Bah Humbug Challenge 17

The challenge at Bah Humbug this week is 'pleats and ruffles' - it is wonderful how the residents of Humbug Hall manage to come up with such diverse topics to challenge us.  I chose to pleat some gold ribbon as an embellishment across the bottom of my card.  Background paper is from a Papermania pad; the Santa image is a stamp from a set by Habico although I think it was at one time available as a wooden sttamp; the Christmas light border was cut using a Spellbinders die and coloured using the die as a stencil; a computer sentiment was punched out with Stampin Up ovals.

Forgotten Friday 14

As I am possibly the only person with zero interest in today's proceedings I'm happily dabbling in my craft room and I've just made this card for Judith's Forgotten Friday challenge.  Like Judith I was looking through my drawers of wooden stamps recently looking for one which I knew was there somewhere and in the course of this search was reminded of many of them which haven't seen the light of day for a very long time. The stamps used on today's card are all on a Judikins wooden cube stamp and another thing which I've not actually used lately either is my brayer (in fact I'd tidied it away in a recent re-organisation and had trouble finding it).  The colours are from a Big and Juicy ink pad and the images were cut out using Nestabilities.  The sentiment was computer generated and punched using Stampin Up punches.  Background paper is from Echoes of Italy collection so no connection with zebras but the colour seemed to be right!!

Funky Hand Spots and Stripes

The challenge this month on the Funky Hand blog is to use stripes and spots which is fairly straightforward as there are so many lovely papers to choose from as downloads and on their CDs.  I've used a stamped Forever Friends image (Papermania stamp) coloured with pencils and  two papers from the Funky Hand Colour Me Happy range.  I stamped a message and a little football from the same stamp set.

Faux Postage

I spent quite a bit of time making this card but thoroughly enjoyed the process despite a setback along the way.  First of all I produced the faux postage stamps using an acetate mask and some teeny tiny stamps from Chocolate Baroque - the templates for the stamp outline and the mask are available as a download from them also.  The background was made by stamping a large text stamp (Stampin Up) onto white glossy card and embossing with clear powder.This was then sponged with distress inks and allowed to dry before placing copy paper over and ironing with a hot iron to melt the embossing before overstamping with various postage themed stamps and this is where the setback occurred..  I had been reminded of this technique by seeing a recently posted card on a friend's blog and I actually had to contact her for help when my first effort turned to disaster because the copy paper welded itself to my lovely background.  This was the first time I'd tried this ironing technique and hadn't realised that the copy paper had to be removed quickly while it was still hot - isn't it great to have helpful crafty friends??  Thanks Karen.

A Blog Award

I’ve been lucky enough to have been given this blog award by my friend Anne and have to do the following things

Step 1 - Make a post linking back to the person who gave you the award!
Step 2 - Share 7 random things about yourself
Step 3 – Award 7 recently discovered bloggers with this award
Step 4 – Contact these bloggers and tell them they’ve won the award

Here goes with seven random things (difficult to decide what to say) –

I’m definitely not young
I enjoy lots of different crafts (too many really) – think ‘Jack of all trades’!!
I collect stamps and I don’t mean the paper kind
I spend too much time at the computer
I’m a member of the Chocolate Baroque Guild
I’m a member of the Beadworkers Guild
I always try to adopt a positive attitude

I would like to pass this award onto

Eileen - Cuttlebug Cupboard
Sue - The Making Room
Lesley - Loves and Hugs
Judith - Poppy Cottage
Sue - Crafty Corner
Rita - RMG Creations
Sue - The Messy Craftroom

Phew - that was a long post and I do hope I've got all the links right, now all that is left is to contact the seven people to tell them they have an award.

Doodle Birds and Butterflies

I was lucky enough to win a plate of these great Doodle stamps in a blog candy give-away from
Chocolate Baroque and had fun with Distress inks on this card. The background was sponged with three colours of Distress ink and then overstamped with various stamps from the plate.  For the image I put some of the inks onto a craft mat, spritzed with water and then mopped up the colour with some white card then stamped with Versamark and embossed with white detail powder.  The ribbon was coloured with just one of the colours in the same way. A flower was built up from oddments in my flower collection, the swirl was cut from a scrap of the previously coloured white card and a small dragonfly was stamped, cut out and added for some dimension.  There are lots of lovely designs on these plates and I can see I'm going to be using them again and again.

                              

Bah Humbug Challenge 16

The challenge over at Bah Humbug this week is - the man himself, Santa Claus - so I turned to Joanna Sheen's Enchanted Christmas CD set which has lots of Santa images.  I've chosen one of my all time favourites and printed it off in two sizes together with the accompanying background papers. I coloured a peel-off bow with a matching Copic pen, added a computer greeting with a bit of matting and layering and that's it really for this week.