WWC322 - - Marsha's Challenge: All About Occasions

 Hi there, time for a new challenge at Watercooler Wednesday Challenge. Marsha is our hostess with an  All About Occasions challenge.  

Today, I'm sharing a Christmas card.    I've recently purchased some Sweet Poppy stencils.  

These are beautiful large stencils.  I just managed to get this one onto an A2 US sized card.  They are metal stencils so I used a new magnetic embossing plate to keep the die on my paper.  I saw some ideas on the web showing people using magnetic sheets and I knew I had a new unsued plate and thought I'd try it and it worked so well.  I started by taking some Altenew Eastern Sky and Sunkissed inks to colour the centre of the Bauble stencil. I then used Crimson for the ribbons and bow plus the Holly berries, and Hunter Green and Seas Forest inks for the holly and pine branches.  My next step was to stamp some trees in the greens.  Both trees used came from old freebie sets as did the sentiment.  Added some white nuvo drops, some Stickles and a bit of gel pen to create the snow.  

Come and join in the fun at  Watercooler Wednesday Challenge and check out the project from the other designers.  Then take our challenge and link up your project to the challenge post.    We'd love to have you join us.  You have until Monday at 5 pm Mountain Standard Time (Tuesday at 12.00 noon NZ time) to link up your project.

Christmas in July.

 It's winter here in New Zealand and today which started nice and then turned to rain, so I managed to get a few hours in my craft room.  I saw a fabulous tutorial on Facebook - one the Simply, Sweet Poppy Stencils page.  It was done by Susan Bradney using Sweet Poppy's Christmas Bauble stencil.  I recently got the Bauble stencil and decided I would try it out following the tutorial.  I CASE'd the card Susan made. 

Making this card involved making a mask, stencilling in a pale ink, using the mask and doing some ink blending.  I used some stamps from my stash (freebies from magazines)  One of my purchases on Friday was a white Posca fineliner pen.  Used it to make my snow flakes and add some to my snow banks. To add colour to the stencilling, I used Prismacolor pencils. I matted the panel onto some gold mirror card and then onto a Pearlised card base.  It's a lovely bit card 6" square.

After spending most of the afternoon making this first card my second one for the day was much quicker.   I bought Gina K's Holiday Tapestry  stamp set a while back and only opened it today.  

This one started with some patterned paper from a Uniti pack.  I die cut it with a Sunny Studio's slimline Scalloped Frame die and then embossed the big floral image at each end of the panel in silver embossing powder.  I then stamped and embossed the sentiment in gold powder.  Add some Pink Fresh gold and silver metallic pearls.  Slowly building up my Christmas card stash.  I'm entering this one into Darnell's NBUS (Never Before Uses Schtuff) as it's the first time inking up this one. 

Thanks for stopping by.