Flowers

 Today's card is a floral one - a change from making cards for Christmas.  I was sorting out some of my older stamps recently - wooden ones which I rarely use these days and came across the crackle effect one which I've used to make a background for this card.  It's not that I don't have loads of patterned paper but I thought this would work to showcase the pretty flowers in their jars.  The jars were die cut from some dark blue pearlescent card scraps and the flowers from left over oddments of watercolour paper which I then coloured using Distress ink pens.  The sentiment was printed using the computer and die cut with a handy small rectangle die.

Dies - Tim Holtz floral set which included the jars
Stamp - Hampton Arts USA wooden stamp, years old

Trees and Leaves

 This week's challenge at Allsorts is **A/G or trees and leaves** and having made this card I realise that although it has trees  they have no leaves but I suppose in any case it will fit the A/G (anything goes) category so all is not lost 😀😀.  Some great inspiration from the design team as usual.

Stamps - Lavinia
Sentiment - produced on computer

White Christmas

 Time for another challenge over at the Playground, where as you probably know by now we are encouraged to use up our snippets. A little while ago I had purchased some white card blanks but it wasn't until I opened the pack to use them that I noticed quite a proportion of them had damaged corners - I guess the pack had been dropped at some point. Anyway I wasn't sure where they had come from so rather than faff about trying to find out I decided to cut my losses and simply trim off the damaged part, leaving me with some sizeable snippets of white card  as if I didn't have enough white snippets already but heigh-ho that's the way the cookie crumbles 😀.  This has led me into making a white-on-white Christmas card for the challenge and apart from the card blank (undamaged) everything else was cut from the snippets.  There's always a silver lining and in this case at least the snippets actually matched the background perfectly 😉.  Why not pop along to the Playground to use up some of your snippets - a lovely prize as usual and possibly hot chocolate and crumpets if you time your visit well!.

Dies from Stampin'up, Lawn Fawn and some unbranded ones
Sentiment Die - a magazine gift from several years back 

Christmas Wreath

 I've made another Christmas card even though I still have quite a lot left from last year's makes but I feel I should open up my box of Christmas themed stamps and dies because I'm sure they need an airing. I started by using a circle mask and lightly inking around with a  light green before adding the twigs, holly leaves and berries.  The tiny berries on the holly were coloured with a glaze gel pen but of course that doesn't show in the picture.  The larger berries were coloured using watercolour pencil and the final thing was to add the stamped sentiment.

Stamps by Lavinia apart from the twig which was from Card-IO
Sentiment - from a set of free magazine gift stamps by Phill Martin

Christmas Theme

 The theme this month at We Love Stamping is **Christmas** - who would have guessed 😉.  For my card I've picked up on an idea inspired by the talented Jo Rice.  Branches and berries have been stamped onto cream card and some tiny die cut baubles have been added along with a stamped greeting. Do pop along to visit and see the inspiration from the design team.

Stamps - Lavinia Stamps branches and berries
Greeting - free magazine gift stamp
Baubles - dies which were also a free magazine gift from a previous year

Challenges

The latest challenges seem mostly to be based around a **Christmas** theme and Stamping Sensations for November is no exception with some beautiful examples from the Design team.  Also there are two super Christmas themed prizes for  lucky winners.  My card is very much based on one of the brilliant demonstrations from Tracey of Lavinia Stamps.  It is a DL card and I've used Distress Oxide inks in various shades of blue for the scene and for the stamping Versafine Clair was used along with a little bit of white embossing on the branches.  Really enjoyed making this one 😉

Stamps - by Lavinia Stamps
Inks - Distress Oxides and Versafine Clair Twilight

Snowflakes

 I see that the latest Allsorts challenge is **sparkle and shine** and this recently made Christmas card came to mind because sparkly silver card has been used behind the die cut snowflakes and also for the decorative word which is the main feature of the card.  A piece of suitable paper came from my Christmas oddments box, job done - another card ready for the festive season.

Background - printed using Season's Greetings CD from Artylicious
Large Word - die from Creative Expressions
Snowflakes - die from my Christmas collection gathered over many years