CAS Christmas Mid month reminder

Red Poinsettia 

Here we are at CAS Christmas with our mid month reminder poinsettia cards. Join Marina of My Perfect Life our Guest Designer for July and the rest of the design team in creating beautiful poinsettia Christmas Cards. Check out the challenge posts for some amazing inspiration.

I fussy cut two poinsettia and layered them to give dimension, then added Viva Decor gold peal pen to the centre and popped it up on some foam dots. I wanted a lots of white space in my background as a contrast to the bright red flower.

I hope you like the card and would love to hear from you.

Card Recipe
Stamps: Stamplorations, Rubbernecker sentiment
Paper: 110lb white, mixed media
Ink: Ranger archival
Accessories: Distress watercolours, gold pearl pen, poop up dots
Techniques: Watercolouring, fussy cutting

Colouring die cuts

 I've had this die for a while but never tried colouring it.  The background is smooshed with Distress Oxide inks, the cone flower die cut is watercoloured..  I gave it dimension by placing it on 2 layers of card stock.

I'm entering this for 

CAS Watercolour (smoosed background)

CAS MixUp (colour your dies)

Just us Girls (#449 watercolour background)

I hope you like it and would love to hear from you.

Card Recipe
Stamps: Tim Hotz
Paper: 110lbwhite, watercolour, mixed media
Ink: Distress oxides, Ranger archival
Accessories: Aqua markers, Distress oxides, Distinctly Dee's cone flower die, Stamplorations  double running stitch die, Simon says stamp stiched rectangle
Techniques: Smoshing, die cutting

CAS Christmas Card Challenge

It's time for CAS Christmas Card challenge and this months theme is Poinsettia.

Come join our Guest Designer Marina of My Perfect Life and the rest of the Design team in creating some beautiful cards, I'm sure you could do with adding to your Christmas Card stash.

I pulled out my Pan pastels and Versamark for my background, and also used the Pan pastels for the die cut.  The centre flowers are Viva Decor silver pearl pen.

I had a little oopsie on my first attempt at fixing the colour of the pan pastels on my die cut.  I grabbed the wrong can and ended up spraying it with glue instead of fixative, straight into the garbage as it was one sticky mess.  

That's what happens when you are in a hurry and don't check the can properly or perhaps I have too many cans on the shelf 😕

Lay down your Pan pastel colour, stamp the sentiment or image in Versamark and then go back over with Pan pastels.  The sentiment really pops with colour.

Come join us in the fun, you have until  the 26th of the month so lots of time.

Card Recipe
Stamps: Unity Sentiment
Paper: l10 Lb white
Ink: Versamark
Accessories: Memory box small Poinsettia, Pan pastels, Viva Decor Pearl pen (silver)
Techniques: Pan Pastels

Embossing folder monoprint

I used some Brushos and Lindys Magicals with an embossing folder to create a monoprint.

I stamped the seahorse and painted it with Lindy's Magicals for some shimmer.

I wish I could get a better picture of the sparkle but you know what it's like.

I'm entering this for the following challenges

CAS Watercolour- Ocean

A snowflakes Challenge-anything goes.

Craft Stampers - TIMI anything goes.

Card Recipe
Stamps: SU, Technique Junkies
Paper: Mixed media, 110lb white, Black
Ink: Ranger archival
Accessories: Lindy's Magicals, Embossing folder
Techniques: Embossing folder monoprint, watercolouring

Dirty Pour

During our retreat last month we had some fun with Dirty pours. While we had the paint out we tried dirty pours on cards stock, canvas paper and art boards.

This was sort of a swipe technique, we put a clean piece of paper on top after pouring and moving the paint around and transfered the paint from one sheet to the other.  It seem to bring more cells to the surface.

This pour is on card stock, so a great way to practice and not waste the art boards.  Also they make amazing backgrounds for cards.

The dirty pour was a mix of blues and greens, the cells gave it an ocean feel so I thought I would use it as the background to my encrusted jewel dolphin.

I used my favorite coral stamp from the Retired Stamping up set (By the tide), and added some white frantage to create the white foamy water.

Here's a close up of the dolphin and the dirty pour background.

I often don't add sentiments until I'm ready to use them.

I'm entering this for the following challenges.

CAS Mix up Layered embossing , Stamping and die cut.

HLS anything goes with a die challenge.

A Bit more time to Craft #70 anything goes.

Card Recipe
Stamps: SU -By the tide
Paper: 110lb white, black
Ink: Ranger archival
Accessories: Acrylic paint, embossing powders, Memory box Dolphin Die
Techniques: Dirty Pour, Encrusted Jewel

Pennyblack flower

I borrowed a beautiful Penny Black stamp off Susan to colour with markers directly to the stamp.  I first stamped the image using Sahara Sand to give me the outline.  I think Sahara Sand may have been a little dark for the colours I was using but I still like the effect. My one oopsy was the leaf around the bud, one came out a little too dark.  Other than that I really like the end result.  I didn't too too much spritzing with water so the intensity of the colours stayed.

I blended the edges of the image with Distress inks (Old Paper) and over stamped the flower with a visible image stamp Fibonacci I just picked up.

For those among us who are interested in Math. The Fibonacci is a spiral created by drawing circular arcs connecting the opposite corners of a squares in the Fibonacci tiling.

I'm entering this for the following challenges.

Penny Black and More - In the garden

Craft stampers June challenge - Anything goes

Addicted to stamps and More challenge #296 Anything goes

Card Recipe
Stamps: Penny Black, Visible image
Paper: Hot press Watercolour, 110lb White, Black
Ink: Distress inks,
Accessories: Tombo watercolour pens, water spritzer, MISTI,
Techniques: Direct to stamp watercolouring

CAS Christmas Mid month reminder

It's time for our CAS Christmas Card challenge mid month reminder.

Our Design Team and Guest Designer Bobby of Bits and Pieces have some gorgeous cards for you're inspiration.

But Don't forget the rules - 

- Christmas cards only following the monthly theme

- Cards must be CAS (lots of white space, uncluttered, minimal embellishments)

- Link to your entry post, not your entire blog

- Include a link to this challenge in your write-up

- New card creations only please

- Enter up to three (3) times

Here is my card, a simple holly die cut on white with a silver background.  The sentiment is stamped with Ranger archival blue and the Holly is a Tim Holtz mixed media alterations die, keeping it CAS with a masculine look.

Card Recipe
Stamps: Rubbernecker sentiment
Paper: 110lb white, glitter paper.
Ink: Ranger Archival.
Accessories:  Tim Holtz mixed media alterations dies.
Techniques: Die cutting

Serendipity farm house

Last month I joined Serendipity blog Design Team as Guest Designer in their blog hop. The great thing about their bi-monthly blog hop is you have the chance to win  $20 worth of free stamps, who wouldn't want to win.

I love this Winter homestead set, it's such a peaceful Christmas scene and really perfect for a CAS Christmas Card.  I don't usually create one layer cards but this stamp really shouted CAS, CAS, CAS.

I use prismacolour pencils to colour the house and barns and then used Nuvo glitter pen and glimmer spray on the whole card.  It's hard to see but the card has a beautiful soft shimmer to it.

I'm entering this for 

June CAS Christmas Card Challenge (masculine)

Merry Monday (add a barn to your card)

Christmas Crafts all year round 

Card Recipe
Stamps: Serendipity winter homestead set
Paper: 110lb white
Ink: Ranger archival black
Accessories: MISTI, Prismacolour pencils, Nuvo glitterpen, glimmer spray.
Techniques: Pencil colouring.

Pencils with Gamsol

During our recent crafting retreat Susan (Cardmaker's Garret) walked us through using coloured pencils with Gamsol.  I wanted to see what would happen if I used pencils on coated card, it certainly lightened the colours and made the colour move easily around on the card stock.

I used this cute guy from Katzelkraft, he's looking a little blue today.

I'm entering this for the following challenges

The paper players #396 Animal Antics

Addicted to stamps and more #294 CAS

Card Recipe
Stamps: Katzelkraft, Sentiment Tim Holtz
Paper: 110lb white, 110lb Coated card
Ink: Ranger Archival black, Ranger archival blue.
Accessories: Faber Castell pollychrome coloured pencils, gamsol
Techniques: Gamsol pencil colouring

CAS Christmas Encrusted Jeweled Ornament

 It's time for CAS Christmas card Challenge and the theme is Masculine.

Our Design Team and Guest Designer Bobby of Bits and Pieces have some amazing eye candy for you to peruse before you join in.

But Don't forget the rules - 

- Christmas cards only following the monthly theme

- Cards must be CAS (lots of white space, uncluttered, minimal embelishments)
- Link to your entry post, not your entire blog
- Include a link to this challenge in your write-up
- New card creations only please
- Enter up to three (3) times

My card is a die cut which has been covered with embossing powder and little bits of gilding flakes some tiny beads and any sprinkles I could find in my stash it's Encrusted Jeweled Faux Enamel.

I die cut my ornament and poured some embossing powders of it while it was on a hot plate.  There is a great video showing the technique

I hope you like the effect of adding extra sprinkles while it's hot so they stick to the enamel.

Here are a couple more pictures of our crafty retreat. 

Now I'm sure you have seen some of the pictures of the gals at the retreat on my last post for Eat Sleep Craft Repeated but I just got a few more from Darnell.  We had some additional crafters with us, Tika my dog and Tess Susan's dog were helping. 

Poor Darnell lost her stuffed horse Tika thought it was a present for her.

Tess got up to a little mischief and  pulled so many pieces of Kitchen roll out of the garbage and chewed them into little snippets of paper.

This little rascal is Tika, Dylan our other dog was on vacation at another friends for the week.

and here's Tika and Tess together, they look like angels but don't be deceived😛

I hope you enjoyed my card and the photos of the dogs, I would love to hear from you.

Card Recipe
Stamps: Sentiment Unity
Paper: 110lb white, Black
Ink: Ranger archival
Accessories: Die cut ornament (Gina Marie), Emerald Creek Embossing powder (Baked texture Deep sea), Frantage embossing enamels (shabby blue), (shabby white), gilding flakes, beads, electric fry pan
Techniques: Encrusted jewel faux enamel.