Warm Wishes

I haven't quite finished the number of Christmas cards for this year, so I'm trying to come up with some fun but quick makes, using elements from my UFO box.

I figured my previously stamped card base was the perfect background for a festive food/beverage type of design. For my topper, I heat embossed my NBUS stamp by Neat and Tangled in liquid platinum embossing powder and then used some acetate to do some ink smooshing (Coral Cabana and It's a boy, CP inks). I intended to do this in a controlled manner, but then one of our cats decided to give me a helping hand by jumping onto my craft table, so I just went with it.

I'm playing at:

Jingle Belles - Festive food/drink

Beccy's Month of Holiday Cards - W ... Warm Wishes

ABC Christmas - W for Wishes

CHNC - Anything Christmas goes

SSS Wednesday - Anything goes

SSS Work it Wednesday - Holiday crafting

Embossed wreaths

I'm popping in with a quick post so that I can link up my cards at Beccy's Place where there's a race going on.

I started by cutting and scoring several sheets of cardstock in green and red and stamping the SSS gingham background in tone on tone (Spruce and Rockin' Red, CP inks). I had embossed my (square panel) wreaths last year, but could not figure out how to use them on my cards. I decided to fussy cut the wreaths and blend a little ink over it, and then used a marker to add colour to the berries

I discovered that this sentiment by Penny Black fitted perfectly in the middle of my wreaths, so I used my MISTI to stamp them and heat embossed them in gold. To finish off, I adhered a strip of gold glitter washi across before popping up my wreaths using thin foam tape.

I'm also linking up my cards at:

Stamping Sensations - Getting ready for Christmas

Sparkle's Christmas - #95 Embossing (heat or dry - I used both)

CHNC - #413 Anything Christmas goes

It's the end of the month and that means 

it's also time for the November Rudolph Days

Poinsettia and Pomegranates

I have been colouring another digital image by Power Poppy today. They are just perfect for practising my Copic colouring using the additional Copics that I got for my birthday last month. Since Marcella has already put in a lot of the shading, you don't have to figure that out yourself.

I die cut my panel using my go to stitched rectangle die (SSS), stamped this beautiful sentiment by Penny Black (Holly Tweet) in Versafine onyx black and heat embossed it in clear ep, and simply adhered my panel to an A2-sized card base (Schoolhouse Red, SSS).

I'm playing at:

The Flower Challenge - #26 A Special Occasion

Beccy's Month of Holiday Cards - P ... Poinsettia and Pomegranates

Uniko - #50 Celebrate

CHNC - #413 Anything Christmas goes

Power Poppy Creative Confetti - Just color

I'm also linking up my card at 

Kathy's 30D colouring challenge

Glittering Glass Santa

Hello everyone! I'm popping in with another Christmas card.

After printing my digital image (Glittering Glass Santa, Power Poppy), I coloured it in using a mix of Altenew Artist markers and Copics. The sentiment is from the Happy Christmas set by Winnie & Walter. I blended a little Tumbled glass distress ink around the edges for a softer look and die cut my outer frames, including the skinny one, from hammered cardstock using a single SSS die (Frames). 

To finish off, I added a little sparkle to the baubles and tree and then added glossy accents.

I'm playing at:

CAS Christmas - Santa

HLS Christmas - Anything goes (option: CAS)

Beccy's Month of Holiday Cards - S ... Santa 

(and for 'skipping some letters' LOL)

ATSM - #319 CAS

Power Poppy Creative Confetti - Just color

I'm also linking up my colouring at:

Kathy's 30 day colouring challenge

Seize the Birthday - Tags

Hello and welcome! And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who are celebrating this day!
It's time for my last installment as the Surprise Party Guest at Seize the Birthday. I want to thank Nancy and the Design Team for allowing me to party along with them. It's been great fun!

As always, you have the option of linking up any birthday-themed card or using the current Toppings, which is TAGS.

I started by die cutting the leaves (Perfect Vines, Catherine Pooler Designs) from a scrap of cardstock, and then ran my die cuts through my die cutting machine in a woordgrain embossing folder that I had inked up with Green tea ink (CP Designs). I had not yet thought about the exact placement of the leaves on my card, so I had to do some fiddling as well as cutting and pasting to make sure the embossing all went in the same direction, but I got there in the end. I die cut a tag (Studio Calico) from the same cardstock, stamped the sentiment (Say it in style, Clearly Besotted) and added some Green tea ink to the edges for a unified look. I also splattered some ink onto my cream card base and added some hemp twine to my tag before adhering all of my elements.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing my creations for Seize the Birthday these past months, and I do hope you will check out the creations by the Design Team.

I'm also playing at:

CAS Mix Up - Stamping and embossing folder

+ sponging, die cutting, splatters, twine

Christmas blues and browns

I was inspired by a moodboard challenge at StampNation to create this wintry Christmas scene.

The trees in one of the moodboard photos had a bluish tint to them, so I decided to use my soft blue embossing powder to heat emboss my tree image (Snowy village, Penny Black). To create a mirror image, I stamped the image onto a piece of plastic packaging and pressed that onto my cardstock panel. This was the first time I tried doing it this way, and it worked even better than expected. To cover up the sides of my panel, I stamped the edge of my tree image again on either side of my stamped panel before sprinkling on the embossing powder.

After blending distress inks onto my panel, I die cut the panel and my snowbank using SSS stitched dies and blended some blue distress ink onto my snowbank for a more wintry look. I used thin foam tape to mount the snowbank to my main panel, that I had adhered to a soft grey card base. The sweet deer (Collectables COL1330 by Marianne Design) was die cut from a scrap of cream cardstock. I decided to do a little experimenting with some pigment powder (in the colour Chameleon by Pentart) that I found at the (only) craft shop in my area, and I loved how this turned out. The sentiment is from Bright Baubles (Neat and Tangled).

I'm linking up my card at:

Beccy's month of holiday cards - B ... blues and browns

SSS Wednesday - Baby it's cold outside

Penny Black and More - Make someone smile

PBSC - Anything goes with Penny Black

HLS Christmas - Anything goes

Uniko Challenge - #50 Celebrate

Arctic friends

Some of you may remember this card that I shared back in September. I really liked how this one turned out so I used the same stamp from Penny Black and another quarter of my galaxy background panel to create a similar but different card.

For this one, I heat embossed my image onto a piece of vellum and used a white coloured pencil to add some 'colour' and texture to the stars, the polar bear and the penguin's belly. I created the snowy ground using puff embossing powder.

I'm linking up my card at:

Beccy's Annual Month of Holiday Cards - A ... Arctic animals

Beccy is hosting her 6th annual month of holiday cards 

this year, posting inspiration each day of the month

 and sprinkling prizes along the way, so do check out 

her blog if you still need to make a few (or many) 

Christmas cards to send out this year.

PBSC - Anything goes with Penny Black

Stamping Sensations - Get ready for Christmas

Cute Card Thursday - #556 Stars

MAWTT - #84 Winter animals

Kathy's 30 day colouring challenge

Poppies

Hello and welcome. I've been doing some colouring this month and managed to turn one of my coloured panels into a card, just in time to link up at Allsorts.

I coloured in this new to me stamp set by Woodware (Stitched poppies) using Copics markers. I was able to expand my collection of Copics last month thanks to my husband who agreed that it would make a nice birthday present. After the colouring was finished, I trimmed down my panel and blended some green ink around the edges before adhering it to my green card base. The sentiment is by Altenew and was stamped using Rockin' Red ink by Catherine Pooler.

I'm linking up my card at:

Allsorts - #493 Poppies and/or the colour red

Addicted to stamps - #168 Anything goes (optional: ribbon)

Colour Crazy - #46 Anything goes with colouring

Kathy's 30 day colouring challenge

Seize the Birthday - CAS

Hello and welcome! It's time for another guest appearance at Seize the Birthday, where this fortnight's optional theme is Clean and Simple.

I was lucky enough to win Uniko's entire August release and this bold sentiment (BIG & BOLD - Hello) seemed like the perfect stamp to ink up with some of my new Catherine Pooler inks (Tiara, Tiki Torch, Tutti Frutti) that arrived from Guernsey a few days ago. The green (Lime Rickey) from the Party ink collection was a bit too bold for my colour combo, so I used Garden Party instead. The birthday sentiment is made up of four different stamps from the Young at Heart set by CAS-ual Fridays. I picked up the stamps with my long and narrow grid block and stamped the sentiment in Versafine Onyx black. After trimming down my panel, I used foam tape to adhere it to my card base.

Please do pop over to the challenge blog to see what the talented ladies of the design team have created to inspire you. And remember that the Toppings are always optional, so if CAS is not your thing, simply link up any birthday-themed card.