This was my last attempt at Craft Stamper of the Year, and this round was Indigo Blu. Having learnt my lesson from the previous round where I only bought one stamp that proved hard to use, for this round I bought a set called Wild Meadow and a Sunflower stamp and I had the freebie small butterfly from Craft Stamper magazine. I also bought black stamping card from Indigo Blu, as previous winning entries had used 3 or more elements from the sponsor. I actually got this one in a day before the closing date, or maybe it was hours as I was up to the early hours of the morning finishing it because we were leaving for Devon the next day. I stamped onto the black card with Brillance and the pad has three colours of blues and greens, and then heat embossed with crystal pearl powder, and I trimmed this and mounted it on some gold card then onto the card blank, I think I left the image a little long, however I had been stamping and practicing for hours and forgot to make it a little shorter and had no time to do it again. I stamped the sunflower onto white card several times and coloured them with Promarkers and Trias, then cut and decoupaged the images so each layer gets a little smaller, and I stamped and coloured the butterflies in the same way. I painted over the sunflower and butterflies with artists irridescent medium to give it shine, and finally I stamped the sentiment onto parchment paper and die cut it, edging it with the same brown ink I used to stamp it. I actually bought stamps to complete the last round but ran out of mojo, so got nowhere! I love the stamps and I am sure they will get a lot of use.
This card was also for Stamper of the Year but the round before Indigo Blu, which was sponsored by Crafty Individuals, and I have a lot of their stamps, however this all went horribly wrong! I started by trying to glue book pages together to make an altered book, but it was clear I wasn't doing it right and I didn't have time to look for the instructions - again this was the last day! So I carried on with the book theme and used a page from the book which is about a beautiful garden outside a house window, and I cut a window into the middle and used a Sizzix cut and fold window die with the top part hidden. Inside the window I stamped and embossed the bird cage and some blue birds. Outside I stamped branches and birds, and then went to grab the flower stamps - it wasn't until I had spent some hours colouring them in that I realised I had grabbed the wrong make of stamps for the flowers, I had stored Graphicus (Chocolate Baroque) stamps on the same sheet and the Crafty Individual stamps were right next to them - whoops! Again with no time to redo the whole thing I had to just finish off with some Distress walnut coloured ink painted onto and around the page, which is mounted on Kraft card on a lighter Kraft card blank. Oh Dear!
Christmas Eve make, delivered to a neighbour at 11:30. I was making quick cards by this time, and this was the Crackerbox Palace santa and sleigh stamped onto linen effect card which was embossed with the snowy village and I added Ice Stickles to highlight that image. Crafty Ribbons of course, and by the time I got to Boxing day and still making cards I had refined this a little but didn't take more photos so I need to make some more so I can!
This was inspired by the Crafty Ribbon DT, and used up some short ends of ribbon. I only had one of these card blanks left but I am sure I can reproduce this in some other way with the tools I have! Ribbons are Crafty Ribbons except for one tiny bit, black and silver which is Papermania. I sprayed the card blank with bronze Glimmer Mist and added a star and some wooden ornaments, and this was for Shaun.
Not a card, this is an insect hotel and was one of my Christmas pressies!
What a clever "hotel!" And wow, an impressive parade of cards as well.
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