Cherry Blossoms Bunch - two ways

My last order arrived - including Altenew Cherry Blossoms Bunch - stamps, stencils and die.    I made two cards this weekend using it. 

First up - used the stencil to colour it. 

I used Altenew Frosty Pink and Coral Berry for the flowers and Green Fields for the leaves. I added Honey Drizzle for the stamens. For the gold stripe I used Altenew Buffalo Plaid stencil - masking off so just one stripe used.  I also got some Simon Hurley Lunar Paste Slippery When Wet in the order, so that was what I used through the stencil.  The sentiment is from Altenew Birthday Builder set.   Added some Pinkfresh metallic gold pearls to the centres and around the flowers.   

This one is being entered into Darnell's NBUS challenge for February. 

Edited:  Thanks to Maxine - I'm adding this to the February Challenge at We Love Stamping  - stamping with optional stenciling.

For my second card I tried something different - Shimmer powders. 

 For this one I stamped the flowers and then I did some watercolouring by wetting the image and dusting with Nuvo Shimmer powders and Pixie Powders to add some colours.  I thought they woud look amazing against the black background.   I had used some watered down Lunar Paste - Slippery when Wet to splatter and smoothed some over some white card to cut the sentiment.   I layered onto some white die cuts slightly offset. 

I'm adding this one to the Altenew Inspiration challenge for February 

I'm enjoyed trying out different ways to colour this stamp set.  

WWC323- Cathy's Challenge - All Things Feminine

 Hi there.  It's time for a new challenge at Watercooler Wednesday and Cathy is our hostess with an All Things Feminine challenge .

My card today is full of colour and shine 

I used some watercolour paper and spitzed it with water and added some Pixie Powders.  It really is super shimmery - the photo does not due it justice.  I then ran it through an Altenew 3D embossing folder - Daises,  I rubbed a little gold metallic paste over the centres of the flowers.  I madded it with some dark purple card and added to a white card base.  I die cut a gold card stock hello with a Catherine Pooler die.  I found a little white embossed sentiment strip that had the word you on it, so trimmed it out and added to the card.  

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 11.00am NZ time) to link up your project.

Peace Christmas Card

Today I have a card to share I made for the latest Southern Girls Challenge Blog.  Our challenge theme is Let's get Inky -use Sprays and or Inks.    I used a die from our sponsor Krafter's Cart.

I used some Pixie Powders to make my background .  I added lots of different colours and layers till I got what I liked.   I trimmed my piece down a bit and used the left over piece to die cut the Peace from a Hero Arts Stamp and Die set.  I layered the die onto some white card slightly offset.  The rest of the sentiment is from the same set.   The bird die was supplied by Meetu at Krafters Cart (no longer available but do go and visit her online store - it's full of superb supplies)  I used some glittery fun foam to cut out the dove.   Added a little die cut twig. 

So get your inks and sprays out and join us at Southern Girls Challenge. 

Beautiful Butterflies

I was playing around with my Stamp Of Approval Lovely Notes tonight, using the butterfly set.  It is stunning.  I managed two quick cards...

First up I did some embossing - dry and wet. 

I embossed the background with a new folder I recently got.  The butterflies were stamped onto Vellum with Altenew ink and then versamark before being embossed with WOW Clear Sparkle powder.  I then fussy cut them.  I used a Spellbinders label's die to cut my sentiment panel.  Sentiment is from the same set as the butterflies.

My second card was made with the Simon Says Stamp challenge in mind... "Make for the border"

I used the bigger butterfly again, this time using some various Pixie Powders on the stamp.  I then inked the edge of the stamp with black ink.  Turned out very pretty.  The powders have quite a shimmer to them.  I used a sentiment from a previous SOA collection - Beautiful World.  And finished with a few sequins.  I layered the panel onto some purple card and used a Fiskers edge punch.  My favourite colour with my favourite theme - butterflies. 

All in all, a fun evening of crafting.

Pretty Peony #2

I got around to making a card with my Altenew technique piece

I started with this... but felt it didn't really pop. So I embossed the outline

Made quite a difference I think.   I had this on my one layer card but messed up the sentiment.  So just trimmed the peony out. 

I stamped the leaves around where I was going to pop the flower.  I stamped them directly to the card in Verafine Onyx Black.  I decided to leave them uncoloured to allow the flower to be the focal point.   The sentiment is from the SOA Lovely Notes Collection from StampNation.  Die cut with a Lil' Inkers die and added to some Bazzil card.  Some Pretty Pink Posh clear sequins to finish.

Loved how these turned out.  So much so, that I have ordered some more Pixie Powders in some other colours. 

Thanks for stopping by.  Hope this has inspired you to get your craft on!

Shimmery flowers

My friend send me a Pin the other day... very pretty technique using Color Bursts (see it HERE)
It used an Altenew layered Peony.  I have four colours of Pixie Powders which are similar to Color Bursts so thought I'd try it out.

I was so pleased with how they turned out.  The green in particular was fabulous.  The Blue one is very shimmery.  I used some gold embossing on the final one.  After I took the photo I decided that I needed to gold emboss the outline layer.   That made it look even better. 

Made the blue one into a card. 

The big sentiment is from Hero Arts.  I was really happy with this technique.  I'm entering it into the Simon Says Stamp Challenge.

Had a great weekend up at Mangawhai.  I finished making the set of 20 cards that one of my work colleagues ordered.  I did 10 on Saturday morning... had a production line going. And had fun using a mixture of stamps to make this card

 Altenew berries, SOA Butterfly and freebie sentiment.  This is a Happy Card for me.

Thanks for stopping by

Purple Peony

Last weekend I did some background using my new Pixie Powders... so today I got around to using one of them

I had stamped Altenew Peony Bouquet over the portion of the background I'd concentrated the purple powder to.   Although it looks simple, layering the different stamps proved to be more difficult than I thought and I didn't quite get it right.  Added some more purple inks to give it a bit more depth.   I decided that all it needed was the die cut sentiment.  It's from Creative Expressions .  One of my purchases last Friday.  I added some washi tape along the top of my panel and then used some fun foam to pop it up.

Hope you have managed to get some crafting done.   It's back to work for me tomorrow as I did not win the BIG Lotto prize this weekend.   I'm going to leave you with a quick photo of Archer.  He's almost 12 weeks now.