Watercoloured poinsettias

I had a play with my new Arteza real brush markers. I simply grabbed a scrap panel of watercolour card (Crafter's Companion), gold heat embossed the big poinsettia (Pinkfresh Studio / Creative Stamping magazine) three times and set to work. I started with a light colour and added a darker colour when the first layer was dry. For my background, I first used a damp brush over a larger area before coming in with my marker and then drawing the colour out to achieve a softer look.

After my panel had dried, I realised it had a bit of a funny size, but I did not want to trim my panel down, so I rummaged through my prestamped and die cut sentiments (SSS Christmas word mix 1) and decided that this three-word sentiment was the perfect fit. I popped up my panel and sentiment circle using thin foam tape.

I'm playing at:

Jingle Belles - We THREE kings 

(3 poinsettias, 3-word sentiment, 3 card elements)

January Rudolph Days - Always anything Christmas goes

SSS Wednesday - Anything goes

Watercooler Wednesday - WWC256 All about occasions

HLS WC - Anything goes

Inspired by Sandy Allnock

This card was heavily inspired by one of the Christmas tags that Sandy Allnock created for the 12 tags of Chrismas event at Ellen Hutson's, back in December.

I started out by stamping the houses from the Cozy Christmas set (Essentials by Ellen) in antique linen DI onto a scrap of watercolour cardstock, before realising the Sandy had been using Copics. I decided to just go with it and used my Copics on the watercolour cardstock, using my hex chart to select my colours. I did make the houses on the left and right a bit wider than the stamped image. After I had finished my scene, I added snow using a white Sharpie, trimmed my panel into a tag shape, added a twine bow, and then foam-mounted it to my white card base. I selected a very simple heat embossed sentiment from my ready made sentiments (Christmas word mix 1 stamp and die set, SSS) and popped it up using thin foam tape.

I'm linking up my card at:

CAS Christmas - Tag

ABC Christmas - A ... Anything Christmas goes

ATCAS - #176 Frosty

Shopping Our Stash - #412 Winter Blues

Sparkles - #124 Winter Blues

Playing with new goodies

Last week, the last of my Black Friday orders finally made their way to Crete and I could not wait to start playing with some of my new goodies.

I knew which products I wanted to play with first, and last week's sketch at Freshly Made Sketches inspired the design of my card. Sadly, I did not get around to share it there.

For my background, I blended some warm grey ink (Altenew) through my new stencil (Holiday Sweater, SSS) and then used an older die (A2 Card Curved Edge, SSS) to add the curve to my panel. I die cut this irresistible gnome (Li'l Gnome, SSS) from several scraps of cardstock. I used alcohol markers to add some shading and foam-mounted it to my background panel. I had already stamped and die cut a bunch of sentiments using the Christmas Word Mix 1 stamp and die set (SSS) and selected a few that I had heat-embossed in liquid platinum, and popped them up using thin foam tape.

Here's the sketch I've used:

I'm playing at:

CAS Stencil - Use a new stencil

Jingle Belles - Look what Santa brought me

SSS Wednesday - Use a stencil

ATSM - #373 Holiday

And because I've been a good girl 

and used some of those snippets 

that I can never seem to part with, 

I'm also going to have a play at

Pixie's Snippets Playground - #369

This sweet gnome die is just perfect for

using up loads of scraps, even patterned papers...