International Art and Soul Challenge 48

Our challenge for this fortnight, and indeed over the Christmas and New Year period is Add Some Sparkle.

For this, I homed in on the word sparkle and got out my Crafter's Companion Sparkle pens. I used them to create a background.

I used water to shade the colours together, and when it was dry, I did some faux bleaching with a very old holly stamp.

I used that same stamp for the main image, stamping with the red and green sparkle pens, and a mounted stamp from Dovecraft. I then added the text using an unmounted rubber stamp which I suspect came as a freebie from the Rubbernecker stall at Ally Pally some years ago. I stamped that with Versafine ink as the sparkle pens didn't give a solid enough result.

I cut various mats, and die cut all four layers with some of my set of Tonic Sew Pretty squares. Then, I stitched as you can see, using a sparkly gold thread.

I often forget how a very simple focal image can be complimented by suitable embellishment, and I must say I went from being rather disappointed with the image stamping to being quite pleased with the complete card.

I hope you can join us this time, and I wish you and yours all the best for the festive season.