Dancing On Ice in a Winter Wonderland

 

Here I am again, at the last minute as usual for the CASology Blog Challenge.  The cue card for this week's challenge is Winter, I thought this cheeky chap dancing on the ice was ideal.  The card also fits the Addicted to CAS weekly challenge embossing so I will be entering it there too.  This subject would be ideal for the Simply Less Is More Challenge "Sport or Exercise" but it is a one layer challenge, I am sure I can manage to use him again!

 The stamp is "Ice Skating" by Marriane Designs, I stamped him onto the card, embossed him and coloured him with distress inks.  I embossed a square piece of card with a dotty embossing folder, cut out the center with a spellbinders die, and stamped the sentiment in the bottom corner.  Some string was tied round and fastened with a bow, the panel was them fixed to the card with 3D sticky fixers.

I am working on half a dozen other things at the moment and hope to post a few more creations later today or tomorrow, at last I am getting organised and maybe next week I will not be posting to challenges at the last minute.

Thanks to all you lovely ladies who have been commenting recently, your comments are very much appreciated. 

"V" is for Very Frustrated!!

 

Today is the day to get to grips with the Craft Barn's Alpha Challenge,  I gathered together some dictionaries and finally started to alter my chosen dictionary.  I couldn't make my mind up what to do so tried two options, alter the actual dictionary or make an art journal with the pages.  The journal didn't work out well so the altered dictionary it was.

 

After flipping through "V" for inspiration I fell upon VISTA, thought this would work with my Machael Powell Urban Stamps "Clock tower" and "crooked cottage".

I started by circling the chosen word with a black pen and stamping the clock tower scene which I coloured with distress inks.  The top part of the crooked cottage stamp was stamped along the bottom of the page twice and also coloured with distress inks.  I doodled inbetween the two stamped areas to make it one continuous stamped image.  A letter V was cut out of paper, coloured blue and stamped with flowers which were coloured red, this was stuck to the page and butterflies stamped randomly up the page and coloured blue.

I wanted a way to find my page when I went back to my dictionary, a ribbon bookmark was created by stamping flowers and butterflies on to a white ribbon with black Stazon, colouring the ribbon, flowers and butterflies with distress ink.  I folded over the top of the ribbon and fastened a paperclip inside the fold to make a clip to fasten the ribbon to the page.

The "Very Frustrating" part was getting some ink on my stamping block when stamping the butterflies on the page and not realising until I had stamped the butterflies. I decided to leave it for the time being, but will try incorporate it into the stamped picture with a bit of doodling when I have thought out how to do it!  

Tagging along on a challenge or two

I am still waiting to receive some super crafting things I ordered last week but as always when you want something it takes ages for it to arrive.  I have decided to try out tags this year, Tim Holtz has been very helpful with some of his tutorials, if only I can remember some of the techniques!!

At present I am working on a tag for the Tim Holtz 12 Tags of 2013, I don't have all the items suggested so have improvised with what I have and some Sizzix/Tim Holts products, I will let you have a peek when it is finished.

On to other things though, the following tag was made for the Artful Times Challenge where we have to use 2 or more embossing folders in our design.  I am also entering it in the Splodgeaway Challenge which is "New Beginnings".

 I cut out the tag using the Sizzix "Tim Holtz" Tag and Bookplate die and embossed it with Craft Concepts Budding Vine using a Sizzix embosing diffuser.  The tag was coloured with distress ink in mustard seed  and the house stamped and coloured with Distress inks.  The greeting was printed onto a vellum tag and the top half embossed with the vine folder,  the tag was torn just below the greeting and attached to the main tag.  A Sizzix tattered floral flower was cut out and embossed with a Cuttlebug dots folder then coloured with distress ink in dried marigold and spiced marmalade.  The flower was assembled and atached to the tag with a die cut leaf, and a ribbon fastened through the top to finish it off.

 

The gold ribbon was stamped with black Stazon using the bird and flower stamp from the same set as the house (freebie with some magazine, not sure which).