Five Christmas cards for September!!!

Good morning!!!

Here I am as promised every month with my five Christmas cards for this month!!! - Oh it's all going so well!!!

 I've popped them in three photo's so that you can see that each one is slightly different to the next one.

So, I have used the lovely Poinsettia by Woodware for these cards and the Seasons Greetings sentiment is also from that same set.  The Wishing you A Magical Christmas is from Stamps by Chloe.

I have stamped each flower with a perfect medium ink pad and heat embossed with white powder. I also used the same technique for all the sentiments.

These took me a little longer than usual for batch making as they have been painted in with lovely bright Brusho's and finished off in the centres with aqua markers applied undiluted.  The backgrounds have been done by masking off each flower first with masking fluid (this took a while!) and then mixing a couple of Distress Oxides and adding some filler stamps and stencils.  A tiny touch of white pen and I was done!

There you go! Month nine - mission complete - I'm nearly there with my news years resolution!!!

Hope you like them! Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xxx

Brown Paper Packages tied with Strings and Whiskers on Kittens for Fashionable Stamping Challenges.....

 Good morning!

Here I am with two inspirational pieces for our current theme over at Fashionable Stamping Challenges of "The Sound of Music" or "Your Favourite Things".

This first piece came to mind very quickly as I am a lover of brown paper at Christmastime, especially with nice bright red ribbon and perhaps a few fir cones on the top and some berries. So brown paper packages just shouted Christmas to me!  I've stamped some lovely spruce branches (Stamps by Chloe) in green and then overlaid those with some further spruce branches which have been embossed in white. The brown parcels were stamped (these were a freebee from a magazine) and then I tied the little string bows and attached all the strings to the parcels.  These parcels were simply painted in with diluted distress ink.  The background has been done using the new Tim Holtz distress oxide inks. The sentiment is also from Stamps by Chloe.

That's another Christmas card done and perfect for our theme this month!

Isn't this little puss adorable?  Here we are with my piece for "Whiskers on kittens" and you could join in with any kitten or cat stamp that you have at home or even just your favourite stamp!

I firstly stamped my kitten (which is an old wooden mounted stamp and the maker has actually rubbed off of the wooden block so I'm unsure of it's maker).

This background started off with brushos and I softened the edges with some distress ink.

I found the lovely little kitten toys on one of Sheena Douglass's stamp sets and they went perfectly with this little kitten stamp. I painted those in with diluted distress inks.

Finally I just popped a ledge in to make it look like the kitten was resting on something and poking the toy over the top.

This sentiment WHICH I LOVE is another from the Sheena Douglass stamp set.

Hope this has given you some inspiration for our current theme at Fashionable Stamping Challenges, remember, if you haven't got a stamp to match the theme exactly, it's wide open for you to use a favourite stamp or to stamp something that's your favourite thing!

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx

Wishing you a magical Christmas.....

Good morning!

Only took a couple of photo's of this one in it's making so I'll talk you through how I got there.

Started with my usual Sheena stamping card and coloured my background using Spectrum Aqua Markers.

I stamped my pine spray and the five baubles (all Stamps by Chloe).  The pine was embossed with white embossing powder.  Two baubles were silver embossed and three were in black archival ink.  I then decided that I wanted more dimension so that the baubles looked more round (they looked too flat to me) so I added glossy accents to each one of them and allowed it to totally dry.  Still wasn't happy so I added some sparkle embossing powder over the top on the black baubles and stamped over again with silver embossing powder on the two silver baubles - yes, I am now stamping on top of dry glossy accents! - When I heat embossed all five baubles again not only did the embossing powders melt but the glossy accents bubbled and made the most realistic effect leaving them "lumpy bumpy"!!

I stamped my sentiment "Wishing you a Magical Christmas" (Stamps by Chloe) and embossed in the silver sparkle embossing powder (Cosmic Shimmer).

Darkened the edges with distress ink and added ribbon bows to three baubles and some dots of Cosmic Shimmer pearl pva.

Mat and layered.

Here you can see the lovely roundness that the baubles have to them.

Happy with that, very pretty.

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx

Seasons Greetings.....

Good morning!

An extra blog this week!  I completed a milestone a few days ago - I completed my 2016 new years resolution!!!!! (5 Christmas cards a month.....and I did it having got ahead and did Decembers five too!!!!! yay!!!!!). I will feel really good knowing that they are all done.

OK, this is one of the cards made for Christmas - I wanted a tree just like the one I have here at home at Christmastime - nice and big, fat, fluffy and bushy!!!! I took some photo's of how I got there so lets go on our usual journey shall we?

Started with my usual piece of Sheena stamping card and started to stamp the arms of my tree with a couple of different colour distress inks using a pine branch stamp by Stamps by Chloe. So as you will see, this tree started and continued to form from just one, the same one straight pine branch stamp.

Here we go! By now I have added the same stamp with white embossing powder for some of the branches.

Now I have added some stencilling to the background and some die cut ivy hanging down (ivy makes me think of Christmas as it's always evergreen and always there at Christmastime).

ooooh, looking good!!! You will notice now that I have "knocked back" the background to bring the tree forwards to the foreground (so that the tree doesn't get lost in all the colours).  I have stamped an angel (Crafty Individuals) on to some shrink plastic and heated her to shrink her right down for the top of the tree and the baubles are also on shrink plastic from much larger ones by Stamps by Chloe and some glitter has been added to the baubles and the angel.

With some small hole punch circles of mirror card and some Nuvo pearl drops, a stand and some ribbon we were done! Oh, have you spotted the secret ingredient? - yes, matching feather pieces - perfect!

Mat and layered.

I got the exact effect that I wanted, a nice, fat, bushy and fluffy tree!

Hope you like it too,

I would like to enter this in to the Try It On Tuesday challenge "Trees are green... or any other colour":-

http://tuesdaytaggers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/trees-are-green-or-any-other-colour-at.html

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx