One last Christmas card.

This is probably my last Christmas card post for 2018. I liked the way these turned out so I thought I would write a post about them.

These were made using a cutting file from craftsuprint. The bird panel has three layers, the blue background, a silver layer (you can see this on the right hand card) and the white detail layer which is all in one with the whole card front. The greeting is also cut out and the silver layer extends behind it.

The bauble is cut out to show the silver layer and then has three white layers added on top. For my third layer I chose two pictures and cut them with a small scalloped circle die. The robin is a photo I took in Ireland last winter, while on holiday there, and the snow scene is one made from several stamps for a project a few years ago, and then saved as a digital file for future use.

This is a versatile cutting file with the option of adding colour to the cut out panel, and adding a range of stamped or printed images to the bauble.

A small bow added to the top of the bauble was the only decoration I felt it needed.

I am linking this to Paper Players Challenge PP421: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Rudolph Day Challenge for November

Hi folks. Once again I have not posted since the last challenge but I have the excuse that I was away in UK for two weeks. While there I managed to get all my cards for UK stamped and left them with my son to post later, but now I am home I find I still need about forty cards for local friends, so I have been busy making some simple 'runs'. But the cards I am showing today are some I made just before I went away, using the boxed magazine set - Stamps by Chloe, Christmas Collection.

This magazine came with two dies and a set of 11 stamps to coordinate with one of them, a very pretty embossing folder and lots of papers, toppers etc. The magazine was full of examples and techniques, and although I was careful not to copy any of them exactly, they did give me lots of ideas, including using colour combos that I might not have considered otherwise.

So here are three of the cards I made.

The papers and embossed background (dotted with stickles for a sparkle effect), are from the set, as are the poinsettia panels, decoupaged with flowers from the toppers sheets.

The top one has a large flower corner made using an Altenew stamp and die set, and Tim Holtz and Joanna Sheen signature dies for foliage. 

Both sentiments are made with Cut & Make mini dies. 

I shall try to get some more cards made with this versatile kit, this week.

In the meanwhile I will link up with the Rudolph Day Challenge on Scraps of life by Scrappy Mo, and try and catch up on my other blog!

Rudolph Day, October 2018

I am back with a Nativity scene for this month's challenge. I like to use them on my Christmas cards, and this features Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem, so not the usual picture which makes it nice.

I made it using a very cheap set of dies from China that I bought from Amazon. I have often thought about using these but felt they were almost too cheap to be any good. I had to wait a while for them to arrive, but I can't fault their quality. I liked this set because it makes a small card. This one is A6 size, and I don't really like cards that are too big.

It made sense to cut more than one while I had my Bigshot out, so I made four base cards from some rather dull blue card. Then I went though my snippets boxes and found various offcuts in shade of grey, to cut the two rows of buildings, and some black card for the figures. I used a piece of packaging to cut four strips for the sandy road, and found four pieces of starry sky paper to cut the background. I found I preferred it with a narrow black border top and bottom, and I made and cut the sentiment on my Silhouette cameo from silver vinyl.

These were quick and easy to make so I shall probably make some more. but first i will link up with Rudolph day Challenge at Scraps of life by Scrappy Mo, and I will also take them over to Pixie's Snippets Playground, as it is a long time since I paid her a visit!

Rudolph day September 2018

Well I am back with some slightly 'lazy' cards. My mojo went to sleep during the long hot summer, and it has not woken up fully yet! But I really wanted a card for this challenge and I need a couple of good runs of cards to complete my stash, so when I spotted this year's Hunkydory Christmas packs, I decided to buy them. I tend to steer clear of Hunkydory because so many of their kits are just too big and heavy for me. I don't make very big cards,and weight has to be a consideration as most will be posted internationally. However I could see that these packs had some smaller images and many of them looked like ones I would use, and I was not disappointed. I bought a pack of toppers and papers, and also two blocks of small images which mostly have six of each image in them. Some could be used as a simple topper with nothing added, if that is what you wanted. 

I had decided not to spend much time looking at their worked examples and ideas. Instead I cut sets up, rearranged them, paired them differently, made them up and them embellished them. I chose several images and divided them into either what I call 'Christian' images or 'secular' images. I tend to lean towards ones that depict the Nativity, the real story of Christmas, but I am happy to use the others as well, and I always add a small Bible text inside them anyway. So here are one of each that I made into cards.

I then went on to make a further nine cards so far, with many more planned for the next couple of weeks if I can get myself into action.

For some of my cards I found a stamped and embossed sentiment was all that was needed, or a little added glitter glue etc. For others I made mats and frames either with metal dies, or in my silhouette cameo, and added stamped sentiments and other little bits and pieces from my stash. Each one is a little bit different from the next, and I am looking forward to getting some more done now. Here are the ones I have made so far. (Please excuse the photo. I realised how very messy my table was behind this group, so I cut them out and added them to a plain backing, but I didn't have time to tidy it up much).

That said, it is time to link up with Rudolph Day September Challenge over on Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo.

Rudolph Day Challenge #August

Happy Rudolph Day everyone! I have had a very busy summer with non-stop visitors, (just one son with us now for one more week), but I was so uncharacteristically organised that I had all the cards I needed until September, made by the start of July, including this one for today's challenge.

The star is an old Marianne die, and the angel and dove stamp (they were together but I separated them) is by LOTV. The sentiment stamp is from a clear set by Hero Arts. I stamped the image twelve times and then decided how to use them.

I used pre-cut blank 13.5 cm square cards from Hobbycraft in white and cream, and rooted through my Christmas paper oddments box for backing sheets. Then I matched each paper to a toning glitter card for the star. Finally I coloured the image to go with each set and mounted them up. 

My doves ended up more like pigeons because when I just added grey shading to the white doves, they didn't show up on the cards, so I added a little pink and lilac to them!

So now I have another twelve cards for my stash. I just need to do a few more runs like this to reach my target. 

So I will link these up with the August Rudolph Day Challenge over at Scraps of Life by Scrappymo, and get back to my visitor.

A Star Led the Way for Rudolph Day; July 2018

As I have so many visitors coming over from UK this summer, I worked hard over the last few weeks, to make all the cards I need during July and August, as I know I won't get much craft time while family are here, and that included my cards for Rudolph Day.

For last month's challenge, our lovely hostess Scrappy Mo used a die that I really liked. It was a Find it Media, Jeanine's Art Christmas die, featuring a pretty Christmas tree. I had difficulty finding anywhere outside of USA  that was selling it, and I have been caught on import tax and heavy P&P too many times to order from there, but Mo helped me find a source and I did buy one, and at the same time I bought another die from the same set, featuring stars, so that is what I have used for my card this time.

I found a half-used sheet of scrapbook paper that was just big enough to cut the die frame twice. The paper is very pretty and where it looks green in my photo, it is actually gold.

I have a huge stash of glitter card from our cheap 'Todo' (means everything) shop, in a great range of colours, so I used a darkish brown one as a hand cut mat behind the frame. It came with a circle die for the aperture, so I made an insert to fit, using a small LOTV stamp of a stable, which I added a tiny nativity scene to for a card I made earlier this year. I generated the sentiment on the computer and added an amber gem to the centre of the star. 

For this one I matched my aperture colour to a plain cream purchased card blank. For the second die cut I had flipped the orientation of the die (by cutting from the back of the paper instead of the front). I followed the same steps as above but mounted it onto a dark brown card. 

The backing paper looks prettier in this one. In both my photos everything looks a bit off kilter, but they are both straight in real life! I must have been having a bad camera day.

So that's two more cards for my collection, but I need to make a big run of one soon, as I have fallen behind somewhat since my excellent start to the year!

I will link this up with Rudolph Day Challenge; July and I 'll be back again in August.

Birthday butterflies

I am determined to squeeze one post in before the next Rudolph day on Wednesday, so here are a pair of butterfly cards I made, one for my sister's birthday, and the other for a friend.

In each case the flowers and leaves were stamped with an Altenew set of layering stamps. There are six layers to the flower and four to each leaf, and they really do build up into beautiful roses. I am lucky to have a range of coloured ink pads in my stash, so I have plenty to choose from. They are then cut out with the matching dies.

The two sets of background papers were from pads I have bought at Lidls at some time, as is the plain dark pink paper.

The doily on the top card was cut with a cheap Chinese die bought through Amazon, and the lower one is a Gina Marie Design die.

The sentiment on the first card is cut with a Joanna Sheen signature die, and the butterfly is using two Memory box dies.

The sentiment on the second card is one I designed and cut with my silhouette Cameo machine, and the butterfly die is by Wild Rose Studio.

Both cards are the same inside and they use a pop-up arch of butterflies and flowers cut on my silhouette cameo from pearlised paper, using a design by Judith Henry, and bought as a cutting file from craftuprint. It was a bit fiddly to put together, but I loved the end result.

I shall be using this insert again, but I prefer my more fancy card front to the plainer one that came with it.

Rudolph day, June 2018

Here we are at Rudolph day again (25th of each month). I have not posted anything since the May challenge. I have made needed birthday cards, but have been too busy to write about them.

But with my new kitchen now finished and the house back to normal, and our first visitors of the season gone, I thought I had better get myself back in gear. We took our son and his partner to the airport yesterday morning, so in the afternoon I thought about a quick and easy card I could make for today's challenge.

I settled on a bought printable file from craftsuprint. It provided a complete card front with decoupage flower elements and layers of the main image to make a pyrimage. I am not a huge fan of pyrimage and I try not to make my cards too dimensional for international posting, so I decided to use just the main card front and printed it directly onto heavy duty card.

There was a corner element of holly sprays and Christmas roses which I didn't care for either, so I used some Joanna Sheen Signature dies to cut two sizes of poinsettias and some holly. I used copic markers to add pale green and yellow to the flowers, and covered the printed corner with my own. Then I used stickles glitter glue to add some sparkle to the flower centres and the ribbon printed down the spine of the card. A few drops of red perfect pearls added some berries to the holly.

My flowers partly covered the very small greetings banner at the base of the image so I glued a new one over it, from a packet a friend gave me years ago. There were hundreds of them in there, and I forget to use them.

And that's it for this month. I made two identical cards, but I need to make a lot more to catch up with my monthly target. (And I started the year so well!).

Scrappy Mo has not posted the challenge yet so I will call back later and link up  to her when she has.(Now linked).

Rudolph Day Challenge for May.

Well here we are at Rudolph Day again (25th of the month). It has been a bit of a roller coaster month for me, will little time to spend in my craft room, but I have managed to make a set of simple Christmas cards, so here are a few of them.

The words "Joy to the World" was a cutting file purchased from the Silhouette store, and cut with my Cameo machine. I ungrouped it all and carefully removed the letter "O", and replaced it with one of three nativity baubles, also purchased from the silhouette store, and reduced to fit in the space.

I cut the main letters from a variety of coloured card and some metallic embossed card. Because the nativity images were more intricate with some fine lines, I cut them from several colours of vinyl. It is hard to photograph it well, but the top one is cut from green metallic vinyl, the next one from black glitter vinyl, and the last one from silver.

I rooted through my stash and found a variety of backing papers, using transfer tape to position the cut images centrally on them. Then I cut base cards to tone with each one, and used  up oddments of border papers, peel-offs and ribbons to finish them off.

I made eight cards in all, each one different, but all using the same words, and one of the three images.

So now I am linking them up with the Rudolph day Challenge - May, on Scraps of life by Scrappymo.

April Rudolph Day.

I see my last post on here was for March Rudolph Day and here we are at 25th of April, ready to post another Christmas card. I don't know where the time goes!

This month I am going back to my preferred images for Christmas cards - Nativity scenes.  My first card uses an old pre-loved Woodware (Francoise collection) stamp that I bought from a friend at my sewing group.

It is very sweet, and only needed a little colouring done with my copic markers. I looked through my Christmas paper oddments and found two matching pieces in different colours. Between them I managed to cover the front of a plain, brown card. I inked the edges of my image to tie it in, and used a tiny strip of brown card to make a banner. The sentiment is embossed with Pirate gold powder.

Knowing that after a very good start to the year, I am now falling behind on my monthly target for cards for next Christmas, I made a second one using a mixture of a Heartfelt Creations stamp, overlaid with a Wild Rose Studio one that came free with a magazine last year.

Again it is coloured with copic markers, and cut with a stitched square die. Using the next size up die, I cut a mat from dark blue slightly glittered card, and then mounted it onto a square white card covered with an offcut of starry paper.

I have one more of each image coloured and ready to mount up. But first I will link these two up to Rudolph Day Challenge - April, at Scraps of Life by Scrappymo.

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.

February Rudolph day Challenge

Something a bit different for me this month. This is not my usual style but I wanted to try it, and also to try out a new stamp and die set.

I like cards that have a suitable verse on them, especially if it is Bible verse that tell us the true reason for Christmas. But in this case I had a nice little verse that I saved from a greeting card from a few years ago.

The red, inner white, and green holly, frames came as a set of dies by Amy Designs. I cut a trial set to see how much space I would have and then typed the verse using a font from my library called Asphodel, and played around with it until it fitted inside my frame.

The poinsettia is stamped and cut with my new set that I bought recently in an Altenew sale. The stamps are again layered with four shades of red, and two shades of green for the leaves. My Misti is perfect for getting the layers just right. The matching dies cut with a white edge around each petal which I don't care for, so I inked it to match the petal or leaf.

The ivy and holly sprays are Joanna Sheen signature dies, I layered them all up to cover the 'empty' part of the frame, and used green distress ink around the base card edge.

This month I made a set of six cards all the same, so not quite as good as last month's twenty-five, but a good addition to my stash all the same.

So I shall now go to Scraps of life by Scrappy Mo, to link this up with the February Rudolph Day Challenge.

Butterfly Challenge #95, P is for........

Yes there is a new Butterfly Challenge and this time the letter is 'P' which stands for Pink, Purple or Peach, Pearls, Paper Piecing and Patterned Paper. So there was quite a choice, but because I need a challenge to motivate me at the moment, I decided to try to use all six, and here is what I made.

I started with Paper Piecing which I quite enjoy. I used my Silhouette cameo to cut a hexagon grid from dark Purple card, and raided my snippets box for any Patterned Papers that were Pink, Purple or Peach. I cut out several hexagons from each and rearranged them several times until I was happy with them, then glued them in place, and covered all the joins with the grid. I thought it looked quite pretty.

I then chose a set of Tonic dies that have never been used, and cut the main piece from black card, and then some more solid and lacy butterflies from snippets of bright Pink and Purple mirri-card, and some from black. I cut several lacy flowers from Peach glitter card.

I tried my Paper Pieced background on white, Pink and Purple card, and decided it looked best on the Purple (lilac actually!), so I cut a base card from that and glued the grid in place. 

Then by trial and error I eventually placed the main die cut across the upper half and added Pink mirri card butterflies with black lacy overlays on them. Then I added the Peach glitter flower, and used two more in the bottom corner with a Pink mirri-card butterfly in place of a bow.

There was a tiny mistake in the top right corner where I had trimmed the grid too closely, so I covered that with a Purple lace butterfly over a solid Peach mirri-card one.

The sentiment die (Joanna Sheen Signature dies) comes in  two sizes, and I thought this card needed something quite bold so I went for the larger size, and cut it from the Purple mirri-card.

To finish off I used Pink Pearls on the bodies of two butterflies, and a tiny Peach Pearl on each flower.

So there we have it, a card with all six 'P's' on it, and I have quite a few extra die cuts that might make up in to a second card.

So now I will flutter over to Mrs A's blog to enter in the Butterfly Challenge #95, and also go and play in Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Up and running for the first Rudolph Day Challenge of 2018

For those who don't know, Rudolph day is the 25th of each month, when we are encouraged to make a card, or other Christmas related item, to help us build a stash and avoid a panic at the end of the year.

I have been out of action for best part of a month with the dreaded cold virus, but I am beginning to feel 'human' again, so I wanted to find my mojo and get some crafting done. So here is the first card I made.

Last year I fell woefully behind my target of 12 Christmas cards each month, and I want to do a bit better this year. I needed something fairly straight forward to get me started, so I browsed some fairly old craft CDs, really to see whether I need to keep them or pass them on to someone who would make better use of them, and I came across one called Romany Christmas, which I have never used. The images on it are sort of 'folk art', very simple and muted. There were some sheets of toppers, with six designs to a page so I printed off two each of two pages. The images ranged from robins to Christmas trees, from puddings to snowmen, and even old Rudolph himself. Here is another one made into a card. Very simple but quite effective.

Because of the type of images they were, I felt it would spoil them to add too much embellishment to them, so I found various pre-cut cards from my stash, and several dies for frames. Then I decided which shape worked best for each image and cut them out with a corresponding mat.

Then I used snippets of patterned paper from my Christmas offcuts box, digi scrapbook papers sized down to a fit a square card, and printed off some of the matching papers from the CD, and between all of those I made a backing paper for each card and added the relevant topper.

Then I used oddments of sticky ribbon, die cut lace borders, and elements salvaged from old Christmas cards (I found a bag of these from years ago in one of my scrap boxes!) to add some interest.

I used my misti to position a sentiment stamp on each design and stamped them.

So now I have a collection of 25 cards! WOW. That is a great start to my collection for this year. Just in case you don't believe me...

Sorry the photos are a bit dark. This may be January, but we have unseasonably bright sunshine in the mornings here this month. I am not complaining, but it makes photographing cards quite difficult.

So I will link these up to Scraps of Life by scrappymo, for the Rudolph day challenge.

I won't keep up the momentum of twenty-four cards every month, but I do hope to get some smaller runs done, so I can stay on target this year.

Roses in December

A long time ago, when my Mum died and I had the task of sorting out some of her papers, I found a little text that has stuck in my mind ever since. It read "God gave us our memories that we might have roses in December". These days we hardly need our memories for that, as roses seem to bloom most months, and I have had a flower in my garden at Christmas. But when I needed three cards for December birthdays I remembered the text and I decided to make them using my newest Altenew set of rose stamps and dies. I have had their small roses set for a while, but they have now released a single larger bloom and I love it. So here is the first card I made.

There are six layer stamps for the flower and four for the leaves, enabling you to build up the colours to give a very realistic image. Fortunately I used to have a passion for collecting complete sets of ink-pads, and although I don't use a lot of the different coloured ones now, I was able to find six toning shades of pink for my flower. So I stamped my flower once - my Misti stamp positioner, or a similar one, is essential for aligning the layers of these flowers - and the leaves twice, and cut them out with the corresponding dies. 

The background is a white card blank lightly dusted with pink distress inks. I then used a leaf stencil with Prima Art Alchemy acrylic paint in Rose Gold. I bought this new recently and wanted to try it. It is so pretty, and ideal for adding some gentle shimmer to my card.

I sorted through my green snippets for a piece large enough to cut out the mat using another new purchase - a die by Gina Marie designs. I put them all together and cut a sentiment with another green snippet using my Silhouette cameo and Desire pro font.

I was pleased with this card, so I decided to repeat it using other roses that I had stamped in various colourways when I was first playing with the set. So I ended up with four card in all.

I used white snippets to stamp all the flowers and leaves, and a variety of plain and patterned snippets for the backgrounds, mats and sentiments. I like the darker rose best, but prefer the backing of the first one, but they have all been sent now so I guess I could be trying out some more!

But first I will hop over to Pixie's Snippets Playground with these. It is a while since I made them, but they have not been shown yet. I have been really poorly with a cold virus ever since Christmas, so I have not been down in my chilly craft room very much. But I am trying to get working again now, so hopefully I will have something more recent to show for my next post.