Roses

 The theme for the latest Allsorts Challenge is **anything goes with the option of roses** so here goes with my card for this two week challenge.. I've used dies to cut the layered roses, leaves and a square frame to build up a composition onto a background which has been embossed with a rose design folder. Everything is in toning shades of browns and cream with a touch of gold

Flowers - dies from Beautiful Brushstrokes dies Stampin' Up (retired)
Leaves - stamps and dies from SU Forever Fern
Frame - Creative Expressions Noble stitched frame dies (maybe no longer available)
Embossing - folder from Crafter's Companion (maybe no longer available)

Forest Toadstool

 I spent an enjoyable afternoon yesterday playing with this beautiful Forest Toadstool stamp and of course others as well to build up a mystical scene.I must say the time just flew by 😉.  I started by stamping the toadstool onto a square of white card and again onto a masking sheet so that I could fussy cut to use this as a mask when colouring the background.  Colours were blended using soft brushes and also some ink was applied through a stencil and then the mouse, snail and various foliage stamps were used.  Finally I peeled off the toadstool mask and coloured the toadstool with pencils.  I can never make up my mind about adding sentiments to this type of card and for the moment I've left this one without although I might just add a small, simple one before I send it to anyone.

Stamps - all from Lavinia, as was the stencil in the background.
Toadstool coloured using Polychromos pencils
Various Distress inks used to colour background

Fun Card

 Sharing a fun card today which I made for one of my great grandsons who had a dinosaur themed birthday party.  The image came from a CD which I've had for many years. The background paper was printed from a more recent USB and the bunting, numbers and letters were die cut using up some scraps of matching card.

Image from a My Craft Studio CD
Background - printed from a Paper Pantry USB
Bunting and Letters etc - unbranded dies and magazine free gifts from way back

Mixing it Up

 Mixing things up a bit is a great way of coming up with designs for cards and it's something I do quite often - the important thing is a bit of discipline to make sure that when finished, all the dies and/or stamps get returned to their correct storage so that each set is complete.  For this card I started with a piece of white card slightly smaller than a DL card blank and brushed it with blue and green inks before colouring and die cutting or fussy cutting a selection of bits and pieces to build up a Happy Birthday scene.  I've used a mixture of items from some different sets, a mix of current and retired items.  I must say that during the very hot spell a bit of quiet colouring and fussy cutting was just about all the crafting I could cope with.  Temperatures are much closer to normal now thank goodness and we've had some gentle rain.

Lucky Win

 I was lucky enough recently to be the winner of a give-away which Christina offers most weeks - usually a copy of a magazine along with the free gift it contains.  Owls always seem to be popular and this one die cuts nicely and has embossed and cut details as well.  There was also of course the magazine and a set of sentiment stamps.  Look out for Christina's posts on a Friday if you are interested.  For my card I started with some cream pearl card and cut a circular window before embossing with a 'bark' texture; backed it with a scrap of text paper and then added the own which I'd die cut from kraft card and rubbed lightly with some copper gilding wax.  The sentiment was one of the stamps which came as part of the magazine gift.

Embossing Folder - Stampin' Up

Allsorts Latest Challenge

 My card for this latest challenge is based on one which I spotted on Lesley's blog recently where she had used a large stamp as a background.  Seeing this reminded me that I have a very similar embossing folder from a few years ago so this is what I used for my card.  At Allsorts the theme is **anything goes with an option to create your own background** so I've inked the embossing folder and stamped trees and a deer before transferring the ink to a piece of white card by running it through the machine.  All that was needed to finish the card was a sentiment.  This way of using embossing folders was one which I'd almost forgotten about but it is a relatively quick way of making a card.  Thanks Lesley for the inspiration 😉.

Embossing - Woodland Textures Stampin' Up (retired for quite a while)

Special Delivery!

 Time to visit the Playground again and although we've just had two Christmas themed challenges, I've come up with another idea for a Christmas card even though 'anything goes' as long as Snippets are used. Apart from the white base card, everything else came from my various Snippets collections. The red layer was a fairly large snippet and I found two snippets of different Christmas papers and a piece of white which I cut with a curvy die.  Next I raided the smaller snippets collections to die cut the bicycle, tree and presents for this eco-friendly delivery.  The sentiment was one which I'd stamped and fussy cut last Christmas and not used (found in one of my pots of bits 'which will come in handy' sooner or later) 😉😉

Bicycle - Memory Box die
Tree and Presents - from a Sizzix Christmas Elf die set