Dramatic Black and Gold -

My friend Kim (in Perth Australia) is hosting the latest 90 min scramble at Hero Arts Flickr Group.  I love how it's a 24hr edition, so you can take the 90 mins when it suits you.   Kim's challenge started at 9.00pm Sat night for me - so this morning I took two lots of 90 mins to make some cards
Kim's challenge was Dramatic Black and Gold...

My first card took 40 mins - including an epic fail at trying to use some Foil and Flocking embossing powder and foil - think my powder is too old...  look at this mess!

So I turned my card stock over and tried again... this time with Ranger's Platinum Embossing powder...

I added some splatters with a Close to my Heart gold sparkle pen.

And while hubby was washing both cars, I took about an hour to do another one

I got to foil on this one.  I added some double sided tape along the bottom and side of my card and added the gold foil.   I gold embossed the Hero Arts Poppies onto the black card and then used some bleach to paint the flowers.  My idea was to bleach then use some gold paint to colour the poppies, but when I dried the bleach the colour was quite golden looking so I just left it as it was.

Nice to have fun playing for fun's sake.  I've been so busy of late working on design team cards to get myself ahead, it really is nice to just play!

enjoy your weekend.  We are off to our son's place later to have dinner with them.  It was his girlfriend's birthday yesterday so will be good to catch up, 

Dogwood Daze...

I got the Hero Arts Dogwood stamp on Friday so took it to Stamp Group with me on Saturday.  I had scoped out some examples on Flickr to get me started so my first card was direct copy of this card by Linda aka Oz

I stamped the Dogwood down the side of the kraft card in Desert Sand Memento Ink and then highlighted with white pencil.  The sentiment was also stamped in the same ink, but it seems to disappear into the card.

As I have never seen Dogwood before and didn't know what colour it should be, I took some ''artistic license" and did a couple of cards where I coloured it in.... one blues and one reds. 

I was pleased with them both, but annoyed at myself as I moved the sentiment stamp slightly on the blue one.   Both of these were coloured with watercolour pencils - the blue one blended with an aqua pen and the red one with a colourless blender pen (from Tombow)   With the blue ones I left the leaves and centre black to give focus to the petals and the red one I coloured over the leaves in a dark green and added pearls to the centres.

As I spend most of the day at stamp club day, I also managed to get some more cards made.... the first one here is a technique I found on the net somewhere ( can't find the original post now) - first you emboss your card and then cover it with acrylic paint.  Once it is dry you sand the piece and then cover it with brown ink.  I got a new embossing folder yesterday called Jules Jewells so I thought I'd have a go.  The original had used pink paint and brown ink for a vintage look, but I used purple paint and then rubbed over d Dark plum ink.  I did have a bit of a giggle as after lunch our demo of the day was about using Whitewash card and Choc box card to do what I did manually.... emboss and sand to show the different colours.  Here is my card

Isn't that just a lovely folder... my fav butterflies yet again!!

And finally a card I made for our friend's 60th birthday.

I used a Rubbadubbado stamp which I coloured with a variety of Distress inks to make a Rainbow Trout.  Finished with the Inkadinkadoo sentiment embossed in silver.

Thanks for persevering with this long post.. but it was a pretty full on day yesterday.  Hope your week is good.... my final with my team.... off to lunch on Thursday and have booked myself a mini facial for Friday afternoon... so a good week planned.  Take care