Whatever turns you on!

One of the nice things about not making cards to sell is that, when a family member has as event that deserves a card, I can really tailor it to the person. So although this card is not my cup of tea at all, as soon as I spotted the digi stamp I knew my son's partner would love it. My card arrived yesterday and she was thrilled with it.

The image is by Rick St.Dennis and he has several in this style in his etsy shop. Having printed it and coloured it with copics, I cut it to fit the centre of a black mat which was then layered onto a textured red mat, both cut with dies from the Sizzix Majestic Elements-Marvellous Squares set. The backing paper was passed through an Embossalicious A4 folder, and the black strip is a newly purchased Memory box die called tesseltina, which is already a firm favourite with me. It is so delicate and fine. 

This close up shows the embossing and the textured red card more clearly. I used a permanent marker to colour a silver peel-off greeting black and put it in the lower right corner, and balanced this with a couple of gems iin the other corners.

I did not expect to find any challenges for this card but I am going to link it to:

 Addicted to Stamps and More Challenge 47: Make your mark (colouring with copics)

Creative Moments Challenge 18: Lots of layers (6)

and Make it Monday 142: Anything goes.

WOYWW 208 - Happy 4th Anniversary!

Yes it is four whole years since Julie invited us to use her blog as a launching pad to visit other folks work-spaces, world-wide. And what a happy family of crafters we have grown into. I try to join in the fun every week, but when other issues get in the way, I really miss it. Now, after a very hectic month, I am finally back and I even have some craft going on, which makes a change.

At the start of April I treated myself to some of the lovely Heartfelt Creations dies and stamps from the Bella Rose range, and I have been waiting for the opportunity to put them through their paces. I have a sister who will be 85 at the end of the month, and I thought they would be ideal for a card for her.

So here on my desk you can see the dies and stamps, all my copic pens with the colour chart I made to help me choose my colours, a couple of my snippets boxes, a selection of memento ink pads - chosen because they work so well with copic markers - and my box of ink dusters, sponges etc.

Swinging round to the left a bit you can see my little green bug, a pot of gesso and my stickles storage tower, my box of white paper offcuts, and, of course, the ever present Arwen keeping her eye on the proceedings.

I was very impressed with the largest collage stamp. I never have much success with stamps of this size, but I used the recently purchased large rocker-block, and I got a perfect print every time. Whether this is due to the rocker-block or the quality of the stamp I don't know, but it was a good result either way. You will have to wait to see the finished card as it is just possible that my sister may see this blog, so I will wait until after her birthday to show it.

Before I go I will just share a few of my holiday photos with those who are interested. I mentioned in an earlier post that I returned from my week in Seville and Cordoba with almost 1,500 photos so I have been trying to sort them out. This little slide show is just some of the wonderful art and craft inspiration that I saw. As an ex-maths teacher, I love pattern and order, so all the tiles were a delight. Many will end up as BP overlays, stencils or embellishment cutting files. So here are a few of the floor patterns I saw, followed by some motifs that I spotted on shop signs, paper place mats etc. Then there are tile patterns from ceilings and walls (many of these could be printed as backing papers just as they are), a lovely piece of wrought-iron scroll work and finally a great piece of 'grafiti'/wall art that we passed each time we went to our hotel. To view them, just click on this link and then on the first photo and the slideshow button above it.

We are, of course, having a little bit of fun to celebrate our anniversary, but you will have to follow me over to Julia's blog, Stamping ground, to find out all about it.

A Rudolph Day Quick Make

Well I  have been AWOL for a long time haven't I? I see my previous post was for Rudolph day in April and here we are at 25th May so it's time to post again. I have had a very busy month with a visitor who came to house/animal sit while we were away, then our holiday, another visitor on the day we got back, the long trip to Alicante for the first visitor to go home, and then on Thursday my grandson flew back, and we are now back to 'normal', whatever that is. Of course I still have the 1,415 photos I took on holiday to sort out, as well as the ones taken with our visitors, three weeks of Project Life to catch up on, some ATCs to make by next Wednesday, and I suppose a bit of housework wouldn't come amiss, but I guess that is fairly normal for me.

However I did manage to make a quick Christmas card last night for Rudolph Day, and here it is. 

The framed bell was cut on my silhouette cameo using an Anna Mironova design file from UK Scrappers, and the corners are a Marianne die. Both are cut from Bronze mirriboard. (I had just loaded a new blade in my silhouette so, for once, it did an excellent cut first time round). They are mounted onto a BP from a 6"x 6" paper pad by Dovecraft - goodness knows how many years I have had that for -  and I cut out the centre to show the die cut better. As the paper is greener than it looks on the photo, I used a pale green base card. A tiny bronze peel-off greeting was all it needed to finish it off.

Now I shall hop over to see Sandra at Stamping for Pleasure, to link this up. Why not follow me and see what it is all about.