Handicrafts by Kate Perry and other ramblings

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Two for the price of one.

A couple of months ago I saw a pretty bauble stamp used by someone on a challenge blog, and thought how nice it looked. So when, at the Ally Pally last month, I saw a pile of these stamps on a counter I went to take a look. Apparently it is now discontinued and they were selling them off at a discounted price, so, of course, one just jumped into my basket! It is a papermania stamp in an unusual cream coloured rubber. The first thing I did when I got it home was to take it off the wood block and put it onto Ez-mount. And when I saw that Hazel's challenge this week was to use baubles I saw the perfect opportunity to give it its first airing. It is quite detailed so it can almost stand alone and I decided to try white embossing it on a dark blue DL card. I was not having a good day and the first thing I did was to drop the inked stamp on the card. I thought I might get away with that for the back of the card as it was versamark ink, so I just turned it front to back and tried again. This time I did stamp it but I got a really poor impression, with lots of the detail missing from the centre of the design. Not deterred I cut the card in half along the fold and turned each piece to it's 'good' side. Then using my purple stamping mat, and making sure I put good pressure in the centre, I managed to get, not one, but two good impressions which I embossed with sea-foam white powder.
It was still fairly plain so I added some very subtle colour with pale blue and gold interference paints. These only show at certain angles, hence in my first photo they are quite bright, and in the second they hardly show at all. I also added ice-crystal stickles to all the little dots. The first image I trimmed a little, cut the ends with a Martha Stewart punch, layered it onto silver holographic paper and then mounted it onto a plain white DL card.The second image I trimmed rather more but it was still only just small enough to go on an A6 card. But out here the standard envelopes are slightly bigger than in UK so I made a card to fit one of them. This is usually a bit wasteful as you can only cut one from an A4 sheet of card, but today I added the extra width by folding it off-centre and even-ing out the two sides by adding a strip of lace cut with the same punch and silver holographic paper as in the first card. I added small white pearls in opposite corners to finish it off. The sun has reflected rather strongly off the silver paper, but at least you can see it's design.

So from an impending disaster I have managed to salvage two Christmas cards which I will link to Shirley-Anne's blog for my tally, and I am also entering them in:-
CHNC Challenge 42: Baubles or anything hanging.
ABC Christmas Challenge: U is for Unused stash, (stamp). WhoopsiDaisy Challenge: free and Easy.

14 comments:

Hazel said...

Fabulous card - I've got that stamp and it's one of my favourite Christmas ones - you've used it to perfection - thanks for joining in my CHNC challenge 42 - hope to see you again soon. x

veronica said...

good thinking there Kate! I love this stamp for quick emergency cards

Jean said...

Great salvage job Kate, and two lovely cards. Jean x

Sheri said...

This is GORGEOUS...nice save! Thanks for sharing with us at WHOOPSI DAISY this week ;-)

Shirley-Anne said...

Hi Kate,Well done for persistance
Result two lovely cards which I will add to your Christmas card tally .
hugs Shirley-Anne

fatmonica said...

These are stunning!The white embossing really makes it stand out.What a fabulous stamp!

Anonymous said...

Love it, this is fantastic :)
Thanks for joining us at Whoopsi Daisy this week :)
Hugs Lill

Saskia said...

Wonderful! Too bad you can't really see the colouring on the second card, I bet that one looks great too. And the story on the failed impressions does sound all too familiar. ;)

Di said...

Gorgeous cards Kate! So, Percy Veerance won the day - well done you. Certainly a stunning result :) Di xx

Shoshi said...

What a gorgeous design. After all that trial and error and things going wrong, you've done a superb job! I like the white on blue - much more effective than multi coloured!

Thanks very much for your kind comments on my blog about my work, Kate, and for your good wishes for my Etsy shop. I still can't believe I've actually done it at last!!! Have a great weekend!

Mona`s Bittelille Scrappekrok said...

Holy smokes!! This is gorgeous! Thanks for joining us at WhoopsiDaisy. Hugs...Mona

Aquarius said...

You did well to get this stamp at a bargain price. When it was issued it sold out everywhere so quickly and I didn't actually get mine until well after last Christmas - at full price too. You've made good use of it after your disasters at the start

Helen said...

Beautiful cards!
Thanks for joining us at the ABC Christmas Challenge!
Helen x

Lorraine A said...

Gorgeous cards Kate :-) the bauble stamp is fab ! I have never seen that before and it is fabulous ! :-) simple and stunning ! :-)

thanks for joining us on the ABC Christmas Challenge :-)
luv
Lols x x x