Non Traditional Christmas Card

The new challenge on the Crafty Cardmakers Blog is either to make a Christmas card in non-traditional colours or to use traditional colours and a non-Christmas image. Well, I went for the former.



I used a brass stencil - a Dreamweaver one, I think - and watercoloured the hat, scarf and carrot nose. I then added embossing pen to the star and wording and embossed them in silver. The card background is stamped in Versamark Baby Blue with a snowflake stamp which was one of the first I ever bought some years ago, and finished it with some blue and silver ribbon.

Faux Cloisonne (Again)

Or, I really should say this is the first time. A few weeks ago, I made this post, but said the idea inspired me to make a card for a swap. Well, I now know the card's been received, so I can post it here too!



This time, I used a fairly old butterfly stamp, embossed it in gold and painted them with my twinkling H2Os. When that was dry, I painted over the colour with a clear varnish. The detail butterflies were stamped on two layers of fantasy film - I can't actually remember which colour because it didn't seem to matter which I used, it always looked about the same. The theme of the swap was 'transparent', and the butterfly wings just about comply with that. After that, all I added was some ribbon from an Autumn collection I bought in Hobbycraft.

Friday Sketchers Challenge No. 78

I really liked this sketch - it's nice and symmetrical while still having something a little different about it. (What can I say? I like symmetry.)



The image is from Cute Daisy May, and it's coloured with my Promarkers and edged with Olive Versamark.

The paper is actually from a Christmas collection, although it's not specifically Christmassy, and the ribbon is some raffia ribbon I've had for a while with a little olive green added. It's finished with a couple of flowers and brads from my collection.

Stamp Something!

When I first got into papercrafting, I tried stamping and quickly decided (well, not that quickly - I still bought quite a few stamps) that it wasn't for me. Then, I joined the Crafty Cardmakers group and decided to give it another go. Now, it's something I'm starting to enjoy although I still get frustrated from time to time when things don't work the way I expected. Still, I recently got some Oliphant stamps which intrigued me because they've got a figure of a boy and a girl as well as several background elements.

The Crafty Cardmakers challenge this time is to stamp something, so I had a play.



As an additional challenge, we had to try something we hadn't tried before. Well, I tried something I've never had any success at before ... masking so I could add the chair, tree stump and robin.

I coloured with my Promarkers. I'm still getting the hang of them, and I'm finding it easier to get the effect I want but sometimes it still doesn't look the way I expected it to. I suspect that's my total lack of an artistic background coming through.

In the background is some paper from the Paper Cellar and I Wizarded some Co'ordinations card with a Cuttlebug folder and cut a snowflake. Then I added some glitter, a stick on gem and some ribbon.