I've been taking advantage of good buys in the run up to Christmas, and finally have had a chance to play!
This is a stitch die from Spellbinders. I do love stitching on paper, and I've liked this one since I first saw it, so getting it in a pre-Christmas sale was a plus. You don't have to stitch - the holes could equally be used as positioners for liquid pearls or similar. I kept the card itself fairly simple.
Another Spellbinders stitch die. There are other bits I haven't used and I'm not sure the leaves work really well with a 'wheel pattern' stitching. I think I may adapt that when I use it again. I've used a paper doiley that I sprayed with dissolved Brushos (very dilute), a Spellbinders circle die and some paper I found in my scraps collection. I'm not sure where it came from, but suspect it may be one I made by tiling a sample of an image.
And another Spellbinders die. I've got a couple more of these background dies, and while I do like them, it's so irritating that they're not standard-sized. They're too wide for A6, not the right shape for 5 by 7, and have to have an addition when you use my most common card size - 6 by 6. In this instance, I finished it with a border die cut. It's a die I've had for years and I suspect it's a Joanna Sheen design, but I'm really not certain.
All the stitching was done in Sulky Blendables. I'm gradually increasing my range of these, but it seems only a limited selection is available in the UK and I'm not about to get in to importing and being fleeced for postage and customs charges.
Not Spellbinders this time, but Stamps by Chloe. I haven't bought any of her designs before, although I've got a few stamps that came with Creative Stamping magazine a while ago. In fact, I made a lot of Christmas cards using that set recently. She has a very feminine, frilly style and that's very much to my taste (although I'm not remotely frilly in person!) This was made using a stamp and die set. I used Versafine Clair to stamp the corner four times, cut the flowers from two images and coloured with pencil (a mix of Polychromos and Koh-i-Noor Polychrome). I added some Sakura Stardust clear to the swirls and some stitcky gems. The greeting is also from Chloe and it's another stamp and die combination. There are three dies - I've used the largest of them with the stamped image.
Another Stamps by Chloe stamp and die combination, but this one is a panel. I used similar colouring materials. The background is a panel embossed using an Embossalicious folder which I've dabbed with interference ink. I finished the card with some washi tape and a couple of die cut borders - again, I suspect these are Joanna Sheen but I'm not sure.
It's been lovely to spend some time stamping and colouring - I don't seem to have enough time for those these days! Maybe I should try to make more time for it in the coming months.
