to craft Christmas

Outlawz Festive 

12 Months of Christmas 

DD Triple B - Bird 

ABC Challenge - I is for ice - my icy background 

Girlz Creative Christmas 

Peace on Earth - 

Inkspirational - Christmas/winter