Penguins In The Snowy Night

This weekend I just withdrew into the craft room. It's my place of safety, comfort and re-charging the batteries. It's been a tough week, and quite a rollercoaster weekend. But when I surround myself with my stamps, dies and inks I feel like none of the bad stuff can touch me. I love how I can completely lose myself in the crafting for hours at a time. 

I love starting my crafty session with a browse of the the current challenges. This time I absorbed inspiration from the current sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches as well as the gorgeous inspiration image over at Inspired By All the Small Things. I'm also linking up over at House of Cards where the challenge this month is Create a Scene and Just Add Ink where the theme is Just Add L (I used L for Layers, I hardly ever do add as many layers as I have here.)

I started by creating the starry night sky using smooshing. I started by inking up my craft mat with yellow and green Tim Holtz Inks, spraying and smooshing my watercolour paper. Then I started building dark blue and black, adding some layers of yellow and green again from time to time, and drying between some of the layers. When I had reached the look I like, I dried the background completely and splattered with white acrylic paint. As I thought the sky actually looked more like a snowy than a starry sky I thought I would go down the winter scene route although the weekend has felt very much like spring.

While the acrylic paint was drying I stamped, coloured and die cut the penguins and built the little scene. I then die cut the background papers and adhered everything in place. I added some gold Wink of Stella to some of the yellow bits in the sky, but it doesn't show in the picture. In real life it adds a nice little sparkle to some parts of the night sky. Last, I added some more white splatters with my gel pen, as the Picket Fence splatters dried quite faint in some parts of the sky. I love how the smooching technique just turns out so random, and you never know what you will get.

Card: 250 gsm white card, 190 gsm watercolour paper

Ink and colouring: Tim Holtz Distress inks Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed, Twisted Citron, Mowed Lawn, Chipped Sapphire, Black Soot, Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Copics, Tim Holtz Distress Paint Picket Fence

Stamps: Lawn Fawn Snow Cool and matching dies

Paper: Stampin' Up Christmas 2013 paper (sorry, can't remember the name), Lawn Fawn Let's Polka in the Meadow

Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Dies, Stitched Borders dies, Stitched Hillside Border dies, Signo white Gel Pen

Paint smooshing on vellum

My week of annual leave is sadly coming to an end and it's time to say goodbye to family and head back home. As sad as that is, there is a silver lining to every cloud, and for me it's of course getting back to my craft room! Oh and seeing the Culinary Consultant too. Ok, that might even be the biggest silver lining to be honest, but don't tell him as he would just go getting big ideas about himself. Men... can't live with them and all that schtuff. Anyhow, I have another card I made a while ago that I wanted to share with you before hopefully being able to create something new in the next day or two. 

I had a bit of a mad creative moment the other day, creating several cards in one go, you can see my other similarly themed card here. I got really inspired to do some Distress Paint smooshing and decided to try it on vellum. I loved the look, it looks like stained glass! The paint behaves very differently on the slippery vellum compared to watercolour paper. I die cut a panel from the vellum after it had dried and stamped the sentiment from STAMPlorations Fond Expressions 2 and heat embossed in silver. I added two die cut snowflakes I found when rummaging through my stash (yay for using up yet another bit from the stash, every little bit counts!). Super quick and easy. If only I was as good at sending cards as I am at making them...

Also, don't forget that you have another 2 days to join the first ever STAMPlorations CAS challenge, where the optional colour twist is silver.

I am linking up with the following challenges:
Craft for the Craic - January Blues
Fussy and Fancy - Monochromatic 
Craft Rocket Challenges - Clean and Simple
If You Give a Crafter a Cookie - Inspiration Image (see below)
Stampavie and More - Winter
A Snowflakes Promise - Winter
Deep Ocean Challenge Blog - Winter Wonderland

Card: 300 gsm white card, Dovecraft 110 gsm premium vellum, silver and white glitter card
Stamps: STAMPlorations Fond Expressions 2
Ink: Tsukineko Versamark, Tim Holtz Distress Paints Broken China, Brushed Pewter, Mermaid Lagoon, Peacock Feathers and Picket Fence
Dies: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangles, Stitched Snowflakes
Other: Papermania Silver Tinsel embossing powder

Frozen smoosh

Well, my mojo clearly has realised it's the last day of my lovely Christmas holiday, and I have managed to create not one, not two, not three but four cards today. It just seemed like the good old mojo was in hibernation and now it's back. How great that I'm now in super-creative mode when I have to go back to work tomorrow and won't have any time to craft until next weekend. 

Sometimes it's the smallest thing that kicks off the good old mojo. I was browsing around looking at challenges (isn't it a bit ironic that most challenges are on holiday over Christmas when most people are on holiday and would actually have time to craft. Of course, being on some DTs myself, I'm of course very thankful for the break, but as a participant, I want more challenges, not less, over the holidays!!). Today, it was the Happy Little Stampers CAS challenge that kick started my mojo. The theme for this month is smooshing and I got super inspired and got out my Tim Holtz distress paints and smooshed a big pile of backgrounds, one of which ended up in today's card. The sentiment is from a set from STAMPlorations called Fond Expressions 2, and it's heat embossed in white. The snowflake embellishment is actually from my stash, I made it ages ago using Lawn Fawn Stitched Snowflakes dies and some Ranger Ice Stickles in Coffee Ice. Always such a rewarding feeling when you manage to use up stuff from your stash, isn't it.


I am linking up with the following challenges which inspired this card;
Try Stampin' on Tuesday - sketch (see below)
Happy Little Stampers CAS challenge - smooching
Happy Little Stampers CASE the designer - I was inspired by the smooched watercolour background and the layout with the watercoloured panel surrounded by plenty of white space
Curtain Call - Frozen 
The Shabby Tea Room - Inspiration image (see below)
Paper Sweeties Inspiration Challenge - colours (see below)
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Winter Wonderland

Card: 300 gsm white card, 300 gsm watercolour paper, Hobbycraft 160 gsm ivory card

Ink: Tsukineko Versamark, Tim Holtz Distress Paints Broken China, Brushed Pewter, Mermaid Lagoon, Peacock Feathers and Picket Fence

Stamps: STAMPlorations Fond Expressions 2

Dies: Lawn Fawn Stitched Snowflakes, Stitched Rectangles

Other: Papermania Seafoam White embossing powder, Ranger Ice Stickles Coffee Ice, Adhesive gems from my stash

Alpaca my scarf

I am so excited my selected bits and bobs from the Lawn Fawn Christmas release arrived just in time for some weekend crafting. I am trying very hard not to fill my craft room too much, but every time Lawn Fawn comes out with a new release I just want every single bit of it. Sigh. Talk about first world problems. But this time they really outdid themselves. There is an alpaca stamp!! Alpacas are so awesome, they are my favourites. A while ago the Culinary Consultant arranged for me to have a day out at an alpaca farm, and I got to see hundreds of alpacas, including a baby that had been born that day. It was amazing, I put a few pictures from my day on my photo blog here. So I put in my pre-order for the alpaca stamp as soon as I saw it, and was very excited to get to play with it.

This card was inspired by a few challenges. First of all, the layout was inspired by the Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge and the colours were inspired by Cupcake Inspirations. I'm also linking up with Crimbo Crackers where the theme is Small and Cute, and also with Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge where the theme is 'twas the night before Christmas. Last but not least I'm linking up with the Anything Goes challenge over at Christmas Stampin' All Year Long.

I created the background for my card using Stampin' Up Irresistibly Yours DSP and Tim Hotlz distress inks in Blueprint Sketch, Chipped Sapphire and Black Soot. I created the snowy hills from hammered white paper using Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillside Dies. I stamped the alpaca and coloured him with Copics and paper pieced his scarf from the new Lawn Fawn Let's Polka In the Dark paper. I stamped the cute sentiment from the stamp set onto green card and heat embossed it in white. Last, I used the new small snowflake dies from Lawn Fawn to create a few ornaments for the corner. Last, I added a band of the same green paper for the background that I used for the alpaca scarf. It's a small card, only 10x10 cm but I think it's a perfect for this wintery scene. And I just love the funny sentiment that comes with this set, and the alpaca is so unbelievably cute in his little scarf. 

Card: White 300 gsm hammered card, white 300 gsm card
Paper: Lawn Fawn Let's Polka In the Dark
Stamps: Lawn Fawn Winter Alpaca
Ink and colouring: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark, Tim Holtz distress inks Blueprint Sketch, Chipped Sapphire, Black Soot, Copics
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillside borders die, Mini Snowflakes die, Papermania Seafoam White

Holly Jolly - Feathered Friends

The last two weeks have just flown by, and it's already time for a new challenge over at Holly Jolly. Thank you to everyone for sharing your gorgeous Christmas Carol inspired creations, we love to see what you are creating, and it's good to see there are already lots of people getting prepared for Christmas. I chatted with a friend the other day and she said she can't even bring herself to use the "C-word" yet, but still she was already getting a head start with her C-cards. Crafters, eh? Lol.

Anyways our new challenge over at Holly Jolly is Feathered Friends. So get your crafty on with some Christmas themed Feathered Friends and link up with us. In addition to comments from our DT you will be in the running for some great prices from our sponsors who this week are Bugaboo, All Dressed Up, Stamp&Create and Crafty Sentiments.

 

This time I got to play with the Bugaboo stamp Winter Penguin Trio. I have to say, I love the challenges where Bugaboo is a sponsor as I absolutely love their cute digi stamps. I had so much fun colouring the Penguin buddies playing in the snow. I used Tim Holtz distress markers, and for the sky I blended the markers with some water for a watercolour effect. For the background I used Stampin' Up Irresistibly Yours Speciality Designer Series Paper. It comes with various resist embossed patterns, and you can colour it to your liking. In my case, I got to try out two of my new Tim Holtz inks on it, BluePrint Sketch the July colour and Twisted Citron, the new May colour. I used Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies to cut the images and the Lawn Fawn Tag You're It die for the banner. To finish, I added a bit of paper twine to the tag. I love the deep blue starry sky behind the Penguin buddies, I really love this new colour from the great Tim Holtz.

I am linking up with the following challenges:
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra - Anything Goes
Christmas Stampin' All Year Long - Anything Goes
A Gem of a challenge - Animals or birds
Crafty Friends Challenge - Inspired by a movie (Madagascar, the penguins are my favourites! Cute and cuddly!)
Fussy and Fancy Friday Challenge - Things with wings
Crafting From the Heart - Anything Goes 
Craft Your Passion - Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Make a Plan (planning for Christmas!)
Card: 300 gsm white card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, Stampin' Up Irresistibly Yours Speciality Designer Series Paper
Inks: Tim Holtz distress markers, ink pads Blueprint Sketch, Twisted Citron, Tsukineko Staz-on Jet Black
Stamps: Bugaboo Winter Penguin Trio, Dovecraft Clear S'Jingle TTS
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies and Tag You're it dies, Tim Holtz paper twine