Christmas in July... Two cards with circles, dots and spots

 Do you know that there is a Christmas Card Makers Success Summit starting at the end of July - it's free but you can purchase the VIP pass and get to watch the tutorials straight away.   And that's what I did! 

I watched the tutorial from Ardyth Percy-Robb - which showed how to use a gel plate to get some gorgeous papers and how turn them into Christmas cards.  For my card I CASE'd Ardyth's example card, just using some different stencils and colours. 

I used a Hero Arts stencil called Crossing Waves.  I added some red paint to my gel plate and added the stencil.  I let the paint dry on the plate and then layered with some gold paint and added another paper. Once it dried I took my pull and this is what I got.   It took a few goes to get something I liked... but got there.  I used a circle die from Gina K Master Layouts 3 to make my ornament.  I used some of my roll off papers to cut the gold topper and the Merry Christmas die (both from a magazine freebie set)  For my background, I swinked some Catherine Pooler Juniper Mist onto some card.   I found a Memory Box stencil (Diamonds) that I used some texture paste to add in the corners.   I thought my background was dry but obviously not... it picked up the ink and coloured the paste.   Added some white dots of Posca paint and white gel pen and finished with some homemade star dots.  

I am adding this to latest Christmas Kickstart Challenge #100 - Merry Go Around.   Use spots, dots and circles-

And while I was in the mood for Christmas cards I made a second card for the challenge...

I used Altenew Wonderful Wreath stencil to make a half circle wreath - with two Altenew green inks - Sweet Leaf and Just Green.  I moved the stencil three times to get the three layers of leaves.  I stenciled the red berry circles, but after making a bit of a boo-boo so changed them to use circular red gems for the berries.  I used some off the left over red roll off from my previous card, covered with some clear packing tape to die cut the Hero Arts Peace stamp and cut set.  The sub-sentiment was stamped directly to the card.  Matted with some dark green card. 

Slowly building up the Christmas stash.  

Music for the Soul

 Continuing with the music theme... I've got a card I made about a week ago after I got my Simon Says Stamp order in the post.  I had ordered Gina K Designs - "Music for the Soul" and here's the card I made. 

It's a great stamp set.  The main image is big... fits an A2 US card base.  I used some Prisamcolor pencils and mineral spirits (Gamsol)  I really love how it turned out.  I decided it didn't need any more embellishments. 

Yesterday I had a bit of a play with some acrylic paint and my gel press.... 

 My NZ swap group this month has a theme of paint or ink... So I thought I'd play with paint.  Some look good and some a bit naff... but I've used one of the panels to make my card to send to Suna - will share when she's received it.  And made two other cards so far.  

Hope all the Mother's had a great day... I had a visit from my son and Grace with some lovely chocolates for me.  

Thanks for stopping by.