'Tis The Season

Hi everyone.  Can you believe that today is the 1st of December!!  (Oooooooohhhh!!  Not long to go until Father Christmas comes!!)  The trouble is we have got Christmas weather now and I just know that all this Christmassy white stuff will have vanished by the time Christmas gets here - it always does!!  Oh for a proper white Christmas!!

Anyway enough of me whittering on about Christmas - today I've popped on to tell you that as it is the 1st of December it means that it is the start of a brand new ATC swap over on The Stamp Man's ATC Swap blog.  The theme for this one is 'Tis The Season so as you can see I opted to go for a wintery looking Christmas tree using my Swirly Trees stamp set.

I embossed my actual ATC using a Papermania Snowflake embossing folder and very lightly coloured the embossed snowflakes using a pale lilac Copic marker. I stamped and embossed the tree border using a white inkpad and Detail White embossing powder onto mauve Bazzill card.  For the main image, I stamped using black Memento ink and then coloured the image using Copics before cutting it out and mounting it to my ATC.

Once I'd coloured my tree I then used my Ranger Inkssentials White Opaque pen to trace over the branches of the tree and also to make the background dots white to emulate snow.

Here's a slightly closer look so you can see what I mean!

However I'm sure that all you ATC'ers out there can do a much better job than I can so why don't you hop on over to The Stamp Man's ATC Swap blog to find out how you can participate.

Until my next post - try and keep warm and think of me battling the -10c wind chill factor whilst doing some Christmas shopping!  That is of course if I can get the car out of the drive!!

'The Look' ATC Swap

Well today is the 1st of the month which means that it is time for another Stamp Man ATC swap with the theme being 'The Look', which of course fits in really nicely with Tracey's Alluring Ladies stamp sheet that she designed for The Stamp Man as this has the 'eyes' stamp on it.

Now I must admit that I am not really an ATC'er but I did have a go at this one and used the free stamp from the cover of Craft Stamper which is a mini version of the 'eyes' stamp - just right for an ATC infact!!  As you can see I opted to keep mine monochrome but if you hop on over to The Stamp Man's ATC blog you can see what the rest of the DT came up with and also find out all the details on how to enter and join in!

A New Challenge Blog

Hi guys.  Time keeps marching on here and I can't believe that it has been a few days since I last posted!!

If you scroll down a little bit you will notice that there are some new blinkies in my sidebar.  The Stamp Man people have been very busy recently and not only are they hosting a new ATC blog but now they are setting up a new Fortnightly Challenge Blog too!!  As you already know the ATC swaps are up and running and we have already had some marvellous entries.  Click here to go and visit and see the ATC's and learn how to win some blog candy. 

The new FortnightlyChallenge Blog will be going live very soon in a weeks time. Cick here to find out all about it.




Anyway all this talk of challenges has made me decide to try and enter some challenges now and again and after having a brief blog hop this morning I have stumbled on yet another new challenge blog called Penny Black At Allsorts so having made a few Penny Black cards recently for The Glitter Pot's demo weekend, I thought I would enter one into their very first challenge called A Burst of Summer Colour.

So here is my entry for this challenge using the Penny Black Sunny Days stamp.  I don't think anything can say 'summer' better than sunflowers!  I just love their cute stamps and this is just so sweet!

As you can see I did quite a bit of decoration for this card.  The delightful background paper is from the Kioshi Collection by Basic Grey and is called Motochi.  I used my tiny daisy punch and also a McGill pine punch to decorate around the wonderful Prima flowers.

You can see these extremely pretty flowers a bit better in this photo.  They are from the Athena range and I just added some Platinum glitter glue around the edges of the petals and some Diamond glitter glue to the centre.

The main Sunny Days image I stamped onto smooth white card using Tuxedo Black Memento and then coloured using Copic markers.  After I'd done my basic colouring I added some shimmer using the Copic Spica clear pen and some Diamond glitter glue.

All of the items mentioned can be bought from The Glitter Pot apart from the McGill punch which I purchased from The Hobby House.

I hope you like it!

Two New Challenges

Hi guys.  Today I have two new challenges to tell you about!  The first one is happening over at The Craft Barn's blog and this challenge is to make an unusual shaped card. Click here for more details.

This is the card that I  made for this challenge using my Marianne Creatables die that I bought a little while ago from The Craft Barn.  I had it in mind at the time that this would make a brilliant shaped card and was quite pleased with the result!  The background papers for the card were made using a large Hero Art stamp called Reversed Flowers and Leaves that I bought from The Glitter Pot.  This is such a lovely stamp and iit makes great background papers just by inking it up with your inkpads.  I used Distress inkpads in Antique Linen and Milled Lavender for these papers.  Not only does the Marianne frame cut out this wonderful shape but it embosses the design around the outside too which I coloured to match the rest of the card using Copic markers.

Here's a closer look at the middle panel for you.  You can see that background stamp in more detail now.  The main image is one of my favourite stamps at the moment called Beary Big Hugs from the Belles 'n' Whistles range.  She was just the right size for the panel too!  I coloured her with my Copic markers and then used the darker plum coloured Copic (that I used on her sweater) to colour my ribbon to match. I took this same marker and used the brush tip to go around all the cut out detail of the frame.  The wording 'special friends' came from my Fancy Flourish stamp sheet.

To add some sparkle I used touches of both Platinum and Diamond glitter glue.

Here's a different view of the card.  No doubt you will see some more of this type of shaped card as I really liked the effect it gave.  By the way the winner of this challenge will receive a surprise £30 goodie bag!!  So don't forget to head on over to The Craft Barn's blog to find out all the details to enter and also to see the other cards that some of the DT came up with!

Okay now onto Challenge Two and this one is happening over on the new Stamp Man's ATC Swaps blog.  The theme for this first challenge is - Wings.  What I like about ATC's is that you only have a small space to decorate so these don't tend to take so long  to do.  Although it does depend on how intricate you decide to make them! 

As you can see I actually kept my offering quite simple! (GASP!!)  See I can do simple - sometimes!!  Well sort of!  I made the background paper myself using a Bundled Sage Distress inkpad and then used the same inkpad to stamp the spriggy background. (The sprig came from my Japanese Thoughts stamp sheet.)  I then used a Gold Encore inkpad to randomly stamp a smaller sprig and the smaller dragonfly (both from my Japanese Minis sheet) onto a strip of black card. Next I stamped and embossed the rectangular dragonflies frame (also from my Japanese Minis) using a black pigment inkpad and clear detail embossing powder. I coloured the imagery using Tombow pens and a waterbrush and added some sparkle (which you can't really see!) using Diamond glitter glue. The Japanese Wording (from my Japanese Minis stamp sheet) was stamped using a black dye based inkpad. 

The rest of the DT have done some really fab ATC's too which you can see over on The Stamp Man's ATC blog.

By the way The Stamp Man are currently doing all of their stamp sheets at 20% off so now is a great time to get any that you might have been thinking about!  Plus they are also doing free P&P at the moment!! Click here to go and see!

Well that is finally all from me today.  I hope that you made it to the end!  If you did I hope you are all enjoying some lovely weather!