Butterfly Challenge #84

The theme for this butterfly challenge is 'Y for You Choose and/or Wedgewood Blue'.  I've chosen to use a stamp from way back and have coloured the butterfly in two shades of blue which are sort of the right colour.  After stamping I masked off the butterfly and one of the smaller flowers before applying two different yellow Distress inks to an acrylic block and spritzing with water and pressed it over the image.  I then removed the mask and coloured the butterfly with pencils.  Another image was stamped so that most of the flowers could be coloured (using Distress markers) and cut out carefully with scissors to pop on top of the image for a bit of dimension.  Gems were added to the butterfly body.  The image was die cut and layered onto a blue background; a yellow lacy border was die cut from a scrap of card and a computer sentiment punched out and popped onto a die cut oval.

There is plenty of time for you to enter this challenge because it is going for longer due to school holidays.

Stamp - Harlequin Butterflies by Chocolate Baroque
Lacy Border - die from The Works
Oval - Stitched shapes from Stampin' Up

Black Poppies

They aren't in fact black poppies but they are stamped, embossed and coloured onto black card.  I stamped the image with Versamark and embossed with clear detail powder then coloured with pencils.  I quite enjoy a bit of quiet colouring and actually did a few while I was on a roll.  Background is paper printed from a CD and I just added a ribbon and simple banner sentiment. Any marks on the black area are down to the fact that my scanner glass needs cleaning - the card is pristine.

 It has been a reasonable day today although a bit dull but now it is looking as if we are in for yet another wet evening.

Image - stamp from Chocolate Baroque
Background - printed from Essence of Nature CD Artylicious
Banner - Stampin' Up stamp on Sue Wilson banner die cut
Pencils - Polychromos with just a touch of metallic pencil

Snowman

I was contemplating getting my hands on a snowman die and thinking that really I ought to resist when into my head popped a memory that I actually had one somewhere, but where.  The die I'm talking about was a very early Spellbinders one (I'd say probably from more than 10-12 years ago) from when die cutting at home was in its infancy, as was card making if we think about it.  The die came in a CD case and was a square of metal with all the various parts for cutting just holes, with cutting edges obviously but this format does make it a bit more difficult to cut out pieces in different colours - so much easier when each shape  nowadays is usually a separate die, however small.  I knew this die wasn't amongst my current storage system but a search proved fruitful so there will be no need for me to spend out for a snowman.  This was a box I'd not looked in for absolutely ages and of course I rediscovered various other quite old dies, mostly of the thicker type with foam attached (not the really thick Sizzix Bigz ones - I know where they are and use them). In the main they were Cuttlebug ones and I'm not sure they even produce dies nowadays although of course they still sell their machines.

Anyway onto the card - I cut out and assembled the components for the snowman and also die cut some trees and a curved snowscape onto which I stamped the sentiment - aided by the Misti of course.  A piece of  snowflake paper left from a previous project and now I have another card for the Christmas collection this year.

Snowman - Spellbinders die from many years ago, no longer on the market I guess
Trees - Creative Expressions die
Snowscape - Lawn Fawn stitched hills
Sentiment - a Docrafts stamp, also from way back
Sky paper - printed from Artylicious Season's Greetings CD, again from way back

Christmas Snippets

I've used one of my die cut Santas for a Snippets challenge card this week - quite a few snippets to make up the Santa and the curved strip across the card, the holly and of course the sentiment. However I'm still not even getting near to running out of small pieces of card which need using up - must try harder.

I found a piece of paper suitable as a background and the Santa was one left from when I cut and assembled several of them to use.  Some snippets of red and white card were used to make the curvy section and a snippet of red for the sentiment.  Finally I dug out some green snippets and cut three holly leaves and used tiny scraps of red for the berries.

As always there is a super card from Di this week, again with a detailed description of how it was made along with the usual helpful hint here and there.   If you take part in the challenge for an opportunity to go into the draw there is of course a terrific prize on offer - the dies and/or stamps used in her card although of course you can always play along just for fun if you don't NEED any new 'stuff'.

Santa - Tonic die
Curved Strip - Die-namics stitched scalloped edges dies
Sentiment - Tonic die
Holly - Joanna Sheen dies
Background - paper from Stampin' Up.