Die-cutting fun part 1

Hello there. I finally managed to finish another card. I recently saw this really fun card where a crafter had turned a round balloon die cut upside down to create her card. I immediately thought of turning one of my new Simon Says Stamp balloon dies into a Christmas bauble. I know I commented on this crafter's blog to thank her for the inspiration, but I cannot for the life of me remember where I saw it and have been unable to retrace my steps and find out.

Anyway, I die cut the balloon shape and also used the same shape to create the masks for inking my sky after white heat-embossing the stars (using distress inks - I was inspired by the colours that Loll Thompson used on this card) and creating the snow banks using Alleene's real snow by way of embossing paste and adding a layer of white embossing powder. All the stamps (plus the matching die for the reindeer that I used to create mask) are by Hero Arts. After stamping the reindeer and sentiment I added some clear Wink of Stella (of course) to the reindeer's sweater.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Virgina's View challenge - Die cutting

Addicted to CAS - 42 Sky

A Blog Named Hero - 48 Sheet Cake (one layer cards)

Hero Arts - One layer challenge

OCC watercolor for card makers 2

This is a second post to enable me to link up the second image for day 11. Please see my previous post for a description.

I'm also linking this card up for Seize the Birthday

OCC watercolor for card makers

Hi everyone, I'm back with several cards to show. I have finally found some time to craft again now that my husband is recovering from the heart operation he had to undergo about 4 weeks ago.

I have been enrolled in yet another Online Card Class, and I think it's the best one yet. As usual, there was so much inspiration and so little time, so I've decided to showcase the 4 cards I made so far in a single post.

Day 2: creating a soft wash using watercolour pencils. The fishes were heat-embossed with clear embossing powder onto vellum and then coloured with regular watercolour paint. I'm linking this card up for LCI (Anything goes), Papertake Weekly (Ohhh so cute), Sweet Stamps (170 Anything goes) and

Seize the Birthday (Anything goes/optional: tags).

Day 11 - Play day: monoprint using a stencil and distress inks, as shown by Tim Holtz. The sentiment was heat-embossed using liquid platinum embossing powder. I'm also linking this card up for Aud Sentiments (107 Bingo - die cuts, embossing, 2 word sentiment)

Day 11 - Play day: another monoprint, using Hero Arts daubers instead of distress ink. Love the soft colours. The sentiment was heat-embossed onto vellum using black embossing powder with multi-coloured glitter. I used a Versamark pen to trace the inside of the die so that I could heat-emboss it for some added contrast. I'm linking this card up for Cute Card Thursday (322 Text only)

Bonus day: dipping into distress inks after debossing, as shown by Laura Sterckx (except I used an embossing folder instead of scoring lines by hand). Afterwards, I stamped and heat-embossed the bird image with the same black/glitter embossing powder as in the previous card. The glitter does not really show in the picture, though, but I love how it looks as if the bird is in a cage. Because of all the glitter, I didn't feel the card needed any further embellishments. I'm linking this card up for the following challenges: Dream Valley Challenges (82 Things with wings) and Cards in Envy (Winged things - flat A2 cards)