White Christmas

 Time for another challenge over at the Playground, where as you probably know by now we are encouraged to use up our snippets. A little while ago I had purchased some white card blanks but it wasn't until I opened the pack to use them that I noticed quite a proportion of them had damaged corners - I guess the pack had been dropped at some point. Anyway I wasn't sure where they had come from so rather than faff about trying to find out I decided to cut my losses and simply trim off the damaged part, leaving me with some sizeable snippets of white card  as if I didn't have enough white snippets already but heigh-ho that's the way the cookie crumbles 😀.  This has led me into making a white-on-white Christmas card for the challenge and apart from the card blank (undamaged) everything else was cut from the snippets.  There's always a silver lining and in this case at least the snippets actually matched the background perfectly 😉.  Why not pop along to the Playground to use up some of your snippets - a lovely prize as usual and possibly hot chocolate and crumpets if you time your visit well!.

Dies from Stampin'up, Lawn Fawn and some unbranded ones
Sentiment Die - a magazine gift from several years back 

Christmas Wreath

 I've made another Christmas card even though I still have quite a lot left from last year's makes but I feel I should open up my box of Christmas themed stamps and dies because I'm sure they need an airing. I started by using a circle mask and lightly inking around with a  light green before adding the twigs, holly leaves and berries.  The tiny berries on the holly were coloured with a glaze gel pen but of course that doesn't show in the picture.  The larger berries were coloured using watercolour pencil and the final thing was to add the stamped sentiment.

Stamps by Lavinia apart from the twig which was from Card-IO
Sentiment - from a set of free magazine gift stamps by Phill Martin

Christmas Theme

 The theme this month at We Love Stamping is **Christmas** - who would have guessed 😉.  For my card I've picked up on an idea inspired by the talented Jo Rice.  Branches and berries have been stamped onto cream card and some tiny die cut baubles have been added along with a stamped greeting. Do pop along to visit and see the inspiration from the design team.

Stamps - Lavinia Stamps branches and berries
Greeting - free magazine gift stamp
Baubles - dies which were also a free magazine gift from a previous year

Challenges

The latest challenges seem mostly to be based around a **Christmas** theme and Stamping Sensations for November is no exception with some beautiful examples from the Design team.  Also there are two super Christmas themed prizes for  lucky winners.  My card is very much based on one of the brilliant demonstrations from Tracey of Lavinia Stamps.  It is a DL card and I've used Distress Oxide inks in various shades of blue for the scene and for the stamping Versafine Clair was used along with a little bit of white embossing on the branches.  Really enjoyed making this one 😉

Stamps - by Lavinia Stamps
Inks - Distress Oxides and Versafine Clair Twilight

Snowflakes

 I see that the latest Allsorts challenge is **sparkle and shine** and this recently made Christmas card came to mind because sparkly silver card has been used behind the die cut snowflakes and also for the decorative word which is the main feature of the card.  A piece of suitable paper came from my Christmas oddments box, job done - another card ready for the festive season.

Background - printed using Season's Greetings CD from Artylicious
Large Word - die from Creative Expressions
Snowflakes - die from my Christmas collection gathered over many years

Allsorts Challenge #700

 An extra special week on the Allsorts blog with it being their 700th challenge and as they are asking for something which celebrates a special occasion  I've chosen to go with Christmas.  Do pop along to see the special occasions chosen by the talented guest designer and the regular design team members.  Some great prizes to be won as well.

A generous blogging friend kindly sent me this reindeer stamp so of course I had to feature him on a card straight away.  Background was produced using Distress Oxide inks and the details stamped using Versafine Clair.

Stamps - by Lavinia Stamps

Snippets Challenge #440

 The current challenge over at the Playground has an optional theme this time and yes, you've guessed it, Halloween or Autumn although if you want to play along with 'anything goes' as usual then that's fine.  Plenty of fun things going on there as well with hot soup, witches brew and the like and there's a rumour that the residents are dressing up😉.  Of course there is a great prize to be won  so why not delve into your supply of snippets and have a go.

I have no need of a Halloween card but I did decide to go along with the Autumnal idea and everything apart from the card blank was taken from my snippets mountain - mostly using white or cream snippets which I've coloured.  The first thing was to find some not too small pieces which were smooshed through a selection of Distress Oxide inks which, once dry, were used to die cut the larger leaves with the addition of a touch of gold glimmer here and there.  The toadstool and other small pieces were die cut from the cream and then coloured using Distress markers; the two layers of wreath were cut from snippets of brown and green.I found a larger cream snippet which was trimmed to fit onto the card, leaving a small margin and another die was used to cut out the corner detail, backed with yet another snippet of text paper, adding a few inky splodges along the way for added interest.  I even used a tiny snippet of raffia tied into a knot - you will have gathered by now that I rarely throw anything away if I think it could be used 🤣.

Dies used - from FIVE different Tim Holtz (Sizzix) sets