Birds and Bees for Allsorts

 The theme for  Allsorts challenge #830, chosen by Ellie, is ** I spy with my little eye, something beginning with B** or, as usual, there is the *anything goes option*.  There are two prizes of coordinating stamps and dies - more details can be found on the Allsorts Blog.  Time to get thinking of what you can make to be in with a chance.

For my DT card this time I actually ended up with two , both of which match  the theme - one with Birds and another with bees.  For the bird card I made my version of a tutorial from Sharon Goold which took my fancy and I was quite pleased with the result. although I can't claim credit for the design. It is more or less self explanatory but I added some detail within the moon using part of an ink blot stencil

Stamps - all  Lavinia
Stencil - ink blots by Marianne Designs
Sentiment - produced using MS Word
Background - Distress and Elements ink pads
Wire - hand drawn using black fine liner pen

For my second card I turned to die cutting and made this 'Bee Happy' card using some slatted hexagon dies and some of the dies from a honey bee set.  The background paper was from my stash and the sentiment was a stamp which was part of a magazine give-away from several years ago.

Background - printed from a Buddly Crafts download
Sentiment - stamp, part of a magazine gift from several years back
Dies - Slatted Hexagons from Craft Addiction UK
Bee Dies - Honey Bee die set also from Craft Addiction UK

Travelling Alarm Clock

I've made another tag for the current Tag-along (and ATCs) Challenge where the theme is **Travel**. I've die cut a fairly large tag which was then smooshed with Distress Oxide inks and over-stamped using stamps from a couple of sets which I've had in my stash since probably somewhere around the early2010's.  The Steampunk 'alarm clock' was stamped and embossed, fussy cut and coloured using pencils with some gold paint on the face, bells and key.  The stamped words came from the same set of stamps.

Tag - Largest one from set by Tim Holtz, Sizzix
Clock and Words - Steampunkery stamp set Chocolate Baroque Glenda Waterworth Design
Background stamping - Punky Romance stamps Chocolate Baroque Glenda Waterworth Design
Colouring - Inktense pencils and Kuretake gold glimmer paint
Distress Oxide inks in various shades of cream and brown

Dancing Mice

 I've been playing with more of my Lavinia stamps - such fun and I often don't know exactly what I'm going to end up with.  I started by stamping the pile of books slightly to the left of my square mat because I wanted to add the sentiment towards the right hand side.  I covered the books with masking fluid and once dry I put the circular sticker mask aperture in place so that I could add some colour for the background and also stamp the mice, bells and foliage.  Once I was happy with the result I removed the mask, and also the masking fluid from the books which I then coloured using Inktense pencils and some gold pen to decorate the spines.  Final thing was to stamp the sentiment 

Stamps - Lavinia designs
Sentiment - Wiry Words from Creative Designs (a very old set)

Butterflies

 I have a butterfly card to share with you today and I've used some slatted rectangle dies along with three different sizes of butterfly..  I had a session recently when I coloured a few A4 sheets of card using different mixtures of my Pixie powders with some spray starch, followed by covering the area with scrunched cling film and leaving it to dry naturally.  The leaving to dry bit was the hardest for me because I'm always impatient to see how the colours have turned out 🤣. I used all three of the slatted rectangle dies to cut into a piece of white card and then backed the whole thing with a slightly larger piece of Designer parchment paper which toned nicely with the butterflies which I'd cut from one of my Pixie powder  backgrounds, adding some gilding wax.  The sentiment was cut from white card and gilded also. 

Parchment paper - from Clarity stamps Indian Summer designer collection
Slatted and Butterfly dies - from Craft Addictions UK
Sentiment - from a long retired Stampin' Up set (Hey Chick)