W is for Wisteria

It is time to be posting off the two tags for November and then just two to make and post for next month and I will have a beautiful collection of 26 'swaps'.  I won't be too sorry to reach the end of these swaps because while I've really enjoyed making the tags and of course receiving some in exchange, there have been months where it has been a fight against time to get them done and some months severe taxing of the brain cells to fit stamps etc to the letters..  Luckily I have the Chocolate Baroque Wisteria Lane stamp set so that was an obvious choice for this month and I added a die cut picket fence along with a stamped and decoupaged bird bath from another older set of CB stamps to complete the Wisteria 'garden'.

I realise as I'm typing this that the Sunday Stamper challenge this week is on the theme of BIRDS so I will enter the tag into that one as well.

Stitching

The autumnal theme continues on Make My Monday blog and this week the topic is STITCHING - REAL OR FAUX.   I've employed a bit of artistic licence here and gone with the mellow creamy browns of the season and I'd say this Wellington Bear from Papermania has reached the autumn of his life!!  A touch fanciful maybe??  I went for the faux stitching with a stitch stamp from Creative Expressions - keep meaning to actually stitch onto a card but just don't get around to it somehow. Background and various layers are all Papermania papers and there is a layer of decoupage on Wellington (I try to keep cards fairly flat these days because of the postage costs.  Often people won't buy a card if they think it will incur extra postage.  There are some great Design Team cards on the MMM blog - well worth a visit.

Floral Theme

The theme this week on Addicted to Stamps and More challenge is FLOWERS  so not too difficult to find a floral stamp in my collection.  This stamp comes from Crafty Individuals and is a favourite of mine because it lends itself to all kinds of techniques.  This time I've chosen to go back to a technique I've not used for ages using alcohol inks with acetate and tissue paper.  Originally this involved using a particular liquid floor polish which if I recall was often difficult to come by and the whole technique was a bit messy and took ages to dry.  This time I used Glossy Accents which dried a lot more speedily.  The finished panel was trimmed and mounted onto  black card; backing paper is from Prima and has been overstamped with a flourish stamp (Chocolate Baroque) in green;   black card was embossed using a Cuttlebug folder, then spritzed with Green Glimmer Mist; the butterflies were stamped onto some of the green background scraps using a free stamp from Craft Stamper, cut out then sprayed with Goosebumps.  A greeting and a few pearls and that's it - a floral card.

Acomplete change in the weather - after yesterday's beautiful sunshine it is very dark and lashing with rain!!

Special Request

Good Morning all - a beautiful sunny morning with blue skies, albeit a bit chilly due to frost overnight, but it is definitely good to see the sun.

I received a request from a friend to make a birthday card for her husband who is a keen amateur artist and I agreed because I knew there was an image on one of the My Craft Studio discs featuring an artist.  Unfortunately my memory didn't serve me too well as the 'artist' was actually a female one called Violet!! However there is a companion disc with a character called Alfie so with a bit of editing and playing around within the programme I was able to produce a male artist and of course I could include her husband's name on the greeting and on the insert so hopefully she will think this card suitable. Backing papers are also from the same disc and I added some pen squiggles - the paint tube and palette were cut out and layered for dimension.