A Trio For Rudolph Day

 Well here we are another month has flown by and it is 25th August, which means it is Rudolph Day at Stamping For Pleasure. The challenge as always is to
make at least two christmas items, it doesn't have to be cards.
While I was shopping this weekend I spotted the latest copy of Simply Cards and Papercraft  magazine and with it was this set of christmas stamps and a pad of 6"x 6"papers from BoBunny and I immediately  thought of Rudolph Day and the magazine along with it's free stamps and papers just fell into my shopping trolley. Odd that isn't it !!!
I decided to make small cards with these stamps and started by cutting an A4 sheet of white card to make three cards roughly 4" square. They are not quite exactly square but nearly, and I folded them to make tent style cards. For the first one I stamped directly onto the card using Versafine Olympia Green for the holly and Memento Rich Cocoa for Santa and the greeting. I used a red felt tip pen to mark in the berries and Colour Soft pencils to colour the Santa. I then used a
Pilot gold pen to add highlights to the frame. I'm afraid I made a bit of a mess of one eye but I can promise that it doesn't look quite so bad IRL as it does enlarged on the screen.
For the next one I used some paper from the pad cut to fit the card front and edged it with a gold Krylon pen. I stamped the Santa again on a snippet of white card and fussy cut it out, and mounted it onto a mat cut from another snippet of red satin card with a Spellbinders scalloped circle die. The greeting on this one is this tiny snippet of ribbon left over from last year. I put a little glossy accents on the ends to make sure it didn't fray, but of course it didn't look very pretty so I stamped the tiny holly spray three times onto another snippet of white card and cut them out. I glued one to each end of the ribbon and one to the santa frame, and then added a little red Stickles glitter to the berries.
This piece of green card with the holly printed on it was
the backing in the stamp package and I thought it looked too nice to throw away, so I trimmed it to fit the card and edged it with the Krylon pen. I used the reverse of  the snippet of paper that I used on the previous card to cut the JOY using a Sissix  long die.I made this tree layers thick and coated it with Glossy Accents, sprinkling on a little glitter while it was still wet. The card had a few faint snowflakes on it and I added a few more using Frosted Spruce DI and stamping off some of the ink on scrap paper first. I also added a few green gems to bling it up a bit.
I used a few snippets on the last two so I'll pop over to Pixies Snippets Playground as well as Rudolph Day.
I have another new follower this week so Hi to Liz, I hope you make it back here soon.
A huge thank you to all of my followers, I love to read your comments and will try and to get to visit you too.

For A Friend's Birthday

I had a particular friend in mind when I made this card, we don't see each other very often but when we do this is how we usually spend our time together, drinking coffee and chatting. ( Sadly  we are both past the skimpy dresses and high heels though!!! he he. But we can dream! )
 All the stamps I've used here are in a set of clear stamps that were free with the Creative Stamper magazine. I stamped everything using black Memento ink onto snippets of white card. I also used some quite tiny snippets of patterned papers to paper piece the sunshade and the girls dresses, and then used Promarkers for the rest of the colouring. I cut the image with a Spellbinders Marrvelous Squares die and matted it onto another snippet of blue card cut with the larger die from the same set. The backing paper is from a LOTV pad and cut to fit the front of a 6" square base card. After sticking the picture in place I hand cut the stamped banner and fixed it with thin foam pads. I wrapped some blue seam binding around the folded edge of the card and tied a bow. The flowers are cut with a memory box die from some more matching snippets with yellow gems stuck in the centres, and the leaves I found already cut in a box of odd die cuts, I think it is probably a Joy Craft die.
I am sure that you have guessed that I will be taking this over to the Snippets Playground and see what all the other playmates have been making.

I have two new followers to say Hi to this week, so welcome to Hettie and Jaycee, thank you both for  following.
 Thank you as well to every one who spares the time to take a look at my work and for your comments which are greatly appreciated.

Birthday Bloom

This card is made using a set of stamps from Just Rite, and dies made by Spellbinders to co-ordinate with them. In fact I have two sets of stamps that go with these dies, one of them is Easter themed, and this one has several different flowers that  fit inside the frame, along with  a stamp for the frame itself, a few sentiments and the nice swirly stamp I have used here. When my friend was here last week she asked if I would cut a frame for her from a piece of patterned paper and decided it did not need to be stamped and it looked really nice on her card, so I thought I would have a go myself.
First I chose the flower and stamped it with Versafine Olympia Green ink on a snippet of white card and coloured it with Coloursoft pencils and blended with Sansodor and a paper stump. I used Brilliance Pearlescent Beige to shade around the edge. I chose a snippet of rose patterned paper from an LOTV pad, Country Lady, to cut the frame, and then deciding it needed a darker edge I drew around the outside of the die onto a co-ordinating paper from the same pad and cut it out by hand. I cut and folded a 6" square ivory base card and decided where I was going to place the framed flower, and then stamped the swirls in the corners with the green ink. The Birthday greeting is cut from the same DP as the frame edge using a Britania die. I cut it three times and stuck them together in a stack and coated with Glossy Accents as I have seen done on several blogs recently. It does add a nice bit of dimension. Lastly I added a few gems in the corners.
The snippets I used will get me through the gates to the Pixie's Snippets Playground again this week, and I am also entering the Stamping Sensations Challenge - Anything Goes.
I see I have another new follower, so welcome to Mags B thank you for joining .
Thank you for visiting and for your comments which are all really appreciated.

Summer Butterflies 2

   Yes I am back with another butterfly birthday card for the Butterfly Spot Challenge at Mrs. A's blog, where the theme is still Summer Butterflies. Now this card turned out to be a bit softer in colour and the flowers are very stylised ones but I hope it is still summery enough to qualify for the challenge.  There are certainly a lot of little brown and orange butterflies flitting around in our garden just now.
The stamps I used are Chocolate Baroque from a set called Fantastic Florals, stamped with Memento Elderberry ink, and coloured with Promarkers. I fussy cut around the image and fixed it to a panel of mauve pearl card that had been die cut with a Spellbinder Card Maker die. I threaded some pale blue seam binding through the slots in the die cut and tied a matching bow to sick at the centre. The pale blue backing paper is from an LOTV pad that came free with a craft magazine recently. I cut this to fit the front of my 5" x 7" base card using a deckle edge blade in my cutter.After sticking the layers together I stamped the greeting below the image panel.  I used a small snippet of white card and stamped the main butterfly twice and coloured with  Promarkers to match. I mixed a little liquid pearl with a spritz of water to make a pearly wash to brush over the butterflies to give the a slight sheen. ( I'm not sure how well this shows in the photo.) I used silicon glue to fix them in place so that the wings would stay slightly raised. I wanted to add a little glitter to the flower centres and picked out a pale lilac coloured Dovecraft stickles type glitter glue and was somewhat surprised when it dried looking decidedly green, although not quite as vividly so IRL as it does here. I think it must contain a kind of interference glitter and using it on a dark colour changed it's appearance.
The mauve card I used was a snippet as  well as the extra butterflies so I am tacking this over to Pixie's Snippet Playground to see if the other playmates are still enjoying the nice weather. We have been lucky here and missed most of the heavy rain. We had a fair downpour on Saturday morning but it cleared up enough for my husband to enjoy his usual game of outdoor bowls in the afternoon, and then it rained Monday evening and most of the night I think, but we don't mind how much it rains at night if it stays nice in the day.

I see I have a new follower so Hi to Jenny Lawrence of Cardsaurus, thank you for following and hope you come back soon.
Thanks to all come to visit and for your your kind and encouraging comments, I appreciate each one.