Congratulations, Christina!

It's been a long time since I've posted here other than as part of my DT duties, but this post is a little different.

One of the DT members on the International Art and Soul DT, CG, has had a baby! So to wish her, her husband and the little one all the best, her colleagues on the team have made cards and posted them to her. And because, with Christmas around the corner and many miles between us, it'll take a while for those cards to arrive, we're also posting here!

I used an image and paper from a Crafter's Companion CDRom with artwork by Rachelle Anne Miller. I added the wording in Photoshop Elements before printing, and cut the result with a Presscut die, and the mat with a Tonic set. To complete, I used some little stars cut using an inexpensive die set I bought in The Range which were given a little shimmer with gilding wax.

So, CG, wishing you all the best with your new little one, and health and happiness for the whole family.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 224

Our challenge at Crafty Cardmakers for this fortnight, and indeed, over the Christmas period is Christmas!

I've used a Woodware stamp set, and coloured the image with Promarkers. I really do like the image - it's simple, yet complex with the knot-work pattern.

I've framed the image and sentiment using a die set from Cheery Lynn which I've had for a long time and used less often than I expected to.

I actually tried several options for this card before I decided on this option. The base card is one I bought at Ally Pally several years ago. It's a beautiful perlescent dark green colour, but I think they'd been badly scored, so I always have to trim a bit off to get a square card. I embossed the side panel using a folder that was a magazine freebie some time ago. To try to accentuate the snowflakes, I gently applied some Versacolor yellow ink to the panel, which had the effect of slightly warming the tone there, but that isn't obvious in the photo.

I do hope you can join us this time, and whether you do or not, wish you and yours a very happy Festive Season.

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.