Using up some stash for Rudolph day

As some of you will know, I am in the throes of rearranging my craft room, and it is a very slow business, mainly because I am easily distracted by stash I haven't looked at for quite a while. One of the things I re-discovered was a big envelope containing calendars from several years ago, all of which I felt at the time, had craft-potential! Among them were a Flower Fairies calendar and a Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady one. For each month they had a picture, and elements for decoupaging them, and two were ideal for my Christmas cards this month.

The first one is from the Country Dairy calendar. I cut the image and elements out. It only has two layers but I added dimension with the careful use of silicone glue, allowing some of the second layer to extend beyond the main image. I wanted to use some pre-cut cards and envelopes I had found, so I looked for a suitable snippet to use as a BP. This red was just too short, so I cut it across and separated it, hiding the gap with a strip of holly border, also from the calendar. I added a bit of glitz with stickles frosting on the leaves, and used a large gel sticker from a set that might have been in my drawer for a decade or more!

I am a collector of Fairies, but only the Flower Fairies of Cicely Mary Barker. In our main room I have a display of 48 collectors plates depicting them, as well as mugs, canisters, cross-stitched pictures etc, so it is no wonder someone gave me a calendar of them. And, of course, the December page depicted the pretty Christmas tree fairy. The two things I love about these fairies is their charming faces, which she drew by sketching the little children in her sister's nursery school, and the poems that accompany each one which are full of accurate botanical details about the flower/plant.

For this card, I chose a BP snippet from my Christmas box, that was covered in sparkly Christmas Trees - possible from a Papermania pad but I am not sure. The image had three layers this time. You cannot see in the photo, but the lower branch is layered and it was quite a game cutting all those pine needles! Again to add a bit of glitz I used stickles around the hem of her dress, a gold glitter pen on her star and wand, and a Wink-of-stella gilt pen on her wings.  Another fairly ancient addition is the green and gold sentiment banner, which I balanced with a dark green bow and a tiny silver tree charm, tinted with butterscotch alcohol ink as the other 'extras' are gold.

I wasn't sure I would  be able to join in today as our internet was down this morning - apparently because of a power cut in Mojacar! - but we are up and running again now, so now I will link these up with Sarn at Stamping for Pleasure, and also in Pixie's Snippets Playground for the backing papers I used.

Two for the younger males of the Perry Tribe.

While I was busy with our visitors last month, one of our grandsons celebrated his thirteenth birthday. I had a card ready and posted it to him but didn't find time to post it on here, so here it is.

He is an ardent Dr Who fan so choosing a subject for his card wasn't too difficult. As this was an anniversary year for the program, there was a lot of stuff in the internet, and some while back I downloaded all the parts of a Dr Who blog hop, which together made a fairly comprehensive digital scrapbook kit. So in Adobe photoshop I started with one of the backing papers and added the letters, the Dalek and the Tardis at the bottom, and a badge and sentiment at the top, (the font was included in the kit). I printed it out and cut it into sections, sticking them top and bottom of an A5 white card. The section across the centre is a cutting file posted by one of the kind folk on the Silhouette Facebook page who generously share files they have designed. It depicts profiles of the twelve faces that have played the Doctor. I thought it was quite clever, so I cut it from black vinyl and transferred it to the space between my paper layers. I printed a second badge and embossed it with clear powder before sticking over the original one.

Next week it is our little great-grandson who has a birthday and he is three already! So for his card I looked through my digi-stamps and found this little bear singing along with his mice friends. He came from Di's Digi Downloads. When I had printed it out and cut my card to size, I made a mask from copy paper and dusted the whole background with Distress inks, squeezed lemonade and scattered straw. Then I coloured the image with copic markers. For the sentiment I dusted a small off-cut of white card and used an old stamp by Butterfly Kisses. I dug out a set of pens called Emboss. They have very 'wet' ink in strong colours, and were sold specifically for colouring a stamp for clear embossing. I have had them for at least eight years, and I was amazed to find they were still all working. So I used a variety of them to colour my stamp, embossed it with clear powder and cut it out. I matted it onto red card and cut it out again. The balloons are cut from tiny snippets of vinyl using a file I had in my silhouette library. At the last minute I made one larger and cut it from metallic vinyl and added a gold number three. I arranged the balloons along the top of the card, cropping them along the edges, and used a fine marker to draw in the strings.

The sentiment strip and balloons used up some snippets so I am going over to Pixie's Snippets Playground #138 with this one. (Sorry the photo is a bit pale. It is much more colourful in real life. It was very sunny and I was trying to get the metallic sheen of the red balloon to show. I didn't realise it had made everything else looked rather washed out!). But Hey-ho, You can't have it all ways.

Six Rockin' Robins

Although I do try to always enter Sarn's Rudolf day Challenge, which ensures I make two Christmas cards every month, I am aware that I will need a lot more cards than that in a few months' time, so I decided to have a little 'batch bake'. In with a recent order, this IndigoBlu stamp called Rockin' Robin, just fell into my basket, so I thought I had better show it some ink. 

I found six pieces of white card in my snippets box and stamped the image, three times using ink - black, blue and green. I then dusted a piece of card with blue ink and stamped it in versamark and embossed it in white. For the last two I again stamped in versamark and embossed one with clear powder and one with gold.

Next I rifled through my Christmas snippets box and found pieces of BP that went with each stamped panel. I added some green colourng to the green and black stamped images, and to the clear embossed one, and blue to the blue one, using copic markers. I left the white and the gold embossed ones as they were.

I mounted the backing papers onto plain white A6 base cards leaving a narrow border round each one, and then added the image panels. For each one, I highlighted the snowflakes with glitter glue, which looked quite different depending on what colour of ink it was covering, and also added some white perfect pearls drops for the mistletoe berries.

While these were drying I returned to my stamp. Inking up just the robin with Memento rich cocoa, I stamped it six times, and coloured them, again with copic markers. (I wasn't sure about the actual zones of colour on the robin so I looked at some in google images and was quite surprised to see the red area starts up around the eyes, and although we think of them as brown and red, they actually have quite a lot grey in their feathers). I fussy cut the robins out and glued one to each card panel. 

For a finishing touch I rummaged through a box of very ancient Christmas stickers and found a sentiment for each one. Some of the jelly stickers were so old that they had dried up and were no longer sticky, but I am determined to work through some old stash, so I did find something to suit each one. And here is the complete set.

I shall be flying over with these to Pixie's Snippets Playground #137, and also entering them in Crafty Hazlenut's Christmas Challenge #189 where the theme is Fur or Feathers - in other words show an animal or bird.

A man's card with a maritime theme.

Many folk are having problems with blogger right now, but I am going to risk trying to write a post anyway. I suddenly realised that I needed to post a card to my brother who will be 85 in a few days time, and as he used to be in the Navy, (the Fleet Air Arm really), I thought he might like a card with a maritime theme.

I started by choosing a tropical beach photo from the thousand plus that I took on holiday in Thailand six years ago. (I still haven't made the scrapbook!!). In photoshop, I clipped it to a mask from a set called Marina masks, by Black Lady Designs. So this was my background, which I printed out to form the front of my white card.

I then added a seagull in one corner using an very old inkadinkadoo stamp, with a little added copic colouring, and fussy cut it.

The ship in a bottle is a much newer stamp that I bought recently from Creative Expressions. I stamped it in Memento London fog, and coloured it a little with my copic markers. When it was dry I swiped it with a versamark ink pad, dipped it in clear embossing powder, and heated it to resemble glass. I attached it to the background with silicone glue, and stamped a small happy birthday in the bottom corner with a very old Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque) stamp.

My card is now winging it's way over to UK and with a bit of luck, it might just arrive in time for my brother's birthday.

Summer Butterflies

While visiting a friend's blog recently I saw a link to Aurora's wings Digi-stamps. I'd not heard of them before but I liked the image on their link thumbnail so I looked them up. Not all the images were in a style I would chose, but I came across this girl and she immediately made me think of this month's Butterfly Challenge, where the theme is Summer Butterflies. So I bought her, along with a couple of other images and last night I used her for my card.

The base card is a pre-printed one, that I have had for ages. it's probably another of my QVC surplus store buys. I'm always glad when I think to use up some ancient stash!

The image from Aurora Wings digi-stamps, was dusted with DI tumbled glass, and coloured with copics. I printed a second copy and decoupaged the largest butterfly and the front flower on her hair. The top layer of the butterfly was swiped with versamark and embossed with clear powder, and a little stickles was added to the wing tips, and to the yellow flowers.

Using an off-cut of yellow card, the frame was cut and embossed with a Marrianne die, and the embossed detail was inked with Memento grape ink, before removing it from the die. I don't care for this hard shade of yellow very much, but it went with my coloured flowers and the detail on the base card. There was just enough left to cut the sentiment with Britannia dies. (I was also determined to use up something from my yellow/orange/red snippets box as it is bursting at the seams, and this was the best option!).

Two foil butterfly stickers were the finishing touches.

I am linking this up with Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge; Summer Butterflies, and I am also popping it over to Pixie's Snippets Playground.