Teddy Birthday Card

This card was made for a Birthday card swap. The person who's birthday it was loves teddies and most things cute so I dug out my one and only cute teddy stamp and came up with this. Cute is not really my forte - other people do it better than me but I enjoyed making the card.

The teddy stamp is from Visible Image and was stamped onto some card cut with a die from a set of circle shape Nestabilities then layerd onto a co-ordinating scalloped circle. The image was coloured with Prismacolor pencils which I blended with paper stumps and low odour mineral spirits.

The background paper is from the a Joanna Sheen CD - the Pamela West Collection. I stamped and heat embossed the floral corner flourish which comes from a set of stamps designed by Sheena Douglas then painted all the little leaves and flowers with with Twinkling H2Os. The flower embellishment is from Prima and was given some extra glitz with a coat of Shimmerz paint.

There's a moose loose aboot this hoose...

... um sorry, my Scottish genes were getting a bit carried away there! I have always rather liked the House Mouse stamps, such cute characters! I think this is such a sweet image of the little mice taking a shower under the spout of a watering can. This is a card I made for someone's birthday and as it has now been received I can post a piccy here.

The image was stamped with black Stazon because I planned to use a wet medium to colour the image. Once stamped I used Derwent Inktense Pencils to colour the image, these pencils are cool because unlike normal water colour pencils they dry permanent. You can use them like a regular watercolour while wet but once they are dry you don't have to worry about the colour bleeding if you want to add other wet stuff such as clear glaze or glitter glues. I did infact add some clear glaze from a Sakura Gelly Roll Glaze pen to the water coming from the spout of the watering can and to the puddle that has form around the feet of the mice to give it a shiney wet look. For some reason the photograph is not showing very clearly that there is a weak wash of blue over the puddle and this was the colour I did not want to have bleed into other areas.

The background paper was made using the 3D2 Card builder CD and Joanna Sheen's Pamela West Collection CD. On the Joanna Sheen CD there was a lovely image of some blackberries, but unfortunately the co-ordinating paper did not incorporate any of the berries so I used a graphics programme to cut a tile of the image out that did include the berries and some leaves. Then using the 3D2 CD I created my own a backing paper. I need to play some more with the 3D2 CD however as I could not figure out how to make the tile big enough that you can actually see the blackberries repeated across the page and I was running out of time to get my card into the mail, so I went with what I had made as the colours were just perfect to match those I had used when colouring the stamped image.

Christmas Left Overs - Not More Turkey!

In the final run up to Christmas I made some cards using Joanna Sheen's Enchanted Christmas CD. As I was in a hurry at the last minute I didn't mess about printing only the bits I wanted, so this left me with some pages of partly used toppers and bits and bobs of co-ordinated backing papers piling up in my craft room. It seemed like a good idea to use them up and get a head start on my cards for 2009. In fact I have promised myself faithfully that for Christmas 2009 I will be ready with plenty of cards made well before any deadlines for mailing them out come around. That way it won't matter if my mojo does it's now annual trick of heading off to warmer climes for a December vacation leaving me stuck at home with no creativity! Anyhow here are a couple of cards made with my "leftovers".

For the first card I simply added red and green Stickles Glitter glue to the Poinsettia and also traced the sentiment with gold Stickles. The image and the co-ordinating backing papers were matted and layered onto gold foil card and I added a pretty bow as a finishing touch.

For the second I matted and layerd the image and backing paper onto dark blue card and, using my favorite Stardust Stickles, added lots of sparkle to the snowy scene in the main image and traced a fine line of glitter round the edges of the mats. The sentiment is a silver peel-off sticker. I still have more unused bits - seems a shame to waste them so if I find I am still in Christmas mode I may put together a few more cards in the next few days.

A change from Christmas Cards

It's getting to that time of the year where it's nice to make something that isn't Christmas themed. I was at the NEC last weekend and treated myself to one of Joanna Sheen's CDs - the Pamela West Collection. It's stuffed full of very pretty images and some rather cute ones too. Anyhow it was a nice change from Christmas stuff to make this card.

Another "Messy Rabbit" Stamp for Christmas

I like this little snow covered house. It's part of the "Messy Rabbit" series of stamps from Joanna Sheen, but while you can use it along with the rabbit images, it stands up all on it's own to make a simple but fun Christmas Card.

Here I have stamped the house, water coloured it and then used coloured Sakura Glaze pens to make the Christmas lights around the roof of the house stand out and the clear glaze pen on the windows so they appear to have glass in them. Finally I added some "Snow Writer" from DecorArt to all the parts of the image where there was snow and sprinkled that with Crystal glitter.

The backing paper is from my Artylicious "Season's Greetings" CD, and the Sentiment stamp is a little cheap one I got in one of those bargain tubs you see in craft shops. Sorry about the photo, it's just not doing the card justice. Anyhow that's another one for Fab's Big Christmas Challenge this month.... only 2 more to go before Monday!

Getting on with Christmas Card Making

It was easy to get motivated for Christmas card making yesterday after the postman deivered my new stamps from Joanna Sheen. She has a very cute new range of stamps called "Messy Rabbit". I used the a stamp from the plate called "Baggy Jumper" which I stamped in Black Stazon then coloured with Prismacolour Pencils and belended with artist's low odour white spirit.

The finished image was mounted onto papers from a Crafter's Companion CD and some blue Mirri card and a little bow was added for a finishing touch. The sentiment comes from a little set of clear text message stamps which hubby bought for me from a local craft shop - not sure what make they are but the tiny text is often quite useful.

This makes a total of 4 cards made for this months "nutter's challenge" on Fab's big Christmas Challenge - 3 more to go before the 25th, I guess I had better get a move on!