Mixed Media butterfly card

Over at StampNation, we have been enjoying a Mixed Media class for card makers and here's one of the first cards I created.

The background for today's card was created with the ink that was left on my craft mat after dripping and spraying Catherine Pooler inks (All that Jazz and Melon Ice) on one of my MM backgrounds. I didn't want to let it go to waste, so I smooshed a panel of watercolour card in the ink. I applied the same CP inks to blend some ink through d 2 Tim Holtz mini stencils (set 4) and then decided I wanted to go a little darker on the foliage stencil by adding a touch of CP Spruce ink.

I wanted to add some contrasting colour and remembered this Uniko butterfly (English Country Garden), that I had coloured previously when breaking in my new Copics. After fussy-cutting it, I was trying to find the right placement for the butterfly and sentiment, so I started out by stamping the sentiment (Stampers Anonymous) onto a scrap of vellum. I then decided I kind of liked the addition of the vellum, so I simply adhered my vellum strip and mounted my panel onto a Neenah desert storm card base.

I'm linking up my card at:

STAMPlorations April challenge - Focus on the sentiment

SSS Wednesday - Anything goes

heARTful Stamping - Anything goes + a stamp

Merry Christmas wishes

Popping in to sneak in my card for the current Merry Monday challenge as well as a few other challenges.

Here's the inspiration photo.

I focused on the quirky houses and the snowflakes. My background comes from a Pink Fresh paper pad, I die cut the Merry sentiment (Winnie & Walter) from a scrap of cardstock and heat embossed it twice using SSS rose gold ep. The sentiment (Winnie & Walter) and the quirky snowflakes (Paper Smooches) were stamped in Tsukineko bronze. I went over my NBUS snowflake (SSS) with some Inka gold in copper and also used this to create a matching border for my die cut panel (SSS).

I'm also linking up my card at:

Rudolph Days at Scrappy Mo's blog - Anything Christmas goes

And since I used a snippet for die cutting my sentiment, 

I'm also popping over to 

Pixie's Snippets Playground #325

Winter Wonderland - Snow much fun

SSS Wednesday - Anything goes

Twofer chicks

Phew, looks like Mr Mojo came back in the nick of time so that I could play along at Twofer #4. And if you're running out of time when making cards, there's only one thing you can do: keeping it really simple and digging into your UFO (UnFinished Objects) box for a quick background.

In February, I was lucky enough to win a stamp and die set of my own choosing from Technique Tuesday from Miriam Prantner's blog and I could not resist the chicken family which has some great sentiments as well. The current Twofer challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity to start using these stamps, since it's all about pets.

Although we don't keep any chicken ourselves, we do have several friends who do, and they sometimes surprise us with fresh eggs. In addition, our landlord is also keeping chicken (and one turkey). We can catch a glimpse of them when we are sitting outside on the porch. For one of our cats, this is nog enough. She goes to visit them every day and sits there staring at them for a good while.

For my first card, I started by stamping the sentiment and focal image and then stamped the image repeatedly to fill up my panel. I coloured my chick with Prismacolor pencils.

I'm also linking up this first card at:

ATSM - #289 CAS

For my second card, I decided that this small left-over panel from last year's shaving foam experiment would work well with this fun sentiment. I stamped and die cut the image, coloured it with my Prismacolors and popped it up on foam squares. I adhered my panel to a dark blue card base.

I'm also linking up my second card at:

Cards in Envy - Birthday party time

Crafty Cardmakers - #210 Birthdays