Non-traditional Christmas colour

 I lost a shadow die last week, so on Sunday I did some tidying up - and not I did not find it... but did find a stamp stuck to the top of my Misti - not even sure what set it came from and I found my Sweet Poppy metal stencils - I have two Christmas ones - an ornament and a bell. 

I took the ornament one and some paper and got out some purple Altenew inks.  I recently purchased the Scrapblook.com magnetic magic mat and I used it to hold my stencil onto the paper.   It sticks to the magnetic side perfectly and lets me do the inking. 

Doesn't it look impressive in the purples.  It is a large stencil and to get it all on my card, I made a base that is 5" x 6".  I used several of the Altenew inks. And then I added a sentiment from a magazine freebie, inked in Altenew Obsidian ink.  I splashed some water on it to get droplets and then spritzed it with Shimmer Spray in Frost.  Added some white gel dots, and some white pearls.  For tiny splash of colour I added some red enamel dots for the berries. 

A bit of Christmas - 4 Christmas cards

 Hi there.   Over the last few days I've made some Christmas cards for a few challenges and some just for fun.  

First up is a  card I made for Let's Squash It challenge.  The challenge is Not Paper, Not Card.

I took a piece of vellum and used a Christmas word folder.  I wrapped it around some dark red card stock.  I used a lighter red card and some dark green card together with a Hero Arts Poinsettia stamp and matching die cut to make my flower.  I layered the red panel onto some dark green then onto my white card, 

Second one was for the challenge at Christmas Kickstart.  Jo and Gail provided a beautiful photo inspiration. 

I took my inspiration from the brightly coloured tree.  

My tree came from a magazine freebie stamp set.  I took some patterned paper to add to my mini slimline and stamped the tree.  Then I took some Nuvo drops and 3D Liquid pearls and added lots of blobs and dots.  I gold embossed the sentiment from the stamp set. 

My next two cards were just for fun. 

la

Playing with my setncil again.  This time I blended my desert scene and stamped the Bethlehem stamp (from a NZ company Montarga Stamps) - It went a bit wonky but I was happy with the results.  Add the sentiment along the bottom.  I used pencils to colour in the rest of the stencil and added Wink of Stella all over.  

And finally using a fun fold I used recently. 

I made the cuts on my card and then added my patterned papers.  I used three different sheets of paper. Two for the backgrounds and the other one to cut out Father Christmas.  I then used a die to cut out the big Christmas and stamped the little Merry. 

thanks for getting to here... I know it's a big post.   

Things here in NZ have taken a turn for the worst.  We've got a case of Covid in the community so the whole country has gone into Level 4 lockdown.  Here in Auckland and in the Coromadal Peninsula,  it's for 7 days - rest of the country it's for 3 days.   The case has no links to the border or managed isolation so we are just waiting to see if there are more.  So working from home for the next week.  

Take care out there people.  

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.