Quick and easy wreath cards

Just popping in to post some quick and easy stamped wreath cards.
I started by stamping the two holly stamps from the Merry and Bright set (Catherine Pooler, SOA Candy Cane Lane collection) on a square piece of scrap paper to figure out the correct placement of the stamps for my wreath.Next, I used my stamped piece as a guide for posioning the stamps on my MISTI. After this, stamping the wreaths onto my pre-scored square cards was a breeze. Stamp, turn, stamp... I then stamped the berries by hand.

For the sentiment, I arranged the 2 sentiment stamps from the same set who I wanted them, making sure to leave room for the die cut Merry sentiment (Merry Labels dies by Cas-ual Fridays, included in the CCL collection) and stamped the sentiment on all of my cards.

I did some quick colouring of the holly leaves using alcohol markers and then adhered the die cut sentiment using a glue pen.

After I had done my stamping and die cutting, I decided I also liked how the wreath looked without colouring in the leaves. So out of the 4 cards I created, I coloured in 2 and left the other 2 without any colouring.

What do you think?

Challenges:

Beccy's Place - A month of Holiday cards - Day 2: wreaths

Stamping Sensations - Christmas greetings

Sparkles Christmas Challenge - 70 Holly and Ivy

Penny Black and More - Anything Christmas including hand stamping

Christmas at Sweet Stampin' - Anything Christmas goes

CHNC Extra - Always Anything Christmas goes
Sweet Stampers - 1 Weihnachten/Christmas

And of course I'm also linking up my card at Kathy's 30 day colouring challenge.

Hip Holiday

With only 6 weeks to go until Christmas, I really need to step up my Christmas card production. Here's one of the cards I made this week.

I started by blending some distress ink (Dusty concord) through a die cut mask (Merry Labels, Cas-ual Fridays, included in the Candy Cane Lane SOA collection) using a Clarity brush and then stamped three sections of the tree from the Hip Holiday set by Catherine Pooler (CCL collection) in Memento elderberry ink. Next, I stamped the star and birdies from the same stamp set with Versamark and heat embossed using gold embossing powder (Ranger). I also heat embossed a snippet of cardstock to die cut my sentiment (Merry Labels set) from. To create a little more interest. I die cut the label shape from another cardstock panel and adhered that on top of my stamped card base using double sided tape. To finish off, I added some Hemptique cord.

Challenges:

LIM - 301 Colour: purple and gold

Stamplorations November CAS challenge - Anything CAS goes with optional colour twist: purple

ATSM - 219 CAS

HLS November Anything goes with dies

CAS Mix Up - Stamping, masking + heat embossing & die cutting

More gold

When I realised that the linky at Taheerah's Gossip column challenge over at the Winnie & Walter blog would be closing soon, I just had to try and put together another card using a few elements I had already created.

I started with a panel that I created about a year ago, when I was playing with some gold acrylic paint and added some left-over paint onto a few card panels. Tonight, I repeated stamped the pine image from the Winter Woodland set by Winnie & Walter (can you tell how much I love this set?) in green ink. Because the dye ink did not dry immediately on the gold paint, I decided to heat emboss my stamping using clear embossing powder befor adding a little light blue sponging. I just love the way it defines the gold edges. I had heat embossed the Merry die cut (Winnie & Walter) last month, when I wanted to experiment with a heat-embossing technique I had seen Julie Ebersole use, to see if I could mimick the piece of gold ore that Taheerah showed in her post.

I started by heat embossing the entire die cut using Liquid Platinum (Ranger) and then sprinkled some gold embossing powder (Wow) on top, followed by a sprinkle of Ranger gold ep, which has a coarser structure than the Wow ep. Here's another picture where you can see the gold granules on top of the liquid platinum.

I adhered my panel to a red card base (Simon Says Stamp) and finished off with a few gold and clear sequins from one of the shaker mixes from Luy's Little Things.

Challenges:

Taheerah's Gossip Column at W&W - No. 5 Precious metals

Christmas Card Challenge - 46 Anything goes

Simon Says Stamp - Anything goes