Merry Patterns, special Hostess set

I just love this stamp set - unfortunately it was only available for hostess orders for the month of October. Just too soon for holiday crafts. I got mine, but didn't get to use it until December!!

I love the easy two step stamping with photopolymer stamps. And even if you are not 100% matching, it still looks pretty good!

So I made this one card with 3 different colour combos, using the special metallic snow flakes available from the Holiday Catalogue. The pack has 2 different colours of metallic snow flakes - gold and silver. The back of the snow flake is white, so I guess you could use them white also.



The first two colour combos where on Whisper White card stock, using Night of Navy card stock as a layer, Silver snowflake and on one the deer and the pattern sentiment has been stamped with Night of Navy, and on the other using in-colour 'Powder Pink'.





My favourite colour combo was the first one, which actually surprised me. I don't particularly like Very Vanilla, it's just a bit too yellow. I also don't care for the new in-colour 'tranquil tide'. But in this card, combined with the gold, it just looks 'trafidional'. The pattern stamp in the sentiment 'season' and the deer head has been stamped with Sahara Sand. The wood pattern paper (where the deer is stamped) is from Wood Textures Designer Series Paper Stack.

Then a very simple design. Just using single layer of Thick Whisper White Card Stock!. The stamp is from Merry Patterns special Hostess set. I stamped the outline deer with Archival Black Ink and then coloured the pattern version with Real Red marker (just the sweater part). Stamped the red sweater on the deer and then hand coloured using Sahara Sand Marker the head and the legs. I tried first colouring the stamp with two colours, but the image ended up smudged.

The border is hand drawn with Basic Black marker. The idea for this card came from Pinterest. I saw a german demonstrator doing this and thought it look very Scandinavian!

Using leftovers in card making!

This card came up from bits and bobs that I had left from the earlier scenery cards. I cut some folds on the card to create a 3D effect and glued the houses on the folded stubs. I did colour the houses before attaching them on the card base.

Here is an overhead close up view of the houses.

There are three pieces attached in front of the 3 tabs. One piece is actually tucked going under the middle tab and one piece is attached on the left tab.

Here is a side view of the tabs and the image placements. The colouring is done with ink and aqua painter and some are done with watercolour pencils and blender pens.

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Here are four different takes on the same card. All using the snow flake embossing folder (from the Holiday Catalogue). The last card has the snow flake embossed 'reversed', which looks really cool too.

The other differences are just the colours and the sizes of the snow flakes set on top of the card. The last card has only one golden snow flake, the rest of them are white (cut from Shimmery White card stock). The snow flake dies are from Seasonal Layers Thinlits set. 

Santa's sleigh

I saw this idea on Pinterest and wanted to give it a try. I first heat embossed the 'snow swirls' (or are they stars....) with versa mark and clear embossing powder - YES, it is clear but because it is on white card stock and inked after, it shows white!

Once I had heat embossed the images, I started adding ink with sponge daubers. I used the darker blues at the 'tips' or centres of the swirls and lighter tones to the edges. I even used some Tempting Turquoise on this! Then I stamped the images from Hearts Come Home stamp set with Early Espresso and added some 'snow' on the house and trees with White craft ink and a paint brush.

Colourful Scenery

 I saw this idea on Pinterest, and wanted to try couple of versions of it. I loved the idea of fully coloured houses, but the execution of the third version is not the best, mainly because I used Shimmery White card stock for the cut out houses, on a Whisper White card base. Plus I think I would prefer colouring the houses with Watercolour Pencils and then add water to make it look painted, rather than using ink and aqua painters.

These two cards are similar. The second one is layered a little bit tighter, just because I cut the pieces a bit shorter. So if you want it not so tight, make sure you have enough white space below the houses to tuck behind the lower layer!

And here is a close up of the fully coloured houses!

Hearts Come Home

This is my favourite Thinlits set and matching stamp set!

This card looks impressive, but it's not really difficult to do. The worst part is to try to align the white and crumb cake images so, that the white layer is a little bit 'off'. On the first card you can see, how the white is not showing at the edges of the cut out images (on the ground), where as in the second card there is some 'snow' on the ground too

Pieces & Patterns cards

I fell in love with this stamp set and matching Designer Series Paper. I just never got to making any cards with them until about a month ago. Then forgot to post the pictures here :-)

I love how the black and white DSP looks like film strip! And love all the cameras on the paper! This card only has one stamped image - the greeting!

This card is using the same paper, but with more surface. Again, only one stamp used - the same greeting!

This third card has a bit more layers and elements.

I used the stitched framelits to make the Crushed Curry 'picture frame', the swirl is from Swirly Scribbles Thinlits and the leaf is from the Seasonal Layers Thinlits set. The only stamp used in this card is the greeting, which is from Pieces & Patterns stamp set.