Allsorts Challenge #719

 The Allsorts Blog Challenge this time is **anything goes with an option to include a trio of something** and I've chosen to opt for the trio.  I had this piece of background lying around from one of my inky play sessions.  It is watercolour paper coloured using Brushos with a dash of Pixie Powder thrown in.  I decided that my trio would be these mice living dangerously, dancing on a branch and I've used various foliage stamps to build up the scene. I'm still undecided about adding a sentiment but might do so before sending this to anyone. Why not have a go yourself choosing either the anything goes or maybe you can come up with a trio of something - you might be lucky enough to win a prize 😉

Branch - stamp from Stampin' Up
Everything else stamped using Lavinia stamps

Snippets Challenge #449

 I've usually popped along to the Snippets Playground with my latest snippets card during the first week of the challenge but somehow I've lagged behind this time.  No excuse really but at least I've not missed it completely - certainly no shortage of snippets here to use up that's for sure.  I just hope there is still some hot chocolate on offer because the weather still isn't good - fancy this has been a long winter and it doesn't seem to be ending any time soon - sigh 🙄.  Anyway here's my card which has used a variety of toning snippets which I've pulled out of my collection along with a few surplus die cuts which I always seem to have left over from previous projects.  Guess I often stamp, colour and die cut too many every time I make something and as you know, I can't bear to throw anything out.  Everything used apart from the card blank came either from my snippets collection or from the container where I keep all the surplus die cuts.

Everything here is from Stampin' Up, either current or retired

Animal Theme

 The Allsorts Challenge theme this time is **anything goes with an option to include four legged friends (domestic)**.  I've chosen to use a quirky cat stamp for this fairly quick and simple card. The cats were stamped onto a piece of watercolour paper which had been 'Brusho'd' followed by a bit of partial colouring done with pencils.  A strip of the left over paper was punched to look as if it had been torn from a notebook and everything was popped onto a piece of script paper.

Stamp - Trilby Cats from Crafty Individuals
Sentiment - stamp and die from Sizzix, years old
Colour - Brusho and Polychromos pencils
Punch - from EK Success, also an old one

Stamping Sensations March Challenge

 There is a new challenge on the Stamping Sensations site and this time the theme is **anything stamped with an option of wings/tails**.  It so happened I'd stamped and coloured these owls yesterday and they were sitting patiently waiting to be made into a card.  I had this landscape designer paper handy and decided to die cut some tree trunks.  The leafy areas of the trees were also die cut from scraps of white card after I'd randomly stamped leafy texture in various shades of green.  There were no dies with the owl stamps so these were fussy cut.  Great inspiration from the Design Team and  a lovely prize for the person lucky enough to be drawn at the end of the month.

Owls - Adorable Owls stamp set from Stampin' Up (Sale-a-bration)
Trees - Aspen Trees dies and stamps from Stampin' Up

Class in the Post

Here's another card which came as part of the class in the post mentioned yesterday and this time I've adapted it to make a 5" x 7" card with the addition of a piece of toning patterned paper and another layer of grey card to match the centre mat.Everything for each card in the class comes ready cut to size - just needed to stamp a sentiment, assemble everything and pop it onto my chosen larger background

Everything apart from yellow layer is from Stampin' Up Playing in the Rain

Umbrellas

I decided I really needed to kick-start Mr Mojo who seems to have been on a prolonged break so I treated myself to a class in the post from the lovely Jenny Moors.  Getting these classes presents a great opportunity to have a play with some of the latest products from Stampin' Up and I thought this one using umbrellas and some cute critters would be fun to play with.  The SU cards are usually small in size with the American postal system in mind but I  much prefer to make larger cards so I have the added challenge of trying to do just that.   This is the first one I've made and I managed to turn it into a 6" square card by adding a square of  raindrop paper which I knew I had somewhere in my stash and I also added some additional stamped and/or die cut elements using magazine give-aways which I've had for a long time (just needed to find them though 🤣).  There are four more card sets in the class and hopefully they can all be made larger using bits from my stash.  Watch this space 😉!!

 Umbrellas and Clouds - from Playing in the Rain Stampin' Up
Wellies and Puddle - using a magazine give-away stamp/die set
Sentiment - from the same stamp set
Rainy Paper - from my stash
Other layers came in the class kit Stampin' Up
 

Snippets Challenge #448

 I had a lucky win recently from a Challenge blog and the prize was this great Snowman die set - hence my entry into the Playground challenge this time is a Christmas card..  As usual the only part of this project which didn't come from my snippets collection is the blank square card.  The snowflake background was trimmed from a fairly large snippet to fit and then I pulled out white, red, green, black, grey and orange to die cut the many layers  which make up this fun snowman. The sentiment was stamped onto another white snippet and fussy cut and finally even smaller snippets were used to add some snowflakes.  

Snowman die set from Sizzix (Tim Holtz)