A Christmas bauble

Hello there!  I am finally almost ready for Christmas;  after a hectic few weeks, the presents are bought and wrapped and I just need to pick up the turkey and the last few food items on Friday evening when I finish work.  And that will be it...  what's been forgotten or not done by then, won't be done.  

After Barbara Gray showcased my Christmas card on her blog yesterday, I thought I'd blog a little step by step in case you want to have a go.

First, I stamped the small moonfairy into place with black archival.  I found it easier to mask him off using masking fluid, rather than using a post-it.  Then, I stamped the bauble and sentiment into place.

Put the outie mask into place.

My advice would be to mask off the rest of the card with copy paper to make sure you don't get any ink anywhere else.  And how does she know this???

I brushed peacock feathers distress ink into the bauble, working round and round from the edge, building up the colour slowly.  I left the centre paler to highlight and to create the illusion of depth and dimension.

Remove the mask.

Now use the innie mask to cover up the bauble.

Next, I lightly brushed picked raspberry distress ink through the top right and bottom left corners and stamped the snowflakes into place;  allowing them to drift down from the top left to bottom right corner.  I used paradise teal and vibrant fuchsia archival inks;  as I love the clean, crisp impression you get with archival ink.  you could however just as easily use your chosen distress inks.  You can now remove the masking fluid;  it just rubs/peels away.

You can see below the Faber Castell polychromo colours I used to colour the moonfairy.

A little glitter to add sparkle to his wings, and all that's left to do is to edge with a black sharpie pen and mat onto a card blank.

So here is the finished card.  I hope you like it.  Maybe you feel inspired to mix some of your new Clarity stamps with an old favourite.

And here is the same design in a different colourway.

So there you have it;  a clean and simple design that's reasonably easy to achieve. 

And now I wish you all a truly fabulous Christmas and a Happy New Year.  With all that's going on I'm sure you'll join me in praying for peace around the world.  Till next time.  Xxx

Carol Singing and Christmas Joy!

Hello there!  I can hardly believe that its December already.  Hope you're a bit more organised than me.  I've got a lot to do before I'll be ready for Santa!



This months theme over on the Claritystamp challenge blog is "Carol Singing and Christmas Joy" so you have plenty of scope to make a last minute Christmas card or gift.



I kept it very simple, so no step by step this month.

All stamping done in paradise teal archival.  The partridge was stamped first, then masked with a post-it note before stamping the tree into place.  I used a quickie glue pen  to add some glitter to the leaves and coloured the partridge with my polychromos.



I then stamped the words into place using the word chain alphabet and some of the word chains.  Glitter round the edges and mounted onto a co-ordinating card blank, and voila!!!



Looking forward to seeing all your entries this month.  Its always exciting to see what you come up with.  Don't forget the winner gets a £50 Clarity voucher;  now think how nice that would be...  just in time for the half price members sale!


Hopefully I'll be back soon for a closer look at the samples I've made for this weekend's Claritystamp shows on Hochanda.  The new stamps are just fabulous.  Till next time.  Xxx

Butterflies

Hello there!  I thought I'd pop in with a quick blog of my butterfly card from 20th November's Best of Clarity shows on Hochanda. 

First, I blended distress paints on an A5 piece of stencil card.  I think the colours I used were:  candied apple, carved pumpkin, fossilised amber, lucky clover, mermaid lagoon and wilted violet.  The good thing about using paint is that you get full coverage and vibrant colour really quickly and easily.

It took several trial runs on copy paper to work out the positioning of the butterflies before stamping them onto stencil card.

I then cut round the wings with  a really sharp craft knife so that they could be folded up.

All that I needed to do then was to stick this in place on top of the coloured background.

Trim back and edge with a black sharpie pen before mounting onto a card blank. 

Its a clean and simple design, but its very effective I think.  I hope you like it too. 

I can't believe that Barbara Gray is back on the TV on Sunday.  My samples for that show are all boxed up ready for posting tomorrow and I'll be back on Thursday with my Claritystamp Challenge card for December!  Going to be a busy few days!!!  Till next time.  Xxx