Fun Anniversary Card

 The February theme at We Love Stamping is **ROMANCE**, very apt for this Valentine month and I've chosen to take along an Anniversary card featuring a couple of frogs which have been stamped, coloured and die cut.  The large heart background was cut in two shades of pink, as was the shaped sentiment tag.  I also cut out a few more smaller hearts for added interest.  The sentiment was also stamped onto a piece of white card and then die cut..

Hearts - dies from Tonic - quite old so possibly no longer available
Sentiment Stamp - from a magazine freebie set, also from years ago
Sentiment Tag - from a Sue Wilson die set, again old so maybe no longer available
Frogs - from an unbranded stamp set, coloured using Inktense pencils

Snippets Playground Challenge #473

 Here is my homework for the latest Snippets Playground Challenge.  Sarn is in charge this time and she has made a super card from some of her lovely snippets.  Of course there is a great prize to be won by the lucky person whose name is drawn at the end of the fortnight.

For this card I decided to use up a snippet of card which I'd coloured using various Pixie Powders and had a fancy to use my Crazy Bird stamps although when I started I had no idea what the finished result was going to be.  Once I'd stamped and die cut the birds I decided I wasn't too keen on the outer margins of the die cuts which looked a bit too 'spotty' so I trimmed them much closer to the line with scissors - better!.  Next I scrabbled through my box of sundry die cuts, mostly white ones, which I always save because they might be useful one day, and found some leafy branches.  I coloured these using Distress ink pens and found some larger white snippets of card to cut the circle and to stamp and die cut the sentiment tags.  Another little problem with the birds was that being stamped onto inky card their beaks and eyes were somewhat 'lost' so I stamped again onto snippets of white card and fussy cut the eyes and beaks so they could be layered.  I also added a bit more colour to the bird bodies using coloured pencils.  Found a snippet of blue card to tone with the birds and then assembled the card - that's it, job done 😉

Actually remembered to take a pic of my snippets!!

Birds - Crazy Birds Sizzix Tim |Holtz
Branches - a very old Sizzix die

Toadstools

 This card was relatively quick to put together once I'd spent some time die cutting and assembling the group of toadstools which as you can see is made up of quite a few separate and tiny pieces.  I did some light stencilling onto a piece of cream card slightly smaller than the base card.  My original intention was to use just the group of toadstools but they looked a bit lost on their own so I die cut and coloured some grasses to pop behind them, finally adding a sentiment stamped in brown.  Colouring was done using alcohol pens.

Froggy Birthday

 A fun birthday card from me today.  I had a little stamping session with a set of frog stamps and enjoyed colouring the images which were then die cut ready to be made into cards.  The frog is leaping about - as they do - in celebration of someone's birthday which should raise a smile I think.  The background was stamped onto a piece of white card and the sky area brushed with some blue ink before adding the die cuts.  

 Water - a retired Stampin' Up stamp
Grasses - stamps from Inkylicious
Frog and waterlily - unbranded stamp/die set
Colouring - Inktense pencils and water brush

Today's Card

I do hope you're not bored by my recent posts using items from the famous Gummiapan mystery bag and after this one there might be a break from seeing them while I put the rest to one side and get into using other items from my stash.  For this one I die cut the cow head in black and again in white so that I could swap the pieces around to make a couple of Friesians.  Next I had a scrabble around in my pot of miscellaneous die cut bits and pieces, mostly left overs from previous projects, to see what I could use to build up a card.  The result is this country scene.  The  back layer is a brick wall effect achieved with an embossing folder, followed by a snippet of patterned paper which looks like sky and green for the ground.  The cows are peering over a 'fence' made using three strips from a die set which has a quite different purpose and finally I added some corn and grasses  which were also loitering in the 'useful bits' pot.

 Wall - embossing folder from Stampin' Up
Landscape background - New Horizons DSP also SU
Fence - Beautiful Brush Strokes dies SU
Corn - from Hey Chick set SU (retired)
Grasses - from two other retired SU sets

Snippets Time Again

 Time for a new challenge in the Snippets Playground and I've used yet another item from my recently purchased mystery bag of retired dies and stamps from Gummiapan UK.  There were dies of two sizes in this set and I've used the larger of the two.  I translated the Swedish name of the set to be 'oval gems' but really had to think hard of ways to use them effectively.  I finally decided the larger die of the two would perhaps work as a sort of paperclip to hold some snippets of torn papers so I cut it in dark brown card and added a bit of gilding wax for interest.  The torn papers were all from my snippets collection and as usual the only non-snippet thing here is the base card which is 5" x 7".  As one of the torn pieces was a music one I've added a treble clef, also cut from a dark brown snippet and touched with gilding wax.  Another great and varied prize this time around, good luck everyone.

Oval 'paperclip' - Gummiapan UK (retired)
Notebook Punch - EK Success
Treble Clef - a very ancient die from Marianne
Sentiment - Tim Holtz stamps

Monsters

 This is another card made using one of the stamps in my bargain Mystery bag.  The monster was stamped a couple of times onto scraps of card, coloured using alcohol markers and then fussy cut with scissors. I thought it would be fun to imagine they were singing a birthday greeting so I stamped some notes and a stave, finally adding the 'text speak' sentiment.  That's it, a fairly CAS card making use of another of my newly acquired stamps and dies.  The square mat was cut using a die already in my collection and was backed with a plain square to match one of the monsters

Music Stamps - Lavinia
Monster stamps - Gummiapan (retired)
Square and Greeting -  dies from Gummiapan
Colouring - Copic alcohol markers