Trees

I'm still on a roll with Christmas cards and this is another fairly simple stamped one using a stamp with matching die for the scene and trees and a silhouette one from another set for the Santa flying across the sky.     I started by stamping the scene and colouring in the trees before masking off the lower portion to brush ink across the sky area.   A few pine sprigs were stamped around the top and the silhouette Santa stamped in the sky.  The trees were then die cut and embossed before adding embossing ink to the raised areas and heat embossing using white detail powder.  A touch of glitter on the snow in the background and that's it.

I've been playing around this morning with a serious amount of snippets as well so watch out for the resulting card tomorrow.

Scenic Stamp - Creative Expressions designed by Sheena

Santa and Reindeer - from a set of seasonal Cardio stamps

Pine boughs - from a  free set of  Christmas stamps

Trees - Die from Creative Expressions

Nearly Tempted

I spotted a magazine article which was of course tempting people to buy a set of stamps at the very least and almost succumbed when I remembered I had a set of polymer stamps which could be used for my version of the idea.  Although these stamps are basically floral they aren't actual flower images, rather they are a set of separate images of quirky petals, leaves, seed pods and the like which can be built up into all manner of designs.  I started with some white card and stamped a little border along the top, then built up a flower - these areas were then masked off before creating the background using powder colours, spritzed with water and once dry the addition of some distress ink around the edges.  Once dry the masks were removed and a little detail added to the flowers using  coloured pencil.  The stamps have a companion CD so I printed off a couple of the backing papers, cut them down to size and added a simple greeting.  This was fun to do and due to the random nature of the powder pigments there is no way it can be repeated exactly but it was fun to do and I have a few more ideas ready to be tried.

Stamps - Lavender Tea set with companion CD from Polkadoodles
Pigment Powders - Pixie Powder from Cosmic Shimmer

Robin

Another quick Christmas card for the box, this time using a robin stamp which has been coloured with  watercolour brush pens.  I'm trying to keep my Christmas cards fairly flat because of the extra postage for anything with a bit more dimension.  There is some glitter on the snowy branch but not sure it shows up here.

Background paper from a free pad
Image - Creative Expressions stamp by Sheena Douglass
Colouring - Zig Clean colour fine tip brush pens
Die Cut - Sue Wilson Noble s Pierced squares

Santa and Rudolph

Two days in a row, how's that for blogging?  I've had this stamp for ever - well ever since the early days of stamping when it was possible to buy 'grab bags' of unmounted stamps which were always great value and a very varied selection.  To think that I used to buy the  double sided sticky foam to mount them and cut and sand my own wooden blocks from scraps of timber - unmounted stamps were unheard of then and as for clear polymer, certainly none around. I reckon I'm talking some 15 years ago - how things have moved on if we stop to think about it.

Anyway back to the card - the image was stamped and coloured using coloured pencils and the card was finished with a banner and sentiment mostly using up oddments of kraft card, all onto a piece of printed background paper.

Background - from a paper pad by Craftwork Cards 2015 I think
Image - stamp of unknown source in a grab bag probably over 15 years ago!
Colouring - Coloursoft pencils
Banner - dies from Stampin' Up

Pixie Snippets Playground

I've just realised I've not posted anything since the card for the Playground last Sunday - this week has just disappeared without me noticing where it went.  For my card this week I used a fairly large snippet of Centura pearl card which has been embossed using a free folder which came with a magazine some time ago and which I understand was so popular that it actually went into general production and was bought by lots of people - not surprised really, I love it.  The embossed piece was sponged with blue ink and the flowers were stamped using the same colour.  I also sponged a smaller snippet of pearl card to cut out the sentiment.  I had these leaves lying around from another project so they came in handy to finish off the card.

Today started with blue skies and sunshine, albeit a frost as well but I'm so glad I went for a nice walk this morning because by lunchtime it had come over really dark with rain and I don't think the forecast is too promising for the next couple of days - good crafting weather though.

Embossing Folder - free with magazine
Flowers - Flower Shop by Stampin' Up with matching pansy punch
Sentiment - Crafter's Companion die
Banner - Sue Wilson die
Leaves - from Jar of Love die set Stampin' Up