Allsorts Challenge #698

Another challenge from Allsorts and of course the opportunity to win a great prize. The theme this time is **Add a Sentiment** and as usual there is plenty of inspiration from the design team.

I decided to make a feature of the sentiment by re-visiting the eclipse technique which is something I've not seen for quite a while - ideas seem to come and go don't they and most techniques come around at some point as a reminder.  I started by stamping some flowers onto a square of card before using a die to cut out the words,  adding a die cut label with the final word, which could have been anything but I chose 'birthday'.  The words stand out well in real life but, as is often the case, the picture doesn't show it as clearly 🙄 

There are various ways of achieving this effect and plenty of YouTube tutorials available. 

Flowers - Stamps from Art Gallery set Stampin' Up
Words die - matching die set Art Gallery Stampin' Up
Birthday - word produced using Microsoft Word

Snippets Challenge # 439

 It's the turn of Sarn to host the Playground Challenge this fortnight  and she has used a small snippet of white card on which to draw one of her beautiful 'tangle' designs.  It doesn't matter how few or how many snippets you use, you can still enter with a chance of winning as great prize so why not pop along for a visit - hot chocolate is usually on offer too now the weather has turned colder 😉😉.

Everything, with the exception of the base card, came from my snippets mountain which, as I've mentioned before, never seems to diminish.  I found a square of white and a square of blue which were trimmed slightly to fit the card blank.  A stitched circle die was used to cut out the apertures, leaving three blue circles to pop back into the 'mountain' for another day and the white square was embossed.  I then used small snippets of white to stamp and colour the hippos, with even smaller snippets of colours for the accessories.  I do hope they are in a heated swimming pool 😄.  The layers were put together with thin foam pads so that the hippos could peep out of the apertures.

Circle Dies - Creative Expressions
Embossing Folder - Creative Expressions
Hippos - Stampin' Up, as was the sentiment die

Autumn Colours

 My attention has been drawn to another stamping challenge HERE and the theme for this month is **Colours of Autumn**.  As my second Bumble Lodge card has been coloured in shades of yellow, green and brown I thought I'd pop over there to share it.  This one was coloured using pencils and the surrounding area inked with Distress ink and some stamped stars.

Stamps - from Lavinia Stamps
Stencil - also Lavinia
Lodge Coloured using Faber Castell Polychromos pencils

New Home

 I'm not at all sure that many people will be moving house in the current financial climate but I have made a 'New Home' card anyway because I just wanted an excuse to use this beautiful stamp.  This is a great stamp to colour and I  actually stamped and coloured two in different colourways.  This one was coloured using Inktense pencils and a water brush and the other, which you will see another day, was coloured using Polychromos pencils.  I started by cutting a large tag from watercolour paper and once the image was finished I sponged with toning colours, adding ribbon to match.  The DL base card was stamped with some 'splodges'before adhering the tag and the words.

Image - Bumble Lodge from Lavinia Stamps
Tag - die set from Sizzix

Autumn

 The theme for the current Stamping Sensations challenge is **all things Autumn** and of course the project must have stamping as a main feature.  For my card I started by applying yellow and orange Distress inks to a piece of white card and then flicking with some water for a faux bleach effect.  Once dry I used stamps from a variety of sources to build up the design..  The panel was then mounted onto brown to tone with the various Autumn colours in the stamping. 

Gate, Tree and Birds - stamps from Card-IO
Foliage - mix of Lavinia stamps with a floral border free stamp (magazine gift)

A Day Out

 This card was made quite a while ago but not posted here at the time.  I had acquired some beautiful scenic DSP which came as 6" squares and I used some of the sheets cut into four to make a selection of cards, thus making it stretch a little further.  I imagined someone stopping  the car  to just sit for a while and enjoy the peaceful scene.

 Scene - New Horizons DSP Stampin' Up
Trellis die - a very old Sizzix 'Bigz' die
Car - die from a magazine gift set

Cat and Mouse

 Who says cat and mouse can't be friends and share a windowsill to gaze at the moon - they can in my fantasy Lavinia world 😉.  This card was inspired by something I spotted a while back when trawling the net - as you do - but unfortunately I couldn't find it again and can't remember the source.  I used a die to cut the opening into a piece of white card which I then embossed with a brick wall pattern before inking with grey and black Oxide inks.  The opening position was lightly marked onto another piece of white card so that I could build up the scene before layering the pieces together on a card.

Embossing Folder - Stampin' Up
Cat and Mouse - Lavinia stamps