Christmas time snowmen

 I haven't made many Christmas cards this year- couldn't get my head around it early enough. I was asked to make a few commissioned cards, and what do you know, I got my Christmas mojo back!

I enjoyed making these- fabulous vintage-y paper, and the Stampendous clear snowman stamp, which can be manipulated to make different shaped snowman bodies.

I think the spotty paper's my favourite :)

I'm entering these into the Crafty Cardmakers Christmas challenge and

the Simon Says Wednesday challenge- winter inspiration- I went for snow inspiration!

Stamp Man DT- Anything goes!

I'm a bit late with my DT post for the Stamp Man this fortnight, but in my defence, the Olympics is verrrry absorbing. Plus, it was my birthday weekend, so time sort of got away from me!

The challenge is Anything Goes, so a really easy one, and an easy way to win a Stamp Man voucher!!! I went for a card, using a lovely  Stampendous Cling stamp called Butterfly post .

The stamp is so gorgeous, I just highlighted the butterfly wings and the edge of the postcard with my beloved watercolour pencils. I went for shiny mirri card and a foiled black card background.

A few black and smoky grey gems for added bling- well you can never have too much, right?

Travel or time at the Stamp Man

I couldn't stop thinking about Dr Who with this challenge- time travel and all that! However, my project has nothing of the Dr about it- except that he's probably visited Paris a few times in his travels.

I used a gorgeous Stampendous Frantage stamp available from the Stamp Man here. Gently watercoloured it with Wild Honey and Ripe Persimmon Distress Inks. The gold card is punched with a Woodware ribbon slot punch, I quite liked that the sheer ribbon I chose let the gold slats show through.

The stitches round the edge are by Doodlebug and are BY FAR the best rub ons I've ever used. They were so easy to rub on and stuck really firmly, I'd recommend them. I quite like a rub on from time to time!

So the challenge details are a the Stamp Man challenge blog, and the theme is time or travel, so quite broad- there's a fab voucher up for grabs, so well worth an entry!

I'm entering this into the Simon says stamp and show- anything goes challenge.

Flippin' heck, how can my baby be 10 already?

Unbelievably, my son is 10 today. I can't believe he's in double figures. Here's his birthday card, on a whopper of an 8x8" card.

I used the Lion digi, from I Brake for Digis, coloured with Promarkers, then layered up and fixed with eyelets. The card and brown layer are stamped with a Stampendous set of fab wild animal prints. There are loads more fab digis at I Brake for Digis, and if you quote my discount code SAVE10LISA, you'll get 10% off! Plus, there's lots of inspiration over at the I Brake for Digis DT blog.

I'm entering this into the following challenges:

Passion for Promarkers-  Anything goes 

Crafts and Me- Anything goes

I Love Promarkers- Anything goes

Papertake Weekly- Anything goes

Allsorts- Anything goes

Ingredients

Stamps- I Brake for Digis Lion, Stampendous

Inks- Versafine Vintage Sepa

Promarkers- Gold, Tulip Yellow, Canary, Cocoa, Tan, Cool Grey 1, Terracotta, Pear Green
Stash- Handmade paper, orange eyelets, cream peachskin paper, brown card

The Stamp Man Challenge 9- Christmas!

Oh my goodness, where are the weeks flying to? Challenge 9 already!!!

It's an easy one this fortnight, we want to see Christmas projects. Well it's given me a kick up the you know what to get going!!! Here is my very first Christmas card of 2010....

I'm totally in love with this Stampendous Perfectly Clear Jumbo Snowman stamp . He's acrylic and just the outline of the snowman, so you can squidge his outline about and make him all sort of shapes and sizes. Then you add his hats or gloves or buttons, so make lots of different snowmen from one stamp set. Fabulous.

Here it is open.

I had made this a sort of off centre gatefold card, but I ended up adding a section of red card for the bodies to stand on so that they looked like they were peeking round the card.

I coloured the snowmen with Promarkers for the bright bits and watercolour pencils for some bluey grey soft shading round the edges. 

The Let it Snow words are another Stampendous stamp and these are stamped in black and embossed with Golden Pumpkin/Blush Moonglow 2 tone embossing powder . It's a bit hard to make out on the photos, but it gives them a lovely shimmer. If your black ink pad isn't good for embossing (like my beloved Versafine), try inking the stamp up with clear Versamark or another embossing pad first, then inking up the black on top before stamping. It works, and it means you can use most ink pads to emboss with.

Some Sparkly red paper, a few punched snowflakes and a squidge or two of Diamond Stickles and I have officially started on my Christmas cards.......

Ingredients

Stamps- Stampendous Perfectly Clear Jumbo Snowman, Stampendous Snow stop

Promarkers- Pumpkin, Bright orange, Red, Berry red, Ruby, Black, Cool grey 2, Cool grey 5

Watercolour pencils- Faber Castell Cold grey 2, light ultramarine

Stash- Diamond Stickles, Red glitter paper, Black and red card, snowflake punches

The Stamp Man Challenge- Autumn!

Well the weeks are flying by over at the Stamp Man's challenge blog. Did you all enjoy the blog hop? I did, it was great having lots of new visitors to my blog. We'll be posting the winners soon, so watch this space!

This fortnight's challenge is Autumn. Very appropriate now that the night's are drawing in a bit more. Here's my card.

The main image is triple embossed- it's a gorgeous Stampendous cling stamp called Autumn Trees, and I used orange and copper embossing powders to create the panel. It's mounted onto some fabulous orange mirriboard which my Mom gave me, the photo doesn't do it justice at all! The little punched leaves are in the same orange mirri, with a few brown ones thrown in. I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out, it looks like the wind is blowing them about.

The leave word is from The Stamp Man's Nature stamp plate, I just stamped it 3 times. I was having a talk with Kay the other day about what sentiments to put on cards, and it always seems a bit weird not putting Happy Birthday or the like. This just seemed to fit though.

Right, over to you. Come and play over at The Stamp Man Challenges and you could win a fabulous prize :)

Stripy ATCs for my crafty girls

I don't know if I mentioned it before (old age, y'know!!!) but I am part of a little group of 4 who regularly take it in turn to set each other ATC challenges. It started as a way to make sure we were using our new or uninked up stamps, but it's turned into a little bit of an institution for the 4 of us.

Well, this was my challenge theme- to use a previously unused stamp and incorporate stripes. I had a smashing afternoon yesterday catching up on my trashy TV watching and making these....

I think the yellow one is my favourite. The backgrounds are cut from a sheet of waste card used under some cosmic shimmering.

Ingredients

Stamps- Stampendous Petal Plus

Inks- Versafine Onyx Black

Stickles- Christmas red, Turquoise, Yellow