Autumn Colours

 The theme for the latest Allsorts Challenge is **Autumn Colours**  or, as always **Anything Goes** so as it seems to be perfect crafting weather today (AKA damp and dreary) I set about making a card using some of my Lavinia stamp collection.  It so happens that the prizes this time are also Lavinia stamps which is great.  I started by smooshing various yellow and orange Distress inks onto some watercolour paper (300 gsm) and once dry I cut out a circle and set about building a colourful scene in various browns - decided against using any black this time.  Once I'd decided that 'enough is enough' I then stencilled a diagonal sweep across the base card and simply glued the circle in place.  No sentiment just in case the recipient decides to frame this card, in which case a sentiment would be superfluous 😉.  Very therapeutic working with these beautiful stamps in such lovely warm colours.

Stamps - all Lavinia designs
Stencil - also a Lavinia design
Inks - Distress Mustard Seed, Scattered Straw, Marigold and Spiced Marmalade
          Versafine Sepia and Versafine Clair Fallen Leaves and Golden Meadow

Inspiration

 Inspiration is all around us and sometimes when I'm trying to decide what technique to use for my next card I turn to the Group of Seven Cardmakers where there is a wealth of ideas to be found along with tutorials and links to videos.  For today's card I've used a colouring technique using a Speedball Elegant Writer and if you look HERE you will find full details and examples by the various members of this talented group.

This is my first time trying this pen and it was fascinating to see just how the colour changed as I added water, blotting with kitchen paper along the way.  I started by stamping the flower using second generation Versafine Clair Twilight ink which I thought would be less harsh than using black. I'm looking forward to trying this pen on a selection of different paper or card to see what variations are possible.  For this one I used some watercolour paper.

 Stamp - Sketch Flower from Crafty Roo, fussy cut
Colouring - Speedball Elegant Writer 1.3 mm pen
Texture Background - unbranded die

Stamping Sensations September Challenge

 The theme for this month's challenge at Stamping Sensations is **Anything Goes** or **Animal Magic**  and my card is certainly in the first category and with a stretch of the imagination might be covered by the second.  I made an inky background with Distress Oxide inks and overstamped with the some word stamps and the diamond pattern.  The bird was stamped directly onto the background and then the little bird stamped again onto some white card and fussy cut with scissors.  A simple computer sentiment was added.  Some great prizes as usual this month for the lucky name pulled out of the hat.

Stamps - all from Crafty Roo

Twofer

 I don't  normally make more than one of any card design but this one really lent itself to being done as a 'twofer' because it required two pieces of double sided designer paper to be die cut for the infills.  I started with a Snippet of white card and cut the cover plate die twice before finding some suitable DSP to cut again for the infills which were alternated on each card.  Next thing was to find some toning plain card snippets for the backing layer.  A small snippet was used for the stamped sentiment and the whole panel was popped onto a 5" x 7" card blank, which left a space at the bottom.  Rather than trim the card down to suit the panel size I decided to leave it as it was and had just enough of the two background colours to die cut three little matching flowers for each card.

This is a twofer in more ways than one because I made it for the Snippets Playground challenge *use snippets* and also for the latest Allsorts challenge **add a sentiment**.  Sorry no photo of the snippets this time - I used practically every last shred of the coloured card and the tiny bits left weren't worth taking a pic so they went into the bin.  There are the usual great prizes from each challenge so why not have a rummage and see what you can come up with.

Coverplate Die - unbranded
Papers used - DSP from Butterflies set Stampin' Up (retired)
Sentiment - From Stampn' Up Daisies stamps and dies
Flowers - Spellbinders die set which was a magazine freebie