Playground Challenge # 465

 Well I'm making a quick dash over to the Snippets Playground this morning with my homework - and why a quick dash?  That's because it is raining pretty steadily for the second day in a row.  I just hope there is plenty of hot chocolate on offer 😉😉.  Apart from having used a card blank, everything else on this card came from my various snippets collections.  Started with a large snippet of patterned paper trimmed to fit the card, then sorted out small pieces of white, yellow, greens and mauves to cut the other elements.  The sentiment was stamped using purple ink and the final addition was a scattering of matching pearls.  As usual there is a lovely prize on offer for one lucky person so why not use up some of your snippets to be in with a chance of winning 😊.

Trying Techniques

 Trying different techniques is often the way to go if ideas are lacking and I enjoy watching card making videos on YouTube where a wide variety can be found.  I particularly like seeing videos presented by Chrissie Stokes and of course the offerings from Lavinia are well worth a watch (many others are also available).  Anyway today's card was inspired by a recent video from Chrissie who, in turn, had been watching Lou Collins using this technique.  I've used a stamp which was with a recent Indigo Blu boxed magazine kit, stamped onto some watercolour card and heat embossed with white before adding quite a bit of water and a selection of Distress Oxide inks, drying and re-applying until I was happy.  I started with some random splodges (technical term) and then added more localised colour to the flowers and leaves, finally adding some darker ink to the background areas.  If you watch the videos from either Chrissie or Lou there are lots of hints and tips.  The final touch was just a simple sentiment produced in Word, and if you don't know how easy it is to produce light lettering on a dark background just watch one of the videos and all will be revealed. 

Stamp - from Indigo Blu magazine kit
Distress Oxide - Walnut Stain, Rusty Hinge, Iced Spruce, Cracked Pistachio
Embossing - Wow Opaque white

Outing for the Pets

 These pets are out early to post their Christmas cards.  The design came about because I wanted to use the lovely German Postbox die cut which I'd received from a friend.  Coloured it using alcohol pens and then racked my brains for ways it could be incorporated into a card design.  I eventually came up with the idea of the pets and a few robins for good measure.  You will see I've  again used the tree die as a background but with some different DSP for the sky.  Sorted out some suitable snippets of card, die cut and assembled the dog and cat; stamped, coloured and die cut the robins and embossed a piece of curvy white card with some 'snow'.  I really enjoy dreaming up this sort of design and then playing around with the components to build the card which will hopefully make someone smile at Christmas.  Mixing items from various stamp/die sets is a fun thing to do but I'm always careful to return them to their 'home' when the work is finished 😉

Background - Aspen Tree die from Stampin' Up
Robins - from Quite Curvy stamp/die set also Stampin' Up (retired)
Cat and Dog - dies from Globeland (Amazon)
German Post Box - die from Charlie and Paulchen (courtesy of a generous friend)

Christmas Kickstart Challenge

 It is a very special Kickstart challenge this month and you can read all about it on their blog HERE

You will probably have gathered that the theme is **CATS** as well as Christmas of course and for my card I've chosen some wintry trees and added black cats and a few flying birds - fairly simple but at least it is in keeping with the theme.  I've used some snowflake background paper to showcase the trees.

Trees - die from Stampin' Up
Cats - dies set from Impression Obsession (years old)
Flying birds - dies from Gummiapan

Two Challenges

 Don't you just love 'two for the price of one' and this is happening here with one card for two current challenges.  One is the Snippets Playground and the other is Allsorts..  As usual anything goes for the Snippets challenge as long as snippets have been used and Allsorts theme is autumn leaves.

For this card I searched my 'inky play' snippets collection and found enough of a piece which had been coloured using a selection of Oxide inks in autumn colours so some distressed leaves were cut from this piece (those are my Snippets).  I then had to cut into a new piece of cream card to make a layer to fit the card blank and used a leafy cut out border die, placing another inky piece of card behind the aperture.  This was left over from a shaving foam playtime so another Snippet.  The Autumn leaves are covered for the Allsorts challenge with the die cuts and the colours chosen.  The leaves have been edged with some gilding wax but that doesn't really show up in the picture.

If you want proof of 'great  minds thinking alike' it is worth popping along to this blog where the talented Sarn has used the self same autumn leaf dies with some clever background work.

Leafy Border - unbranded die
Leaves - Tim Holtz Leafy Fragments

White Christmas

 I have another white on white card to share today, made using items I've had for some years along with a couple of die cut trees which were gifted to me recently.  I simply cut a square aperture in a piece of white card, backed it with an embossed falling snow design before adding the die cut 'snowflake' word and the trees.  Glamour dust was added to the 3D elements for a bit of sparkle.

Snowflake - die from Sheena Douglass - no longer available
Embossing Folder - also from Sheena and again, no longer available
Trees - Gummiapan 'Fluffy Trees' courtesy of a generous friend

Allsorts Challenge #747

 There is a *four-legged friends* theme for the Allsorts challenge this time and I've made a Christmas card using some stamped die cuts which were gifted to me by a kind friend last Christmas.  I did use some of them last year but came across a few unused ones when trying to bring a bit of order to the chaos which is my craft room.  I coloured the images using alcohol pens, found a piece of Christmas background paper and put everything together fore this fairly quick card which I reckon fits the Allsorts theme.

Background - Christmas download pack from Buddly Crafts
Everything else was from MFT Happy Pawlidays stamp and die set