March Rudolph Day Challenge

As Scrappy Mo said, the 25th of each month soon comes around. This time I am showing a card I made with another Stampendous stamp bought at the end of last year, but not used. (I showed a snowman card made from another of these stamps a week ago).

This time I am using a lovely image of a candle.

I stamped it onto cream paper and coloured it with copic markers. Then I fussy cut around the scroll and distressed the edges. I looked through my Christmas papers and found a pad called A Merry Little Christmas by thecraftblog. I chose a page with a  cream background and holly on it, and the holly was glossy and slightly sparkly.

I cut it to fit a 13.5 square, cream pre-cut and folded card, and just put it all together. As a finishing touch I added a small drop of yellow glitter glue to the centre of my poinsettia and to the candle flame.

This was an easy and effective card, so I made a second one the same.

I also used the last of my trio of Stampendous stamps,to make two cards the same, with this image.

The main oval image is hand-cut, and I don't think it needs any further explanation. So together with the two snowman cards, I have six more to add to my collection.

I am linking these up with The March Rudolph Day Challenge: Anything Christmas.

Playing in Photoshop.

I use Photoshop quite a lot in my digital scrapbooks, but I don't pretend to be an expert, and there is so much in the software that I have never used. So every now and then I buy a tutorial on one technique, and because they are purchased they remain yours to go back to for a refresher whenever you want to. So this week I revisited a tutorial on blending a photo into a background, and decided I needed to have a go.

I chose a photo from one of my files, of a church in Winter. This is actually St Oswald's Church in Oswestry, Shropshire, my home town when I lived in UK, and it was taken last year, and sent to me by a friend.

I edited it a bit to make the colours less intense, and also straightened it. Then I chose a background from a scrapbook kit I purchased from the Digital Press, called Snow, snow, go away.!

I made this even paler than it is here, and added my photo on top of it, and then followed the steps from the tutorial to lose all the hard edges.

I used Publisher to reduce this to the size of some pre-folded card bases I had in my stash, printed it twice and cut it out and mounted it onto two cards. 

Then I raided my mirri-card and glitter card snippets box and found enough silver mirri-card for a snowflake and sentiment on one card, and some pale blue mirri-card for the greeting on the other, with white glitter card for the snowflakes. ( I made the sentiment in my Silhouette cameo machine and the snowflake corner is a part of a die called Winter Corner by Jeanine's Art).

A little bit of glitter glue to add some sparkle to the church scene finished it off.

So that's two more cards for my stash, and hopefully a technique learned that I can use again.

Brenda's giveaway

Brenda, from Floral fantasies, needs to give up some of her design teamwork due to ill health, and is currently running a generous giveaway of pre-used dies and stamps. She has six bundles to give away.

To be in with a chance to win one of these bundles, leave a comment on her blog HERE, and the winners will be chosen by Random.org. over Easter.

Butterfly Challenge #97

We were given a pretty range of colours to choose from this time, as well as some very varied additions. The letter was 'L' for Lemon, Lavender and Light Blue, plus 'L' for Lace, Layers and Letters. Once again these are a choice, along with a Butterfly of course, but I like the challenge of incorporating as many as possible. I only managed six out of the seven this time unless you call the flap of my envelope Lace. But I used several Layers of card, Letters for my sentiment, and all three colours, which again proved a challenge to photograph accurately. My lemon looks very washed out, and the blue was lighter in real life, but I did my best.

I made this card with my Silhouette cameo cutting machine and a design sold as a svg file by The Dreaming Tree. It is one of a set of three cards which are available to buy on their web site, but this week they were offered as a free gift with an order above 10$. So I thought I'd have a go at making one of them.

The base card is Light blue and there is a cut-out swirl in the Lavender front panel to let it show through. The flower and sentiment were cut from Lemon card, with the smaller flower centre cut from a darker yellow heavy vellum (It looks green here but it isn't). I used a pale green card to cut the leaves and held the flower and leaves together with a lavender gem brad. The sentiment was a file already in my Silhouette library, and I am not sure where it is from.

I think all the elements are here, including some tiny butterfly stickers, but the main butterfly can be seen when the card is opened.

I used the same green and lemon card to cut the flower and leaves, and a slightly darker shade of lavender card to cut the butterfly. Then I cut a backing for its wings from the yellow vellum which shows nicely when it pops up.

There was a file for cutting an envelope in the folder, which I wouldn't normally bother with, but as the card was not a standard size, I did cut its envelope this time, and backed the Lace flap with some more of the green card.

So I will link this to Mrs A's Butterfly Challenge #97. Why not fly over and see who else is there, and maybe add a butterfly of your own.

It's snowing again.

I am sure my friends in UK have seen enough snow for this year, but here in Spain we don't see any, so it is a novelty to use it on a card now and then. In fact I rarely make snowy Christmas cards, but last Autumn I bought three Stampendous stamps that caught my eye, and they arrived too late for my cards, so it is time this one saw some ink.

I stamped it with Memento ink in tuxedo black, so that I could add some colour with copic markers. Then I fussy cut it out, and used Tumbled glass DI ink to distress the edges (It doesn't show in my photo, but it is there!).

For the background I cut a pale turquoise base card and a piece of white card to almost cover it. I embossed the white piece in my falling snow EF, and again used Tumbled glass DI to add a little colour to it.

I used some bright white glitter card to cut a snowflake lace strip (Joanna Sheen signature die) and a small snowflake (Gina Marie Designs), and assembled it all. For a final touch I added glitter glue to the snow in my image.

I am entering this card in:-

ABC Christmas Challenge - E for Embossing and G for Glitter, and

Sweet Stampin' Christmas Challenge - Anything goes.

Butterfly Challenge #96

I've left it a bit late for this challenge but there are still a couple of days to post in. This month our challenge was to use, obviously a butterfly, and anything from this options wheel.

As you know I like a challenge so I decided to try to use all the options again this time. It is not a colour combination I might normally choose, but I think it worked quite well. Here is what I made.

It was a difficult one to photograph and the colours are not very true. The yellow is brighter and the navy much darker. I had so much trouble finding navy card when I made stationery for my son's wedding and this was all I could get. It is quite dark with a pearlescent sheen which reflects the light and makes it appear paler in a photo. The yellow was a very harsh shade, but I found the  shiny back to a brochure that was the nearest I had to the naples yellow in the challenge. I looked up Napier green in google and it is quite a yellowy shade of green, so I found the nearest I could in my stash of green snippets.

I started with the leafy frame which is from a Sizzix die set. I then used the software in my Silhouette Cameo machine to design the oval mats to fit it, and cut them from blue, yellow and green card. The butterfly is my favourite die from Wild Rose Studio, cut from the navy card, backed with white paper and coloured with my new watercolour brush pens to match the cards. I attached it to my frame by just its lower wing so that it stands out a little to give some dimension.The tiny butterflies are a Presscut die.

The yellow card proved too heavy and tough to cut the sentiment, which I wrote and shaped in the Silhouette, but fortunately I found a snippet of vinyl that matched perfectly so I used that, and it cut just fine.

I needed a card for a 40th birthday that is coming up soon, but I know the recipient doesn't follow this blog so I am fine posting it ahead of the day, and it was a good excuse to include the 40 on it, thus using the last of the challenge criteria - to use numbers.

So now I will quickly link up with the Butterfly Challenge#96, before it is too late.